The richly dressed man frowned to himself. Taste? Do you taste a poem? It isn’t food.

Nothing about the boy suggested a man of letters. He sounded like a peddler working the alleys.

“Master, one look and you can tell this one’s a swindler. Don’t bother with him. Let’s go home.”

The pale, beardless man glared at Ning Chen.

And Ning Chen did look exactly like a swindler.

Ning Chen’s eyes went wide. “Who are you calling a swindler? Let me tell you something. Before long my name is going to shake the literary world, and my poems will be worth a fortune. Don’t buy today and I guarantee you’ll be sick with regret.”

The shrill one sneered. “You’re going to shake the literary world?”

Ning Chen looked him up and down with contempt. “You simper like a girl. What would you know about poetry?”

“Insolence!”

The shrill one leveled a finger at Ning Chen, and it shook with anger.

The richly dressed man waved a hand, looked at Ning Chen, and said with a smile:

“You talk a big game. Do you dare let me test you?”

Ning Chen spread both hands. “Go ahead. Real gold doesn’t fear the fire.”

The middle-aged man looked around, and his eyes came to rest on the lake beside them, where several white swans were playing.

He laughed. “Then let’s take swans as the subject. Write a poem?”

Ning Chen said easily, “How hard could that be? I can do it off the top of my head. Listen — goose, goose, goose—”

Before the rest of it was out of his mouth, the shrill one cut him off with a thin, high laugh.

His face was all scorn. “That’s what you call a poem?”

Ning Chen’s face darkened. If he weren’t here to make money he’d have started swearing. This one is unbearable.

“Quit yapping. Let me finish, and then laugh. It won’t be too late.”

He said, in a low voice, “No interrupting. Let him finish.”

“Yes!” The shrill one bent at the waist, then shot Ning Chen a glare. “Go on, then. Let’s see you talk flowers out of thin air.”

Ning Chen ignored him. He was here to do business, and a pleasant manner brings in money.

He cleared his throat. “Listen properly.”

鵝鵝鵝，曲項向天歌， 白毛浮綠水，紅掌撥清波。

Goose, goose, goose — bent neck singing to the sky. White feathers afloat on green water, red feet stirring the clear ripples.

The middle-aged man’s eyes brightened.

The shrill one jeered. “That’s a poem? That’s just plain talk.”

But the middle-aged man waved him off. “A good poem! There’s no deep meaning in it, no philosophy — but it rolls off the tongue, it suits the scene, and it would be perfect for teaching a child his first words.”

“How much for it? I’ll buy.”

Ning Chen’s heart jumped. Open for business. Money coming in!

He thought a moment, then held up one finger. “One tael of silver.”

The truth was he had no idea what a poem went for. But a tael of silver would buy him a padded winter coat.

It was too cold. He was frozen through.

He stared. “One tael of silver?”

Ning Chen thought he’d priced it too high. “Uncle, one tael really isn’t much. Buy from me again later and I’ll knock something off for you.”

When the man frowned, Ning Chen kept the pitiful act going.

“Uncle, winter’s nearly here and look at me, still in a thin shirt. I won’t lie to you — every last person in my family is dead. There’s just me and one old servant with a bad leg, keeping each other alive. We haven’t eaten in days.”

As he finished, his stomach did its part and let out a long, obliging growl.

The middle-aged man looked at him. “Come on. Let’s talk somewhere else.”

Ning Chen hesitated.

The man smiled. “Relax. There’s something in it for you.”

“Something like what?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Relax — a boy like you wouldn’t fetch much on the market anyway.”

It stung. It was also true.

Ning Chen nodded and went along.

He brought Ning Chen into the Top Scholar Tower and up to an elegant room on the third floor.

“Sit anywhere, don’t stand on ceremony.” Then, to the shrill one: “Go. Have some wine and food sent up.”

The shrill one left, plainly unwilling.

He sat down at the table. “I still don’t know your name.”

“My name is… Lan Xing.”

Ning Chen gave a false one. He might never see Lan Xing again (TL Note: 藍星, “Blue Star” — a common Chinese nickname for Earth. Ning Chen is naming himself after the planet he died on, which is why the man across the table has never heard of the family.). Let it stand as a small memorial to the home he’d come from.

Something flickered in the middle-aged man’s eyes as he turned it over. Is there a Lan family anywhere in this capital? I doubt the boy is telling the truth.

“Uncle, what’s your name?”

“Mine? My name is… Tian Xuan.”

Ning Chen laughed. “Good name. Heaven and earth, dark and yellow — and you’ve taken two of the four for yourself (TL Note: the opening line of the Thousand Character Classic, the primer every child learned to read from. “Tian” is the heaven of it and “Xuan” the dark, so the man has just named himself after half of creation. Ning Chen is teasing him for it.).”

Ning Chen had seen from the start that this was no ordinary man. He’d also worked out that the shrill one was a eunuch.

So this man was imperial family, or something close to it.

But some things you see through and don’t say out loud.

The more you know, the faster you die.

He was here to do business. Make the money and be done. Nothing else mattered.

“Lan Xing. You said a moment ago that you were accomplished in poetry, verse, song, and rhapsody. What else have you written?”

“Uncle, are you buying that first one? Because if you are, I’ll give you a discount on the rest.”

Tian Xuan nodded. “I’m buying. But that poem is worth more than one tael.”

“Uncle, one tael is already cheap. I’m barely making anything—”

Tian Xuan waved a hand, smiling. “I said more than. Not less than. For that poem, I’m willing to pay ten taels of silver.”

Ning Chen was stunned. “Ten? Uncle, are you serious?”

Tian Xuan laughed. “This emperor is— ahem. I am. Quite serious (TL Note: in the original he starts to say 朕 — the first-person pronoun reserved by law for the emperor alone, so that merely using it identifies him — and catches himself. Chinese rulers referred to themselves this way rather than as “I,” and “this emperor” is the closest English equivalent.).”

Ning Chen’s whole face lit up.

“Uncle, you’re the father and mother of my second life. Don’t you worry — anything you want to buy later, I’ll give you a good price.”

Tian Xuan smiled. “So what other poems do you have to sell?”

Ning Chen laid it on thick. “Oh, far too many to count. What kind of poem do you want, Uncle? I’ll write you whatever you like.”

Just then a burst of noise came through the wall from next door.

Tian Xuan frowned. “The Top Scholar Tower is a place of quiet refinement. Is this any way to behave?”

The pale, beardless man happened to come back just then.

Tian Xuan asked, offhand, “What’s going on next door?”

The shrill one bent quickly and answered with great respect. “Master, it’s Old General Chen. He’s drunk.”

Tian Xuan let out a soft sigh. “Old General Chen spent his whole life in the saddle, fighting for this country. Now his body is broken and he can’t take the field. I expect his heart is bitter, and he’s drowning it in wine.”

Ning Chen knew of Old General Chen. A lifetime of campaigns, and then a leg taken off on the battlefield three years ago. Now he’d been pushed to the sidelines — and by every account he drowned his sorrows in wine, day after day.

“Lan Xing. Take Old General Chen’s bitterness as your subject. Write me a poem.”

That made Ning Chen scratch his head. This one was genuinely hard.

The shrill one’s face filled with contempt. “Big words a moment ago. Poetry, verse, song, and rhapsody, wasn’t it? And now he’s stuck. That’s a slap in your own face, isn’t it?”

Ning Chen rolled his eyes at him and turned to Tian Xuan. “Uncle, I can’t come up with a poem this second. Would a lyric do?”

Tian Xuan smiled. “Poem, lyric — same family. A lyric is fine.”

“Good. Then I’ll give you a lyric on Old General Chen’s situation.”

Ning Chen picked up his tea, took a sip to wet his throat, and began.

醉里挑燈看劍，夢回吹角連營。 八百里分麾下炙，五十弦翻塞外聲，沙場秋點兵。 馬作的盧飛快，弓如霹靂弦驚。 了卻君王天下事，贏得生前身後名，可憐白髮生！

Drunk, I trim the lamp to look at my sword; in dreams I am back among the camps, the horns calling down the line.

Roast ox carved out to the men under my banner, fifty strings turning the songs of beyond the frontier — autumn, and the troops mustered on the killing ground.

My horse runs swift as Dilu. My bow cracks like thunder off the string.

To finish my sovereign’s business under heaven, to win a name in this life and after it — and the pity of it: the white hair comes.

(TL Note: Dilu was a famously fast warhorse in Chinese legend, the mount that once carried its rider across a river in a single leap to escape an ambush. Naming it here is like saying a horse ran like Bucephalus.)

When Ning Chen’s voice fell away, Tian Xuan’s face was pure shock.

Even the shrill one, who had done nothing but mock him, was struck dumb, both eyes bulging like a toad’s.

(End of Chapter 4)