Thousand Taels for Brother Guan

"No… it's nothing…"

The King of Thieves wiped his face on his sleeve, sniffed hugely, and let the Circling Finger Softness uncoil from his finger. It slid back into its hiding place in the broken knife handle like a snake into a hole. He tucked the whole thing away inside his cloak, close to his heart, and when he looked up again his one eye was clear, though still a little red.

He clasped his fists.

"Brother, I'll take my leave first. I'll come back tomorrow morning." His voice roughened. "My wife at home is still recovering. The medicine's working, but she's weak. I don't like to leave her alone too long."

"Then take this."

Li Yuguo had already reached into the bracelet on his wrist. When his hand came out, it held a fat cloth bag, heavy enough that it sagged between his fingers and clinked when it moved.

"A thousand taels," he said. "For your wife's medicine. And for whatever else she needs."

He could afford to be generous. For the first time in either of his lives, he was rich. Between the pepper, the spices, and the outfits Shi Dacheng had gone down on his knees for, the bracelet on his wrist was so full of oil and water that a thousand taels felt like a handful of loose change. He was not going to be stingy with his brother.

"How can this be…" said the King of Thieves.

He said it very politely. His face was the picture of reluctant modesty. And his hand, entirely of its own accord, had already reached out and taken hold of the cloth bag.

"I've already accepted so much from you, brother. And now this unparalleled hidden weapon. How can I possibly ask for more money?"

"Once I've settled the internal affairs of the City Lord's Mansion, you can move in with us," said Li Yuguo. "But for now, your wife still needs treatment, and that means spending money in a lot of places. Since we're brothers, don't stand on ceremony. Take it as you please." He smiled. "Of course—if you really don't want it, then there's nothing I can do."

And with a perfectly pleasant expression on his face, he began to pull the bag back.

The King of Thieves did not let go.

Li Yuguo pulled a little harder. The bag stretched between them. The King of Thieves' face remained the picture of polite reluctance, and his fingers remained clamped around the cloth like iron pincers.

Li Yuguo pulled harder still.

The King of Thieves was stronger.

The bag slid out of Li Yuguo's fingers and vanished into Guan Yunfan's cloak in one smooth motion, and the big scarred man clasped his fists and bowed so deeply that his cropped head nearly touched his knees.

"Then I'll keep it for now," he said gravely. "Thank you, brother."

Li Yuguo burst out laughing.

---

Guan Yunfan had heard all the stories, of course. Everyone in Nalan City had. The King of Soft Rice. A useless, ignorant playboy, living off his wife's name. When he first knelt in the market dust with a stranger's silver in his fist, some part of him had been waiting for the catch.

But he had walked beside this man for the past few days. He had watched him in the market and the alley and the bloody lane. He had watched him step into a ring for a stranger, haggle a dying girl out of a cage, punch a machete, and smile at a sect master's son with blood running down his arm.

He knew now. The stories were wrong. Li Yuguo was a good man. More than a good man—a hero who did not seek fame or fortune, but who saw further down the road than anyone else.

He had already made up his mind. The rest of his life would be spent at Li Yuguo's side.

"Brother," he said, and clasped his fists once more.

And then he was simply not there.

There was no flash. No sound. No swirl of dust. One moment the King of Thieves stood in the middle of the road with the sun on his scarred face; the next, the road was empty, and a single dry leaf was turning slowly in the air where he had been.

Jun Xue's mouth fell open.

"Wow," she breathed. "Young master—the King of Thieves just disappeared!"

"It's his unique art," said Li Yuguo, a little smugly, as if he had invented it. He had, in fact, invented it. "Come on. You're coming home with me."

---

Nalan Meng was waiting in his room.

He saw her the moment he opened the door of the guest room at the back of the house. She was sitting very straight on the room's single chair, in the crimson silk, her hands folded in her lap, as if she had been sitting there for some time and had no intention of leaving until she got an answer.

Her eyes went past him to the small, thin, white-haired figure hovering behind his shoulder.

They narrowed.

"So," she said. "Bringing a little girl back into the house. Openly. In broad daylight."

Li Yuguo set down the bundle on his shoulder—the box of Snow Spirit Fruits, a bag of pills, and a few other things he had picked up in the market—and smiled at her.

"From now on, she'll be my personal maid." He turned. "Jun Xue—come here. The lady in front of you is the County Lord."

Jun Xue stepped out from behind him. She clasped her thin hands in front of her and bowed so low that her long white hair swung forward over her face.

"This slave greets the County Lord…" she whispered.

Nalan Meng's frown deepened.

"A maid?" she said. "The City Lord's Mansion has so many servants already. Aren't they enough?"

"Wife," Li Yuguo said mildly, "think about it carefully. The servants here all serve you. How many of them are willing to serve me?" He spread his hands. "I wash my own clothes. I cook my own food. I sweep my own room—you saw me do it. If a grown man has to do every little thing for himself, where is he supposed to find the time to go outside and make money?"

Nalan Meng's shoulders stiffened. She opened her mouth to argue.

Then she closed it again, and her teeth set.

It's true, she thought.

Most of the maids in this house had come with her from her father's household. They were her people—loyal to her, fiercely so—and every one of them looked down on Li Yuguo. Maid or manservant, groom or cook, none of them would so much as give him a civil look. She had reprimanded them more than once. It had changed nothing. Some things could not be changed by an order.

If Li Yuguo wanted a maid of his own, it was not a great matter.

"…Fine," she said at last. "But why is this girl's hair white?"

"She's sick." Li Yuguo's voice softened. "If I hadn't taken her in, she would have died out there in the wilderness. Everyone has some compassion. How could I just let her die?"

Before Nalan Meng could answer, he reached into his robe and set a heavy cloth bag down on the table between them. It landed with a dull, solid thunk.

"This is a thousand taels of silver."

---

Nalan Meng stared at the bag.

She did not move. For a long moment, she did not seem able to.

"One…" Her voice came out strange. "A thousand taels?"

She had never imagined it. Not from him. In all their years together, Li Yuguo had only ever known how to spend money. Hers, mostly. He had never brought a single copper coin into this house in his life. And now—fifty taels turned into a hundred, only days ago. And today, a thousand?

It was too unbelievable.

Li Yuguo, watching her face, felt his stomach sink.

Too much. I overdid it again.

He had eighty thousand taels in his bracelet—or he had, before the pills and the fruits and Guan Yunfan's medicine. What he really wanted was to pour every last coin of it into this city's empty treasury and fill the hole. But he had not thought it through. To a woman who had been scraping together fifty taels at a time, a thousand was already an enormous sum. If he had put down five hundred, she would have been happy, and much less suspicious.

"Where did you get this?" Nalan Meng's voice had gone cold. "Did you rob someone?"

She heard herself say it, and the coldness in her own voice frightened her a little. Because she knew exactly what a thousand taels was worth. She had earned a thousand and fifty taels herself, only last night—by putting on scraps of black string and bending over a table in front of a stranger's face so that he could look at her—

Her hands tightened in her lap.

Li Yuguo sighed inwardly. She really does look down on me. Otherwise, why would she react like this? If she knew he'd made eighty thousand taels in a single deal, she'd probably stop breathing.

"I pick up leaks now and then," he said easily. "I meet people who don't know what they've got, buy their things cheap, and sell them to people who do. You know as well as I do how many merchants pass through Nalan City every day."

Nalan Meng sat back in the chair.

She was half convinced. It was true, after all. The economy of Nalan City was sluggish, but the traffic on the southern road had never stopped. A clever man with a good eye could make money from it.

A clever man. She had never once thought of her husband as a clever man.

"I remember," she said slowly, "that you told me before—that you wanted Nalan City to rise. That you wanted the people to have good lives. How would you do it?"

"Gradually," said Li Yuguo. "Nalan City has been like this for decades. You can't change decades in a day. Reforms that are too drastic only end up doing more harm than good."

Nalan Meng bit her lip.

He might really have changed, she thought.

It made her feel a great deal better than she wanted it to.

"Are you…" She hesitated, and looked at the wall instead of at him. "Are you going to stay in the guest room again tonight?"

The meaning was plain enough. She was asking whether he wanted to come back. To her chambers. To live together, as husband and wife.

---

Li Yuguo understood exactly what she was asking.

He also understood what it meant, and what it did not. Even if he went back, she would not let him touch her. He would still sleep on the floor of her antechamber. Accepting a man in your heart was one thing; accepting him in your body was another, and it took time.

And if he leapt at her first invitation, he would look cheap. Eager. The same old Li Yuguo, rubbing his face against her bedpost.

It was not that he wasn't interested. Gods, he was interested. He looked at her sitting there in the crimson silk with her lip caught between her teeth—that slender waist, those magnificent breasts swelling against the deep-cut silk, that delicate face that would have made a poet weep—and he felt the Lieyang fire stir low in his belly. In his old life, as a man of nearly thirty who had never touched a woman, an opportunity like this was something he could only have dreamed of.

But he was still rational. The time had not come. He needed her to understand that he was a man who thought for himself. Not a puppet she could pull back and forth on a string.

And—a cold little voice reminded him—the King of Soft Rice could not put it in anyway. Not for a long time.

"No," he said. "I'll stay in the guest room again tonight. Have your maid prepare a bed in another guest room, would you? Jun Xue's going to be a member of our household from now on."

Nalan Meng stared at him.

"I—" She stood up abruptly. "I can't live with love, then!"

It came out sharper than she meant it to. She did not even know what she meant by it. She only knew that she had swallowed her pride and asked, and he had refused, and it made her feel strange and unsettled and a little unhappy in a way she could not explain.

She swept out of the room without another word.

But at the door, she stopped, and turned her head, and said to the maid waiting in the corridor: "Xiaocui. Prepare a room for the girl my husband brought home today."

"Yes, County Lord," said Xiaocui.