The moment Clerk Song's fingers touched the loose board, Wang Guizhi pounced like a lioness provoked, flinging herself forward.
"Don't you dare touch that! Those are my Xue family's ancestral tablets! Who gave you leave!"
Hair tumbling loose, she planted herself in front of the altar, arms spread wide, eyes bulging like copper bells, lips trembling around a single refrain: "The Bodhisattva is watching... the Bodhisattva is watching..."
Jing Shishi and Xue Lan'er shrank back in fright, the two girls crowded at the door of the shrine hall, not daring even to breathe loudly.
Clerk Song's brows drew down; his hand came to rest on the saber at his waist, and his voice cooled several degrees.
"Mistress Xue. Obstructing officials in the conduct of their duty adds a degree to your offense."
"What duty! You're bandits! You've come to rob the Xue family!" Wang Guizhi had gone half hysterical. She whipped her head around and fixed on Cen Sheng, her gaze like needlepoints dipped in poison. "It's you—it's you, you jinx, who brought them here! You've conspired with outsiders to ruin the Xue family! I'll beat you to death—"
She raised her palm and lunged at Cen Sheng.
Cen Sheng didn't dodge.
She stood right where she was, watching Wang Guizhi's twisted face bear down on her, and what rose in her chest was not fear but an uncanny calm. Twelve years this woman had struck her more times than she could count—slaps, the feather duster, the fire-poker. She had taken them all. But that was the life before.
In this one, that hand would not touch her again.
The instant Wang Guizhi's palm came down, Cen Sheng sidestepped, caught her wrist, and wrenched it back with a twist.
She wasn't strong—but she knew where the leverage lived, a way of exerting force she had learned without meaning to, struggling for her life inside a coffin in her past life.
Wang Guizhi shrieked with pain as Cen Sheng pressed her, howling, against the edge of the altar.
"Mother-in-law." Cen Sheng bent close, her voice pitched low enough for the two of them alone. "The Bodhisattva truly is watching. Tell me—when the Bodhisattva watched you hound my father to his death, watched you have my Second Uncle thrown from his horse—do you think he'll testify for you?"
Wang Guizhi's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
Her mouth fell open; a strangled rasping came from her throat as though hands were at her neck. That well-kept face twisted in a heartbeat into a demon's mask, terror and disbelief warring in it until it turned grotesque.
Cen Sheng let go and stepped back, slipping on once more the mask of the docile daughter-in-law, and dropped a small curtsey to Clerk Song: "Lord Song, my mother-in-law spoke out of turn and in her panic. There is a loose board beneath the altar. Look, and you will see."
Clerk Song gave her a long, meaningful look.
This fair-skinned young woman—a flash of steel one instant, the picture of mildness the next; two different people. But he had served in the yamen a dozen years and seen every manner of household war; he asked nothing, stepped around Wang Guizhi collapsed on the ground, bent, and ran his hand along the loose board.
The sound of the board coming up was harsh as a scream in the silent shrine hall.
Wang Guizhi closed her eyes.
From the hidden compartment Clerk Song drew out a tin-lined box. Not large—a foot square, brass-bound at the corners, hung with a rusted copper lock. One tap of his knife's spine and the lock gave way.
Inside, stacked in tidy rows, lay a bundle of yellowed ledgers and contracts.
The topmost was a contract, dated twelve years back. The ink had faded to a dull brown, but the words were still perfectly legible—
"Received by order of Xue Chongli: three hundred blocks of bluestone, inferior stone passed off as fine, delivered to the river-dike works at Qingping County. Difference in value, three hundred taels of silver, settled in full with Master Xue in person."
It was signed with the name of a stone merchant house, pressed beside it a dark-red thumbprint.
Clerk Song's face changed.
He rifled quickly through the documents beneath, and the deeper he went the tighter his brows knotted. The ledgers recorded, item by item in a fine dense hand, every stone transaction: the markups from passing off inferior stock, the silver spent greasing official palms, the money paid to buy off the head of the corvée laborers—line after line, all clear.
And on the last page, at the very end, a small line in vermilion brush—
"Cen Wangshan refused. Threatened with the lives of his family, he agreed to take the blame. Send men to escort him to the frontier—and finish it on the road."
Darkness swam before Cen Sheng's eyes.
She clenched her teeth until her nails bit through the skin of her palms, and only then kept herself from falling.
Her father hadn't simply vanished.
Her father had been dead for twelve years.
Dead on the road of exile, dead at the hands of men the Xue family sent.
"Lord Song." She heard her own voice squeeze out of her throat, calm in a way that frightened her. "I cannot read a word of these documents. But I would like to know—the Cen Wangshan named here. Is he this humble woman's father?"
Clerk Song closed the ledger and looked at her, grave.
"Cen Wangshan is your father?"
"He is."
Clerk Song was silent a moment, then handed the contract to her, pointing at the vermilion line.
Cen Sheng read it character by character. Then, slowly, very slowly, she closed her fist.
She did not cry.
Twelve years of grievance, twelve years of not-knowing—the weight of it had long outstripped anything tears could carry.
She turned and looked at Wang Guizhi, collapsed on the floor.
Wang Guizhi was utterly broken. Propped against the altar leg, she was a puddle of mud, mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out.
"Mother-in-law." Cen Sheng crouched down to her eye level, her voice soft as if soothing a child. "My father wouldn't cook the books for you, so you made him take the blame. He took the blame, and you still weren't satisfied—you had him killed on the road."
"It wasn't me... it wasn't me..." Wang Guizhi shook her head desperately, tears and snot smeared across her face. "It was Chongli... it was all Chongli... I'm only a woman, I knew nothing—"
"Nothing?" Cen Sheng laughed once, a short cold sound. "And the man who had my Second Uncle thrown from his horse—was that Xue Chongli's arrangement too? The girth strap cut through—did Xue Chongli's ghost visit you in a dream and order you to do that as well?"
Wang Guizhi's mouth sagged open; the blood drained from her face to the last drop.
"You—how do you know..."
She didn't finish, because she finally heard what she had just said.
Clerk Song's gaze snapped over.
"Thrown from a horse?" he asked, low and hard. "And which case is that, pray?"
"Lies! It's nothing! Nothing at all!" Wang Guizhi waved her hands like a madwoman. "She's making it up! She's making it up—"
"Made up or not, one look will settle it." Cen Sheng rose, brushed the dust from her skirt, her tone as flat as if remarking on the fine weather. "Lord Song, it is known to the whole village that Second Master Xue Miao was crippled by a fall from horseback twelve years ago. Accident or not—have a coroner examine the old injury, and find the saddle from that year and inspect the girth. The truth will show itself."
She paused, then added:
"Ah—and the old servant who had my Second Uncle thrown was one my mother-in-law's own family brought with her. If you wish to look into it, my lord, ask at the Wang household."
Wang Guizhi broke at last.
Her eyes rolled back and she toppled straight over, the back of her head striking the altar leg with a dull thud.
Jing Shishi screamed.
Xue Lan'er rushed in to catch her mother, weeping and crying at Cen Sheng: "Sister-in-law, have you gone mad! How can you treat Mother this way!"
Cen Sheng looked at her.
This sister-in-law, whom she had treated as a true younger sister in her past life. Yet Xue Lan'er had stood silent when they forced the poison down her throat, and never spoke a word for her when they nailed her into the coffin. She didn't hate her. But she would never soften toward her again.
"Lan'er, you are fifteen this year." Cen Sheng said evenly. "Twelve years ago you were three. None of this is yours. But remember today—remember what your mother did. The next time someone tells you 'your sister-in-law is a jinx,' you'll know where the scale in your heart should sit."
Xue Lan'er stood frozen.
Cen Sheng looked away from her and bowed to Clerk Song.
"Lord Song, this humble woman has one more thing to report."
Clerk Song was fitting the lid back on the tin box; he looked up: "Speak."
"I don't know why Xue Wenyan was taken this morning. But Xue Wenyan is Xue Chongli's eldest son, and for years he has managed the Xue family's lands and shops. If you wish to know whether the family's income these twelve years has any connection to the river-dike works, my lord, his private ledger will serve you better than the household's public accounts."
Clerk Song's gaze sharpened: "You know where his private ledger is?"
"In the hidden compartment of his study." Cen Sheng said. "Behind the curio shelf. The third brick—it's hollow."
She said it placidly, as if describing what she had eaten that morning.
Beneath the calm: a previous life of nights and days of endurance and watching.
She had served Xue Wenyan for twelve years—ground his ink, laid out his paper, kept his study. There was no secret corner of him she did not know by heart.
Clerk Song looked at her a long moment, and slowly nodded.
"Madam Cen." He suddenly changed his form of address, and there was a measure more respect in his voice. "Everything you said today will go into the record exactly as spoken. If these documents and Xue Wenyan's private ledger prove tied to the river-dike corruption, then you are a material witness in this case. The imperial censor may summon you for questioning in due course."
"This humble woman will await the summons."
Clerk Song clamped the tin box under his arm and strode out of the shrine hall.
Passing Wang Guizhi where she lay sprawled, he did not slow, and left only one sentence behind:
"Mistress Xue. From this day you do not leave Qingping County. Resist, and you will be taken into custody."
Footsteps receded.
Only the dying embers of incense flickered in the shrine hall now, and Wang Guizhi's ragged gasping, and Jing Shishi's strangled sobs.
Cen Sheng stood before the statue of Guanyin and looked up into that serene, kind face.
The Bodhisattva's eyes were lowered, the corner of the mouth holding its eternal smile, gazing down at everything that had happened in this hall.
In her past life she had kowtowed to this Bodhisattva more times than she could count—begging to conceive soon, begging Xue Wenyan to turn his heart back home. Later she stopped begging, because she had understood: the Bodhisattva never decides for anyone.
A person can only decide for herself.
She turned and walked out of the shrine hall.
Behind her came Wang Guizhi's voice, hoarse past all hoarseness, like a curse squeezed up through a crack in the earth:
"Cen Sheng... just you wait... when Wenyan comes back... I swear I'll see you die a hideous death..."
Cen Sheng didn't stop.
The sun stood at midday; autumn light fell warm on her shoulders. She walked out the main gate of the Xue household and set off east along the village road.
She was going to find Xue Miao.
The truth in that tin box—Xue Miao must have known it long ago. Yet last night he hadn't told her a single word of it.
She was going to ask him why.