The Swallow Falls, the Crow Cries - Chapter 2

She was not entirely wrong.

After my parents died, our relatives passed us from one to another. In the depths of winter, my younger brothers and sisters huddled together, so hungry they had nothing to eat but snow.

I sold myself to a pleasure house. I had never regretted it for a single day.

There were many women in the house, but Li Qiyuan ate the finest food and wore the most beautiful clothes. Everything about her befitted its reigning courtesan.

So I copied her in everything.

Poetry and songs, pouring wine and serving tea, even the slight inclination of her head as she laughed and talked with patrons. I was never ashamed of it.

When I was a few years older and began receiving clients, I competed with her for everything, snatching whatever I could.

Li Qiyuan doted on her daughter, A-Chan. So I doted on the girl twice as much, wishing only that she would love me more than she loved her mother.

Later, my beauty became famous and I enjoyed all the glory I could wish for. In the house, I was lazy, fond of my comforts and forever ordering people about.

There was not a single vice of a whore in which I fell behind.

Willing degradation. I deserved every word.

So I only smiled in silence, making no attempt to argue.

After a pause, the prefect’s daughter actually softened her tone.

“Whatever you did wrong, you have been punished for it. My brother is generous. He no longer holds it against you. Mend your ways, and stop degrading yourself.”

Cui Zhao’s little sister was so very innocent.

I sighed. “Come closer, miss.”

She hesitated, then moved a little nearer after all.

Now she could see what a dreadful state I was in. Those long eyes, so like someone I had known, widened in horror.

“Your wounds… how could they… I’ll have someone fetch a doctor…”

She called out her nursemaid’s name.

The wandering monk in black had taught me how to take another’s body.

On the seventh day of the seventh month, in the midst of a downpour, I was to wait for a pair of A-Chan’s eyes.

Lightning ripped the sky apart, illuminating the ruined shrine as brightly as day.

I reached out and took her cold fingertips.

Thunder crashed.

All the pain in my body was gone.

I lowered my eyes. Layer upon layer of bridal robes trailed across the floor, the scarlet brocade half soaked with rain.

The hand clasping another’s was soft and pale. Not a single scar marked it.

A piercing scream tore through the storm.

I looked up.

Close before me, a deathly white face was howling.

Delicate brows, sorrowful eyes, a faint beauty mark like a teardrop. The traces of beauty were still there, but the face was twisted like an evil spirit’s, without a hint of living color.

It was my face.

“You… you…”

She clung to me and crawled closer. Her festering wounds dragged a long smear of blood across the straw mat.

The nursemaid rushed in at the screams. She pushed the frantic woman away, then turned and caught my hands, looking me over in alarm.

“Miss! Miss! Are you hurt?”

I shook my head gently.

The woman fell to the ground, clawing at her own face. Nothing but broken whimpers came from her throat. Within moments, she went into convulsions and passed out.

“Poor thing. Fetch her a doctor.” Little by little, I wiped the blood from my hands. “Try Jisheng Clinic. They say there’s a wonderful physician there.”

Though the Cui family was marrying above its station, the marquis’s household treated the match with great importance.

The red dowry procession stretched ten li, and the bridal sedan had eight bearers. The Old Madam had overseen the ceremony herself. In every observance, they had spared the bride the slightest indignity.

Red silk hung high in the wedding hall. Candles blazed. From my crown, a curtain of pearls caught the candlelight, filtering it into drifting fragments of red before my eyes.

“Bride and groom, bow to each other!”

The ceremonial call rang out.

As I bent, the groom steadied my forearm.

Through the wide, elaborate sleeve, he gave the lightest support, then withdrew his hand.

Shao Huaiyong had always been like this. Cold almost to the point of cruelty.

The first time we met, lanterns swayed on a pleasure boat. After singing a song to my pipa, I feigned drunkenness and leaned into his arms. He rose and left without so much as lowering his lashes to look at me.

Who could have imagined that, after a few more encounters, affection would begin to entwine us?

At the Lantern Festival market, he took down a lantern from the eaves for me and pondered its obscure word riddle until he solved it.

In a black-canopied boat tossed by wind and rain, with thunder rolling overhead, he had once raised his hands and gently covered my ears.

Rain stretched to the horizon behind him. His lips moved as he smiled and said something to me.

“—, —.”

I could not hear a word. I recognized only my own name.

Yanniang. Yanniang. Countless mouths had called me that, so carelessly.

At such a moment, how should I twine my hands around him? How should I make my eyes soft and inviting? How should I throw myself into his arms and wheedle and coax him a hundred different ways?

Instead, I simply stared.

I forgot the tricks by which I made my living.

And let the violent rain wash away the moss that had clung to the landing for years upon years.

Until the courtroom, and the crack of the sounding block.

Those same hands took their time examining the evidence the coroner had presented.

After a while, they set the jade fragment gently down.

“On the night of the eighteenth day of the sixth month, Young Master Cui, my brother and I were all at Changyuan Mountain outside the city, escaping the heat and enjoying learned conversation. I can vouch for them both.

“Nor did I see Young Master Cui wearing any jade pendant. As for this woman…”

At last, he turned.

His gaze passed lightly over me.

“I do not know her. How could we have gone out together on the Qian River, or witnessed those two fleeing?

“It can only be a false accusation.”

The prefect threw down a sentencing tally and thundered his judgment—

“—The ceremony is complete!” Another call rang through the wedding hall.

I sat beside the bed until late into the night. Shao Huaiyong never appeared.

In the silence, the distant sound of a pipa drifted to me.

The tune was plaintive, its notes almost breaking. A wavering voice came through the lattice, singing of the seventh night of the seventh month in the Palace of Everlasting Life.

I listened a while. “Who is singing?”

A maid fell to her knees and stammered an answer.

“S-someone brought in from the pleasure house… His lordship has never cared for women, but for the last fortnight, for some reason, he has summoned her every night to play.

“I’m afraid tonight as well…”

But I felt such tenderness for the memory that I could not help laughing softly.

“I see. He really is…”

Such a devoted lover.

Shao Huaiyong. Shao Huaiyong. How I wanted to slit open that handsome skin and see whether I truly lived inside his heart.