19. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
Mu Fanqing
“It appears that we are hunting a shapeshifter,” I tell Chenghou as I walk along the courtyard, looking for a secluded back area where we can speak in peace. Here in the governor’s mansion, there are so many servants that one can’t take even a few steps without tripping over one.
That’s one thing that I miss from the Xiao manor in the Imperial City. I wasn’t surrounded by so many servants. Now that I think about it, outside of a few cooks and the coachman and then a few servants who cleaned, I only saw Yan Yi and Qu Ting, one servant for me and one for Shu.
It is simpler that way. Not as peaceful as my life as a cultivator, but even before that my father was only an eighth rank official, we had servants of course but not the small army that can be found in this manor, serving the governor.
“Don’t look at me,” Chenghou says, resting his chin against his claw as he looks up at me.
He is still the size of a bracelet and on my wrist, but he is back to his red coloring, no longer gold.
“I would never eat any livers.” His tongue slithers out, although I’m not entirely sure if it is from disgust or just the way he talks. “I already have one of my own.”
I wrinkle my nose in distaste. This case appears to be a particularly vile one, the spirit behind this has a very specific pattern of victims and a very specific way of killing.
Which is how we know that it is the same creature even though every eyewitness paints someone different leaving crime scenes each time.
Sometimes they claim to have seen a tall man, sometimes an old woman, sometimes a child even. But the scene this creature leaves behind is always the same.
A mangled corpse and a missing liver.
Also disturbing is the fact that all the victims all seem to be young women of passable beauty.
“It sounds like a fox spirit to me,” Chenghou says with a huff. “Although don’t expect me to help you hunt my own kind.”
“Even if your kind is hurting people?”
“What they do is none of my business.” Chenghou sniffs and shakes his tiny head, his golden hairs shivering with the movement.
They float around his head as if they have the will to defy gravity.
“Just as what you elves do is none of my business. I haven’t existed as long as I have by concerning myself with everyone’s business. ”
“Only mine?” I ask raising my brow.
“You aren’t just anyone. You are my savior. Do you know how incredibly bored I was, trapped in that vase? To you I will be loyal forever.”
I wag a finger at him. “Be careful the promises you make. Forever is an awful long time.” However, I can’t help the smile that creeps across my face. I was a little worried that once faced with his freedom, Chenghou’s promises from last night would fade from his mind.
After all, he is a great spirit, a dragon.
He can hardly be bothered to keep every promise he makes.
However, he stayed by my side the whole day, adorning my wrist and then morphed back to speak to me the second we were alone.
It seems that he is dedicated to teaching me magic.
Although I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do it here in this stifling governor’s mansion.
So large and yet nowhere to be truly alone.
My step has a little skip in it as I head around the courtyard, but I draw to a halt when a familiar voice reaches my ears. “I suppose I should get this over with sooner rather than later.”
Shu.
I pause, ducking behind a flowering tree and press myself against the tree trunk. I peer around to see him step up to a low stone table situated in the center of a path in a small pagoda in the garden. General Gao is already sitting at the table, sipping a cup of tea.
She sets the cup down and glances up at him. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
“I wasn’t sure that we were still that,” Shu replies easily. He folds his legs, lowering himself into the low chair and pours himself a cup of tea. He pauses and blows on it before glancing at Liying.
“It has been a while,” she says as she sets her cup down and braces her hands on her knees.
I know I should leave. Eavesdropping is rude and what Shu does is none of my business. The sooner I get that through my head the less that man will frustrate me. Not to mention that my prying into his affairs only invites him to return to favor and I cannot risk him learning about the dragon.
But I can’t seem to force myself to move away. From the second I met her and found out that she has a connection to Shu, I have wondered just what transpired between them in the past.
From the sounds of it they were quite close. I tamp down the spark of jealousy that tries to rise up within me. What does it matter if Shu has a past with someone? It isn’t as though he has a future with me.
He is free. His own agent.
“You’re married now,” Liying says simply. She doesn’t seem to speak much but when she does, all her words appear to be carefully chosen. As if she is on a battlefield right now and her words are her weapons, craftily wielded to win any encounter.
“So, I am.” Shu takes a sip of his tea.
“I thought you were never going to get married.”
Shu is calm like a still river. “His Imperial Highness had other ideas.”
“So, I heard.” Liying reaches forward, grabbing a flower shaped pastry off the plate.
However, she doesn’t take any bites from it.
She simply fingers it as she watches Shu.
“The lord of the Fourth Family marrying the daughter of a mere eighth rank official. Just think, if you had agreed to my proposal, you would have had the opportunity to marry up instead of being insulted by marrying into such a lowborn family.”
I feel my mouth drop open, feeling the sting of her insult as keenly as if she had slapped me. So, she looks down on me for my birth? Does everyone? Do they think I married far beyond my level?
As if this was my choice, did they think I begged the emperor on my knees day and night until he finally agreed to this marriage? His decree barged into my quiet life and ruined every dream I had once harbored.
And she insults me all because she wanted Shu for herself? If she is angry at him, she can insult him. I want to be left out of this.
I haven’t done anything to her.
If anything, I saved her by marrying Shu myself.
Saved her in the very least from the moral dilemma she would feel when she learned that he was a smuggler.
She is a general loyal to the realm, she would not have the same ability to turn a blind eye to his crimes as I do.
In fact, now that I think about it, I wonder if maybe that’s exactly the reason he turned down her marriage offer.
Perhaps he even loved her, but he chose his smuggling over her.
Shu sets down his tea calmly and draws in a sharp breath. “The only problem with your suggestion is that I would then have to see your face every day,” he says in the calmest way possible as if he were discussing the weather.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t love her…
I don’t know why that should make me feel so good about myself, but it does. Liying is a beautiful woman and yet he insults her. He has never said anything disparaging about my face. I slowly raise my hand to rest my fingers on my cheek.
Does he perhaps think I’m pretty?
Unbidden, I feel that frustrating blush warms my cheeks.
Liying blinks, her head moving back as Shu pushes to his feet. “Next time that you wish to insult Fanqing’s birth I will remind you that she gave me something you never could—a father-in-law I don’t detest. I will take my leave,” he says before he turns sharply and walks away.
I’m fortunate that he heads down the path in the opposite direction as me because I am in too much shock to try to hide the fact that I just overheard their whole conversation.
Liying watches him go before she tosses the pastry onto the table. “Insolent man,” she grumbles. She huffs angrily, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
I push away from the tree, rubbing my hand against the skin now indented by the bark where I leaned up against it too hard. Did Shu just defend me? Defend my eighth-rank father?
I give my head a sharp shake. I’m sure he only did it because of the contract.
I start down the path trying to come to terms with what I just learned.
So, Gao Liying, the gorgeous and powerful general from the Third Family, even higher than Xiao Shu’s Fourth Family…
is in love with him? She even proposed that he marry her and he turned her down.
Yet she still wants him. Does he truly have this effect on everyone?
Was I doomed to fall from the start?
My mind flits to his strong grip on my wrist as he helped me sign that marriage contract…
I shake my head sharply, ridding myself of that image, however it is quickly replaced by the memory of how peaceful he looks when he was asleep in the carriage.
I suppose I can see how he has this charm since he is so handsome…
at least he is when he is asleep and not running around committing who knows what sort of mischief.
“I won’t pretend that I understood all these terms such as eighth-rank or Fourth Lord,” Chenghou says with a frown, finally speaking up. “But it does sound to me that she insulted you.”
I glance back over my shoulder; however, the pavilion is out of view, blocked by trees and shrubbery. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Chenghou grumbles. “As if I would choose an inferior elf as my apprentice.”
My foot skids against the ground as I hold up my arm to see the dragon more clearly. “I don’t suppose I am to call you master then?”
He waves his scaled claw with a quick flick. “Chenghou the Mighty will do well enough.”
I drop my arm, feeling my mouth turn up at the corners into a smirk.
I don’t know what it is about Chenghou, but it almost feels as though I have known him my whole life.
I feel a certain ease in his presence that I certainly shouldn’t be feeling with a dragon.
His very existence could see me executed.
And yet I cannot find it in myself to fear him.
At this point it isn’t even ambition, it’s almost as though I trust him. Which is ridiculous, he has given me no reason to do so.
It feels almost as if we have met before, but that cannot be true. I would remember meeting such a magnificent and grand beast.
I give my head a small shake as I continue down the path. “Magic to spirits is a necessity,” Chenghou says filling the silence. “It is our very lifeblood, to exist is to carry it within us. But tell me, why out of the options available to elves did you choose to be a cultivator?”
My foot pauses, and my skirts swoosh around it, hovering there an inch above the ground.
“I don’t quite remember the exact process,” I admit at last, my shoulders slumping slightly. My lifelong dream and yet I cannot place the exact moment or thought that inspired me to follow this path. I shake my head, shrugging. “I must have simply always wanted it.”
Chenghou makes a humming sound in the back of his throat. “Perhaps you simply became a cultivator since we were fated to meet.”
“Now don’t go getting sappy with me. I don’t believe in fate and you’re such a wise creature I’d have to lose some respect for you if you did.”
Chenghou sticks out his tongue but doesn’t say anything else. His nostrils flair before he quickly takes back on the golden appearance just as Qu Ting rounds the corner in the garden. She draws to a halt, her skirts flaring around her. “My lady, a letter for you.”
I take the letter. Upon first glance I can recognize the penmanship written down the envelope. Ehuang. I open it up, unfolding the paper to see my sister’s neat, lined script. I recognize it from all the notes she has made on plants and the properties they possess.
The contents of the letter details Ehuang’s journey, it seems she didn’t make any stops for illicit smuggling activities and so they made it to the city late last night instead of this morning. The letter concludes with the message, “I am waiting for you at the Tree Pine Inn.”
I quickly fold the letter, finding myself smiling a bit at the thought. And Ehuang was so worried that we would not see each other much once I was married. Only for us to wind up in the same city only days later.
I wonder if Ren Shang will be there as well since he is investigating alongside Ehuang. I have not seen my old study mate Ren Shang for three years, ever since he joined the Ministry of Justice. I hope that he is doing well.
I also want to go speak to him about keeping an eye on my sister, because I’m not entirely sure if I want to trust a Xiao to do that.
I’m sure that he would do it anyway even without my asking, Shang has always been an upright person like that.
But it would help ease my mind to know that he has agreed.
I fold up the letter, tucking it into my sleeve, making sure to hide Chenghou in the material. “I am going to the Pine Tree Inn to see my sister.”
Qu Ting nods once. “Would you like me to have a carriage prepared?”
Then everyone will know where I have gone.
I don’t like having that much attention on me.
A part of me misses the quiet seclusion of my cultivation where every other student was focused on their own efforts and I was free to structure my day however I wanted.
I shake my head once since it’s no use pining for something that I will never have again.
“It’s a nice enough day, I think I will walk. ”
As I start back through the courtyard, with Qu Ting following along behind me, a thought strikes me. For the first time in my life, I am going to have to lie to my sister. Not just about one thing, but two.
Because she works for the Ministry of Justice now, I dare not allow her to find out about Shu’s smuggling activities, even though I feel like I may burst from simply keeping it a secret. For all I know, Shu could be the very smuggler she has been sent to track down and apprehend.
Would that not be the greatest of all ironies? If my sister was sent to arrest my husband?
But even that secret pales in comparison to the one that I myself am keeping, the reason why no one must ever find out about Shu’s smuggling, is because I cannot be investigated myself. For as long as I live, no one can ever find out about the dragon disguised as a bracelet on my wrist.