Chapter Forty-Three: The Paper Phoenix
A legendary creature reveals an unexpected union.
The streets of Jingzhou City were as busy—and as noisy—as ever.
Zhao Yun stepped onto the hot pavement and slowly made his way through the crowd, taking in the various sights and sounds in observant silence. Tomorrow, he would have to set out for the rigorous Yizhou campaign, but today, he was free to acquaint himself with the place that had been Xi Tian's home for the first seventeen years of her life.
Shops lined the bustling sidewalks, proudly displaying their colorful bolts of silk, their excellent teak and sandalwood furniture, their enticingly aromatic sweets and baked pastries. Overzealous vendors, flashing phony white smiles which stood at stark contrast against their darkly suntanned faces, loudly shouted out bargains and sales pitches.
In one corner of the city square, a troupe of tiny prepubescent acrobats were performing a series of stunts using only wooden poles and clay plates of differing sizes, while an increasing group of spectators ooh'ed and aah'ed at their impressive feats of skill and agility. Directly across from the child act stood a trio of musicians; a dueting middle-aged man and a woman bounced bawdy lyrics back and forth between them, while a third member churned out a simple melody on his lute.
Zhao Yun slowly wandered down the streets, a little impressed by all the vigor and buzzing activity, a little curious as to whether the obviously sheltered Xi Tian had really grown up in such a spirited city. A rough thump against his legs jerked the silver-armored warrior out of his faraway thoughts, and when he glanced down to find out what had happened, he managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a few raggedy street urchins. The gangly figures hurriedly circled around the obstacle that was his body, before racing off at a speed that could have made even Red Hare envious. The youngest of the group was clutching at his forehead as he zoomed off—a testament to the force with which he must have bumped against the Little Dragon's knees.
Instinctively, Zhao Yun brought a hand to pat the pocket where he kept his money. The taels of silver, neatly strung up on their yellow hemp cord, jingled satisfyingly. Not that Zhao Yun would have worried too much to find them gone. Those poor ragamuffins probably needed whatever silver or copper they could get their little hands on a thousand times more than he himself ever would.
However, the concern that Zhao Yun felt for the little delinquents settled into the background when he stumbled across a crying girl of about five or six. She was a chubby, rosy-cheeked child, and judging by the clothes that she wore, Zhao Yun had no trouble guessing that she was a young handmaid-in-training for one of the wealthier families in Jingzhou City. Her tears were not the tantrum-inspired ones commonly found on children of her age and social rank, and the look of sheer terror in her eyes tugged at Zhao Yun's heartstrings and compelled him to kneel down to better match her height as he asked soothingly, "Can I help you, Little Miss? Are you lost?"
The girl dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve and shook her head, wailing in despair, "No, but I'd rather be lost than go back! My lady is going to scratch my face off when she finds out that I lost all the money she gave me!"
A concerned look came over Zhao Yun's eyes, and he scooped the child up and brought her to the least-crowded section of the city square so that they might talk in peace.
"Who is your mistress? What happened to the money that she gave you?" he asked gently.
The little girl sniffled, but, taught to obey an adult's every whim and command since birth, dutifully replied, "My lady is the famous beauty Miss Chang Qing Lian, daughter of our Governor Chang Fu."
Another governor's daughter.
And not just any governor. Zhao Yun's breath caught in his throat, as he realized that Lord Chang must be the successor to the governorship of the same city Xi Tian's family had helmed for generations. But the unfortunate little maid was continuing.
"I'm Si Er(1). I was supposed to be Qing Gu Niang's personal attendant when I grew up—but now I'll be lucky if they don't sell me off." The poor little servant rubbed at her watery eyes until they were red and swollen, and Zhao Yun gently pried her fingers away as he set his personal pain aside to attend to the child's instead.
"Why's that, Si Er?" he asked in his most comforting voice.
"My mistress has always been of delicate health, and she takes special pills to alleviate her pains and sufferings," Si Er sniffed. "It was my job to buy them from the Shen family's shop today, but a group of dreadful boys stole all the money Qing Gu Niang gave me!"
Those urchins who'd bumped against his leg! Now Zhao Yun realized why they had been in such a hurry, and felt some sympathy dissipate. But he swallowed these feelings, and instead helped the disconsolate Si Er up. In his most cheerful voice, Zhao Yun encouraged, "Then why don't you let me help you? It just happens that I have some money on me right now, and I'll be happy to pay for all the medicine that Qing Gu Niang needs."
He was prepared for any number of polite refusals and protestations, but discovered to his pleasant surprise that Si Er had yet to reach that age where children begin to learn about keeping up genteel pretenses. The little girl's eyes lit up with grateful adoration, as she clutched at Zhao Yun's hand and sang out in her happiness, "You'll do that for me? Really? You're the nicest and most wonderful person I've ever met!"
Zhao Yun smiled modestly at her enthusiastic praise, swinging the child up and letting her sit on his shoulders.
"Now why don't you be my eyes, and lead us to this store that sells Qing Gu Niang's medicine?" he suggested lightly, adjusting his passenger's weight so that it was distributed more evenly across his back and neck.
Si Er was more than happy to comply, and together the unlikely pair wove in and out of the crowds. Zhao Yun heard more than a few titters and smart comments from his fellow citizens, and once or twice frowned when he caught a particularly sardonic gossip muttering to her friend, "Looks like the dashing General Zhao has finally settled down and started a family!"
Eventually, he learned to let their remarks sift into the background, and it wasn't long before Si Er had directed him to a reasonably-sized two-story medicine shop. The child began wriggling around, impatient to hop off and run inside, so Zhao Yun obligingly set her down and watched her scramble toward her destination.
"Madam Shen, we're here," little Si Er announced loudly, as she tottered into the wooden building with Zhao Yun following a couple of paces behind.
The sixteen-year-old girl behind the counter who glanced up and smiled upon her customers was certainly not old enough to warrant the title of "Madam." Si Er looked confused for a second, before shrugging off her surprise and beaming in apparent acceptance of the substitute.
"Oh, it's you, Miss Ah-Mei," she chirped out a greeting.
Between the various wives and sisters-in-law of the sprawling Shen family were eight daughters, all named after flowers of some sort. Among them, Ah-Mei was without a doubt the most beautiful. She obviously had this particular honor in mind when she went to welcome Zhao Yun, for she fluttered her dramatic eyelashes and put on her prettiest smile, successfully inveigling a blush out of the handsome Tiger General.
"Si Er, you little imp—you never told me you'd brought such a distinguished escort," Ah-Mei cooed teasingly, adding a coy wink and a giggle for maximum effect.
The Chang household's miniature servant was obviously far too young to understand the flirtatious undertones of her statement, but Zhao Yun wasn't held back by such age limits, and quickly averted his eyes. Ah-Mei frowned, and bit down on her lower lip. This wasn't the reaction she'd been anticipating…
As if to make matters that much worse, an all too familiar voice hollered from the back room, "Ah-Mei, if you're just wasting time out there, you can hurry back and help your sisters shelf all the pills!"
Moments later, the buxom, imposing figure of a woman in her early fifties emerged and took her rightful place behind the counter. Si Er perked up upon recognizing her, and called out cheerfully, "Madam Shen, you're here after all!"
The greeting was duly returned, although much of the cheery tone wasn't. Madam Shen shot an annoyed glare at her daughter, snapping impatiently, "Well? Stop chasing after every man who walks in here and go help your sisters in the back!"
Ah-Mei at least had the grace to pinken at her mother's blunt words, but that didn't stop her from sending Zhao Yun one last secret smile as she scurried toward the back room. Only until after the girl had left did Madam Shen turn around to face her customers. She must have caught the look in Zhao Yun's eyes, for she immediately spoke up as if by means of explanation, "I'm terribly sorry you had to sit through that, General, but somebody must keep the foolish chit's vanity in check. I hope my daughter didn't offend you; she can be a bit open with her affections."
Zhao Yun blushed under the woman's frank words, trying and barely succeeding in dredging up a faint smile, but it was the child beside him who cleared away all remaining traces of awkwardness in the air.
"Madam Shen, do you remember me?" Si Er bubbled happily.
The loudmouthed woman shot a brief smile at the chubby-cheeked, downy-haired figure who hardly came up to her tall companion's knees.
"Of course I do, little one!" she laughed heartily. "My own Si Er has been asking for you. Why don't you go look for him and let us adults take care of boring grown-up business?"
"Oh…" Si Er looked torn. She clearly wanted to go play with her best friend, but she also had an errand to run for her mistress, and Qing Gu Niang's teary tantrums were infamous amongst the House of Chang's handmaids.
Zhao Yun gently patted the little girl on the back.
"It's all right, Si Er. I'll buy the medicine for you, and you can go find your friend," he encouraged with a smile.
Still, Si Er hesitated for a while. In the end, however, she did what most carefree six-year-olds would have done, and happily skipped off in search of the Shen family's fourth grandson.
"Remember," she sang out over her shoulder, "Qing Gu Niang takes—"
"White Lotus Pills, I know," Madam Shen finished for her.
The child was already out the door by the time the shopkeeper had finished speaking.
Zhao Yun slowly turned in Madam Shen's direction, echoing in a soft voice, "White Lotus Pills? You know by heart the name of the medicine that Qing Gu Niang takes?"
The robust middle-aged woman snorted a booming laugh, as she scooped up a dozen perfect white tablets and dumped them onto a large sheet of rice paper.
"You mean our governor's precious daughter, Miss Chang Qing Lian? Hah! I think I know every single one of her ten thousand little aches and pains," she spoke with just a tinge of derision as she worked. "Pampered rich ladies like her have nothing to do with all their excess time and money, so they spend their days posing delicately and cooking up hundreds of imaginary illnesses!"
Having finished with packing the desired pills, she placed them inside a silk-lined box which gave off a pungent herbal aroma.
"The truth is," she confided, wisely lowering her voice to a modest ten decibels in case any rich people strolling nearby happened to overhear, "these dainty women are simply looking for trouble, because it's the only excitement in their cloistered lives. Any little cough or cramp immediately becomes a devastating illness that must be treated with a hundred ludicrous pills and potions."
Zhao Yun nodded politely and tried to look as if he were actually paying attention to the woman's ramblings, but Madam Shen needed no encouragement to keep talking. She was on a roll, and she was determined to chatter on until either she finally ran out of breath or the fearless warrior before her fled from her store screaming for his sanity back.
"It's ridiculous, I tell you! I couldn't sell these wealthy aristocrats real medicine—medicine without fancy names or pretty fragrances—if I tried!" she declared.
"Is that so?" Zhao Yun almost succeeded in looking enthralled by her revelation, as he took out the appropriate amount of silver and placed it on the counter.
Madam Shen nodded in brief—far too brief—silence, as she expertly counted the taels before smiling in satisfaction and sliding forward the box of medicine for Si Er's picky mistress.
"Let me tell you, General, I've run this shop for the past twenty years, and not once have I come across a noblewoman interested in anything not named after flowers or heavenly essences!" she trumpeted.
Zhao Yun was prepared to leave, a respectful excuse already at the tip of his tongue, when something the storeowner had said caught his attention. Striding closer to the counter, he leaned slightly forward and asked in what he hoped was a casual voice, "Twenty years? Would you happen to know this city's previous governor, then…?"
"Lord Xi Wen Qing?" Madam Shen jumped at the bait almost instantly. "I sure did! His daughter was especially fond of my Sweet Chrysanthemum Tablets."
"Really?" Zhao Yun blinked in surprise. Xi Tian hardly struck him as the type of girl who'd willingly try any medicine, no matter how florid its name was…
"Absolutely," Madam Shen confirmed. "Such a pale and beautiful girl…but so fragile and sickly! Every season she had a new illness—autumn coughs, summer fevers, winter chills, spring faints—and I could tell that for once, those were genuine afflictions, not something made up to look delicate and pampered."
Zhao Yun's eyebrows nearly flew off his forehead upon hearing the woman's claims. Fragile? Sickly? Constant, seasonal illnesses? That certainly didn't sound like the Xi Tian he knew…
"Poor girl, she was destined for a wretched existence in this lifetime," Madam Shen went on mournfully. "I felt so bad for her when I heard that she'd taken her own life less than a year after her marriage to one of the sons of the Marquis of Qi. That's one of the reasons that drove her family into seclusion, you know."
Now Zhao Yun knew for sure that she couldn't be talking about Xi Tian…and then he remembered the other paintings on the walls of Refuge Park. Of course! Lord Xi had once had four daughters.
Feeling like a mighty fool, Zhao Yun gently prodded the middle-aged medicine woman, "But Lord Xi had more than one daughter, didn't he? What about…what about the third girl?"
Madam Shen beamed.
"Tian Tian!" she blurted out the girl's pet name. "Never had an illness her entire life…or if she ever did, she was too careless to notice any symptoms. Her amah always worried that the little chit was too healthy to be ladylike!"
Acutely aware that he knew virtually nothing of Xi Tian's childhood, Zhao Yun asked carefully, "How was she like?"
Happily, Madam Shen was only too delighted to have a listening ear for once, and didn't stop to think about the proprieties of sharing gossip with a stranger.
"Oh, she was the most charming girl I'd ever met. A bit loud and frivolous perhaps, but Heaven's own daughters couldn't have been sweeter," the woman nattered on. "She once told my own Ah-Mei that she would one day find a gentleman who would love her like the Xiang River consorts loved their emperors—you've heard the legend, haven't you, General?—and that man was going to be the man she married. In fact, I recently heard that she got en—"
But Madam Shen never got the chance to finish her sentence, nor notice the myriad of expressions fighting for control of her customer's eyes. A loud cry rang out from the back room, before a boy and a girl—the two Si Ers—fought their way out, bickering and grabbing for a worthless cardboard trinket. Madam Shen irritably tore herself away from her gossip to holler at the bawling children, and for several painful seconds, the noise level in the room was nothing short of deafening.
"ENOUGH!" Finally, a mighty roar from the redoubtable shopkeeper stunned everybody into silence.
Zhao Yun's ears were still ringing when one of the Si Ers—the little boy—tried to explain himself to his grandmother.
"We were just playing a wedding game," he sniffed. "I was the groom and I was supposed to be like that Jiang general and we were going to have a wedding just like his because everybody's talking about what a great wedding ceremony he's going to have and Si Mei Mei(2) was supposed to be the bride and—"
"And Si Ge Ge(3) wouldn't let me wear the phoenix crown!" Here, the girl Si Er broke in, pointing at the fiercely contended object. "Even though we were going to have a wedding just like the one General Jiang Wei and Miss Xi Tian are going to have in the North and everybody says Miss Xi Tian's going to get to wear a phoenix crown and it's not fair and—"
"Hush!" Madam Shen snapped irritably. "How many times do I have to tell you little idiots to stop paying attention to street gossip? And now look at what you've done; you've annoyed our venerable customer!"
But the suddenly pale Zhao Yun, wearing a wide-eyed expression that made him look as if he'd just had the wind knocked out of him, was obviously too preoccupied with bigger matters to feel any annoyance toward a petty children's squabble.
1. "Si" means four, and the suffix "Er" means child or young one. Si Er is not only a name, but it also tells the little girl's social rank in her household—she is the fourth child of her family.
2. Younger sister. Used here not to show actual relation, but rather, seniority—in other words, the boy Si Er is considered older than the girl Si Er.
3. Elder brother. Used in the same manner as No. 3.
A/N: That's it for now . Chapter 42 review talkback's over at Way of Musou as usual. Link's in my profile; I'd better go now before I get booted off for taking up too much bandwidth "answering" reviews!