Xie Zheng rose with a dark face, threw on a robe, and had barely limped out the door on his crutch when he saw Fan Changyu coming down from the attic. She held an oil lamp in one hand and, in the other, a gyrfalcon with its feathers beaten into disarray from all its flapping.
She was a little surprised to see him. "Did we wake you?"
The gyrfalcon, drooping from the slaps it had taken, cried out pitifully the moment it saw its master. This time it didn't dare shriek. The cry was as faint as a chick's, the feathers on its head stuck up, and the glossy sheen it had had before was gone.
Xie Zheng was silent for a breath. "This is..."
Fan Changyu held up the bird with a broad grin. "I kept seeing this gyrfalcon around, and I'd just bought an old hen, so I tried setting a trap. I really caught it!"
An ordinary hawk or falcon could only carry off a chick, but this gyrfalcon was huge. Its wingspan was nearly a meter, and its strength was startling. Struggling on the roof, it had torn a big hole in it. If Fan Changyu hadn't heard the noise and gone up in time, it might well have broken free and escaped. Only after a few slaps from her had it settled down.
"I'll take it to the market tomorrow morning and see how many taels of silver it fetches," she said.
The gyrfalcon kept staring at its master with its small, round, pitiful eyes.
Xie Zheng couldn't bear to look at the stupid bird. With a cold face and a clear conscience set aside, he said, "No one on the market buys live raptors. The meat is tough and sour if you kill and eat it, and ordinary families can't afford to keep one. Without a falconer's training, its wild nature won't change, and it is very likely to injure people."
"Oh. Is that so." Fan Changyu's face fell.
She scratched her head. "But this gyrfalcon's leg was hurt by a trap, and it broke a wing on the rafters while flapping around. If I let it go into the wild, I doubt it would make it through the winter."
The gyrfalcon obligingly let out a weak, wretched cry.
Xie Zheng: "...I know something of training birds. I can try to help. A properly trained raptor can sell for a hundred taels or more."
"Eh?" Fan Changyu was astonished. But once she heard that a trained gyrfalcon could bring in dozens or even a hundred taels, she was delighted, and even the roof she'd have to patch tomorrow no longer seemed like a problem.
"Then we'll keep it at home for now!"
She promptly found a chicken coop, shut the gyrfalcon inside, and brought out wound medicine and gauze.
The gyrfalcon huddled in a corner of the coop. Fan Changyu lifted one of its feet to dress the wound and wrap it, and its small round eyes were full of terror, yet it didn't dare move.
Xie Zheng watched the gyrfalcon's foot get wrapped up like a rice dumpling. His eyelid twitched twice.
When she'd finished, Fan Changyu crouched beside the coop and gazed at the bird with the fond look of someone gazing at a hundred taels of silver. "Tomorrow morning I'll kill a pig, and then you'll get some fresh offal."
The pork had to be saved for sale, but the offal she could spend freely. The offal from the pig she'd slaughtered today had already all been braised.
Before returning to her room, Fan Changyu thought it over. The main room was too cold. The room she shared with her younger sister had a heated kang, so they hadn't lit a charcoal brazier there. She had lit one in Yan Zheng's room only because she worried that his serious injuries had left him weak. That made it the perfect place for the bird.
That was a hundred taels of silver. It must not freeze to death!
So she turned on her heel, picked up the coop with the gyrfalcon, and knocked on Xie Zheng's door.
Without caring what expression the man inside wore, she set the coop down in a corner of his room. "It's cold tonight. I don't want the gyrfalcon to freeze, so let it stay in your room for now."
Xie Zheng swept the gyrfalcon with a murderous glance. "...Fine."
The door closed. The gyrfalcon's small round eyes met its master's long, narrow, gloomy phoenix eyes, and it shivered, dragging its injured leg, its wings drooping and half its feathers gone.
The next morning, Fan Changyu slaughtered the pig as promised, then carried over half a lobe of chopped pig lung to feed the gyrfalcon.
It seemed especially cold outside today. Snow had piled up almost to the threshold, and when the door opened, a rush of frigid air made people shiver. Looking out, one could see a row of icicles frozen under the eaves.
Fan Changyu's hands were red with cold. She put the large bowl of pig lung into the coop, rubbed her hands together, and said to the man sitting on the edge of the bed, "It's Great Cold today, and it's freezing. Dress warmly when you get up. I've made maoxuewang. It'll warm you up."
Xie Zheng nodded to show he understood, though he really had no thick clothes to wear. Before long, Fan Changyu found a padded winter jacket of her father's and brought it over.
Once he had it on, he looked rather bulky, but he was tall enough that he still looked handsome. And the winter clothing was truly warm. No matter how the cold wind blew, his body stayed warm.
Along with the jacket she had brought a dark blue hair ribbon. Xie Zheng recognized it. Last time, Fan Changyu had angrily tied it around her own head.
He frowned.
Fan Changyu came out of the kitchen carrying a large soup bowl. Seeing that he had already washed up, she said, "You're up? Good timing. Sit down and eat."
The soup in her bowl was glossy and red, and a fiercely numbing, spicy aroma drifted through the air.
She noticed that he hadn't used the ribbon she'd brought, but she said nothing about it. She had seen how fond of cleanliness he was. Bathing was inconvenient in winter, but every other day or so he would wipe himself down with hot water, and he washed his ribbon often. Sometimes when it was slow to dry, he even held it by the fire pit. That was why she had given him the one she'd bought, so that he could switch between the two.
She wasn't petty. She wouldn't really refuse to give it to him just because she'd been annoyed with him before!
The bowl was filled to the brim and had just come off the fire, so it was scalding. After setting it on the table, Fan Changyu quickly pinched her earlobe with her burned fingers. "Hoo, that's hot!"
Little Changning leaned in. "Ning'er will blow on it. Blow, blow, and it won't be hot anymore."
Fan Changyu didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She held out her fingers to her sister, and Changning puffed out her cheeks and blew several times before she stopped.
When Fan Changyu looked up, she found Xie Zheng watching her with a strange expression. She wiped her face and found no soot on it. "Is there something on my face?" she asked.
He looked away. "No."
She eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then set out his bowl and chopsticks. "Try the blood curd! It tastes best when it's blanched and eaten right away, but there wasn't time today."
On top of the soup lay a layer of Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies drenched in hot oil. Underneath were pieces of pig blood curd, the large intestines braised the night before, pig stomach, pig lung, and other offal. It was a pity there were no bean sprouts at home to line the bottom with a layer of plump, white, crisp ones.
Fan Changyu fished out a piece of blood curd for her sister's bowl. Little Changning sucked in air from the spice, but after finishing the piece she looked eagerly at the bowl again. "More!"
Fan Changyu fished out two more for her.
This was the first time Xie Zheng had seen a jumbled dish like this, one pot of everything stewed together like a thick soup. It didn't even look drinkable, and the Fan family had no habit of using serving chopsticks. Ordinary stir-fried dishes were fine, since each person could take from their own side, but with a single stewed pot, there was almost no way to pick anything up.
While he hesitated, the two sisters had nearly finished half a bowl of rice. Fan Changyu saw that he was only eating rice and no dishes, and asked, puzzled, "You don't eat spicy food?"
"...It isn't that."
In the end he put aside his small fastidiousness about meals. Frowning, he picked up a piece of blood curd boiled to a dark red.
The first sensation in his mouth was numbness and heat. It needed almost no chewing; a slight press and the blood curd dissolved between his lips and teeth. To his surprise, it was delicious.
He went on to try the braised offal in it one piece after another. Braised first and then boiled, the savory braising flavor blended perfectly with the numbing spice, and he couldn't slow the movement of his chopsticks.
By the end of the meal, Xie Zheng had all but forgotten that he was fastidious about food.
It was also just as Fan Changyu had said. Soon the spice had him sweating, and he didn't feel the bitter cold outside at all.
"Is this a local specialty?" he asked.
"More or less," Fan Changyu said. "It's a signature dish at Yixiang Restaurant in town. The proprietress there knows so many dishes!"
Xie Zheng considered, for only an instant, promoting this dish in the army, then dropped the idea. Army meals only had to fill the stomach and couldn't be made this refined. Besides, chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns were no small expense.
After clearing the bowls and chopsticks, Fan Changyu carried the gyrfalcon out of his room and set it by the fire pit. Before going out, she remembered to remind him, "There's still half a lobe of pig lung in the kitchen. Chop it up later and feed it to the gyrfalcon."
She scratched her head and said, a little embarrassed, "If you have time, would you also try training it?"
The look Xie Zheng lazily swept over her felt like a slow slicing. "...Fine."
In its coop, the gyrfalcon trembled and drew its neck in, like a giant quail.
Fan Changyu set off for the shop with an easy mind, pushing her cart. The snow was heavy today, and at this hour there were hardly any people out on the streets.
The street where the butchers' stalls stood was also cold and deserted.
She opened the shop door and cleared the snow from under the eaves. Only then did she notice that the stove she had built outside from bricks had been smashed.
She laughed out loud in anger. She'd only been selling braised meat for a few days. Had it already made someone envious enough to smash her things?
After what had happened with Fan Da and the gambling house, she was now known outside for being fierce and sharp-tongued, and that reputation sometimes did her good.
She threw down her broom at once, planted her hands on her hips, and swore. "Which spawn of a turtle smashed your grandmother's things? Only sneaking around behind my back, too scared to say it to my face? Were your ancestors turtles?"
She had practiced martial arts since childhood. When she let loose with her breath sunk to her core, her voice carried through the whole street.
None of the butchers at the neighboring stalls said a word. Only Butcher Guo, when her gaze swept over him, immediately started shouting. "What are you looking at me for? I didn't smash it!"
Fan Changyu hadn't suspected him at all. Besides the gloating, there was nothing guilty on Guo's face.
A butcher's wife nearby seemed to remember something and suddenly said, "Oh no. Changyu, your shop was closed for a month. Did you pay the protection money?"
Fan Changyu had never heard of protection money. "What's that?" she asked, puzzled.
The butcher's wife sighed. "When we open for business, besides paying the monthly tax to the government, we also have to give some money as tribute to the ruffian boss who controls this street. Your business has been so good these past few days that they must have heard about it. If you ask me, they'll most likely come by later."
Fan Changyu understood. Whoever it was had smashed the stove at her door last night as a show of force, and today they would surely come to collect protection money.
She thanked the butcher's wife, set out the fresh meat and braised meat she'd brought on the chopping board, and put a long staff behind the door. Then she sold meat while she waited for the ruffians to find her.
By the third quarter of the Chen hour, a band of street thugs came barging down the road toward the meat market, swaggering arrogantly, with people along the way stepping aside at the sight of them.
Fan Changyu heard the commotion from inside the shop and looked out.
Well, well. Old acquaintances!