Baodung Jingyi's room looked like a war zone. Underneath the chaos it resembled a room typical of any teenage noblewoman: fine furniture, soft fabrics, a large wardrobe, small but pretty treasures and toys, a few books and scrolls and pithy sayings on woodblocks. But the layer of chaos atop this normalcy was so thick as to render the room unrecognizable.

Half of the furniture had been broken. Not just chipped or dishevelled, but outright smashed, as if trampled by a team of horses. Many of the soft fabrics had been shredded and strewn about the room. The books were nothing more than shreds of paper spread across the floor, and an empty spine on the remains of the girl's desk. The dresser had been overturned and most of the clothes upturned into a pile next to it.

"How many people have been in here since this morning?" Lian asked Yao from their position in the doorway.

"Only a few, and we moved very little. We looked for blood but didn't find any. Then we left."

Lian continued looking, then slowly stepped into the anarchy of the room, searching for clues as to what had caused such destruction. "I'll need to speak to the girl's servant, if she has a regular one."

"Why?" Yao asked. "Shouldn't you be looking for clues about who took her and where they've gone?"

"Do you want to do my job? Or do you want me to do the job where we just find a body?" Lian asked calmly as she continued to ease her way through the room.

Yao grumbled and muttered a curse under his breath, then said, "I'll go get her."

"Thank you," Lian's thanks lacked any warmth.

When the servant – a woman barely older than Jingyi herself – arrived, Lian asked Yao to wait outside. He huffed but agreed. Lian invited the woman in and asked her to close the door behind her. Almost at once the servant – obscured by the same dull clothing and averted gaze as the rest of the servants – started to sob.

"How long have you served Madam Jingyi?" Lian asked, approaching the woman slowly, still looking over some of the furniture.

The woman swallowed a few low moans before answering, "Five years now. Madam Baodung hired me specifically to help her through the teens. She said..." another sob, "...she said she wanted someone close to Jingyi's age. Someone she could maybe, share things with."

Lian stopped and smiled at the servant, trying to set her at ease. "And did she share things with you?"

The servant looked away, smiling through the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "Some things. Not much, truth be told. She was a very happy girl, she didn't have much she needed to share."

"She share anything about any boys? Girls? Someone she might want to run away with? Was she seeing someone?"

"No!" The servant responded strongly, believably. "No, she never took to anyone really strongly that way. There was a boy last summer... they spent some, time together. But she was never happy with him. He stopped coming around before the second harvest came last year."

The servant was lying, but it was hard to distinguish about what. Lian walked back into the middle of the room and knelt next to the overturned wardrobe. "This is quite heavy. Seventy pounds maybe. More with all the clothes. They would have had to push her quite hard into it to knock it over like this."

The servant's lips trembled and she brought her hands to her face, cupping her mouth and letting loose another set of tears. Lian let her imagine the kind of pain that would cause her mistress before she asked the next question.

"Where do you sleep? Are you nearby?"

The servant shook her head between sobs.

"Who does sleep near here?"

"No one. The lady has the hallway to herself."

"I see. And below her? Who would have heard this commotion?"

"Well..." the woman thought for a moment. "That, that would be..." She stopped herself, her own job prospects dangling in front of her: implicate the wrong member of the household and she could be a pauper on the highway, or worse.

"Would be...?" Lian prompted.

"Um, Master Fang. He's the home physician."

Lian nodded, then changed tact. "When did you see her last then? What did you do and say?"

"Nothing. I mean, nothing out of the ordinary. I brushed her hair, helped her clean her teeth, and then brought her some milk... she drinks a bit of goat's milk before bed. Has since I've been here. It helps her sleep."

"And then you left?"

She nodded.

"And you found the room like this, this morning."

Another nod.

Lian considered. "Who prepares the milk in the kitchen?"

"Not the kitchen. Master Fang prepares it. Lord Baodung had asked him to do so. The lady has had trouble sleeping lately, so Master Fang adds some powders to it, to help her."

"I think I should have a talk with Master Fang then."

The servant girl looked blankly forward, piecing together her own possible set of issues that may have arisen from the physician's connection to Jingyi. Lian didn't let her fester.

"Tell me, is there a portrait of the lady anywhere so I know what she looks like?"

The servant nodded and then looked to the rubble pile of clothes next to the dresser. She rummaged around for a moment before pulling out a hand-sized portrait of the noble. "This was done last year," she handed it to Lian.

The portrait was painted in an older, classical style. Very much like the house as a whole. The girl on it was stylized like a famed princess from antiquity, in thin ink on a brushed, matte background of white. "Would you say the portrait is accurate?"

The servant nodded and confirmed Lian's worst fears. She was a natural beauty. Rich, beautiful, and drugged nightly. It made for an easy target. Which made the condition of the room even more unexplainable.

"I'm going to talk to Master Fang now," Lian announced, standing shoulder to shoulder next to the servant, looking away from her. "I probably won't see you again before I find Madam Jingyi. Which means if there's anything else you need to tell me to help find her, you have to do it now. If you tell me what it is you've been holding back, I can find her sooner and probably alive. Every minute I wait is a minute she could be closer to death."

Lian felt the woman breathe in then tremble, this time her whole body: convulsing and shuddering under the weight of the choice between betrayals – her charge or her employer. She chose as Lian had hoped.

"When, when you mentioned the boy. It's..." she swallowed, then turned her head to look Lian in the eye. "It's not a boy. Not really." She swallowed again and tears welled in her eyes, but she couldn't blink them into gravity's embrace: she was too terrified to do so. "He... he loves her. He's always loved her. Too much. Too much..." a final swallow and then she looked down and the tears fell. "...for a father."