Chapter 26

Mother Shen took a light sip of tea, settling into the posture of a grand household’s matriarch. “You may be at ease, there is no major matter,” she said. “But in the end, one’s own daughter is best raised by one’s own family. You’an will soon have to return to the Xuanji Pavilion. If Shen Ling keeps staying in our manor all year round, the care she receives will never be as suited to her as at home.”
At those words, the magistrate immediately understood that this was a polite dismissal.
Cold sweat trickled down his back. Most likely his daughter had offended his cousin’s household somehow. Fortunately, his cousin’s wife was not the ruthless sort and was still willing to maintain the appearances of harmony between the two families.
The magistrate hurriedly said, “Madam Shen speaks most rightly. May I ask where Yerong is? My wife and I will take her home at once and keep a strict eye on her.” He deliberately put weight on the words “keep a strict eye.”
Mother Shen immediately sent someone to summon Shen Ling.
When Shen Ling entered, her face was pale and her expression far from good. Clearly Madam Shen’s words a few days prior had been nothing short of a thorough lesson.
The magistrate, catching sight of her, at once pulled her forward toward Mother Shen. “Yerong, why are you still standing there? Quickly thank Madam Shen for taking care of you these past days!”
Shen Ling bit her lip and glanced at her Father, her feelings a tangle he couldn’t read. She stepped up and gave Mother Shen a junior’s salute. “Yerong thanks Aunt and Uncle for their care and kindness,” she said.
Mother Shen’s expression remained cool, and she did not respond. Instead she turned to the maid at her side. “The tea has gone cold. Why haven’t you refilled our guests’ cups?”
The affectionate “Aunt” that Shen Ling had so deliberately used was made to sound like a joke against that one word, “guests.”
Before Shen Ling could say anything more, the magistrate and his wife, who had caught Mother Shen’s meaning, were already pulling her back. The magistrate’s wife shot her daughter a warning look, and the magistrate forced a smile. “Since we’re leaving, it would only be a waste to refill the tea. Pardon us, madam. I still have pressing business at the yamen, so we won’t trouble you any longer.”
Mother Shen calmly took another sip of tea. “In that case,” she said, “I must soon be choosing cloth and cutting new garments with my daughter. I won’t see you out.”
She lifted a slim hand. “See our guests to the gate.”
Just then, a servant came in bearing several bolts of silk. A clear, lively voice followed after. “Mother, I’ve picked out a few pieces of cloth for now, but I can’t quite decide which one would be best for my summer robes. Could you choose for me?”
Carrying a faint floral scent with her, Shen Qing brushed past Shen Ling’s family of three. She didn’t spare Shen Ling so much as a glance, heading straight into her mother’s arms.
Only then did Mother Shen’s always-cool features soften. “If you can’t choose,” she said gently, “then take them all. I’ll call in more seamstresses later and have them make every piece into skirts. You can change them as you please.”
Shen Qing’s eyes lit up. “Mother is still the wisest,” she said, delighted. “That’s the best idea!”
For some reason, Shen Ling stopped just a few steps outside the main hall. She turned back to stare fixedly at the harmonious mother and daughter inside, and at the servants carrying bolts of silk.
The silk was fine and smooth to the touch, like clear spring water pouring from a ladle, fluid and bright like moonlight spilling down, light as nothing at all. Anyone with eyes could tell at a glance that it was priceless.
Not only that, but even the robe on Shen Qing’s body was made of Yuehua brocade, a fabric noble girls in Chang’an would fight over with ten thousand gold and still be unable to buy. The scent on her body was Magnolia Dew from the Wanbao Pavilion, sold only one vial a month. Every ornament she wore was unique, something money alone could not buy.
Madam Magistrate tugged her dazed daughter’s sleeve. How could she not know what Yerong was thinking? “Yerong,” she said, frowning, “it’s time to go.”
It was as if Shen Ling had been dragged out of a dream. After a moment of dazed confusion, she blinked and looked up to see her mother’s hands, rough from years of work, and her Father’s face, lined into a permanent look of worry.
When she looked down again, hanging from her own arm was the coarsest, most ordinary hemp-cotton. Country girls could barely afford it; highborn ladies wouldn’t spare it a glance. Even the maids at Shen Qing’s side wore clothes from Wanbao Pavilion.
Madam Shen’s warning from that day still rang clearly in her ears:
“You’an is my daughter. If she says something is there, then it is there. Young Lady Shen need not say another word. This manor can take in any homeless child, any rootless woman and orphan, but we will not tolerate even one person who is harmful to my daughter.”
That day Madam Shen’s face had remained composed, but the sharp gleam in her eyes was inescapable. It was the blade a mother raised to shield her child.
“For these next days, Young Lady Shen will remain in this courtyard. Your honoured father will be here before long. I advise you to conduct yourself with restraint.”
Without listening to a single explanation from Shen Ling, Madam Shen had directly confined her in the small courtyard and left without looking back, leaving Shen Ling alone, face ashen, under the scornful and disgusted gazes of the servants.
Now Shen Ling was pulled out through the main gates by her parents.
This time, everyone saw with their own eyes that it was Shen Ling’s parents who had come to take their daughter home, not the Shen family heartlessly throwing her out into the street.
The magistrate sighed. “Since Madam Shen does not welcome us, we mustn’t go forcing ourselves on them in future. Fortunately, madam is generous and hasn’t pursued the matter further. Yerong, you must not behave like this again.”
He knew very well that everything they had today came entirely thanks to that younger cousin’s support.
Back when they were still in the ancestral compound, he had never been able to do much for that cousin. If he had to name one thing, it would be how, when his cousin had taken a flogging from the clan for insisting on marrying his present wife, then been locked up badly injured with no one allowed to treat him, he had slipped him a cup of water.
At the time he’d wanted to drink hot tea, but the tea had gone cold. On a sudden impulse, remembering his cousin shut away next door with his life hanging by a thread, he had taken the teapot over instead.
He had never imagined that the other man would remember that small kindness all the way to this day.
The magistrate’s wife echoed him. “Indeed. Since Madam Shen and Young Lady Shen do not like it, we won’t go again.”
Just as they were about to step up into the carriage, Shen Ling suddenly stopped. The magistrate and his wife looked at her in puzzlement. “Yerong, what is it?”
“If I said I did nothing wrong,” Shen Ling asked quietly, “and that it is Elder Sister Shen Qing who dislikes me and deliberately targeted me… would Mother and Father believe me?”
At those words, the magistrate only shook his head and ducked back into the carriage. The magistrate’s wife stroked Shen Ling’s hair. “Let it go, silly child. Just don’t go hovering around Young Lady Shen anymore.” She let the matter pass with a light remark and tugged Shen Ling up into the carriage.
Shen Ling stared blankly at the carriage curtain.
“Let it go”, what exactly was that supposed to mean? Let go of the fact that she had done wrong, or let go of the fact that Shen Qing had targeted her?
Did Mother believe anything she’d said at all?
Very clearly, she did not. Or perhaps she simply couldn’t be bothered to dig deeper.
Just like when she was small. Father had used money he’d saved up for a long time in private to buy her a mohele clay doll; she had loved it, hugging it happily for days.
Later, the neighbor’s little boy stole it from her, then turned around and claimed that she had stolen his doll.
Shen Ling spent a long time explaining that her father had bought it for her, but no one believed her.
In a fit of anger she shoved the boy, and he fell and split his head. The matter blew up; both sets of parents were called out. Shen Ling had thought she would finally be able to prove the doll was hers, but Father never spoke up for her.
He took her doll and handed it over, coaxing the boy patiently. Only when the boy finally stopped crying and hugged the doll, grinning from ear to ear, did Shen Ling break down in sobs.
No one present cared about Shen Ling. Her grandfather looked at her in open disgust. “Girls are nothing but trouble! We should have thrown her out back then.”
When her father had finally soothed the other side and seen them off, her mother patted Shen Ling’s head and said, “Just give it to him. Better that than stirring up more trouble.”
Shen Ling cried, “He stole my toy first, that’s why I pushed him. Why did Father give him my mohele?”
“Let it go, Yerong,” the magistrate had said. “I’ll buy you another one next time. Don’t go looking for trouble.”
He had kept his word, scrimping and saving again until he could buy his daughter another clay doll.
Shen Ling did get another mohele in the end, but by then every child in the county already “knew” that Shen Ling was a bad child who stole people’s things and hit them. No one was willing to play with her.
Looking at her mother’s face now, an emotion shot up in Shen Ling’s chest like bamboo after a spring rain, breaking through the soil and shooting higher and higher, thicker and harder, until it became a towering stalk. At the same time, something in her eyes changed.
Shen Ling answered softly, “All right. I’ll do as Mother says. I’ll let it go.”
Her docility pleased the magistrate and his wife very much. Thinking of the way her daughter had looked at that other girl earlier, the magistrate’s wife hesitated, then said, “I brought some silver with me. It won’t do for you to dress so plainly all the time. Let’s go to the clothing shop and buy you a few new outfits.”
“Okay,” Shen Ling agreed. But what she wanted wasn’t the clothes from a common dress shop, it was brocades and silks from Wanbao Pavilion.
With her current status, those were things she was destined never to obtain. Since that was the case, why not do as she had in her last life and seize them for herself?
This life had already gone awry in many ways. She had accidentally lost the Glass Heart that was supposed to be hers, and the Cang Prince who should have traded with her had been snatched away by Shen Qing. Now the only chance left in her hands was Deputy Liu.
Perhaps she could still take the Glass Heart back. After all, in this life Shen Qing was still the same spoiled, rude fool who only knew how to drown herself in jewelry and skirts.
Shen Ling’s gaze grew ever more resolute.
Back at Shen Manor, Shen Qing finished happily picking out her bolts of cloth, then asked Madam Shen offhandedly, “Mother, in all these years Father has been guarding the border, has he made many enemies?”
Madam Shen said, “On the battlefield, lives are decided in a single instant. Whether he has made enemies or not, if he has, they are either already dead under your Father’s blade, or they’re cowering at home, too afraid to show their faces. Why are you asking this all of a sudden, You’an?”
Shen Qing gave a sheepish smile and shook her head. “I was just curious. Has Father ever offended anyone here in Chang’an? If one day I accidentally offend some noble’s daughter, will that cause trouble for Father?”
Madam Shen laughed lightly and teased, “Oh dear, if that day really comes, your Mother will sell off every last bit of the family fortune if she has to, just to protect you.”
Since she could get nothing useful out of her mother, Shen Qing’s thoughts were clearly distracted. She forced a smile. “I knew Mother loves me best.”
It seemed that on the surface at least, Father had not offended anyone at court.
If she wanted to find the hand behind the scenes, she would have to dig much deeper.
Nor could she afford to leave Shen Ling unchecked. Shen Qing had long since set people to watch the Shen Ling family closely. Any stir, no matter how small, would be reported at once. She was simply waiting for the moment she could grab whoever was in contact with Shen Ling.
As for the accounts from her last life, once she dragged the mastermind into the light, she would settle them slowly.
If she wanted to torment someone, Shen Qing had no shortage of methods.