Chapter 20: In Liangzhou

Shunyin had left the manor early that morning.

Mu Changzhou had told her to go out and enjoy the city at her leisure, and she intended to do exactly that — conspicuously, visibly, in a way that left nothing to interpret. If she stayed shut up inside, he would only use it against her: see, she was uncomfortable.

So she had risen, made her preparations, taken Shengyu with her, and ridden out to the main street.

Liangzhou City was wide and well-organized, its streets broader than she'd expected, its neighborhoods arranged with a kind of practical tidiness. There was enough of it to occupy a full day without trying.

The sun was already low by the time she found herself standing at a corner of the south main street, veiled hat on, watching a group of Arab women perform. It wasn't anything she hadn't seen before — she'd seen similar acts in Chang'an years ago — but she was supposed to be observing the city's character, its customs, the texture of daily life here. She was doing that. The watching was genuine, even if the reason behind it was layered.

Shengyu appeared at her right with the horse and a look at the sky. "It's getting late, Madam. Shall we see more of the city, or—"

Shunyin glanced up, then shook her head. "No. We'll go back."

Shengyu brought the horse forward. Shunyin took the reins — and then stopped.

Someone was watching her from the roadside.

She looked again. A young woman stood near the entrance of a silk shop, dressed in light blue, her features fine and composed, her eyes fixed on Shunyin with an intentness that didn't quite match the posture of someone who had simply noticed a stranger.

"Wait a moment." She handed the reins back to Shengyu and walked over.

The young woman didn't move as she approached. She watched Shunyin come closer with those careful, measuring eyes.

"Miss Lu," Shunyin said.

Lu Tiao's daughter. Lu Zhengnian. She remembered her from the day before — the way she had stood behind her father, looking at the city gate with that same fixed attention.

Lu Zhengnian glanced at her and then looked down, silent, some thought working through her that she hadn't resolved yet.

Shunyin stepped a little to the right to make it easier. Still nothing. She was beginning to wonder whether something was actually wrong when the girl seemed to come to herself and looked up with a small, slightly rushed expression: "Madam, please don't misunderstand — I'm not mute."

Shunyin didn't know what to say to that. She nodded.

Lu Zhengnian steadied herself. "My father has a message he says he can't deliver himself right now. He asked me to bring it to you."

"What is it?"

Lu Zhengnian glanced along the street, then shifted her position to put her body between Shunyin and the road. From her sleeve she drew a small piece of paper, folded and wrapped with care, and held it out.

Shunyin took it, turned slightly away, and opened it.

A few lines in Lu Tiao's hand: The matter Madam entrusted to me has encountered an unexpected development. Hu Biao has been watching the Central Plains closely of late. A messenger has reported that a letter from Qin Prefecture was intercepted by Hu Biao while still en route...

She stopped reading.

The paper crumpled slightly in her hand.

So it had happened. Feng Wuji had written, and the letter had been intercepted. Which meant Mu Changzhou had already seen it.

Lu Zhengnian was watching her from the side, quiet and attentive.

Shunyin came back to herself. She tightened her grip on the paper until it nearly folded in half, then pressed it deep into her sleeve. Her face was entirely steady. "Thank you." She turned and walked back.

Shengyu saw her coming and registered nothing unusual — it had looked like a brief, unremarkable conversation with the prefect's daughter. "It's nearly dark, Madam. We should hurry."

Shunyin put her foot in the stirrup and swung up. She turned the horse almost before she was fully settled, and they rode back.

---

By the time the military commander's residence came into view, curfew had begun and the sky was the deep blue-grey of early dark.

Shengyu assumed she was tired and helped her dismount.

Shunyin's feet touched the ground and she stood still for a moment, feeling her thoughts settle around her the way they sometimes did after movement — clarifying as soon as she stopped moving. She looked at the gate. She pulled off her veil and handed it to Shengyu without speaking. Her fingers pressed together. Then she walked in.

The residence was lit throughout. Not the dark of an empty house.

She moved through the front courtyard and toward the back, her mind running ahead of her: perhaps he saw the letter and was too occupied to read it carefully. Perhaps he read it and found nothing. Perhaps—

But she couldn't make herself believe any of those. The thing that felt true was the thing she least wanted to be true: that he had seen it, and that he had understood it.

The backyard was entirely quiet. Not a servant in sight.

She walked along the corridor until her own east room came into view. She stopped, murmured something to herself — the habit she had when things were going poorly, it's alright, it's alright — tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear, and went straight to the door.

It was open. The room was fully lit. The wind chimes stirred in the draft from the corridor.

She stepped inside.

Mu Changzhou stood by the table. He was wearing the dark blue robe she had brought him. In one hand he held a document, head bent over it. At the sound of her entering, he looked up.

Their eyes met.

Shunyin felt her fingers curl inside her sleeve. Her voice came out steady. "You're back early, Second Brother Mu." Her gaze moved briefly to the document in his hand — she recognized it. Something she had written recently.

"Naturally," he said. "I came back for Yinniang."

She was close enough to hear him clearly. She stood without moving, because she already knew that the thing she'd feared most was exactly what had happened.

He glanced at the document. "I found myself curious why you liked to write down your observations. Then I began to notice that you understood military matters quite well — and that you had been taking care to conceal it." He looked at her. "Now I understand. It all had a purpose."

"What purpose?"

"To gather information on Liangzhou's defenses. To carry intelligence back to the Central Plains." He said it simply, without theatrics. One word at a time.

Shunyin's expression didn't shift. "How do you know?"

He reached into his robe and placed Feng Wuji's letter on the table between them. He pushed it toward her.

She looked at it. She didn't pick it up. She said nothing, only watched him.

Mu Changzhou moved around the table and came to stand at her right. "Poetry has its own formal structures. Apply the same principle to letters — establish a structure, vary it according to a system, fill the space with ordinary words — and to any outsider it reads as nothing. But someone who knows the system can read the structure, and from that, extract what the words actually say."

Shunyin's fingers tightened sharply in her sleeve.

She had expected him to find something — some detail, some slip. She had not expected him to reach the format itself. The system was internal, known only to those within it. An outsider couldn't find it. Couldn't even know it existed.

How had he—

Her face stayed still. She pressed her lips together and said nothing.

Mu Changzhou opened the document he was holding — her notes — and stepped closer. He read from it: "Huining Pass, 180 li southwest of Huizhou, on the city wall—" He stopped. Looked up. "No further description. I wonder how you memorized the rest."

She had memorized it. But she wasn't going to say that.

She closed her fingers again inside her sleeve. The first measurement — 180 li — was plain text, plainly written, because it was general information, already known. What came after it concerned the walls directly, and it was in code; any surface reading would find only a description of landscape and scenery. And yet he had identified it. He had known she was writing about the walls.

He took one more step. "How could Yinniang forget — I lived in the Feng family for four years."

Something moved in her chest.

She looked at him and understood, in that moment, what had been sitting wrong with her since she'd arrived in Liangzhou — the feeling she couldn't name, that he was hiding something from her while she was busy hiding things from him.

This. This was what he had hidden.

He had known. Not guessed. Known.

She opened her mouth and found, for the first time in this conversation, that her voice required an effort to keep even. "What does Second Brother Mu want to say?"

"Your father and brothers were kind to me during those four years. I was a scholar; they spoke frankly with me about certain things." He paused. "They likely knew you were distant from me at the time, so they never included you in those conversations."

She felt it like something physical — a blow to the place she'd thought was shielded.

Her family. It had been her family. The thing she had spent years carefully building and concealing had been sitting in plain view of this man since before she'd ever thought to hide it from him. And no one had told her.

Mu Changzhou pressed a hand lightly to the document. Then, in a different tone: "Where is Wu Huo? He's the one I talked to most."

She opened her lips. Wu Huo. Feng Wuhuo. Her eldest brother. The eldest son of the Feng family.

"They're gone," she said.

He looked at her. "Gone where?"

Her face had gone cold. "Gone. Not anywhere. Just — gone."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded, very calmly. "Of course. He was the eldest son. If he weren't gone, he wouldn't have left the family behind."

There was no cruelty in his tone. That was somehow the worst part of it — he said it the same way he said everything, with that unshaken steadiness, as though he was simply noting an obvious fact. As though her brother's death were a logical conclusion rather than a loss that still woke her in the night.

The sharp pain came and sank, fast, into something harder underneath.

"Second Brother Mu," she said. "If there's more, say it all at once."

He looked at her face, then into her eyes. "I heard the Feng family fell on charges. Is your intention — to build up Feng Wuji's position, to revive the family, and then to have your father's case overturned?"

She looked at him evenly. "I know only that I have a duty to the Feng family."

He seemed about to ask what duty. He looked at her eyes. He didn't ask.

The cold had settled in her fully now, and the colder she felt, the more composed she became — it always worked that way. She extended her hands toward him, palms up, steady as stone. "If Second Brother Mu wishes to pass judgment on this — you may bind me whenever you like and do as you see fit."

He looked at her hands. At her face. There was not a trace of fear in either. Even now, he could see, she understood that his assessments had been built on inference — on what he had reasoned, not on what he could prove. She had made the calculation and was offering him an outcome she had already accepted.

He held her gaze for a long moment. "Wouldn't that be letting Yinniang off too easily?"

She frowned.

He stepped closer, until his shadow crossed her, and she had the almost involuntary impulse to step back — she held it.

He caught her extended wrist in one hand, and said: "You have real ability. Why not use it for me?"

Shunyin looked up at him, genuinely uncertain she had heard correctly. "What?"

"When I first encountered this system, it was still in early form. Now it's been fully developed, with its own internal logic — I can't reconstruct the detail from the outside anymore." His gaze settled on her, still and direct. "Which means it was you who completed it. You know far more than just what's in that document."

Her eyes shifted slightly. He was right — he had built his conclusions on structure and judgment, on four years in the Feng household and however long he'd spent comparing letters. The specifics were still hers. He had arrived at the shape of the thing, not the content.

She let herself sit back into that knowledge and said, calmly: "Second Brother Mu, what if you've guessed wrong?"

"Then I'll accept it." His eyes didn't move from her face. "But no one else in Liangzhou would find what I've found. I'm confident enough."

She considered him. Then she looked at her wrist, held in his hand, and asked quietly: "Are you threatening me again?"

"This is a proposal." He straightened slightly, and something in his manner settled into a kind of evenness that was almost unsettling for how genuine it seemed. "I sat the imperial examination. I have met the current Emperor — we are the same age, and I know how his mind works. He wants stability at the border. He wants to be free of the fear of war. You give him what he wants; I give you what you want. What is wrong with that arrangement?"

Shunyin stared at him.

She could not find the joke in it. His eyes were dark and entirely without irony.

He loosened his hold on her wrist — not releasing it, only shifting his grip. "We are already husband and wife. Is Feng Wuji's advancement enough to carry the weight of the whole family? To rebuild the Feng name, wouldn't it serve you better to have a husband with real influence behind you?"

Something turned over slowly in her chest. She held his gaze for one moment — then wanted to look away, and pulled her wrist back.

His hand closed tighter.

He didn't look alarmed or urgent. If anything, there was a faint curve at the edge of his mouth. He drew her toward him — just slightly, enough to close the last of the distance — and bent his head toward her right ear. His voice, when it came, was low enough that it existed only in that small space between them.

"Whatever kind of man I am — in Liangzhou, Yinniang, you can only rely on me."