There was no time to recall what private tie the original body had with the only son of Baron Gusitafu's house. Xialuote looked back through the crack of the door she had just squeezed through, saw the glow of an oil lamp already lit outside, realized that Aidian, who had tracked her here, was close at hand, and hurriedly shouted:
"Close the door! Someone is following me!"
The manservant by the door did not move at once. He looked up instead at the baron, who had plainly just been startled out of sleep.
Even as the baron signaled the manservant to obey, he came down the stairs. His gaze swept quickly over her, and he asked in surprise:
"By the Craftsman, Xialuote, you are covered in blood... What on earth happened?"
"Thank you for your help, Uncle Lai'ang." Seeing that the manservant at the door was already closing the great door, Xialuote secretly let out a breath of relief and, in a familiar tone, played on her closeness with Baron Gusitafu. "As you can see, a dangerous man is following me. He says my father sent him, but I have never seen him."
In truth she was not even sure whether the original Xialuote had ever met Aidian, but now she had to insist that he meant her harm.
Sure enough, at her air of certainty, Baron Lai'ang Gusitafu nodded slowly, fastened the last two buttons of his coat, and said:
"Don't worry. You are safe here..."
Before the words had faded, the great door, just about to shut, was shoved. The force was not great, but it was applied with skill at the very instant the bolt was about to catch. Not only did the door swing open again; the poor manservant was knocked flat.
Right after that, Aidian strode into the courtyard, a lamp in one hand, the other pressing his tricorn back into place. The eyes beneath the brim swept once around, glanced at Xialuote, and came to rest on the baron.
Just as Xialuote thought a clash was about to break out, he drew his gaze back, removed his hat, bowed, and said:
"Baron Gusitafu, I apologize for intruding on your residence so late at night, but the matter is urgent. I must take the young lady away."
"And who are you?"
Seeing that the man made no further move after forcing the door, the baron lowered the hand that had frozen at his collar and asked in return.
"I am a solicitor employed by Baron Suolun," Aidian answered without haste. He tucked the tricorn under his arm and drew a document and a small seal from his pocket. "This is my registration certificate at the Suxite High Court, and the token His Lordship the baron entrusted to me. You may verify them at once."
The baron did not step forward to take the token himself. He waved a hand, signaling another manservant who stood dumbstruck nearby to step forward.
Watching the manservant walk toward Aidian—who stood beside the great door and yet had become the focus of the scene—Xialuote thought of how easily this man had knocked down two night watchmen, and could not help calling out:
"Be careful. Don't go near him."
The manservant halted at once. Aidian only smiled, quite unbothered, and held out the certificate and the seal of his own accord.
Lai'ang Gusitafu took the document from the manservant's hands and opened it. By the light at the stairway behind him he looked down for a few moments, then raised the small metal seal and studied it. After a moment he sighed. When he looked at Xialuote again, his eyes were entirely different.
It was over. Those things seemed to be real... Xialuote's heart sank.
Set beside Aidian—neatly dressed, courteous, carrying a document and a token—her present clothes did not match her station, her dress was covered in eerie bloodstains, and just now she had, as if by reflex, stopped the manservant from approaching him. In the baron's eyes, which of them was more believable went without saying.
What was more, with her memory not yet fully recovered, she could not even be sure whether the man was a fraud at all.
Just then Aidian spoke again in that thoroughly confident tone:
"It seems Your Lordship has confirmed my identity. May I take the young lady away, then?"
He shifted his gaze to Xialuote once more and, smiling, explained:
"Miss Xialuote, His Lordship the baron's carriage is at this moment on the west side of Municipal Square. He ordered that, as soon as you were found, we were to meet him there. That is why we did not return directly to Saint Luoke District in the east just now."
So that was it. Baron Suolun seemed to have sent more than one searcher, and was waiting in a carriage in the city center. She had misunderstood him... Listening to the explanation, Xialuote set aside the doubts in her heart and realized that her earlier reaction had indeed been somewhat excessive.
Perhaps if she had listened to Aidian before she ran, everything that followed could have been avoided... Embarrassed, she looked toward Baron Gusitafu beside her. Following the curtsy in the original Xialuote's memories, she made a token lift of her skirt, dipped slightly, and said with apology:
"I'm sorry, Uncle Lai'ang. My memory really may be a little... confused."
"So long as the misunderstanding is cleared up."
The baron nodded, unconcerned, and passed the document and seal in his hands to Xialuote.
Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught Aidian setting the tricorn back on his head. On the face hidden in shadow, a trace of an eerie smile appeared.
It seemed only the smile of someone who had finished a task and let out a breath of relief, gone in an instant—but it jolted her, as if she had been startled awake from a dream.
No. How had she believed his story so easily, even begun to doubt her own memory... Even if a baron were searching for a missing daughter, he would not casually leave home and wait for news in a carriage by the roadside... A seal stamped with the family crest would bring a great deal of trouble if lost. It would not be handed out to every person sent to search, and yet Aidian happened to have one... Doubt after doubt surged up. In that urgency an idea struck her. She pretended to look at the seal in her hands, went blank for an instant, then jerked her head up and shouted:
"This is not my father's token! He is a fraud!"
Her shout changed the expression of Baron Gusitafu, who had already been persuaded and thought the matter was about to end. He too recalled the details he had overlooked without thinking. He looked at Xialuote Suolun—dressed in a commoner's clothes, yet someone whose identity he could confirm—then at Aidian, the smile gone from his face and his gaze turned cold, and quickly made his decision.
"Xialuote, you stay here. Don't go anywhere." He motioned the girl beside him to get behind him, then pointed at the other uninvited guest. "And you—if you truly were sent by Lawuer, go back and ask him to come in person for his own daughter."
He did not directly declare that Aidian's identity was forged, yet he stood with Xialuote without hesitation.
The manservant who had just passed over the token, and the one who had been knocked down and gotten up again, also edged carefully closer, putting themselves between Aidian and their master.
The solicitor, courteous all this while, pressed his hat brim in resignation, glanced left and right, bowed his head, and said:
"As you wish, Baron.
"Before long you will find that your decision was a mistake."
With that he stepped back twice, came to the door, and opened the door that had been shut again, as if about to leave.
Good. In the end the clash had still not broken out... Xialuote quietly let out a breath. Her gaze had just begun to leave Aidian, half his body already through the crack of the door, when she suddenly saw him move.
The tall man snatched off his tricorn and flung it at the nearest manservant. As the man instinctively shielded his face, Aidian closed in with two quick steps. A sideways sweep of his right hand, a horizontal sweep of his right foot, and in an instant the thin manservant lost his balance, spun half a turn like a windmill blade, and pitched headfirst to the ground.
He did not go on attacking the poor man who had fallen twice. He stepped over him, locked his eyes on Xialuote, and rushed in at a speed entirely unlike that of his earlier pursuit.
Only then did she realize that Aidian's leaving just now had been feigned. His aim had been to open the great door again, strike the manservants down at once, seize her, and take her away.
Fortunately, another brave manservant put himself between them. Clearly hoping to distinguish himself before the baron, he paid no heed to the difference in build. Swinging a wooden stick he had got from who knew where, he forced Aidian to halt and meet the attack.
"Anna, go call the other manservants. Bring those two muskets." The moment Baron Gusitafu saw Aidian checked, he ordered the maid beside him, then looked to Xialuote. "Go up to the second floor. My sword is up there."
Xialuote nodded at once. She had no wish to face, head-on, a man who could easily knock a manservant flat and drop night watchmen with one punch each—especially when she herself was his target.
But before she could follow the baron upstairs, something shot past beside her, arced through the air, and landed on the stairs. A bang followed. Flame spattered, and burning lamp oil flowed out in front of the two of them, cutting off the way.
At the same time a muffled grunt came from behind. The second manservant who had bravely stepped forward had already had the stick kicked from his hands. A heavy kick then caught him in the belly. His whole body flew several meters, landed with a thud in the darkness at the corner of the wall, and moved no more.
One of Aidian's hands still held the pose of having thrown the oil lamp. With the other he straightened his neckcloth and showed a trace of a smile, as if mocking Xialuote's useless struggle.
"Baron, I had not meant to let this get quite so ugly..."
He said it in that same unhurried tone as he came forward.
Before the words had faded, he jerked his head up, raised both hands at once, and crossed them to guard his head.
There was a crisp crash. A vase shattered between his arms. Sharp porcelain shards flew, and flower stems and cold water poured over his head and face.
It was Luosaier Gusitafu, who had been watching from the window above all along!
Xialuote held back the impulse to look up. She knew a vase thrown from the second floor could not hold Aidian off for long. If she was not to be taken, the chaos of this moment was probably her only chance.
But what could she do now?
If she ran, she would be caught. Crying for help was already useless. Even Baron Gusitafu's residence and rank had failed to stop this pursuer...
Right—she still had a weapon... Xialuote remembered the dagger at her waist. Her hand moved toward it by instinct, but at the last moment she stopped.
The manservant in the corner, kicked away and no longer moving; the night watchmen fallen in the dark, whether alive or dead unknown; and Aidian's gaze, still cold after he lifted his head again—all surged into her mind at once.
She did not want to kill... but she wanted even more to live!
Her right hand yanked the dagger from her waist. Her left flung away the leather sheath, then braced the butt of the hilt. Under the baron's astonished gaze, Xialuote bent and lunged. In one stride she was before Aidian, half a head taller than she was, yet bent over now, wiping the water and petals from his face.
At that critical instant Xialuote's hesitation sank to the bottom of her heart. What rose in her mind was the scattered knowledge she had seen online back when she was Gao Linyuan, a keyboard warrior who knew a little of everything.
The heart lay behind the sternum, protected by the ribs. If you were not sure of stabbing the heart between the ribs, drive upward from beneath the sternum... The scene before her eyes slowed as if in slow motion. The sharp dagger passed slowly through the gap between the buttons of the coat, slit the shirt and the skin beneath, and stabbed obliquely upward into Aidian's chest, all the way to its deepest point.
Chapter 3