Chapter 425 — Su Wanning Writes

CHAPTER 425

Su Wanning Writes

“SHE ASKED YOU?” Su Wanning screamed from the doorway.

Her scream carried across the guest court. A sparrow left the roof. Sima Lan's pen stopped halfway through a line.

Su Wanning stood in the doorway in a pink robe with her sleeves half rolled, one hand pressed to her heart and the other pointing at Shi Feng. Lin Yue was behind her, holding the sleeve of her robe and looking as if she had run a long way for nothing.

“Senior Sister Su,” Lin Yue said, “I told you to knock!”

“To his FACE?” Su Wanning cried. “Big Sis Qingzhu asked you to your face? Out loud? With words? And you answered? She said you answered! Lin Yue says the whole Valley is saying it, even the cooks, and I had to hear it from the cooks! The COOKS, Shi Feng! I was in the Valley the entire time! I held her hand through the fever! Nobody told me anything!”

“Good morning,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't 'good morning' me!” Su Wanning protested, dropping onto the nearest stool. “What did you say? She won't tell me. She went red, and then she went white, and then she told me to hold the tea. What did you say? Was it long? Was it beautiful? Did you cry? You didn't cry. You're the type who doesn't cry. Did you say sorry? Did you say you missed her? Tell me you said something with the word 'missed' in it!”

“Five words,” Shi Feng said.

“Five?” Su Wanning repeated in disbelief.

“I read it every month,” Shi Feng repeated for her.

Su Wanning's mouth opened. She stayed like that for the length of a long breath. Then she shrieked again, softly this time, into her own hands.

“Five words,” Sima Lan said, writing. “That's the entire reply to twenty months of correspondence. I'd call it an under-delivery.”

“It's the most beautiful under-delivery in the history of Great Liang!” Su Wanning cried. She snatched a clean sheet from Sima Lan's table, grabbed a brush and began to write at tremendous speed, with ink flying. “I'm writing to the circle. This is a matter of public record! The sisters have waited so long! They said the iron tree would blossom first!”

“Which circle?” Shi Feng asked.

“The Thousand Blossom circle!” Su Wanning said. “In the capital! All the ladies on the Register! They've been holding a pool!”

Sima Lan's pen stopped.

“I am on that Register,” Sima Lan said. “Fourteen on the new list. Second on the old one.”

“I know! That's why you get a copy!” Su Wanning replied cheerfully.

“Remove me from the distribution,” Sima Lan demanded, clearly irritated.

“You can't be removed! You're second!” Su Wanning protested, writing even faster. “Dear sisters, the unthinkable has occurred. Underline that. Three times. After twenty months of silence, Big Sis Qingzhu has—” She stopped, looked up, and drew a small, furious face in the margin. “That's for emphasis.”

Shi Feng watched the ink spread across the sheet.

It was a very large letter. It was already on its second page. In two places the underlining had gone through the paper.

Su Wanning was too happy to listen, Shi Feng thought. He'd have to wait until she'd finished celebrating.

“Su Wanning,” Ling Qingzhu called quietly from the door.

Su Wanning froze. Lin Yue ducked aside with startling speed.

Ling Qingzhu stood in the doorway in her violet robe with the veil tied. She was carrying a teapot. She set it down carefully. Su Wanning looked far more frightened by that calm movement than by a shout.

“Big Sis Qingzhu,” Su Wanning said in a very small voice. “It's not what it looks like.”

“What does it look like?” Ling Qingzhu asked, holding out her hand.

“A letter. To the capital. About weather,” Su Wanning replied weakly.

“Give it to me,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Su Wanning handed it over at once. She'd had the sense, at least, to know when she'd lost.

Ling Qingzhu read it standing up. The veil hid her mouth, but not her eyes, and her eyes went down the first page, and the second. At the underlined sentence, her ear began to colour.

At the angry face in the margin, her eyes stopped moving altogether.

She read to the end. Then she went back to the beginning and read it again.

“Big Sis?” Su Wanning ventured.

“This is slander,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“It's true!” Su Wanning protested.

“It's evidence of slander. I'm confiscating it,” Ling Qingzhu declared, folding the pages.

She folded the sheet along its creases, quickly, and slid it into her sleeve. She did not look at him.

“You're keeping it!” Su Wanning gasped. “You always say you'll burn them!”

“I always do,” Ling Qingzhu insisted.

“Then why do I find them in your chest?” Su Wanning asked, looking delighted again.

Ling Qingzhu said nothing for one breath.

“I never get around to it,” Ling Qingzhu said, and walked out with the teapot.

At the end of the corridor she stopped, her back still to the room.

“Item one,” Ling Qingzhu said, to the air, “is at sunset.”

Su Wanning lay face-down on the table. Sima Lan took her inkstone out from under her elbow without a word.

“I'm going to write another one,” Su Wanning mumbled into the wood.

“She'll take that too,” Sima Lan said.

“I know,” Su Wanning said, and sounded blissful.