Young master Hu did not appreciate being asked for documentation.
This was evident in the way his face shifted through several unflattering colors in rapid succession, settling finally on a blotchy red that clashed rather unfortunately with his fine violet robes. He had, Chengyi suspected, expected the mere mention of his family name to do the heavy lifting that actual paperwork ought to have done.
"Documentation," young master Hu repeated, as though the word itself had personally offended him. "You dare ask me, a noble son of the Hu family, for documentation?"
"I dare ask anyone for documentation," Chengyi said mildly. "It is rather the point of documentation, that it be asked for."
A ripple of poorly-suppressed laughter moved through the gathered villagers and the dozen or so guardsmen who had drifted toward the courtyard with the particular instinct soldiers have for sensing entertainment before it has fully announced itself. Yonglie, to his credit, managed to turn his own laugh into something that might charitably be called a cough.
Young master Hu's hand twitched toward the ornamental sword at his hip, the kind of blade meant for looking impressive at banquets rather than for any practical application. He seemed to remember, a half-second too late, that he was surrounded by armed soldiers who answered to the man he was currently insulting, and that this was perhaps not the optimal arrangement for drawing steel.
He settled instead for a different sort of weapon, one he clearly felt more confident wielding.
"Very well," he said, with the air of a man producing a winning hand at cards. "Then let us settle this as men do. A duel, Captain Chengyi. If you win, I shall trouble this little village no further on the matter of tribute." His smile sharpened. "And if I win, you will sign over administration of these collection rights without further... bureaucratic delay."
"You wish to wager imperial tribute law on a sword fight," Wenqing said, in the tone of a scholar encountering a particularly creative form of stupidity.
"I wish," young master Hu said, drawing himself up, "to remind this jumped-up peasant of his place."
Behind Chengyi, Yonglie made a small, hopeful sound, like a dog that has just heard the word "walk."
Chengyi considered the offer. He considered the smug certainty radiating off young master Hu, a man who had clearly never lost a fight he was permitted to win by virtue of his birth. He considered the sixty-odd households watching from behind fences and doorways, the headman wringing his hands at the courtyard's edge, the children peering out with the particular solemnity children reserve for moments adults insist are not frightening.
He thought of a boy with a splintered stick, shouting the name of a general no one else could see.
"Very well," Chengyi said. "Though I should warn you. I have not lost a duel since I was twelve, and the boy who beat me then is buried under a plum tree, having died of being too proud to admit when a wrestling match was over."
Young master Hu did not appear to find this amusing.
They cleared the center of the courtyard with the efficiency of men who had done this sort of thing before, though never quite under these particular stakes. Yonglie produced two practice swords from somewhere with the magician's flourish of a man who had been hoping for exactly this outcome all morning. Wenqing positioned himself at the edge of the cleared space with his arms folded, wearing the expression of a man already composing the official account of events for posterity.
Young master Hu's attendants, Chengyi noted, did not look nearly as confident as their employer. One of them, an older man with the weathered patience of long service, was very studiously examining a nearby fence post.
"Shall we?" young master Hu said, settling into a stance that was, Chengyi had to admit, not entirely without instruction. Someone had paid for proper lessons, at some point. It showed in the positioning of the feet, the angle of the wrist.
It did not show anywhere else.
Chengyi did not bother with a stance at all. He simply stood, sword loose in hand, in the same unhurried manner he might have used to wait for a kettle to boil.
Young master Hu struck first, a clean diagonal cut that, again, suggested actual instruction somewhere in his past. It was a good strike. It was, in fact, a strike that might have troubled any number of the men Chengyi had faced in the bandit camps these past weeks.
Chengyi was not any number of those men.
He stepped aside from the strike with the same economy of motion he used for everything, redirected young master Hu's blade with a touch so light it might have been mistaken for a breeze, and tapped him once, briskly, on the back of the knee.
Young master Hu sat down in the dirt with considerable surprise and even more considerable indignity.
A beat of silence followed, the particular silence of a crowd deciding collectively whether laughter was permitted yet.
"That," young master Hu said, scrambling back up with dirt on his fine robes and fury on his face, "was a fluke."
It was not a fluke the second time, when Chengyi disarmed him with a twist that sent the practice sword skittering across the courtyard to land at the feet of a delighted chicken. It was not a fluke the third time, when young master Hu, red-faced and increasingly desperate, lunged with more enthusiasm than sense and found himself flat on his back, staring up at the sky, with Chengyi's blade resting with polite gentleness against his throat.
The silence broke.
It broke in the form of Yonglie, who let out a whoop loud enough to startle birds from three separate trees, and then in the form of every other watching guardsman and villager, who had apparently all been waiting with held breath for exactly this outcome and now released it as one enormous, jubilant noise. Someone began clapping rhythmically. A child cheered without entirely understanding why, simply because the adults around her were doing it.
"I yield," young master Hu said, in a small voice, to the dirt, since he could not quite bring himself to say it to Chengyi's face.
Chengyi withdrew his blade and offered a hand, which young master Hu did not take. The young master's ears instead flushed a brilliant red, his eyes wide and dazed. It was as if, even for a moment, the blindfold of arrogance and illusory superiority had been taken off, and he was now recognising Chengyi for what he truly was: Superior.
"The matter of tribute," Chengyi said, with a courtesy that had not wavered once through the entire exchange, "is settled, then. I trust you'll inform your family's agents accordingly."
Young master Hu picked himself up without assistance, gathered the tattered remains of his dignity along with the dirt still clinging to his robes, and departed considerably faster than he had arrived, his disproportionate procession scrambling to follow him.
He did not look back.
The courtyard remained in high spirits long after the dust of his departure had settled. Yonglie had already begun loudly relitigating the duel for the benefit of anyone who had somehow missed it, gesturing with such enthusiasm that he nearly struck a nearby fence post himself. Wenqing was attempting, with limited success, to look dignified while clearly enjoying every second of it.
The headman had produced, from some hidden reserve, a jug of something that was probably not sanctioned by garrison regulations, and was distributing cups with the relieved generosity of a man whose village had just been spared a significant headache.
It was in the middle of this — Yonglie mid-toast, Wenqing mid-eye-roll, the whole courtyard warm with the particular happiness of a crisis narrowly avoided — that the sound of hooves reached them.
Not the mismatched, overburdened clatter of young master Hu's procession. A single horse, ridden hard, hooves striking the packed earth of the road in a rhythm that spoke of distance covered at speed and more distance yet to go.
The celebration did not stop all at once. It frayed at the edges first, voices trailing off one by one as heads turned toward the road, until the whole courtyard had gone quiet enough to hear the horse's labored breathing before its rider came fully into view.
It was a white steed, or had been; it was now streaked grey with sweat and road-dust, its sides heaving, foam at its bit. The rider wore the unmistakable colors of the imperial courier corps, a sash gone ragged at one edge, and he sat his saddle with the particular slump of a man who had not stopped moving in longer than was wise.
He did not slow at the courtyard's edge. He rode straight in, and only when his horse had nearly reached the gathered men did he haul on the reins, the animal skidding to a halt with a sound like tearing cloth.
"Captain Chengyi!" the messenger called, his voice cracking with use. He was already fumbling at the satchel slung across his chest, his hands unsteady, whether from exhaustion or something else, Chengyi could not yet tell.
The jubilant noise of the courtyard had died entirely now. Yonglie's grin had vanished. Wenqing had gone very still in the particular way he did when something required his full and undivided attention. Though no words had been stated yet, it was clear this news was far from good.
Chengyi stepped forward and took the offered scroll. The wax seal upon it was not the modest stamp of the regional military office. It was the imperial seal itself, pressed in a red so dark it was nearly black, the kind reserved for matters that could not wait for the ordinary turning of bureaucratic wheels.
"What news?" Chengyi asked, though some part of him, the part that had grown up watching smoke rise from a burning village, already suspected the shape of the answer before the messenger spoke.
The messenger's chest heaved once, twice, before the words came.