3. The Wife’s Brew

The second drum of the night had already sounded when Zhang Yuanlong slipped through the rear garden gate of the Zhang compound. The curfew was strict in Luozhou—anyone found on the streets after the third drum without a lantern and official pass risked a beating or a night in the county lockup. But Yuanlong had no intention of being caught. He wore a dark grey robe of coarse hemp, the kind worn by travelling merchants, and carried no lantern. His eyes had adjusted to the moonlight, and he knew every back alley between his home and the western ward, having played there as a boy and traded there as a man.

The streets were empty save for the occasional bark of a stray dog or the distant tread of the night watchman. Yuanlong moved swiftly, keeping to the shadows beneath the eaves. The air smelled of dust and dried fish, with a faint overtone of nightsoil from the roadside drains. He passed the Temple of the City God, its red doors bolted shut, and turned into a narrow lane lined with shuttered stalls. At the far end, a single oil lamp flickered in a small wooden shack—Liao Wu’s shop.

Yuanlong approached quietly and tapped on the doorframe. There was no response. He tapped again, harder. A muffled voice from within: “Who comes at this hour?”

“A customer with silver,” Yuanlong replied, modulating his voice to a rougher pitch. “I was told you sell rare herbs from Shu.”

The door creaked open a crack. A single dark eye peered out, then the crack widened. Liao Wu was a wiry man of about forty, with a sallow complexion and a thin, straggly beard. He wore a dirty apron over his tunic, and his hands were stained with greenish residue—the mark of a man who spent his days crushing leaves and roots. He gestured Yuanlong inside and bolted the door behind him.

The shack was cluttered with bundles of dried plants, clay pots, and glass vials of colored liquids. A small brazier glowed in the corner, casting dancing shadows on the walls. Liao Wu sat on a low stool and gestured for Yuanlong to do the same. “You are not a merchant,” he said, his voice flat. “I have seen you before—yesterday, outside the yamen. You are Zhang Yuanlong, the eldest son of the Zhang clan. Why come to me in disguise?”

Yuanlong did not flinch. “Because I need information, and I need it without my brother knowing. I found monkshood in my father’s medicine. The apothecary Gui Shou told me you are the only man in Luozhou who trades in such toxins. Who bought monkshood from you in the past two months?”

Liao Wu’s face tightened. He reached for a clay cup and poured himself a sip of murky tea, stalling. “I sell many things—insect powders, rat poisons, veterinary drafts. Monkshood is a controlled item. I do not sell it to just anyone. But yes, there was a purchase—about forty days ago. A woman came to my stall, heavily veiled, dressed in fine silk. She paid in gold and took a small packet of ground monkshood. She said it was for killing wild boars that ruined her family’s mountain fields.”

“A woman? Can you describe her voice, her height, her bearing?”

Liao Wu shook his head. “She spoke with a cloth over her mouth. But her hands were soft, unblemished—no calluses. Not a farmer’s hands. She wore a jade bracelet on her left wrist, a pale green one with a faint crack in the middle. I remember because it caught the light.”

Yuanlong’s heart clenched. His wife, Suo Fahui, owned a pale green jade bracelet with a hairline crack—a piece she had inherited from her own mother. He had seen her wear it on formal occasions. He forced his face to remain impassive. “And the almond powder? The white fine powder—did you also sell that?”

Liao Wu’s eyes darted away. “That I cannot say. I have many customers who buy almond powder for baking. But if you mean the jar left in your father’s room—that was not from me. I never supply almonds in porcelain jars. I sell them in paper packets, always.”

Yuanlong noted the evasion. Liao Wu knew about the jar—knew where it had been found—which meant someone had told him, or he had been watching. “Who told you about the jar?” he asked, his voice hardening.

Liao Wu licked his lips. “A messenger came two days ago—a young man in a green robe. He said that if anyone asked about almond powder, I should deny all knowledge and mention nothing of the jade bracelet. He paid me ten silver coins for my silence.”

“What did this messenger look like?”

“Slim, clean-shaven, with a small mole beside his left eye. He walked with a slight limp.”

Yuanlong recognized the description—one of his brother Yuanqing’s personal attendants, a man named Cao Rong. The threads were weaving together: Yuanqing had employed the night servant Xiao Liu, Yuanqing had sent Cao Rong to silence Liao Wu, and Yuanqing had every reason to want the patriarch dead and the estate partitioned. But the jade bracelet pointed at Suo Fahui. Was she acting with Yuanqing, or was she being framed?

Yuanlong reached into his pouch and placed five silver ingots on the table. “I need a sample of your monkshood—enough to compare with what was found in my father’s broth. And I need the name of anyone else who bought from you in the past month, whether they paid in gold or goods.”

Liao Wu’s greedy fingers twitched toward the silver, but he hesitated. “If I give you that, and your brother finds out, he will have me killed. His agent made that very clear.”

“If you do not give it to me,” Yuanlong said, “I will report you to the magistrate for selling controlled toxins without a license. The penalty is exile to the northern border—or worse. Your choice.”

Liao Wu’s face crumpled. He swept the silver into his apron and shuffled to a wooden chest in the corner. From it, he produced a small leather pouch and a rolled bamboo slip. He handed them to Yuanlong. “The pouch contains a sample from the same batch I sold to the veiled woman. The slip is a record of all my sales since the beginning of summer—names, quantities, dates. But I warn you, some names are false. Buyers often lie.”

Yuanlong pocketed both items. “One more question: who is the third party? The one who left the almond jar in my father’s room—the one who wants me to suspect my wife?”

Liao Wu’s face went pale as chalk. “I do not know. I swear by the Bodhisattva, I do not know. But the messenger Cao Rong mentioned that I should say nothing of a certain merchant—a fat merchant with a round face who often visits the eastern ward. He did not name him, but there is only one such man in that district—Huan Decong.”

Yuanlong felt the pieces shift again. Huan Decong, the creditor, had a direct interest in the pledge being enforced. If the patriarch died before the debt was settled, the eastern wing would pass to Huan by default—unless Yuanlong could prove the pledge invalid. And if Suo Fahui was framed as the poisoner, Yuanlong would be disgraced and powerless to contest. The conspiracy was not a simple sibling rivalry—it was a triangle of greed: Yuanqing, Huan Decong, and perhaps a third hand pulling the strings from the shadows.

He thanked Liao Wu curtly and rose to leave. But as he reached for the door latch, he heard a soft twang from outside—the sound of a bowstring released. He threw himself sideways just as a black-feathered arrow smashed through the paper window and embedded itself in the wall where his head had been. Liao Wu screamed and scrambled under the table. Yuanlong drew his short dagger and crouched low, listening. Footsteps—running away, light and fast, heading toward the main street.

He did not pursue. He extinguished the oil lamp with a single breath, plunging the shack into darkness. “Stay down,” he hissed to Liao Wu. “They may come back.” He waited, counting his heartbeats. After a long silence, he crept to the window and peered through the hole. The alley was empty, lit only by a sliver of moon. The archer was gone.

Yuanlong slipped out the back, through a curtain of hanging roots, and made his way home through a labyrinth of drainage ditches and abandoned vegetable gardens. He arrived at the Zhang compound just as the fifth drum sounded—the signal that the night was ending and the curfew would lift at dawn. He entered through the kitchen window, which he had left unlatched, and removed his soiled robe. He washed his face and hands in a basin, then sat in his study, staring at the leather pouch and the bamboo slip.

He opened the slip first. It was a crude ledger, written in a hasty hand, listing dates and quantities. Most entries were mundane—ginseng, licorice, cinnamon—but two entries caught his eye. One, dated the fifteenth day of the sixth month, read: “Monkshood, powdered, one qian—purchased by veiled woman, paid in gold.” Beside it, in smaller characters, a scribbled note: “Accompanied by a man in green.” The second entry, dated the fifth day of the seventh month, read: “Almond powder, fine, two qian—purchased by a servant of the Huan household, paid in copper.” The name “Huan” was scratched lightly but unmistakable.

So Huan Decong had bought almond powder himself—or through his servant. That meant the jar in his father’s room could have been placed by Huan’s agent, not by Yuanqing, and not by Suo Fahui. But why would Huan frame Suo Fahui? Perhaps to create chaos between the brothers, to weaken their ability to contest the pledge. Or perhaps to eliminate Yuanlong’s wife as an ally, leaving Yuanlong isolated and desperate.

Yuanlong’s mind raced. He needed to know if his wife had truly bought the monkshood—or if the veiled woman was someone else, wearing a similar bracelet, perhaps deliberately imitating Suo Fahui to cast suspicion. He would confront her again, but this time he would observe, not accuse.

Dawn broke over the rooftops, painting the sky in streaks of rose and gold. Yuanlong heard the servants stir in the kitchen. He tucked the pouch and slip into a secret compartment behind his bookshelf, then went to his wife’s chambers. This time, he knocked softly and entered without waiting for a reply.

Suo Fahui was already awake, sitting before her bronze mirror, brushing her long black hair. She looked up at him in the mirror’s reflection. “You are up early,” she said, her voice calm. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I slept little,” he admitted. He walked behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. He looked at her reflection, then at her left wrist. The jade bracelet was not there. “Where is your jade bracelet? The one your mother gave you?”

She paused mid-brush. “I gave it to the goldsmith for repair last week. There was a hairline crack that I wanted mended. It should be ready in three days. Why do you ask?”

Yuanlong felt a surge of relief so intense that his knees nearly buckled. If the bracelet was at the goldsmith’s, then the veiled woman who bought the monkshood was not his wife. Someone had borrowed or replicated the bracelet to frame her. “No reason,” he said, forcing a smile. “I was thinking of having a matching piece made for our daughter.”

She returned his smile, but her eyes were searching. “Yuanlong, you have been strange since you returned. Is there something you are not telling me?”

He bent down and kissed her temple. “There is much I do not yet understand. But I promise you this: I will protect our family. Whatever comes, trust me.”

She nodded, but he saw a flicker of doubt in her gaze. He left her chamber and walked to the eastern wing, where his brother’s household now resided. He did not enter—he merely stood in the corridor, listening. He heard the voices of children, the clatter of bowls, and then a low, murmured conversation between Yuanqing and someone else. The other voice was too soft to identify, but it had a rhythmic, gravelly quality—like Huan Decong’s.

Yuanlong stepped back and returned to his study. He had the monkhood sample, the sales record, the anonymous warning note, and a growing list of suspects. But he still lacked proof of a direct link between Yuanqing and the poisoning. And he still did not know who had fired that arrow at Liao Wu’s shop—whether it was Yuanqing’s man, Huan’s man, or the mysterious third party who had left the warning note.

He opened his writing box and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. He would write a letter to the goldsmith, inquiring about the bracelet’s repair date—to confirm that his wife had indeed left it there before the monkshood purchase. He would also send a trusted servant to observe Liao Wu’s shop during the day, to see if anyone visited after the failed assassination.

But as he dipped his brush into the ink, he heard a knock at his door. It was his mother, Lady Wang. Her face was ashen, her hands trembling. “Yuanlong, come quickly—your father has taken a turn. He is coughing blood. The physician is on his way, but I fear… I fear he will not last the hour.”

Yuanlong dropped his brush and ran. He reached his father’s bedchamber to find the old man gasping, his lips stained red, his eyes wide with terror. The bedclothes were spattered with dark blood. Yuanlong knelt and clutched his father’s hand. “Father, who did this to you? If you can hear me, give me a sign—a name, a gesture—anything!”

The patriarch’s eyes rolled toward Yuanlong. His cracked lips moved, and with a tremendous effort, he whispered two syllables: “Huan… Qing…” Then his body went rigid, and his eyes stared fixedly at the ceiling, unseeing.

Huan and Qing—Huan Decong and Yuanqing. Or perhaps Huanqing, a single name that meant nothing. The old man had tried to speak the truth, but death had stolen the last word.

Yuanlong closed his father’s eyelids and bowed his head. The physician arrived moments later, but it was too late. The cause of death was recorded as “lung exhaustion due to prolonged illness.” But Yuanlong knew the truth—the monkshood had finally done its work, aided by the trauma of the bleeding cough.

He rose from his knees and walked out into the courtyard. The morning sun was now bright and merciless, casting sharp shadows on the cobblestones. He saw Yuanqing emerge from the eastern wing, his face composed into a mask of filial grief. Behind him stood Huan Decong, his round face unreadable, his hands clasped behind his back.

Yuanlong approached them, his steps measured. “My father is dead,” he said, his voice flat. “The funeral will be held in three days, according to custom. After that, we will settle the pledge—and everything else.”

Yuanqing bowed his head. “I share your sorrow, brother. We will honor him properly.”

Huan Decong offered a low bow. “My condolences, Master Zhang. I will await the funeral’s end before we discuss the debt. Please, take your time.”

Yuanlong looked into Huan’s eyes—cold, calculating, utterly devoid of remorse. Then he looked at his brother—the same hollow eyes, the same careful composure. They were allies, at least for now. But alliances in a nest of vipers lasted only as long as the next meal.

As the funeral preparations began, Yuanlong retreated to his study and pulled out the leather pouch of monkshood. He would have the apothecary Gui Shou compare it with the residue from his father’s medicine. But more than that, he would need to find the goldsmith and the arrow—evidence that could break the alliance between his brother and the merchant.

And he would need to survive long enough to use it. Because whoever had fired that arrow at Liao Wu’s shop had missed once—but they would not miss again. The game was no longer about inheritance. It was about vengeance—and about proving that even in a house of poison, one man could outlast the venom.

He took a deep breath and began to write his strategy, stroke by stroke, as the funeral drums echoed through the mourning halls.