The man before her was the Left General of the Jinwu Guard—and also her childhood companion, Jiang Qinghe.
Jiang Qinghe's eyes had gone considerably stern. "A-Qing..."
She cut him off before he could finish. "Lord Jiang. I am the deputy minister of the Court of Judicial Review now. You had better call me Deputy Minister Murong."
Loss flooded up in Jiang Qinghe. He thought of those old days—only now he seemed to have no idea how to reach for them.
This was neither the place to speak, nor to give anything away.
Jiang Qinghe put his mask back on. After a moment's distraction he offered only a warning: "Deputy... Deputy Minister Murong. If you truly mean to find out the truth of Lord Li Ren's death—be careful."
Murong Qing said nothing at first. Then, after a beat, she asked the question she had kept buried in her heart:
"Lord Jiang... the thing I found in the archives—does it have anything to do with you, or doesn't it?"
"The matter... is exactly what you think it is." Jiang Qinghe answered her question with her question. "Find it out or don't—what difference does it make? What was done has been done."
He answered with his back to her gaze, the hands at his sides clenched tight.
"Deputy Minister Murong. Be careful."
Their reunion after so long had come to this.
Come to this? She caught at the word and thought it a poor one—the two of them were, in truth, cooler to each other than she had imagined.
The first quarrel had gone like this.
...
It was some year or other after the disaster that struck Murong Qing's family.
The Jiang household—that is, Jiang Qinghe's mother—took Murong Qing into their home, and sent her to study at the family school as well.
That year she had just reached her hairpin age; Jiang Qinghe that year had newly come of age. Young as he was, he was already winning military merits at the front from time to time.
Every time he came home he brought Murong Qing a heap of novelties from afar, and every time she would put them all away in perfect order.
But on one of his returns, something seemed to go wrong.
Murong Qing didn't see Jiang Qinghe—only, in the courtyard, the warhorse he rode at the front.
Outside, the night watchman was calling that curfew was near. Yet it struck her as strange: usually Jiang Qinghe returned to the city around the shen hour, sometimes the you hour, and the first person he sought was always her.
Not this time.
A shadow of foreboding rose in her heart.
She stroked the warhorse's head again and again; the horse butted its head against her hand. The more anxious she grew, the more she needed answers—so she went straight to Shangguan Jin.
It was at precisely that moment that it happened. Murong Qing overheard what she should not have heard—something concerning her family. Her family's massacre.
Only then did she learn that Jiang Qinghe had a hand in it.
But at the time he had been so young—how could he be mixed up in something of that magnitude?
Later she learned it was true. And she cut Jiang Qinghe out of her life.
That night she had cursed him with everything she had—and it felt, too, like mocking her own blind obedience.
She found it unbearably funny.
—
Back in the present, Murong Qing smoothed her sleeves and chose another path—downstairs, back into the crowd.
A pause. She tipped her head back and looked up at the curtained box above: the dark silhouette behind the curtain was gone.
She stopped concerning herself with it.
As matters stood, she would keep circling the surroundings—perhaps she would find some other secret chamber worth finding.
Extremely carefully she skirted her way out of the banquet hall and moved quickly through the surrounding passages. After doubling around several routes she soon got the lay of the land.
Quite a few people passed by her; at last she slipped into a dark corner.
A dark corner...
Tense, Murong Qing edged back out again, watching every step of the way.
At last, not far off, she saw several black-cloaked figures. The figures glanced around, drew tokens from their robes, and set a token against a stone recess nearby.
At a rumbling sound, a door swung open, and the cloaked figures slipped quickly inside.
Murong Qing suddenly noticed a faint difference in the scent of the air—a spice, strange enough.
Unlike any spice sold in the market. More like something blended by hand.
She covered her nose, fighting a sneeze with everything she had, and as the last of the figures was about to slip inside she darted in after them.
She judged herself sufficiently careful.
She waited, not daring even to breathe deeply; as the last man was entering she slipped her nimble body in behind him.
Without a sound, she quickly wedged herself behind a stone—only to step, unluckily, on a loose pebble. Even the smallest sound here could raise a small commotion.
"Who's there!" The man following last heard it best, and spun around at once.
Not a single shadow anywhere in the air.
"What is it?"
"I just heard someone step on a stone—behind us! The sound came from behind us!"
The two cloaked men behind chattered anxiously.
If an outsider had gotten in here, wouldn't some clue have been left behind? They had no intention of losing their heads just yet!
"Stop talking nonsense! This place couldn't admit so much as a fly! How could anyone have come in?" The man in front cut the talk off at once.
No doubt he too feared the whole affair being repeated to outsiders—one word of it and their heads would be forfeit long before anyone came for them!
"Move! Don't keep his lordship waiting!"
If she guessed right, these were personal attendants—men kept precisely to wait upon certain masters, body and soul.
She had to keep following.
If she were to deal with one of them right now...
Her pupils trembled. She drew the small knife hidden in the deepest layer of her inner garment.
Fine. As she had drilled it in practice, so she would do it now.
Murong Qing drew a cold breath, gripped the hilt hard, and raised her eyes—at the corner farthest ahead.
A thread of killing intent in her gaze, she hauled back the last cloaked man by the collar, clapping a hand over his mouth, straining not to make a sound.
Since the knife was out of the question, she settled for knocking the man senseless—then donned his cloak.
Without wasting an instant she pressed on behind the others. Fortunately the men ahead noticed nothing amiss.
She fell in among them, following in their wake.
Suddenly a thread of light appeared ahead—light slanting in from the wall at the side.
Her heart lurched; her eyes cut sideways toward it.
While the men's attention was fixed forward, she drew the small knife at her waist and threw it through that patch of light.
This was the knife Shangguan Jin had pressed into her hand with his own hands before they parted. If any sign could tell Shangguan Jin where she was—it would be this.
Perhaps. she thought.
Perhaps he would understand.