Chương 15: How to Cram for an Imperial Poetry Banquet

Steam rose slowly off the buns on the wooden cart, sesame and toasted flour thickening in the air, filling the narrow lane. Oliver stood outside the carriage window wearing that utterly unremarkable street-vendor face.

"I want to work with you." Gu Zhiwei waved the driver a few steps back and looked at Oliver, playing dumb.

"And what might you mean by that?"

"West Market. I was working as a pot boy at the wine shop. I brought wine to your table." Oliver went straight to the point.

"That young lady from Russia was hollering about the System and outing herself in the same breath. It was genuinely hard to pretend I hadn't heard." Aglaya, who had been craning her neck to get a look at him, rolled her eyes, sat back inside, and dropped her half of the carriage curtain.

"You saw the thread about me on the Forum."

"Of course."

"Why didn't you turn me in?" Oliver looked at her, faintly amused.

"What do I get out of selling out a promising potential teammate?" If his skill lets him change his face and form at will, it would be a powerful asset in a world like this. But this wasn't the place for that conversation. Oliver seemed to read the thought off her.

"Add me on the Forum? Search for my ID, Proteus." Gu Zhiwei found him and added him.

"You actually made your skill your username?"

"Men should be what they seem." He dropped a bun into a paper bag and passed it through the window.

"On the house. Next time we meet, I hope to have something real for you." Gu Zhiwei took it and bit into it.

"Iago said the same thing." Oliver laughed under his breath, waved, and pushed his cart away. When the carriage started moving again, Aglaya lifted the curtain for another look. That Great Yong vendor's face had already folded into the morning crowd and vanished.

"Who's Iago?" Aglaya asked.

"That line of his. It's Iago's, in Othello."

"Wow, you two are on the same wavelength already? He is pretty hot, though. Looks like he's got more going on upstairs than Matt." Aglaya had already started shipping them.

"?" said Gu Zhiwei.

"Sometimes I genuinely want to throw hands with every last one of you romance-brained idiots." Aglaya doubled over laughing in the carriage.

The Yang residence took up almost half a street in Lin'an Ward. The stone lions at the gate had been polished to a shine, and even the robes of the gate boys carried a faint breath of sandalwood. The first person Gu Zhiwei saw inside was Yang Jingchu. Her cousin had just come back from the Assisting Garrison, still in his archer's-sleeve riding coat. He tossed the blade into an attendant's arms, heard her out about Matt's situation, and asked exactly one question.

"How good is he?" Gu Zhiwei thought about Matt's skill and answered with confidence.

"He could hold off a hundred men on his own." Yang Jingchu's brow lifted. Knowing Gu Zhiwei as he did, he knew she wasn't exaggerating. His interest sharpened immediately.

"Does he know how to follow orders?"

"He is pretty good at the Yong language." Yang Jingchu nodded.

"That's enough. I'll send someone to talk to the merchant and pay off the contract in full. As long as that merchant still wants to do business in Great Yong, he wouldn't dare refuse. And if he knows what's good for him, he won't even ask for the money." Power was a beautiful thing. Gu Zhiwei had prepared several different arguments. She didn't get to use a single one. She suddenly understood why Gu Zhao had called this "easy."

A merchant contract that lodged in an ordinary person's throat like a fishbone was, in Yang Jingchu's hands, two men and one errand. An old family name made a fine umbrella. When it worked, it worked beautifully.

"Thank you, cousin." Gu Zhiwei followed the etiquette in the System's memory and gave him a proper, courteous bow. Yang Jingchu nearly sprayed the mouthful of tea he'd just taken, and coughed with laughter.

"Gu Zhiwei, I never thought I'd see the day." Yang Jingchu laughed so hard he nearly choked on his tea.

"Fine, fine. I'd take care of it just for the privilege of seeing you bow to me like that." Gu Zhiwei's head filled with question marks. She ran a fast search through her memories of this cousin. Oh boy. These two had been brawling since they were kids, and Gu Zhiwei had never once looked him in the eye, let alone bowed. Legacy code. Skip the fine print, ship the bug. Luckily Yang Jingchu only assumed that her father's death had steadied her, made her grow up.

Thinking it through further, he even began to feel he'd been a bit much, and the tips of his ears went red.

"All right, all right, stop worrying about your friend's business. Go sit with my sister. She was talking about you just yesterday." Gu Zhiwei: Bless the overthinkers who replay every conversation and then feel bad about it. Saved my ass. Yang Lingyi, eldest daughter of her Uncle Yang Chongli, was a few years older than Gu Zhiwei, a cousin she'd grown up playing with. She wore an apricot-colored narrow-sleeved dress.

The moment they met she took Gu Zhiwei's hands, asked gently after the family for a while, then steered the conversation straight toward tomorrow's Winding Stream Banquet in the palace.

"Your cousin Changning has been in a mood these past days." Yang Lingyi had a maid pour tea, displeasure threading her voice.

"Yihua recommended a few adepts, outlanders, to His Majesty, and got herself some very handsome rewards for it. Now she's showing off in front of Changning every other day. She really doesn't know when to stop." Changning was the title of the Empress's own daughter, and Gu Zhiwei's cousin. Yihua was Consort Shu's daughter. Gu Zhiwei got it. Mothers feuding in the palace, daughters sent in to fight the next round for them.

"Changning's banquet tomorrow will include a poetry-composing session. The invitations have surely reached your house already, so we'll go together." Yang Lingyi patted her hand.

"You've always been known for your talent. Go win back some ground for your cousin." Something in Gu Zhiwei cracked straight down the middle.

"..." There was, in fact, a line in the System's memory about that. The younger daughter of the Gu house was quick beyond her years. At seven she could name the mansions of the sky; at ten she had mastered the calendrical calculations; and in poetry, too, she had a name. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. But the identity memory had given her only Yong language, basic etiquette, and who was who. She could read their poems. That didn't mean she could write one.

"Our aunt the Empress wants to see you too. You absolutely have to come." Seeing her hesitate, Yang Lingyi turned serious at once.

"She's worried that with your mother the way she is, there's no one to arrange a marriage for you properly. Brother Gu Zhao does nothing but spoil you. I swear, if you really wanted to, he'd probably let you marry even a foreigner."

"???" For one wild second, Gu Zhiwei genuinely wondered if Yang Lingyi had bugged the Gu residence.

"Then again, who wouldn't want a brother who dotes on his sister like that? Brother Gu Zhao is just stubborn. His learning and his character are famous all over the capital." Yang Lingyi, used to this identity's habitual silence, kept the conversation rolling entirely on her own.

"Not like the one I've got, who spends every day messing around in the barracks with no sense of dignity whatsoever."

"Don't say that. Cousin Jingchu has had the makings of a great general since he was a boy..." Gu Zhiwei hurried to his defense. She was asking him a favor, after all. A little flattery was only fair.

"Oh my, it's a rare day when I hear you compliment him!" Yang Lingyi's whole face lit with the delight of someone watching a very good show.

"Back when my mother said you should marry him and keep it all in the family, you wouldn't hear of it." Gu Zhiwei was already dead inside. Yang Lingyi, completely oblivious, was still musing away to herself: "The two of you couldn't stand the sight of each other as children, and look now. He heard you were coming and left his post early today. He never gets home this early." Unreliable System memory. She'd walked in with no idea this thread even existed. Gu Zhao had sent her to Yang Jingchu herself.

She wondered whether he wasn't quietly hoping something would come of it. But she couldn't say a word about it. In this age, the greatest kindness a family could show a woman was to hope she married well. Anyway, her resolve to finish the quest and get out was now considerably firmer. Gu Zhiwei spent the entire day as a designated conversation companion, and in the process shook loose a pile of information about the outlanders.

It amounted to this: a batch of players had, through connections no one could name, attached themselves to Princess Yihua, using their skills to pass as adepts with real cultivation behind them. They were very much in the Emperor's favor now, hunting the baleful star on imperial orders and running the Insignia Guard in circles. Yang Jingchu came home every day and cursed those charlatan priests up and down. It was near dusk when she left the Yang residence.

Aglaya had apparently been sitting on a whole backlog of questions, because the moment she got the chance, she started firing them off in revenge.

"Who's Changning? Who's Yihua? Who's Consort Shu? And why is the Empress your relative too?" Remembering Matt's reaction earlier, Gu Zhiwei had to suppress a laugh. Still, she patiently explained it all to her foreign friend.

"The Empress is my mother's older sister. Lingyi's father is my mother's older brother. Princess Changning is the Empress's daughter, so she's my cousin. Princess Yihua has nothing to do with our family. She's Consort Shu's daughter." Aglaya stared at her.

"And Consort Shu?"

"One of the Emperor's other wives." Aglaya gave up.

"Please. I'm begging this goddamn ancient Chinese world to leave me alone."

After dinner, Gu Zhiwei prowled her father's study, hunting for something on prosody and allusion so she could cram for tomorrow's Winding Stream Banquet. Gu Zhao came in carrying a lamp.

"Tomorrow, in the palace. Remember not to draw attention to yourself." He had clearly seen Princess Changning's invitation.

"Because of Father, His Majesty already holds a grudge against this house. It's only our aunt's maneuvering that shields us. Changning doesn't know better. Don't follow her lead and make things hard for our aunt."

"So you do know. And that day you still had the nerve to refuse an edict." Gu Zhiwei was frankly impressed by his double standard. Gu Zhao froze. It was a long moment before he sighed.

"I only... not before Father's coffin..."

"But you," Gu Zhao said, looking at her with nothing but warmth in his eyes.

"You're the youngest in this house. I want to keep you out of all of it. I want your life to be smooth and happy and safe, from beginning to end." Gu Zhiwei knew all of this belonged to Gu Zhao's real little sister. She was moved by the plain goodness in it anyway.

"I understand. Don't worry."

"It's late. What are you looking for?"

"Father's star-gazing notes. I want to see if there's anything in them that helps you." Gu Zhiwei was certainly not going to admit she was here for remedial children's poetry. Gu Zhao studied her for a moment, then nodded.

"The study and everything in the star-gazing pavilion at the Bureau of Astronomy are under seal, but you may look if you wish. Father kept some private notes tucked into the old almanacs. No one else knew. You dug them out once when you were small." The System supplied the memory right on cue. She was seven, up on her toes on a wooden ladder, pulling a scroll called On the Precession from the highest shelf, sneezing helplessly in the falling dust. Gu Yaozhi didn't punish her.

He lifted her down and said that what was written in there was the sort of thing one could never say at court. After Gu Zhao left, Aglaya carried a lamp and went with her into the old stacks behind the study. Gu Zhiwei dug out that copy of On the Precession, along with several primers on poetic meter that were obviously hers from childhood, and took them back to her room. The night wore on.

Gu Zhiwei summoned the stamina she'd once used for all-nighters over discrete math in the library and chewed her way through most of Master Xie's Rules of Verse. Aglaya hauled over a stack of calamity registers and star charts and kept her company. She read slowly and carefully, easing apart pages glued shut at the spine with a thin sliver of bamboo. From West Market to the Gu residence, she hadn't used her skill without asking once these past days, and hadn't gone poking into the family's private business.

She complained about the archive work, and she never did a scrap less of it. It was in the small things that a person's true character showed. Aglaya made it very hard not to like her. Gu Zhiwei opened the six-person group chat: I'm thinking of inviting Aglaya to the party. Everyone okay with that? Chen Li: Fine by me. I haven't run into any other players here yet. Everyone I've dealt with for business has been a local. If you find someone reliable on your end, bring them in. Matt: No objection.

And thanks for helping me out. Someone came to speak with the caravan leader tonight, so I should be able to report to the Insignia Guard tomorrow. Wang Pu: Works for me. Man, I really wish you guys were here too. Those Beirong bastards had me seeing red today. They raided three villages, then fucking burned the houses and fields. The villagers barely have anything left to live on, and our commander still ordered us to hold position and stay inside the camp. Matt: You're on the front line. Better to follow orders.

Besides, what are you going to do if you go out there alone? Get yourself killed? Killing people isn't the same as killing monsters. Make sure you're mentally prepared for that first. Wang Pu: Yeah... okay. I know. Don't worry. Our sergeant is even more scared of going out there than I am. Gu Zhiwei: Thanks, everyone. Wang Pu, stay safe. If you get a chance to leave camp, look into that abandoned post station first. Wang Pu: Copy that. Gu Zhiwei closed the chat and sent Aglaya a party invitation.

The translucent panel lit up under the lamp. 【Player Aglaya has joined the party. 】 Aglaya stared at her own interface for two breaths, then threw both arms around Gu Zhiwei.

"Ura! We're getting that first win together."

"Please put the books down first. The dust is coming off all over me." That night, they found several pages of notes in the lining of On the Precession. The paper edges were scorched brown by fire. Gu Yaozhi had recorded the movements of guest stars and Mars from the first year of Chongjing to the present. The handwriting began neat and grew wilder the further it went.

"If this age must have a baleful star sent down upon it, let it be..." The rest was illegible. Gu Zhiwei held the page up to the lamp and still saw only a blur of ink. Outside, the water clock had struck three times, and now and then a night watchman's clapper sounded far off. She sent Aglaya to rest, then spread out all fifteen star charts in order and replotted the broom star's path by the method in the notes. Perhaps she had stared at those tracks too long.

Before she noticed it happening, her Spirit had slipped soundlessly in among the ink lines, reaching toward the far side of some endless dimension. Points of light surfaced in her vision. The grain of the paper swelled without limit, a gray-white plain crisscrossed to the horizon. In the next instant the lamp in front of her went far away. She heard a child's clear voice reciting.

Under the covered walkway of a bookshop fronting the street, a boy of seven or eight sat cross-legged on a worn cushion, sleeves washed pale, holding a book bigger than his own face. The shopkeeper knew he couldn't afford it and allowed him only the time it took a stick of incense to burn. The boy turned the pages a few times, then closed the book and recited it from the first page to the last. Passersby crowded half the street to watch him. Some marveled. Some threw questions at him to test him.

The boy was lightning quick, dazzling lines of verse and obscure allusions coming off his tongue, until a knot of students who had just been let out of lessons and were browsing the shop clicked their tongues in astonishment. He looked up suddenly and, across all those heads, looked straight at Gu Zhiwei. The image shattered. The panel unfolded soundlessly above the desk. 【Retrocognition Record Two: The Commoner Scholar of the Realm】 【Current progress: 5%】 Wonderful. Same old flavor, same old recipe.

And the Commoner Scholar of the Realm she'd rolled this time appeared to be a child prodigy. Gu Zhiwei pressed her faintly aching temple and looked back down at the volume of verse at her elbow. The lines that had been stiff and opaque a moment ago came clear. The rise and fall of the tones had a logic all its own. Where each allusion came from, and where it could be put to use, sat there as if it had been buried in her memory the whole time. She turned two pages, testing it. Then two more. Fine, then.

Skill acquired. Delivery delayed, but successful. The sky had gone pale before Gu Zhiwei finally decided to let herself grab a short sleep, and that was when she noticed Oliver's message on her panel. The players who'd wormed their way into the palace posing as outlander adepts had started quietly picking off other players under the banner of the baleful star. The first victim was thrown into a cell this morning. Protect your identity. Don't let it show.