Chapter 165 — The Back Hill

The little river on the back hill ran clear and bright.

Song Yan stood at the water's edge, gazing quietly at the shadows of the trees mirrored in the murmuring current.

In his blue-green brocade robe and jade hairpin, straight-backed and still, he seemed to have become one of the trees in the wood behind him, dissolved into that clear breeze and blue sky—a vast, hushed emptiness shot through with the crystalline purity of a crisp autumn day.

Dou Chi, just stepped down from his soft sedan, halted in his tracks.

Song Yan had already turned at the sound, and smiled. "You came!"

His gaze was gentle, his smile sincere, and Dou Chi abruptly lost his voice. "How have you grown so thin?"

Features once fine and flawless were now sharpened by the gauntness, so that even with a smile on his face he seemed grave and stern.

"Do I?" said Song Yan. "I hadn't noticed."

Dou Yan sighed inwardly.

Anyone caught up in such a business would toss and turn, unable to eat or sleep—and he was carrying injuries besides. That he could stand before her at all was no small feat.

She could not help asking, "Your wounds—how are they?"

"Not bad!" Song Yan clearly did not care to dwell on it, and said briefly, "Gu Yu helped me call in the finest physician in the Imperial Medical Academy; they all say there is no hurrying it, only slow nursing. These days I have done nothing but lie abed, eating and drinking and idling, going nowhere at all." Then he asked her with a smile, "I hear the coming-of-age ceremony was a lively affair. What a pity I could not come and offer congratulations..." A faint regret showed in his eyes, and it was genuine.

Dou Chi could not help grumbling to herself.

Even if you had not run into this wretched mess, even if you had no wounds on you—could you have come? In what capacity, on what pretext?

The thought had no sooner crossed her mind than she felt she was overthinking.

Was there anything Song Yan set his mind to that he could not accomplish?!

Perhaps his inability to come and congratulate her was a good thing.

If he found a pretext to associate with her openly and aboveboard, how could she ever steer clear of the Song family's affairs thereafter?

And then she thought of Ji Yong.

Why was it that every last man she met had this same temperament?!

And then she thought of Wu Shan and Wei Fan... and felt that both Song Yan and Ji Yong gave her a headache.

She simply stopped thinking altogether, glanced about her, pointed to a large bluestone not far off, and said to Song Yan, "Shall we go sit over there?" The words were barely out of her mouth before she felt they were ill-advised—they said Song Yan's injuries were grave. Who knew how he was now? She hurried on, "Never mind, let us just talk standing here?" And privately she wondered whether standing like this was taxing for him...

Song Yan gazed at Dou Xin, the smile flowing from the depths of his eyes all the way to the corners of his brows.

He said softly, "I am fine. The external wounds healed long ago; as for the internal—my eldest uncle felt that training in the external martial arts was too brash and showy. We of the Song family are the Emperor's close attendants, and such studies ill become me. Years ago he specially sought out a master to teach me the internal arts of nourishing life. This discipline is like brewing tea over a gentle flame—it must be done slowly, and there is no hurrying it."

"That is good, then!" Dou Yan recalled that the first time Duan Bing met Song Yan he had said Song Yan seemed to have learned some peculiar martial skill; reflecting that the Jiang and Song families were both houses of a hundred years' prosperity, they must surely possess arts of self-preservation unknown to outsiders, and so she answered casually.

Song Yan smiled faintly. "Last time you told me there were wild vegetables on the estate—do they not grow on this back hill? I have not seen a single one."

Dou Yan could not help saying, "Do you even know wild vegetables?"

"Of course I do!" said Song Yan. "I did not before, but after I went back I had some people gather a few for me... the very rare ones I still do not know. The common ones I know."

Surely not!

Dou Yan blinked.

Song Yan nodded at her very earnestly.

Dou Yan looked around, pulled up a plant with oval leaves, and came back with it folded in her hand. "What is this?"

"This..." Song Yan had never seen it before, and broke out in a sweat on the spot. He mumbled, "It should be... water pepper?"

So he really had done his homework!

Dou Yan muttered to herself.

"Wrong!" she said gravely. "This is sorrel."

Sorrel and water pepper looked very much alike, though the leaves of one were longer and narrower and those of the other rounder and fuller.

Song Yan wiped his brow in embarrassment.

Dou Yan burst out laughing.

That laughter, carrying a touch of teasing and a touch of roguish cunning, had a reckless, soaring quality to it that lit up Song Yan's gloomy heart.

He could not help laughing along with her.

The laughter softened Song Yan's brows and eyes, revealing something of a youth's delicate beauty.

Dou Yan sighed inwardly with regret.

Such a beautiful youth—and Song Cen had ruthlessly made him into a killer.

"It is also called sour-sour," she said, waving the sorrel in her hand. "It is a wild vegetable that grows in summer. Pick it, wash it clean in fresh water, blanch it briefly in boiling water, and then fish it out and it is ready to eat. It clears heat and cools the blood."

Song Yan took the sorrel Dou Yan handed him and said with a smile, "Last time it was okra. You seem to know a thing or two about these."

"Mm." Dou Yan lifted her head and looked at the three wild peach trees on the far bank, smiling. "I grew up here. When I was small I used to go up the hill with the village children to pick wild greens, and we'd wade in the river to catch fish." She pointed at a bend in the little stream. "See that? Come summer there'll be swarms of wild fish there..." Dou Yan turned back and asked him with a smile, "Can you walk?"

"Mm!" Song Yan nodded. "I can walk."

"Come on, I'll take you somewhere!" Dou Yan started forward. "If it gets too much for you, just say so." She paused a beat. "Don't force yourself. There's no point in that."

"I know!" Song Yan said with a smile, and followed Dou Yan across the little river, stepping from stone to stone.

Dou Yan scrambled nimbly up the wild peach tree.

Song Yan did not hesitate, climbing up right behind her.

He saw vast stretches of cropland and two villages. The one to the east was Dou Zhiwei's estate, a house of gray brick and tile standing at the center of the village, ringed by low mud-and-thatch cottages. The other was quite unfamiliar. The two villages were about the same size and laid out much the same way; he could even make out the farmers working in the fields and the shadows of people moving about the gray-brick house.

Dou Yan pointed at the village that was strange to him and laughed. "That's the Lang family estate. The Langs seldom come here. It's run by a skinny old bailiff who has a plump, fair-skinned wife very fond of drink. Every time she drinks too much she chases the old bailiff around walloping him, and he curses her and runs off into the fields, and everyone on the estate comes running out to watch the fun..."

Song Yan could not help but smile.

He seemed to see a tiny Dou Yan, eyes crinkled in crescents, lying here watching the Langs' bailiff and his wife go at each other... That ridiculous clamor, like a warm current, spilled across the cold field of his heart and warmed it.

But Dou Zhiwei's expression had suddenly turned very grave.

She fixed her eyes on Song Yan's and said in a low, heavy voice, "I don't know why your father would want to frame you!"

The smile froze at the corner of Song Yan's mouth.

Dou Yan turned her head away, her gaze returning to the two villages that seemed so close together.