Zhang Hua drove the carriage while repeatedly glancing back at the curtain behind him. He lowered his voice, but could not hide his curiosity and suspicion.
“Mother, who were those people?”
“Some good friends from my past.”
In the pitch-black carriage, Princess Fang secretly adjusted the Fire-Cleansed Cloth. The long, broad strip now had to cover not only the wound through her energy center, but also the newest stab wound.
Princess Fang considered herself highly practiced at treating her own injuries by touch in the dark. Whether her methods were clean, sanitary, or proper did not concern her. She was still alive, so a bandaging method she had used countless times in the past plainly worked well enough.
Zhang Hua murmured an acknowledgment. A moment later, he could not resist asking again, “Which part of your past? When you were a bandit? An outlaw leader? At the border?”
“When I was at court.”
Her trembling hands hurt her badly enough to make her eyes roll, but none of that entered her voice. In her whole life, Princess Fang had been willing to show weakness before only three men. Now there were only two names left on that list. With Fang Luo removed, neither the emperor nor Fang Niu was present.
Letting Zhang Hua hear how much her wound hurt would only make him panic and lose confidence. It would accomplish nothing else.
“What? Mother, you had a period at court? Didn’t you charge straight from the outlaw world to defend the border, then go directly home to have children?”
Zhang Hua thought privately, *Judging from the date your eldest daughter was born, you did not even discover the pregnancy until the fourth month. Five months after returning to the capital, you had a daughter. You recuperated for less than three months, handed the child to Lady Zhai, and ran back to the border to find him.*
*Mother, you escaped notice only because your martial arts were so good. Relations within an army camp are a grave offense punished by immediate execution! And you were even worse with your second child. You did not return to the capital until the fifth month of pregnancy. The baby was born three months later, and you stayed for only one month…*
“I knew the emperor for many years,” Princess Fang said. “I knew him before my younger brother had decided whether to serve him, cultivate a relationship with the crown prince, or join the Empress’s legitimate son…”
Pride filled her voice. “I may have judged one man wrongly, but the sovereign I valued above all never disappointed me.”
“Mother, you have never told me about you and the emperor. Will you tell your son now?”
“I swore never to reveal those secrets to anyone while I lived.” Teasing entered Princess Fang’s voice. “If we see Jin Wu again, I will tell you everything.”
“Mother!” Zhang Hua protested.
Then he fell silent. Beneath the moon, the faint outline of a building appeared ahead beside the road. It might be an inn.
He guided the carriage toward it and looked back. “Mother, there is a building ahead.”
“Then go take a look and buy some meat. But be careful about everything. We have only one Spirit-Stabilizing Pearl.”
“I will, Mother.”
Zhang Hua stopped the carriage some distance from the inn and approached with a heavy string of coins. It was an utterly ordinary establishment–so normal that among a hundred roadside inns, no one would have noticed it for any unusual feature.
Zhang Hua sprang lightly onto the roof. Using a Pearl Rolls Back the Curtain maneuver, he looked into the kitchen. The hanging bones were not human skulls, but the heads of pigs, sheep, and dogs.
He dropped back to the ground and knocked.
A drowsy attendant opened the door and muttered in a low, unbroken stream, “Knocking this late do you plan to let anyone sleep do you know what hour it is in another two hours the innkeeper will drag us all out of bed to drive the donkey and grind beans what do you want honored guest?”
Zhang Hua tossed him the string of coins and a wineskin.
“One string. Fill the wineskin with meat broth and spend the rest on meat.”
Still half asleep, the attendant entered the kitchen and lifted the lid from the great pot on the stove. He pushed a soot-black funnel into the wineskin, then ladled in broth after skimming off the seasonings.
“Honored guest I should tell you drinking broth from a wineskin is convenient but afterward the skin is terribly hard to clean and it will stink–”
Zhang Hua did not answer. The attendant quickly filled the skin, took out two large pieces of beef, sliced them fine, and wrapped them in two broad lotus leaves.
He did not recognize Zhang Hua at any point. But as he carried a lamp outside to see his customer off, he suddenly gave a startled cry.
Zhang Hua turned sharply. “What is it?” he asked softly.
Uncertainty crossed the attendant’s face. He slowly backed toward the building and forced an ingratiating smile.
“Nothing, nothing. Safe travels, honored sir. Safe travels.”
Zhang Hua smiled. “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” the attendant answered at once.
“Truly? I do not look familiar?”
Smiling as if greeting an old friend, Zhang Hua put an arm around the attendant’s shoulders. He gave one light twist, then gently blew out the lamp.
Zhang Hua dragged the corpse back to the carriage and passed the wineskin inside.
“Mother, drink a little.”
“It smells wonderful. Did you buy meat for yourself?”
Princess Fang happily lifted the curtain and sat inside the carriage. She pulled the stopper free and moved the Spirit-Stabilizing Pearl from her tongue to the outside of her teeth, tucking it against her cheek. Then she looked at the dead attendant and drank a mouthful of broth.
“It tastes good too. What happened to him?”
“He worked here and recognized me. The innkeeper treats the servants very harshly. No one will find it strange if an attendant secretly runs away.”
“An inn like this usually employs only one attendant.”
The carriage was already racing away. Princess Fang turned to look at the little inn disappearing behind them.
“Why did you not change into his clothes? To tell the truth, keeping that face of yours from being recognized will be difficult. People remember anyone extremely beautiful or extremely ugly.”
Zhang Hua’s face reddened. “Mother, go farther inside. I need to change.”
Princess Fang giggled, withdrew, and lowered the curtain. “This would be even better with peanuts and wine.”
While stripping the young attendant’s outer clothes away, Zhang Hua slowed their fresh team of horses a little and kept the carriage moving along the road.
“It would be even better if you had not been wounded.”
“Do not be like that, Tenth Lady. No one used to criticize me whenever I was hurt. An injury is unpleasant, but it is hardly a great matter.”
Princess Fang loosened the Fire-Cleansed Cloth around her waist. She looked at the wound that still refused to close because the poison was too strong and finally understood, through the haze, what she needed.
“Once you are dressed, hold this cloth over the torch and burn it.”
She passed the Fire-Cleansed Cloth outside, leaving all the skin from her ribs to her pelvis uncovered.
“I recognize that mountain in the distance. Nipple Mountain.” She gave a soft laugh. “Once we reach this place, we are not far from our destination.”
Zhang Hua removed his young nobleman’s robe, now stained with dust and dirty blood, and stuffed it into a corner of the carriage. He retained the padded white-silk jacket beneath it and pulled the attendant’s indigo batik robe of coarse cloth over the top.
Then he raised the strip of Fire-Cleansed Cloth over the torch fixed in a bronze holder beside the wheel track and burned every place stained with blood.
“Fire-Cleansed Cloth must always be washed by casting it into flame,” Zhang Hua recited. “The cloth takes the color of fire, and the grime takes the color of cloth. Remove it from the flame and shake it, and it becomes as gleaming white as frozen snow.”
He continued, “Mother, I have never understood why the emperor gave you something so precious. You have certainly performed unmatched service, but Fire-Cleansed Cloth is a treasure from legend.”
“Because the emperor knows what matters more than Fire-Cleansed Cloth.”
Princess Fang spoke with great pride, entirely satisfied that one of her past deeds had earned such a reward. According to legend, only King Mu of Zhou had ever possessed Fire-Cleansed Cloth.
“The woman he loves?” Zhang Hua blurted.
“Nonsense!”
Princess Fang carefully rebound her wound and protested with complete confidence. “Can there be no clean exchange of mutual benefit between a man and a woman? He is the emperor and a wise ruler. I am the wife of one of his important ministers and the elder sister of another. Besides, I am not as beautiful as you imagine. Do not be as vulgar as those censors.”
As she spoke, a city appeared not far ahead.
They had traveled without stopping for two days and two nights, covering two-thirds of the journey. The border was near. At dawn, they approached a small walled city.
The soldiers at the gate examined Zhang Hua’s official credentials and travel permit. The documents had been produced inside the grand chancellor’s residence using authentic government seals from several regions. Naturally, they were genuine–as genuine as documents could possibly be, more genuine than gold.
Princess Fang had smeared her face with lard and patted incense ash over it. For two days, she had not washed her face, brushed her teeth, or shaved her scalp. She also carried the smell of the vegetable broth spilled over her clothing the day before yesterday.
Her monk’s robe had not been washed or changed since she first learned at fifteen to disguise herself as a monk. It was so filthy that its original color could no longer be seen. Patches of different colors had worn nearly open between their seams. Song brocade, silk gauze, coarse hemp, cotton–cloth from every corner of the country seemed to meet upon it. A hundred-patch robe would have been the more fitting name. In those days, Princess Fang had fanatically searched everywhere for rags and scraps to add to it.
The robe had remained packed in a camphorwood chest in the grand chancellor’s storeroom, held in reserve. When Zhang Hua was young, he had loved hunting for treasure in that storeroom. He opened the chest once and suffered nightmares for three straight nights after the smell struck him.
The monk’s present appearance and odor could easily be imagined.
The gate soldiers examined her ordination certificate, glanced over the carriage packed with medicinal herbs, and waved them through.
The carriage moved slowly through the city. Princess Fang leaned against its wall and studied the streets through the window. Suddenly, she called, “Stop. Go tell that old legal scoundrel with the pigeon that a man named Leng, who is not quite stubborn enough, has come to collect a debt.”
Without showing the least doubt, Zhang Hua went over. He soon returned with the shameless, hard-faced legal trickster.
Princess Fang lowered her voice. “Does a square block of wood stand upright upon the ground?”
Zhang Hua immediately understood the code. Its pieces–wood, four sides, square, and upright–assembled the written sign they were using for the name Leng.
The trickster looked suspiciously over the monk’s clothing. “How many faces is the block missing?”
“One face of the block is dead.”
Princess Fang reached out and stroked his pigeon. “In this poor monk’s opinion, this bird is very plump. It would pair nicely with wine.”
The trickster spat at the ground. He seized her collar, then released it at once as if afraid of the filth. Both hands waved them away.
“Get out. Get out of here!”
Princess Fang stopped Zhang Hua from reacting. “Go,” she said softly.
She lowered the carriage curtain and drew a paper slip from inside her robe. After a single glance, she clenched her teeth, fell backward, and lost consciousness.