The county seat was not far. On foot, two and a half hours. Fan Changyu was lucky -- an acquaintance heading the same way offered her a seat on his oxcart, and she arrived just as the yamen runners were taking their posts.
She gave the gate guard the name of Chief Constable Wang. A moment later she was led to the duty room behind the yamen.
"...drag every vagrant in off the streets and throw them in the cells. Eyes wide open right after New Year -- don't let anyone slip through."
Wang Butou was mid-lecture. Fan Changyu waited outside the door without a sound.
When he finished, he caught her in the corner of his eye, raised one hand, and the catchers filed out in pairs with their yamen swords, headed for their street patrols.
Fan Changyu stepped in. "Uncle Wang is busy today. I'm sorry to bother you."
Cold outside, charcoal burning inside. The warmth hit her face and fogged her eyelashes.
Wang Butou poured her a cup of ginger tea. "Not busy, exactly. Happens every few days. This year though -- bandits have been bad. Too many dead. The authorities are cracking down hard on outsiders. Anyone without household papers gets hauled in. Past two days it's been vagrant beggars."
Fan Changyu held the cup between her cold-reddened hands and thought: I have no household registration either.
Wang Butou read her face. "Here to transfer the property today?"
She nodded.
"I should've told you sooner," he said. "Fan Da's complaint was filed. The property can't be transferred until the case is closed. But don't worry -- you've already taken in a son-in-law. Even if it goes to court, the magistrate will award you what your father and mother left. Just a bit more trouble."
Fan Changyu hadn't expected it to be this tangled.
She thought of the basin of water she'd thrown over the courtyard wall the night before. "What if my uncle doesn't show up on the court date?"
Wang Butou glanced at her. "The complaint becomes void. Ignoring a court summons is an offense in itself -- twenty boards, as a warning."
Fan Changyu immediately regretted that she hadn't poured more.
"Why do you ask?"
"Curious," she said, and coughed once.
She turned the hot cup in her hands, her fingertips tracing the rim. "There's another matter. I need Uncle Wang's help."
"Go ahead."
She laid out Xie Zheng's situation plainly. "My husband's silver, cash, and household papers were all taken by bandits. Now that he's married into my family, I need to register him again."
The easy look dropped off Wang Butou's face. "You've picked a bad time for this. Registering a new household right now is no small thing."
But when Fan Changyu and Fan Da went to court, the magistrate would certainly ask where her son-in-law came from. Without papers to prove his identity, Xie Zheng might well be arrested and thrown in a cell alongside the vagrant beggars.
She might lose the house and her husband both.
Wang Butou paced the duty room twice, then stamped his foot. "Follow me."
The county's household registrar happened to be a close friend of Wang Butou's. Through that connection, Fan Changyu's husband got his name written into the books.
She thanked Wang Butou, and he waved it off. "Don't breathe a word of this outside, or I'll catch grief I don't need. Your father saved my life once. What I did today -- call it repaying a debt."
"You've done so much for me," Fan Changyu said. "Why would I say a word?"
Wang Butou's face went soft with old memory. "Your father was a strange man. With his skill, he could have had a post at the government office. Insisted on killing pigs instead."
"He used to run escort missions," Fan Changyu said. "My mother was always frightened. After he retired his swords, he just wanted a quiet life. Wanted her to stop worrying."
These were the stories she'd grown up hearing from them both.
Wang Butou knew his old friend well enough to understand. He sighed and said nothing more.
After parting from Captain Wang, Fan Changyu stopped at her sister's favorite candy shop and bought a small bag.
Her original plan: transfer the property, sell a few acres out in the countryside, come home with New Year goods and enough left over to buy a sow and piglets.
Plans don't hold. The transfer was blocked, the deed still frozen. All she had was what the wedding guests had pressed into her hands yesterday -- not quite one liang in total.
The supplements she'd meant to buy for Yan Zheng were out of the question. But she couldn't go back empty-handed.
A roadside stall was selling hair ties and headbands. She spent a few coins on an ink-blue one.
He never tied his hair properly. The red wedding ribbon wasn't fit for everyday wear. She figured he didn't have one, so she bought him one.
She was paying when a man in rags came bolting toward her, scattering several stalls in his panic. Officials behind him shouted, "Stop -- stop him!"
The man didn't stop. He ran like his life depended on it, and the officials ran hard after him.
Fan Changyu assumed the man had committed some crime. Then someone nearby clicked their tongue and said, "New official, new fire. The governor who just took over Huizhou -- true to his Wei blood. Supposed to be suppressing bandits. Instead he's turned the crackdown on the refugees fleeing north. What did those people do wrong? They just lost their homes."
Officials chasing refugees. Fan Changyu thought of Wang Butou's words about vagrants and felt an odd unease.
She glanced at the speaker. He and his companions wore matching long shirts -- the same style she'd seen on Song Yan. County school uniform. Scholars.
One of the man's companions laughed bitterly. "The Wei father and son have their hands over everything. Imperial power is a ghost. The whole Dayin Dynasty has rotted through. Now that Huizhou's military has fallen into their hands too -- if you ask me, this dynasty should just rename itself Wei and be done with it."
Fan Changyu was no traveler. She had never left Qingping County. But she knew exactly who they meant.
Wei Yan, the Prime Minister, had been the power behind the throne for over a decade now. Sixteen years ago, Crown Prince Chengde had led a campaign into Jinzhou and died there. The old emperor had died of grief. Wei Yan had placed the young emperor on the throne and never let go. The people of Dayin knew the Prime Minister's name better than they knew the Emperor's.
His son Wei Xuan had compared himself to the Crown Prince. How much blood of loyal ministers and generals was on his hands, no one could say for certain -- but it was not an exaggeration to call him steeped in it.
Common people heard only what the government chose to release. The inner workings of court were known better to scholars -- men who studied history, watched the tides, and had nothing better to do than argue about it.
Fan Changyu couldn't help but strain to listen.
The first scholar said: "With Wu'an Hou no longer guarding the Northwest Pass -- who knows how much longer this peace holds? Wei Yan may have the ambition to sit the Dragon Throne. Whether he has the nerve is another question."
The title Marquis of Wu'an was famous throughout the dynasty, and it drew split opinions everywhere it was spoken.
His father, Xie Linshan, had accompanied Crown Prince Chengde on that expedition to Jinzhou and died standing. Pierced through by a thousand arrows, he would not fall while he still held the regimental banner.
His uncle was Wei Yan -- the same Wei Yan who had controlled the court for more than a decade.
That ancestry alone was enough to make him a subject of suspicion. Raised under his uncle's roof, most court officials placed him squarely in the Wei faction.
Xie Zheng's methods had always been brutal. Iron-blooded. In that, he took after his uncle.
At seventeen, he had retaken Jinzhou. The world had been shaken and never quite forgot it. It was said that after the city fell, he showed no mercy -- not to soldiers, not to anyone. The armor of his eight hundred personal cavalry ran red. From that day on they were called the Blood Cavalry.
The Beijue people spoke his name like a curse, a ward against bad luck. He drove them back and reclaimed the twelve counties of Liaodong that had been lost since the previous dynasty.
For those achievements, he was granted the title Marquis of Wu'an while still young.
With martial power, bring peace to the land. No one in all the dynastic records before him had been given that title.
As long as Wei Yan had that unstoppable blade in his hand, his position as Prime Minister was unassailable -- imperial power undercut, the court in his grip, and no one willing to move against him.
The officials who called Xie Zheng a member of the Wei faction were the same ones praying he stayed on the border.
Some even said it plainly: while he guards the frontier, the realm is at peace. The day he turns toward the capital, it falls apart.
Now the scholar was saying Wu'an Hou no longer guards the Northwest Pass. Fan Changyu felt the wrongness of it before she could name it. Someone nearby beat her to the question: "What happened to the Marquis of Wu'an?"
"You haven't heard? After the Battle of Chongzhou, his fate is unknown. Wei Xuan absorbed his military command in Huizhou. Whatever future he had -- it's gone."
A ripple of noise went through the crowd. Some doubted it, some pressed for more.
The world hated that Wu'an Hou was Wei Yan's blade. The world feared him for treating lives like weeds, killing without hesitation. But no one could pretend he wasn't holding up the northwest corner of the Dayin court.
That pillar was broken. Fan Changyu didn't know who else in Dayin could hold that sky.
The scholar, badgered from all sides, couldn't produce a better answer. "If you don't believe me," he said flatly, "go find out for yourself whether the Northwest just changed governors or not."
Fan Changyu walked home with the weight of it.
Jizhou sat right beside Chongzhou. If the fighting spread, she wouldn't know where to take her sister.
Then she thought of Yan Zheng -- who had come stumbling out of Chongzhou with nothing. When she got back, she could ask him. He might know something about Wu'an Hou's last days on that battlefield.
Chongzhou was a regional uprising. A local thing. Why had Dayin's God of War ended up drawn into it?
She turned the last corner toward the alley entrance and nearly ran into a neighbor woman.
"Aunt Tao -- out for groceries?"
The woman nodded. But she stopped without moving, her expression slightly off.