To Be A Virtuous Wife novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Thread

The prince did not run toward the fire.

He ran toward the gates.

"Ma, the bell," he said, and the old steward was already pulling the rope by the door.

The great iron bell of Anbei Mansion rang through the dark, and the whole house came awake at once.

Yuwei stood in the courtyard in her nightrobe, holding twelve blue books and a bundle of notes against her chest.

Servants poured out of the sleeping quarters with buckets.

The fire was loud but small, and it was not spreading.

Someone had set it low, at the back shelves, where the oldest receipts were stacked.

Someone who knew exactly which shelf mattered.

"The wall gate," she said to nobody.

She looked at the high back wall, past the well, where the stable lane met the kitchen lane.

A figure was crouched there, trying to climb over a stack of crates.

He was a young man in a gray servant's jacket, carrying an empty clay jar.

"There," Yuwei said, pointing.

Two of the prince's guards had him on the ground before he finished the sentence.

By dawn the fire was out and the household stood in the front court in rows.

The sun came up pale over the roofs.

The black smell of burnt paper hung over everything.

The prince sat in a carved chair on the steps with his chin in his hand, looking like a man waiting for a bad play to end.

Lady Tao came across the court in her morning robes, one maid on each side.

The servant knelt in the middle of the stones with his hands tied.

Yuwei stood in front of him.

She had slept for twenty minutes, and she had never felt more awake.

"Look at me," she said.

He lifted his head a little.

"You carried an oil jar over the back wall at midnight. The oil on your sleeve says you did more than carry it."

His eyes went to the ground.

"The accounts are burned," Yuwei said conversationally. "Not the ones that matter. Someone told you which shelf to burn, and which to leave. Who?"

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