Fake Daughter Is the Real Legend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bowl
In the clan hall, a bowl of water says Ruyun is not the Marquis's daughter, and she is sentenced to three years at a frontier camp. She agrees to go, but not to sign away her name, and finds her trunk was packed the night before.
On the morning of the clan ceremony, forty Qiao relatives stood in the ancestral hall and watched a bowl of water decide who Ruyun was.
Ruyun had slept very little.
Her hands were cracked from copying sutras all night, a gift for her grandmother's birthday.
Lingxue found her at the hall door and caught her wrist.
"Sister, your fingers are bleeding."
Lingxue had arrived at the Marquis's house one month ago with half a jade pendant on a red cord and a story about a wet nurse who had swapped two babies.
The Marquis had matched her half to the one his wife wore.
His wife had cried for three days.
Ruyun had carried tea to Lingxue's room every evening since, because the girl was thin and frightened and had nobody.
Now Lingxue opened a small pot and pressed ointment into Ruyun's palms with both thumbs.
"Whatever the bowl says, you're still my sister," she said. "I'll tell Father so."
"Thank you," Ruyun said.
Her hands smelled of lard and orange peel.
Inside, two white porcelain bowls stood on the altar table.
The Marquise's old maid carried them in, but Lingxue stepped forward and poured the water herself.
"Her hands shake," she said softly. "I don't want a drop spilled on the ancestors' table."
Nobody argued.
A thin shine floated on the water in Ruyun's bowl.
She took it for the candlelight.
The Marquis went first.
He pricked his finger with the clan's silver needle and let one drop fall into Lingxue's bowl.
Lingxue pricked her own finger with a needle from her sleeve, a plain one her aunt had given her.
Her drop sank, curled and joined his at once.
The hall let out a long sound.
The Marquise pressed both hands to her mouth.
Then the Marquis turned to Ruyun and held out his finger again.
She pricked herself with the clan's needle.
Her drop fell into the second bowl and rolled away from his, a small red bead that would not touch him.
Ruyun watched it for a long time.
Nobody breathed.
"The wet nurse's daughter," the Marquis said. "Raised in my house. At my table."
"Father, I never knew," Ruyun said.
"Do not call me that."
Madam Fan rose and crossed the hall.
She did not go to Ruyun.
She went to Lingxue and folded her into both arms.
"My child," she said. "My poor child, all those years."
Her elder brother, the young marquis, stood behind them with his eyes on the floor.
He had taught her to ride.
He did not look up.
"A bowl of water is not a verdict," said a dry voice from the doorway.
The Grand Princess came in on her black wood cane, small and straight in her purple robe.
Everyone bowed except Ruyun, who had forgotten how.
"Mother, it is done," the Marquis said. "Spare yourself."
"I have not decided that it is."
"The family has decided."
He nodded to a steward, who laid two papers on the altar table.
"The first is her sentence," the Marquis said. "Three years of service at the Northern Camp at Ironwall, for living under a name that was not hers. Lingxue begged me not to send her to the magistrate. The law for fraud against a marquis is death."
Lingxue wept into Madam Fan's shoulder.
"The second," the Marquis said, "is her statement that she is no blood of this house, and that she asks nothing from anyone in it. Including my mother's estate."
So that was what the second paper was for.
The Grand Princess's dowry was the Silver Lake farms and ten shops in the city and the bronze tally of her old Guard.
Her will left all of it to her granddaughter Ruyun.
Everyone in the hall knew it.
The Grand Princess leaned on her cane.
"Hongde," she said. "If you send that child north, I will go to the magistrate myself."
"Then I will have you moved to the family temple to pray, Mother. For your health. The steward is ready."
The old woman's knuckles went white on the wood.
Ruyun looked at her grandmother's hand.
Then she picked up the brush with her left hand, the hand Madam Fan had slapped down at table for eighteen years, and signed the first paper.
"I'll go," she said. "I will not sign the second."
The Marquis's mouth tightened.
"You will sign it at the camp, when you are cold enough."
"Then I will see you in three years."
The Grand Princess caught her sleeve as she passed.
"Eat everything they give you," she whispered. "Whatever it is. Do you hear me?"
"Yes, Grandmother."
The cart was waiting in the courtyard.
Two guards stood beside it, and on the back, tied with a rope, was her old wooden trunk.
A paper tag hung from the lid in the Marquise's maid's neat hand.
It was dated yesterday.
The family had packed her before the bowl was ever filled.
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