Flesh Chessboard

The first time I gave myself to another man, my husband was in the next room practicing his dragon palm strikes against a wooden dummy. I could hear the rhythm of it through the paper wall. Thud. Thud. The dummy creaked. Guo Jing counted under his breath, the way he always did, as if his own strength surprised him.

I poured wine for the merchant from Lin'an and let my sleeve fall open. He was fat and smelled of salt and his hands shook when he touched me. Not from desire. From fear. He knew who I was. Everyone in the manor knew who I was, and that was precisely the point.

"You're trembling," I said.

"Mrs. Guo, I only came to discuss the salt tax."

"And we are discussing it."

I guided his hand to my waist. He looked at the door. I could have told him that my husband would not come through it. Guo Jing never came through doors when he was uncertain. He stood outside and listened and convinced himself of whatever he needed to believe. That was his genius. That was his curse.

The merchant finished his business in under an hour. When he left, bowing and sweating, I straightened my robes and went to the kitchen to make tea.

---

The Yellow Lotus, they called me once. Huang Rong. Daughter of the Eastern Heretic, master of schemes, the cleverest woman in the jianghu. I could still solve any puzzle put before me. The trouble was that the puzzle I'd chosen to solve was a man who could not be solved, only managed.

Guo Jing came in from the courtyard with wood shavings on his sleeves. His face was red from exertion. He smiled at me the way he always smiled, open and trusting, like a child who has never been lied to.

"Rong'er, the dummy is cracked again."

"Then we'll buy a new one."

"I could fix it."

"You could. But it's easier to buy a new one."

He nodded, because he trusted me, and because he did not understand that everything I did was a kind of fixing. He sat down and drank the tea I'd made and told me about his day. He'd been practicing the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms. He'd almost mastered the seventh stance. Master Hong had told him his foundation was strong but his transitions were slow.

"Your transitions are fine," I said.

"You always say that."

"Because it's true."

He laughed. He had a laugh like a bear waking up. Then he frowned, and I knew what was coming, because I knew everything about him, had mapped every crease of his simple heart.

"Rong'er, that merchant. He looked at you strangely."

"Did he?"

"At dinner. He kept looking at your hands."

"My hands are worth looking at."

"I don't like it."

"Guo Jing." I set down my cup. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course."

"Then trust me."

He nodded again. He always nodded. The first time I'd used this, I'd felt something twist in my chest. Now it was just a tool, worn smooth from use. My husband was a great man. The greatest, perhaps. But greatness is a blunt instrument, and someone has to hold the handle.

---

The letter came three days later, sealed with the mark of the Imperial Censorate. I read it in the garden while the servants pruned the plum trees. The censor wanted two hundred taels of silver and a guarantee that the salt merchants of Xiangyang would continue to pay their protection fees to the manor rather than to the prefect. In exchange, he would forget certain irregularities in our household registry. Certain names that did not appear where they should.

I burned the letter in the brazier and watched the ash rise.

Two hundred taels was nothing. The guarantee was harder. The salt merchants had been restless since the Mongols took the northern routes. They whispered that the manor was weak. That Guo Jing was a fighter, not a lord. That his wife was the one who truly held the reins, and what did a woman know about trade?

They were right, of course. A woman knows nothing about trade, which is why I'd learned everything about it.

I sent for Yang Kang that evening. He came to my study with his usual insolence, his sleeves perfumed, his eyes bright with the knowledge that he was the only man in the manor who understood what I was doing and the only one who enjoyed it.

"You look tired, Auntie."

"Don't call me that."

"Mrs. Guo, then. You look tired, Mrs. Guo."

"I need you to visit the salt merchants."

"Which ones?"

"All of them. Tell them the manor's protection is worth more than the prefect's. Tell them the Mongols are coming and when they do, the prefect will run and the manor will stay."

"And if they don't believe me?"

I smiled. Yang Kang had a way of making people believe things. It was his only real talent, and I had cultivated it with the same patience I'd once used to cultivate my husband's martial arts.

"Then tell them I'll visit them myself."

He laughed. "That'll do it."

"Don't enjoy this too much."

"I never enjoy anything, Mrs. Guo. I merely survive. You taught me that."

He left, and I sat alone in the study and thought about the prefect, who was a small man with a large appetite, and the censor, who was a large man with a small purse, and the Emperor, who was neither small nor large but very far away and very interested in the southern trade routes. The manor was a knot in a great net, and I was the one pulling the strings, and the strings were beginning to show.

---

Guo Jing woke me that night with his hand on my shoulder. His grip was too hard. He did not know his own strength, never had.

"Rong'er. Someone is in the courtyard."

"Probably a cat."

"It's not a cat."

I sat up. The moon was full and the room was silver. My husband's face was silver too, and worried, and I felt a sudden tenderness for him so sharp it was almost pain. He was a good man. He deserved a good wife. He had gotten me instead.

"Stay here," he said.

"No. We go together."

"Rong'er, if it's an assassin..."

"Then we'll both die. Better than you dying alone and me having to explain it to the Emperor."

He stared at me. Then he nodded, because he always nodded, and we went out into the courtyard together.

The man was standing by the plum tree. He was thin and dressed in black and he did not run when he saw us. He bowed.

"Mr. Guo. Mrs. Guo. I bring a message from the capital."

"From whom?" I said.

"From someone who wishes to know if the manor will support the new tax reforms."

The moon was very bright. I could see the man's face clearly. He was young, younger than Yang Kang, and there was a mark on his collar, a small embroidered character, the mark of the Eastern Palace.

The Crown Prince.

Guo Jing said, "What tax reforms?"

I said, "Tell your master the manor will consider it."

The man bowed again and left. Guo Jing turned to me.

"Rong'er, what was that?"

"Politics."

"I don't understand politics."

"I know."

"I don't like it."

"I know that too."

He stood there in the moonlight, my husband, the greatest warrior of his generation, and he looked at me with those trusting eyes and I thought: this is the last time. After this, there is no going back. The Crown Prince does not send messages to test loyalty. He sends them to collect it.

"Come to bed," I said.

He came. He always came. And in the morning, I would write to the Eastern Palace, and the manor would enter the game, and my husband would never know how much it cost me, or how little.

That was the thing about Guo Jing. He believed in the world. I only believed in what I could hold.