Chapter Text
On the day the imperial envoy came to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian spent the entire morning boating on Lake Lianhua.
No one in the household knew that the imperial envoy would be coming: not even Aunt Yu, who would have had the servants scrubbing Lotus Pier from the roofs to the piles it was built on for days in advance, if she did. Hence, Wei Wuxian felt perfectly justified in putting on what Yu-ayi called her worst set of clothes (a stained and often-mended gown that was twice as thick as her other dresses, because Jiang Yanli had patched it for her no less than twenty times) and going out to catch fish for lunch, since the errand boy who did the daily shopping had been confined to bed with a cold.
It took nearly four hours for Wei Wuxian to catch all the fish she wanted—for six of them were intended for the little runner, who had been prescribed a bowl of fried carp cooked in soup for each day his cough lasted—and turn her rowboat towards the shore. She tied it up near Lotus Pier’s main dock and climbed out with the fish dangling from her shoulders on a string, looping her skirts over her elbow to keep them out of the mud; and then, amid the admiring shouts of the children playing on the pier, she recounted her spoils and went home.
At first, the Jiang- fu seemed much the same as it ever was, but Wei Wuxian realized that something was amiss when she came through the front gate. The house was too quiet, and the field where she and Jiang Cheng used to spar with Jiang-shushu had been swept clean; and when she opened the carved double doors in front of the living compound, Wei Wuxian walked straight into a frantic Yu-ayi and fell over, fish and all.
“Here she is,” Jiang-shushu said cheerfully, hoisting Wei Wuxian up by her elbow and presenting her to what appeared to be a gaggle of uniformed court officials. “My yang daughter, Wei Wuxian.”
“Jiang Fengmian!” Aunt Yu hissed, looking as if she would dearly love to spring at him and pull out his hair. “Fengmian, you fool, look at the state of her—”
One of the officials stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Well—well, since the young lady is here, I see no need to delay any longer. His Majesty has finally decided to hold a selection ceremony for the future Empress in accordance with the wishes of the court, and all unmarried gentry maidens between twenty and twenty-five are required to present themselves at the palace so that huangshang may choose a wife from among them.
“According to shifu at the girls’ academy in the city, Wei-guniang is of the correct age. Is she married, or betrothed?”
Uncle Jiang frowned.
“Selection ceremony? Is this— not about the examinations that were given to the lady scholars last season?” he said, looking bitterly disappointed. “Ah, but our A-Ying did so well…”
“Examinations? No,” the official floundered. “But if Young Mistress Wei has no marriage arrangements set already, she is invited to take part in the xiunu selection next month. Guniang, this is your invitation token.”
And with that, the official took his leave, fleeing from the estate with his retinue as quickly as he possibly could.
Yu-ayi sank to the ground and put her head in her hands.
“Wei Ying, go to the bathhouse and make yourself presentable. You’re not fit to be seen,” she whispered, through her fingers. “And for heaven’s sake, get rid of those fish.”
Wei Wuxian nodded and took her string of carp to the kitchens, where she presented the poor creatures to the delighted cook; and then she went off to the women's bathhouse and jumped into one of the five enormous tubs.
“This must be some kind of mistake,” she muttered to herself, smoothing her wet fingers down the surface of the jade invitation token. “I’m a yang daughter without a drop of noble blood, and no one knows anything about my ancestors on Muqin’s side. If Jiang-shushu explains, they’ll have to take me off the list.”
And with that, she laid the token aside, and forgot about the matter entirely.
* * *
“I still think the palace made a mistake,” Wei Wuxian says mutinously, six weeks later. “Jiang-shushu should have gone back to court to explain that I’m not a blood relation. The court wouldn’t have insisted on including me then.”
“A-Ying,” her older sister coaxes, sliding another— another!— jeweled pin into Wei Wuxian’s dark hair. “The emperor’s family has never held a xiunu selection before. You know the late emperor used to be a court official, and the founder of his clan was a wandering priest. Lan men are as virtuous as monks, and nearly half of them end up finding wives among the common folk. Why should his Majesty be any different?”
“Because his Majesty is his Majesty,” Wei Wuxian sulks, making a sour face at her reflection in the looking glass. “Jiejie, I don’t want to go. Can’t A-Cheng send a message and say I’ve been taken ill?”
At this, Aunt Yu looks up from the fragrance pouch she was embroidering.
“That idiot son of mine—do you think he didn’t try?” she snorts. “I locked him in my dressing room to stop him from knocking the wheels off your carriage.”
“Oh, Mother…”
“What else could I do? No one in this family but A-Li understands what a great chance this is!” Yu-ayi says, forcing her embroidery needle right through the heart of the perfume sachet. “I said nothing when Wei Ying came of age without a betrothal arrangement, because I did not wed until I was twenty-nine, and our household is more than rich enough to keep her here in luxury for the rest of her life. But now, now she might marry a man who vowed to take only one wife, and who would never presume to keep her penned up in the inner court, and still—”
Wei Wuxian blinks. “But Auntie, why wouldn’t his Majesty keep his wife locked in the inner court? What else is the hougong for, then?”
“It’s not as if his Majesty’s Empress will have to mind a houseful of concubines,” her aunt shrugs. “And think of the Grand Princess Zeming. Did the late emperor ever confine her to the women’s quarters? Does she hide away in her husband’s inner court now? No!”
Wei Wuxian is forced to concede to this last, for there had never been a man in this world or the next who would dare think of confining Grand Princess Zeming. She was the emperor’s elder by four years, born to the same mother; and when the late Emperor Qingheng seized the throne from Wen Ruohan, he betrothed Princess Zeming to the son of the general who helped him break into the palace.
A decade later, Empress Haoxian passed away during an outbreak of pox; and though the rest of the imperial family was left unscathed, her husband succumbed to his grief and died before the end of the next year.
The crown prince and the Grand Princess were ten and fourteen at the time, both too young to rule except in name, so Emperor Qingheng’s brother served as regent until the taizi took command of the court at twenty. Both uncle and nephew were competent monarchs; and the Grand Princess, who assisted them with the most difficult court matters, was perhaps even more so. But for some unknown reason, the young emperor spent the last three years quashing any mention of his future marriage, until the court astrologers banded together to kneel before him and plead that delaying his wedding too long would throw the empire into turmoil.
The emperor refused at first, for he had already elevated the Grand Princess’s infant son to the rank of crown prince. More importantly, the precepts of the Lan family—which were set in stone over twelve generations before the emperor’s birth—insisted that its men should wed for love and love alone. But all of the palace officials were united in their hopes for an Empress, right from the Grand Chancellor to the lowliest scholar in the Ministry of Works; and at last, the emperor yielded and announced a xiunu selection.
However, Jiang-shushu went to make inquiries at court and discovered that the emperor had two requirements of his future wife that he would not renege upon. Firstly, she must be no younger than twenty, and preferably at least a year or two older; and secondly, she should have received an education at least equal to that of the young masters who were just beginning their three years of study for the next imperial examination.
“There should not be more than twenty such maidens within a hundred miles of the capital,” Yu-ayi mutters now, applying a sheet of lip paper to Wei Wuxian’s mouth. “From that, I judge that His Majesty must be wiser than most men his age, or else that he does not wish to marry at all; but this xiunu selection is a good chance for A-Ying either way.”
Wei Wuxian frowns. “What do you mean?”
Yu-ayi sighs.
“If the emperor truly wants an educated bride no younger than himself, then you would make an ideal wife for him,” she says slowly. “After all, the Grand Princess takes part in most of his duties, so it stands to reason that the empress would be granted the same privilege. But if he wishes to appease the court while remaining unmarried, the easiest way to do so would be to cull the pool of bridal candidates beforehand, and then claim that none of the girls who attended the selection were to his liking.”
“I knew the requirements sounded odd,” Jiang Yanli murmurs. “After all, Wen Ruohan’s empress entered the palace when she was seventeen, and A-Xian’s academy is the only one that teaches law and martial history.”
“En, exactly. If not for Wei Ying and her friends at the girls’ school, the only unmarried ladies that fit the age requirement would have been widows whose husbands died early,” Aunt Yu says, before stepping back to let Jiang Yanli paint the first stroke of a huadian in the middle of Wei Wuxian’s brow. “Now, hush for a moment. A-Ying, have you picked out a design for your huadian?”
“Paint a smiling face,” Wei Wuxian suggests. “That way, huangshang will send me back the moment he gets a good look at me.”
“A-Ying, so help me—”
“I’m going to paint a lotus bud with red petals,” Jiang Yanli says, with a quelling glance at Wei Wuxian. “Hold still, Xianxian.”
Wei Wuxian holds still as bidden, making a valiant effort to keep her tongue away from her colored lips while Yanli finishes painting the huadian. In the meantime, Aunt Yu goes off to check on Jiang Cheng: or, more likely, to make sure he hadn’t chewed through her locked bedroom door and run out to wreck Wei Wuxian’s carriage sometime in the last fifteen minutes.
“There,” Jiang Yanli smiles, a little while later. “What do you think?”
The huadian depicts a half-blown lotus flower, not quite a bud or a fully-opened bloom; and when Wei Wuxian leans a little closer to the mirror, she discovers that the seed pod at the flower’s heart has a tiny smiling face in the middle.
Suddenly, Wei Wuxian feels as if she might cry.
“I love it,” she says thickly. “What’s next, A-Jie?”
Jiang Yanli kisses the top of her head. “Just your sash and slippers. Hurry, A-Xian, or we’ll be late.”
Her sash and silk shoes are put on in good time, and then Yu-ayi returns with her finished fragrance pouch before fastening it to Wei Wuxian’s belt.
“There,” Aunt Yu says, looking very much like a satisfied cat. “Now a purse for snacks, and we can be off.”
Yanli presents Wei Wuxian with a purse filled with miniature baozi, and accompanying instructions to refrain from taking them out unless the xiunu were not served luncheon at the palace, and then Aunt Yu sweeps Wei Wuxian down the stairs and into the waiting carriage in front of the gates.
“Good luck, A-Xian,” Jiang Yanli calls, maintaining an iron grip on Jiang Cheng’s shoulders—for he had been released from Aunt Yu’s dressing room to see Wei Wuxian off, now that any messages reporting her absence will have no chance of reaching the palace before she does. “I’ll cook a pot of hulatang while you’re gone, so don’t run off to play in town after the ceremony!”
Wei Wuxian’s heart swells.
“I won’t,” she shouts back. “See you tonight, A-Jie!”
And with that, the carriage rolls off. Wei Wuxian leans back and tries to go to sleep, since Yanli and Yu-ayi dragged her out of bed before mao hour that morning; but about fifteen minutes later, she opens her eyes to find Aunt Yu staring straight at her with a pleased half-smile on her face.
“What are you smiling for, Auntie?” Wei Wuxian asks. “I—”
Aunt Yu holds up a hand to silence her. “The moment huangshang lays eyes on you, he will know what choice to make,” she says solemnly. “If you behave at the selection ceremony, I have no doubt that your uncle and I will be sending you back to the palace in red by the end of next month.”
Wei Wuxian’s jaw drops.
Yu-ayi wouldn’t say such a thing unless she believed it, she thinks wildly, before closing her eyes and pretending to go to sleep again. His Majesty wants an educated bride to help him in the court, and Shifu said that my examination scores were the highest she’d seen in the last thirty years. And the palace officials found my name in the records at the academy, so if they sent the records to the emperor…
“Beauty fades, and even fond feelings dissipate with time,” Aunt Yu continues, sounding as if she was talking to herself and not to Wei Wuxian at all. “His Majesty has not been raised to think too much of a woman’s appearance, and he will have no time to fall in love with his bride before marrying her, so he must choose based on other merits. When one’s wife is to be the mother of a nation, the husband must judge by her wits and learning, and then by her manners; and you are second to none in the first, and lack only a little in the latter. Who can he possibly choose but you?”
Wei Wuxian feels her blood run cold.
Yu-ayi’s right. He really is going to choose me, she thinks. Oh, no. Oh, good Heavens, no!
If she had been anyone else, she would have burst into tears on the spot. But just as her eyelids begin to sting, she remembers what her aunt said only two minutes earlier and breathes out a sigh of relief.
The moment huangshang lays eyes on you, he will know what choice to make.
If Aunt Yu has judged the emperor’s motives correctly, Wei Wuxian can only be certain of evading the Empress’s throne if she ensures that the emperor never lays eyes on her at all.
“I guess you’re right,” Wei Wuxian says aloud, mustering a smile for the first time in the past three days. “I’ll do my best, ayi. Don’t worry.”