A cold wave rolled in from the dark, carrying fat goose-feather snowflakes, and swept the capital without warning.
In Cheng'anbo Mansion, old Lady Wei exhaled a slow breath, rubbed her aching knees, and reached for the bronze bell beside her pillow.
The night-watch maid, Jade, had been sleeping thin. Her quilt was no match for the chill, and she had drawn herself into a tight ball without realizing it. The bell snapped her awake. She threw back the covers, dressed, and lit the lamp — all in one unbroken motion. Two or three quick steps and she was at the old lady's bedside, lifting half the curtain.
"Are you uncomfortable, my lady?"
Old Lady Wei shook her head and looked toward the window. "Late spring cold," she murmured. "Wind's picked up. Go fetch another quilt from the chest, then boil water for the soup warmers. My knees hurt. I doubt I'll sleep tonight."
Jade had served the old lady long enough to move without thinking. She opened the storage chest and pulled out a thick quilt that had been put away only weeks ago, spread it snug over the old lady's bed, then tucked four copper warming flasks under her arm and headed for the kitchen.
She pushed the door open. A few snowflakes drifted in to meet her.
The courtyard lamps were still burning. The snow on the ground was already a finger thick.
Jade stood still for a moment, struck silent. Snow in spring. She had never seen it in all her years.
She carried the filled warmers back inside and bent down to tuck them against the old lady's legs. "My lady, it's snowing outside."
Old Lady Wei blinked, genuinely surprised. Snow in mid-February was not unheard of, but the peach blossoms and plum blossoms had been on the edge of opening. They would not survive this.
The warmth reached her knees and she sighed with relief. Then she glanced toward the curtain. "Go to the backyard. Miss Si's girls can't be counted on to notice anything in the night. They'd rather shrink under the covers than get up and tend to her. She's delicate. Take an extra quilt. Take a warmer too, if she needs one."
Jade acknowledged the order and went.
She pulled on the old heavy robe Old Lady Wei kept for cold nights and hurried along the corridor to the small connecting door, lantern in one hand, a pot of hot water in the other. She had the key. She let herself in and looked around. The backyard was silent. Neither the fourth young lady nor the night-watch girl had stirred.
Jade crossed to the second room of the upper building and knocked softly on the window.
Peach woke with a start. Jade explained herself quickly through the wood, and the door opened.
"Is the young lady still asleep?" Jade stepped inside and kept her voice low. "Hurry and add a quilt to her bed. Bring two more warmers — I've got the water ready."
Peach blew on her palms, lifted the candle from the lotus stand, and shuffled trembling into the inner room.
Jade followed. She wanted to see for herself.
Wei Rao had not been sleeping well. The cold had curled her body to its limit.
She heard movement through the fog of half-sleep and turned over. A light flickered behind the screen. "Peach?"
Peach hurried forward and stood at the quilt chest. "Miss, it's snowing outside. The old lady was worried you'd freeze. She sent Sister Jade over. I'm adding a quilt now."
Wei Rao sat up straighter. "It's snowing?"
That morning, the embroidery room had handed out light linen skirts for early summer. And it was snowing.
She wanted to see.
She pushed the curtain aside and leaned toward the window — and found Jade already moving toward her, pressing her gently back by the shoulders and tucking the covers up around her. "My good miss. It's bitter outside. Don't go freezing yourself."
Trapped back in bed, Wei Rao laughed despite herself. "It's not that cold."
Jade held out the hem of the heavy robe she wore. "The old lady made me put this on before leaving the house. Are you telling me you're warmer than I am?"
Wei Rao looked at the robe, conceded the point, and sighed. "Then find me a cloak. I'll go look once I'm dressed."
Jade had served long enough to know that the fourth young lady's mind, once set, was not easily turned — not even by the old lady. She told Peach with a resigned look to fetch a cloak.
"Sister Jade." Wei Rao tilted her head, voice soft and a little coy. "I'm so thirsty. Would you pour me a bowl of tea?"
A face like that — skin the color of new snow, eyes bright, teeth white, lips red — asking anything of you in that voice, and whether it was coaxing or commanding hardly seemed to matter. Jade was happy to pour the tea.
The copper pot on the tea table had gone cold. She measured out half a bowl, went outside to mix in hot water, and came back to find Peach already smoothing out the fresh quilt.
Jade stood beside the bed holding the bowl, waiting. Her eyes settled on Wei Rao's face without meaning to.
Only one candle burned. The room was dim and the night was harsh, the kind of stillness that usually felt bleak. But the moment Jade looked at the fourth young lady, the bleakness dissolved entirely. She forgot the cold. She forgot the hour. She was simply looking.
Wei Rao's beauty was like a peony blooming full in an open courtyard — extravagant, unapologetic, indifferent to whether the viewer could handle it. Scholars called that kind of beauty unruly, too bold for good taste. They were not wrong, and it did not matter. You could be the most self-possessed man in the capital, and one glance at that face would still pin your feet to the ground and empty your head of language. No matter how bare the room, no matter how plain the light, wherever Wei Rao was, the place bloomed.
It was no wonder the old lady loved her above all others. Even knowing that Wei Rao's mother had refused to release her own claim on the second master and had stayed in his house as a widow — a scandal that had cut Old Lady Wei to the bone and blackened the mansion's name — even so, the old lady kept Wei Rao in her own yard, close, protected, seen to at every turn.
The quilt was laid. Peach stepped back. Jade brought the tea forward.
Wei Rao sat up straight and took the bowl in both hands, drinking with her head bowed.
Red lips at the rim of a white porcelain bowl. Long lashes dropped low like small folded fans. Fingers around the bowl as slender as spring onions, and a strip of snow-white wrist showing where the loose cuff had fallen back. It didn't matter where you looked. Everything was pleasant.
Jade thought, absurdly, that perhaps if she spent enough years in the fourth young lady's company, some small measure of that beauty might rub off on her.
Wei Rao had no idea what was going through Jade's head. She finished her tea, wrapped herself in the cloak Peach had brought, and moved to the window.
Snow fell in fat, slow flakes. It brightened the dark.
But Wei Rao's brow pulled tight. She rubbed her hands together and spoke to no one in particular. "Why tonight, of all nights. Tomorrow is my grandmother's sixtieth birthday. This snow — people will talk. They'll find something to blame it on." A late spring snowstorm threatened the spring planting. Crop yields could drop. When heaven seemed to look away, people always found someone to point at.
She lost her taste for the view and told Jade to walk carefully on her way back. Then she turned, lay back down, and said nothing more.
As Jade moved through the curtain into the outer room, she heard a faint sigh from behind it.
She said nothing. She exchanged a look with Peach, picked up her lantern, and went back to the front yard.
"Well?" Old Lady Wei was still waiting.
Jade smiled. "The extra quilt and warmers are all settled. The fourth young lady even got up to look at the snow for a bit."
Old Lady Wei shook her head slowly. Her expression shifted through something complicated. "In the mood to watch snow tonight. Tomorrow morning she'll feel it. There'll be enough sadness then."
Jade kept her mouth shut. If she agreed, the old lady would be up worrying until dawn.
"Tomorrow's troubles can wait until tomorrow. Rest now." Jade leaned over and tucked the quilt back up around Old Lady Wei's shoulders.
The old lady nodded, closed her eyes, and was quiet.
Jade snuffed the candle and withdrew to the side room.
Her own quilt, once warm, had gone cold in her absence. She pressed Old Lady Wei's heavy coat over it, rubbed her hands and feet together, and lay there unable to sleep.
She listened to the soft, steady sound of the snow outside and thought about the fourth young lady and her peony face.
If Miss Si was a young peony spirit, then Miss Si's mother, Little Zhou, was a full-grown one. And Miss Si's grandmother — Shou'an Jun — was the oldest and most powerful peony of all.
The grandmother's story was something. In her youth she had entered the palace as a wet nurse to the Yuan Jia Emperor, nursed him for over a decade, and while the previous emperor was still alive, had charmed the young heir into treating her with filial devotion. It was said that her standing with him surpassed even the empress dowager's. When the empress dowager could no longer tolerate her presence, the Yuan Jia Emperor granted her the title Lady Shou'an and sent her out of the palace to live in comfort — making her the only woman among the capital's official households to receive a titled rank after the new emperor came to the throne.
Her connection to the old reign and her offense against the empress dowager had not won her admiration. So she set about doing as she pleased. Her elder daughter, Big Zhou, had fallen into an unhappy marriage. Shou'an Jun pushed her to leave her husband, then turned around and arranged a new match with a prosperous merchant — as his legal wife, no less. When Little Zhou was widowed years later, Shou'an Jun brought her home, then contrived to put her in the Yuan Jia Emperor's path during one of his visits to the country estate.
Noble families built their reputations on their daughters' virtue. What Shou'an Jun had done, twice over, was considered an outrage.
Because of these women, the stain reached Wei Rao. People had long since decided that she was cut from the same cloth — "a poplar-flower blown by water, with no sense of womanly propriety." Their verdict was already written: she would either never marry, or she would marry and leave, or she would be left herself. The pattern, they said, was in the blood.
Old Lady Wei had spent years and considerable effort trying to restore the fourth young lady's standing. None of it had taken. The reputation was lost, and no family had come to the door with a proposal.
What made it worse was Wei Rao herself. She knew, better than anyone, to stay clear of her grandmother, her aunt, and her mother if she wanted to salvage her name. The sensible thing was to draw a clean line. But she kept going to Shou'an Jun's side — kept stepping back into that black dye vat — and every visit darkened her name a shade further.