Jun Xue Speaks Up

"Wait!"

The voice was small and high and shaking.

"Wait a moment—I can prove the young master is innocent!"

Everyone turned.

A slight figure was standing in the doorway at the end of the corridor. White hair. A gray servant's dress a size too big. It was Jun Xue.

And she was a mess.

Her white hair was tangled and damp, as if someone had dunked her head in a water barrel. Her sleeve was torn at the shoulder. There was a fresh scrape on her cheek and a red mark on her thin wrist, as if someone had gripped it hard and twisted. She was holding herself very stiffly, the way a child does when she has been hurt and is trying not to show it.

Li Yuguo looked at her and felt a chill run all the way down his spine.

Someone's been bullying her. Who?

He looked around the room.

His eyes landed on Xiaocui.

The round-faced maid was standing just behind Nalan Meng's shoulder with her hands folded demurely in front of her. Her face was perfectly composed. But there was a gleam in her eyes as she looked at Jun Xue, a tiny secret twist of satisfaction at the corner of her mouth.

You little bitch, thought Li Yuguo.

---

"Oh?" Li Yutang turned and looked Jun Xue up and down with a half-smile. "Isn't this the girl Yuguo only just bought yesterday? And what, little girl, are you going to prove?"

In his eyes, a skinny white-haired slave girl was no threat at all. He sounded almost amused.

Xiaocui, on the other hand, had gone a little pale.

She had been delighted to see the girl in such a state. But now that the little thing was actually standing there in front of the County Lord, Xiaocui felt a sudden flicker of alarm. She's not going to tell on me, is she? She's not going to sue?

Then she glanced at the King of Soft Rice—the ten witnesses, the salt sacks, the County Lord's black face—and relaxed. Her master can't even protect himself. Never mind her.

Her heart steadied, and she sniffed. "Oh, you're just a little girl who doesn't know anything. What could you possibly know?"

"The young master is so smart," said Jun Xue.

Her legs were shaking. Li Yuguo could see them trembling under the hem of the oversized dress. Her voice wobbled. But she did not step back.

"How could someone so smart make money with a swindle like this? It's—it's stupid. Anyone can see it's stupid. He wouldn't."

She was terrified. But she was not a fool. She could see exactly what was happening in this room. Everyone here was aiming at Li Yuguo. If she did not do her part—whatever small part she could do—he would surely die.

And if he died…

She would go back to the cage. The dark, stinking cage, with the iron bars and the flies and the men who poked her with sticks to see if she was still alive. And there would never be anyone like Li Yuguo again, to stop in the road and come back for her.

It had only been two days. But in those two days, Jun Xue had come to think of him as the closest person she had in the world.

"Smart?" Xiaocui laughed out loud. "Him? He's an ignorant scoundrel! Everyone knows it!"

There was a moment of silence after she said it.

A maid. A little maid, standing in the master's room, insulting the master of the house to his face, in front of the County Lord and the captain of the guard and half the household staff. And nobody stopped her. Nobody even looked surprised.

From that alone, anyone could see how low Li Yuguo's standing in this family really was.

---

But Jun Xue's appearance had given him an idea.

It was a dangerous one. A risky one. If he did this, it might bring down an even bigger disaster on his head—questions he could not answer, eyes he did not want on him. The tallest tree in the forest was the first one the wind broke.

But if he did not do it, right now, there was a very good chance he would never see the sun come up again.

He gritted his teeth.

He raised his hand, palm down, over the wet floor.

The bracelet on his wrist flared with a sudden burst of light.

And silver poured out of the air.

It came in a rushing, ringing, glittering flood—ingots and bars and loose coins tumbling over each other, crashing down onto the floorboards, bouncing, rolling, splashing through the spilled water, skittering into the corners and piling up against the walls. It did not stop. It kept coming, and coming, a waterfall of metal, until it lay in a glittering drift halfway up the legs of the bed and the whole guest room rang like the inside of a temple bell.

More than sixty thousand taels.

When the last coin had finally rolled to a stop against Li Yutang's boot, the room was completely silent.

The servants were frozen with their mouths open. The ten liuzi were staring at the silver with the eyes of starving dogs. Xiaocui had both hands over her mouth.

Even Nalan Meng had gone perfectly still.

She stared at the glittering drift around her feet, and something inside her chest seemed to fold in on itself.

Sixty thousand.

Two nights ago, she had put on a few scraps of black string and silk and walked across a crowded hall with her bare ass swaying in front of a hundred strangers. She had bent over a table so that a fat old man could stare at the cleft between her thighs. She had let the cold air of the second floor touch places that no one had ever seen. And at the end of it, she had come home with a thousand and fifty taels folded in her sash, and sat on the edge of her bed until dawn, hating herself.

And her husband—the King of Soft Rice, the useless one, the one she had to protect—had been carrying this around on his wrist the whole time.

She did not know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. Her knees felt strange. Her face was hot, and she did not know why.

"What…" she said, very faintly. "What on earth is going on here?"

---

Li Yutang was the first to recover.

He could not believe it. That useless turtle's grandson, with this much money? But as the shock passed, a slow, savage delight crept up underneath it.

This isn't a problem. This is a gift. This is the excuse that will bury him.

"County Lord!" He spun to Nalan Meng and spread his hands. "I swear to you, this is the proof! He must have been trading in illicit salt for months! Otherwise, where would he get so much money?"

Li Yuguo did not answer him.

Instead, he reached into the bracelet again and drew something out, and held it up in the morning light.

It was a small, curving bottle with a narrow waist and a fat round belly. Its glass was perfectly smooth, perfectly clear, without a single bubble or flaw, and the light from the window poured through it and broke into tiny rainbows across the wall. It was one of the soft-drink bottles he had bought from Alimama for a few coppers. On Earth, people threw them away by the thousand.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked.

Nalan Meng's breath caught.

"That's…" She stepped forward despite herself, her eyes widening. "That's liuli?"

She had seen a great deal of the world. Her father had taken her to the capital as a girl; she had stood in the treasure halls of great families. She knew liuli when she saw it. Colored glaze. Glass. In this world, a good piece of it was as rare and as precious as a gemstone—and she had never, in her life, seen a piece as clear and as flawless as this.

Li Yuguo smiled coldly.

"I have a friend," he said, "who has a great deal of liuli. I've been using his hand to sell it to the merchants on the southern road." He turned the bottle so that the light danced. "Now. What do you think? Does a man make money selling smuggled salt? Or does he make money selling liuli?"

Nobody spoke.

Everyone in the room was stunned—because every fool in the world knew that there was no comparison. A sack of salt against a piece of liuli was a pebble against a pearl. And more than that: smuggled salt was a crime for the headsman. Liuli was perfectly legal. Any merchant could sell it in the open market and pay his tax and go home to sleep.

Only an idiot would choose salt.

The silence in the guest room was so complete that you could hear people breathing.

---

"Impossible!" Li Yutang's voice cracked. "How could you ever have the chance to deal with a liuli merchant?"

He was shaking with fury. This chance—this one chance—he had been waiting for it for years. Li Yuguo had made trouble in Nalan City before, of course. Plenty of it. But it had always been petty trouble. Gambling, debts, drunken brawls. Nothing that broke the law. Nothing that could put his neck on the block.

But smuggled salt was a capital crime. Li Yutang had already planned all of it. Kill Li Yuguo first, with the full weight of the law behind him. Then, with justice on his side, he could quietly clean up every other threat to himself in Nalan City.

And sooner or later, Nalan Meng would belong to him.

He dreamed of her. Every night. He thought of her day and night—her face, her body, the way that crimson silk clung to her when she walked. It was the deepest wish of his life.

And now that useless cousin of his had pulled a piece of liuli out of thin air and ruined everything.

---

Nalan Meng drew a long breath and let it out slowly. Her voice, when it came, was steadier.

"Yuguo," she said. "Explain."

But Li Yuguo did not look at her.

His opinion of her had fallen this morning. She had come here with Li Yutang. She had stood behind ten paid liars and looked at him like a broken cup. He did not feel like explaining anything to her just now.

Instead, he walked across the room, his feet crunching over the silver, and crouched down in front of Jun Xue.

"Who bullied you?" he asked quietly.

Jun Xue lowered her head. She did not speak.

Her eyes flicked up, just for an instant, past his shoulder.

Li Yuguo did not need to turn around to know who she was looking at. He could see it in the way her shoulders flinched. Xiaocui was standing behind Nalan Meng, staring at the girl, and her eyes said very clearly: Say one word, and you'll be sorry.

Jun Xue pressed her lips together.

"I fell," she whispered.

Li Yuguo looked at her for a long moment.

Then he reached out, very gently, and tucked a damp strand of white hair back behind her ear, and stood up.

He had seen Xiaocui's look too. He pretended he hadn't.

But he had not forgotten. This was not the first time that girl had set herself against him. Not the second, either. The original Li Yuguo had been nothing but a man who lived on his wife's rice—but he had not always been a monster. He had been made worse, and worse, and worse, by people exactly like her. Pushed and pushed until there was nowhere left to go but down.

Not this time, thought Li Yuguo.

This time, I'm keeping a ledger.