Chapter 36 of 90
Flower Wine at Heaven Lust
Wang Youcai threw back his head and laughed.
"Brother Yuguo really is an adventurer!" he boomed. "Well! You've had a great shock today. And it just so happens that we're leaving Nalan City tomorrow. So before we go—why don't we all go to Heaven Lust together, eh?"
"To drink flower wine!" chorused the four elders in perfect unison.
At the words flower wine, Jun Xue's face went pink to the tips of her ears. She did not know exactly what it meant, only that grown-ups said it in a certain way, and that it was not something a girl was supposed to know about. She looked at the ground and wished very hard that she were somewhere else.
But when they set off down the street, she followed anyway, keeping close at Li Yuguo's heels, quiet and well behaved as a cat. She did not want to be left alone in that house. Not today.
Li Yuguo noticed. He did not send her back.
Heaven Lust was the only big pleasure house in Nalan City.
Because the city was so remote, flower wine here was cheap. Many poor women came here to earn money, girls from the starving villages and the ruined farms, because there was nowhere else in Nalan City that paid. In a city where nothing sold, Heaven Lust was one of the few kilns that still turned out gold.
It was already night when they arrived, but the place was blazing with light and noise. Red lanterns swung under the eaves. Music spilled from the windows. On the second floor, in a private room that overlooked the street, there were several jars of fine wine and a table crowded with good dishes: roast duck, braised pork belly glistening in its own fat, steamed fish, sweet lotus root, a whole mountain of dumplings.
Li Yuguo sat Jun Xue down at the end of the table, between himself and the King of Thieves—who had slipped in through the window halfway through the first jar, unnoticed by anyone but Li Yuguo—and put a bowl of dumplings and a cup of sweet plum juice in front of her. Guan Yunfan pushed the roast duck toward her too, gruffly, without a word. She ate with both hands and her head down, small and silent, and Li Yuguo made sure nobody's eyes lingered on her.
"Let me tell you," said Wang Youcai, whose face was already red as a boiled crab, "the Zheng family in the capital—they're incredible. The concubine the second master of that family keeps—tsk tsk tsk—she's so beautiful it's enough to gouge your eyes out and lose your soul…"
He had drunk a great deal. He talked on and on, endlessly, all the gossip of the rich and powerful in the capital—whose wife had run off with which guard, which minister had been caught with which boy, which prince had lost a province at dice.
"Speaking of beauties," said Shi Dacheng, "I think Bai Linglong, the pearl of Heaven Lust, is not bad at all." He sighed. "But unfortunately… that woman can't be touched by ordinary men. She only works the first floor."
Li Yuguo kept his face perfectly still.
Bai Linglong was famous all over Nalan City. She was both talented and beautiful—a voice that could make old men weep, fingers that made the zither sing, and a body whose curves were said to be every bit as lustful as her face was lovely. She was the pillar of Heaven Lust's first floor. Men came from three counties away to hear her play.
But she had another identity, too.
She was Li Yutang's woman.
Because of Li Yutang, no one dared to provoke Bai Linglong. Li Yutang was the captain of Nalan City—the highest military commander in the entire city. Outside, in the capital, a border captain was nothing worth mentioning. But in a small place like Nalan City, he was the local emperor.
That was exactly why Li Yuguo had never confronted him directly. Even a mouse would bite a cat if you cornered it. Push Li Yutang too hard, too fast, and the consequences could be unimaginable.
But Li Yuguo had not come here tonight to drink.
He had come for Bai Linglong.
She slept beside Li Yutang. She was the woman on his pillow. Whatever that man kept hidden, she was the one most likely to have seen it.
Actors are fickle and whores are faithless, went the old saying. In this age, people lived it out to the letter. But Li Yuguo knew something about Bai Linglong that nobody else in this room did. Something that might make even a faithless woman very faithful indeed.
"All right," he said, standing up. "I'm going to the outhouse. You lot keep drinking. I'll be right back."
"Not going off to vomit, are you?" Shi Dacheng teased. "Brother Yuguo, your drinking is a bit dangerous…"
"Ha! I'll punish myself with three cups when I get back!"
"You heard him! Everyone heard him!" Shi Dacheng shouted, banging the table. "My brother Yuguo says he'll punish himself with three cups!"
Li Yuguo went to the door. Jun Xue was already scrambling up after him.
"Master," she whispered, "should I go too?"
"Scared?" he asked.
She nodded, small and miserable.
"Everyone in this room is one of ours," said Li Yuguo gently. "And your big brother the King of Thieves is right here. Stay with him. Eat your dumplings. I'll be back before they're cold."
"Okay," said Jun Xue, very quietly, and lowered her head, and went back to sit beside Guan Yunfan, who moved the duck a little closer to her without looking up.
The back stairs led down to the staff quarters behind the main hall. There, in a little lamplit alcove outside the dressing rooms, an old woman was sitting on a stool, puffing away at a water pipe.
She was the madam of Heaven Lust: Zhang Ma. She was round and wrinkled and hard-eyed, wrapped in plum-colored silk, with gold rings on every finger and a face like a walnut that had been left out in the sun. The water pipe bubbled in her lap. When she saw Li Yuguo coming down the stairs, she took the mouthpiece out of her mouth, and her face cracked into a professional smile.
"Yo! If it isn't Uncle!" she cooed. "Our honored Uncle—"
"Zhang Ma! Haha… it's been a long time." Li Yuguo beamed at her. "By the way, I've brought you a present."
He drew a small packet out of his robe. It was a pouch of fine-cut tobacco—golden, fragrant, perfectly cured, the kind of thing that sold in a tin in any corner shop back on Earth. He had bought it from Alimama for less than a bowl of noodles.
"A merchant friend of mine gave it to me," he said. "But you know I don't smoke. So I thought it should go to someone who'd honor it."
Zhang Ma took the packet. She opened the corner and sniffed.
Her face changed completely.
"This… such fragrant tobacco," she breathed. "You really mean to give it to me?"
"It's worth a thousand taels of silver," said Li Yuguo.
Zhang Ma was a sensible woman. She did not ask where it came from. She looked at him over the packet with her hard little eyes, and her smile sharpened.
"Hey. You said it yourself. A man who's suddenly courteous is either a traitor or a thief." She folded the oil paper back over the tobacco, tucked it into her sleeve, and patted it. "So. What do you want from your mother here?"
Li Yuguo had already prepared his words. He sighed heavily.
"You know," he said, "that woman of mine at home…"
"You mean the County Lord?" Zhang Ma snorted smoke. "Everyone knows the County Lord's a tigress. It's not a day or two that's been true. You always used to laugh it off. Why are you frowning about it today?"
"Zhang Ma, you don't know. Her birthday's coming soon. So… I'm going to play a song for her. To make her happy." He looked at his feet, the picture of a sheepish husband. "But my zither playing is terrible. And they say the best player in all of Nalan City is Miss Linglong. So I thought I'd come and ask Miss Linglong for a little advice."
Zhang Ma's face changed again.
"Now you're making things very hard for me," she said. "Miss Linglong is the woman General Li Yutang has named for himself. Usually, nobody gets to see her at all. She only comes out to perform at the beginning of each month. If you want to see her, it'll have to be the start of next month…"
Li Yuguo made a show of panic. "No, no, no—her birthday's at the end of this month! It can't wait! Please, Zhang Ma, help me out. Who's going to say anything? You won't say anything. Miss Linglong won't say anything. Heaven knows, you know, I know—how would General Yutang ever find out?"
And with an expression of deep pain, as if it were being torn from his own flesh, he pressed a fat piece of silver into her palm.
Zhang Ma looked at the silver. Her brows smoothed out.
"Fine," she said. "One stick of incense. That's all you get. In so short a time, I don't suppose you can get up to anything, Uncle—and I don't suppose you'd dare to cross General Li, either. But I'm telling you here and now: go quick, and come back quick."
"Okay!" Li Yuguo grinned.
He went off down the corridor toward the dressing rooms.
Zhang Ma watched him go, puffing at her pipe, her eyes narrowed in the smoke.
"When did that soft-rice king get such a silver tongue?" she muttered to herself. "It's like he's a different person… He never used to so much as dare to say Miss Linglong's name. Strange. Very strange…"
The last door at the end of the corridor was lacquered red, with a little brass bell hanging from the frame. Li Yuguo knocked.
"Is that Mama?" A woman's voice came from inside: clear and crisp, but with something under it. "Come in. The door's open…"
There was melancholy in that voice. Under the melancholy, a thread of unwillingness. And under the unwillingness, a touch of something soft and coaxing that he felt in his bones the moment it reached his ears, like a warm finger running down his spine.
What a little fox spirit, Li Yuguo thought, and felt his cock stir in his trousers before he had even seen her face.
He opened the door and went in.
Bai Linglong was in the middle of getting dressed.
She was sitting on a low stool in front of a bronze mirror, half turned toward the door, with a lamp burning on the dressing table beside her. And she was very nearly naked.
A strip of pink-purple cloth had been drawn across her chest, but only half tied. It covered one breast. The other was entirely bare. It was full and round and heavy, white as fresh milk in the lamplight, and it rose and fell with her breathing; and at its tip, her nipple was a soft, perfect pink, puckered tight in the cooler air of the room, pointing straight at him. Below her waist, she wore nothing but a single thin wrap of bottom cloth, so fine and close that it clung to her like a second skin. Her underwear lay folded on the table beside the mirror. Through that sheer cloth, he could see every line of her buttocks where they pressed into the stool—the full round swell of each cheek, the soft crease beneath, the shadowed cleft between them, as clearly outlined as if the cloth had been painted on.
It was the most erotic sight he had seen since coming to this world.
He stood frozen in the doorway with his mouth slightly open.
She turned her head and saw him. Saw who he was.
Her face flamed crimson. She snatched up the robe from the back of the stool and clutched it to her chest, and the bare breast vanished behind silk, and she was on her feet in an instant.
"Why are you here?"
"Actually—" Li Yuguo shifted his hands, quite casually, to cover the front of his trousers. "I came to discuss something with Miss Bai."
"Get out!" Her voice cracked like a whip. "If Yutang finds out about this, I won't be able to stop him punishing you! Get out—or I'll call someone!"
Up close, Bai Linglong was a beauty that no one could have denied.
Her long hair was black as jet and flowed down past her waist, heavy and loose, and it gave her a languid, rebellious look, like a cat that had been woken too early. Her face was cold as frost. Her slender willow-leaf brows had been painted a dark, smoky purple; under the dark eye shadow, long lashes framed eyes of a deep, clear brown. Those eyes shone with a light that would have pushed a man back a thousand miles. But somewhere behind them, hidden very deep, so deep that you might never see it unless you were looking, there was sorrow. It was covered over with coldness, the way a well is covered over with ice.
Her nose was high and narrow and delicate, and almost disdainful. Her lips were nearly bloodless. She was biting them now, and her face had gone pale beneath the blush.
The robe she clutched was pink-purple too, a short silk wrap that barely covered her breasts and only made her figure look more extraordinary. Below it hung a long skirt of bright yellow velvet, which she had just stepped into, with nothing at all underneath. He could see the curve of her hip through it where she stood against the lamp. There was something delicious about her in that coldness, like snow on a peach.
And to think that a woman like this was being fucked every night by Li Yutang.
Bastard, thought Li Yuguo.
He made his voice light.
"I came to tell you about your younger brother's whereabouts," he said. "But since you don't want to hear it, I'll take my leave…"
He turned around and reached for the door.
"Wait!"
She was on her feet, the robe forgotten against her chest.
"How do you know about my brother?"
"Not only do I know about him," said Li Yuguo, turning back, "I also know where he is."
He said it very firmly, without the slightest hesitation.
"What…?"
The color drained out of Bai Linglong's face all at once, like wine out of a cracked cup. Tears welled in her eyes.
"Impossible. Yutang has been searching for him for three years. He couldn't find him. How could you find him?"
"Ha!" Li Yuguo laughed. "Use your head. If Li Yutang had found your brother and brought him to you—would you still be here, singing for drunk men? And if he really cared for you, the way he says—your ransom is a mere three thousand taels. Why can't a captain of the guard afford it?"
He went straight to the point.
She stared at him. Her lips moved. Nothing came out.
"Then where is my brother?" she said at last.
"The Mass Burial Mound," said Li Yuguo flatly. "Ten li outside the city."
Bai Linglong swayed.
Her knees buckled. She would have gone down onto the floor if he had not stepped forward and caught her. His hand went around her waist—and found bare skin there, between the robe and the velvet skirt, smooth and warm and seamless as polished jade. He held her up. Under his palm, he could feel her trembling.
She burst into tears.
She cried the way pear blossoms shed rain—silent, shaking, her teeth gritted, her face pale as paper.
"You're lying!" she choked. "I remember—Yutang brought me my brother's jade token, before. He said he'd found his trail—he said it was only a matter of time—"
"And if I told you," said Li Yuguo quietly, "that it was Li Yutang who killed him? That he dumped the body in that grave, and then deliberately dragged out the search, so that you'd have a reason to stay with him? Would you believe me?"
"Would you believe it?" Bai Linglong flung at him.
He let go of her waist and stepped back.
"If you want to know the truth," he said, "come and find me in the market tomorrow morning. I'll take you to see your brother. And if you don't want to know—" he shrugged "—just pretend I never came."
He turned to go.
"Wait… wait…"
Her voice had fallen apart. She was standing by the mirror in her yellow velvet skirt, one hand clutching the silk robe to her breast, the other pressed to her mouth. Her lips were trembling. Her whole body had begun to shake.
"He's your brother," she whispered. "Why are you doing this to him?"
Li Yuguo paused with his hand on the door.
"I just don't want you to be kept in the dark," he said. "Forget about me. Think about you. The man you sleep beside every night may be the man who murdered your brother. If it's true—doesn't that hurt?"
He did not wait for an answer.
He slipped out and closed the door gently behind him.
Bai Linglong stood alone in the lamplight in front of her mirror for a long, long time. Her reflection looked back at her: the painted eyes, the bloodless lips, the white skin, the beautiful empty face that men came from three counties away to see.
She did not move until the incense in the corridor had burned all the way down.
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