Chapter 3
By the time Fourth Master Wu returned, Tang Xiaowan had only just recovered.
He stomped into Spring Breeze House as if it were his own back garden. Reaching her room, he kicked the door open.
“Sweetheart! Your master is back. Did you miss me?”
Tang Xiaowan was combing her hair, her face clean and unpainted. His bellow startled her so badly that the comb fell from her hand.
Fourth Master Wu had never gotten a proper look at her. If not for that letter in which every other sentence cursed his ancestors, he might have forgotten her altogether.
Now he saw pale, tender skin and shy, limpid eyes—a delicate contrast to the ferocious shrew who had written such spectacular insults. He was delighted. The sight of this seemingly fragile, aristocratic beauty producing such vicious language made him itch all over. He shut the door and pounced.
From then on, Tang Xiaowan became the treasure of his heart.
Spring Breeze House saw endless quarrels over patrons. Where women gathered, stories multiplied, and Madam Qian generally looked the other way.
But no one dared provoke Tang Xiaowan.
She had already bought her freedom, yet she stubbornly remained in the largest room at the brothel. Madam Qian resented her for occupying space without earning money but did not dare say so. Tang Xiaowan was not yet seventeen, but even Fourth Master Wu coaxed and yielded to her fierceness.
Two days earlier, he had carelessly groped another girl. Tang Xiaowan did not quarrel with the woman. She picked up a kitchen cleaver and chased Fourth Master Wu through three streets.
The mighty warlord fled with a pale face while half the city watched the spectacle.
Afterward he smoked to calm his nerves. “Damn it all. I’ve seen every kind of woman in this life, but never one so beautiful and so ready to die!”
The more trouble Tang Xiaowan made, the more he adored her. One truly wished to strike; the other willingly endured.
He was rough-looking and incapable of sweet words, but he knew how to cherish someone.
For Tang Xiaowan’s eighteenth birthday, he dragged over several foreign cannons to fire as salutes. She did not so much as lift an eyelid.
It drove him mad. He had loved and hated her in equal measure for two years. Every other woman feared him or flattered his power. Only Tang Xiaowan dared curse him and swing a cleaver at his neck.
Once he taught her to shoot on a whim. Tang Xiaowan smiled softly and asked, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll put a bullet through your head one day?”
Fourth Master Wu shuddered. It was exactly the sort of thing she might do.
She had slender limbs and hips that swayed enticingly when she walked, but inside she was ruthless.
Once, after a quarrel, he went to another woman’s bed. Tang Xiaowan slapped him. Enraged at losing face, he struck her back, swelling her cheek and splitting her lip. She hurled herself at him as if she had no life to lose.
He could never truly beat her. Pride had driven the blow.
That night, Tang Xiaowan coaxed him to sleep, then rose after midnight and sharpened a cleaver beside his bed.
Scrape. Scrape.
The sound was like death coming to collect him. Cold sweat covered Fourth Master Wu.
“Since I belong to you but cannot possess your heart, why don’t we die for love together tonight?”
She raised the blade to her throat.
Fourth Master Wu howled and lunged to snatch it away. From that day on, even a second glance at another woman made him nervous.
Her eighteenth birthday had to be grand. He spent money and manpower without restraint; the spectacle rivaled an empress’s celebration, cannons and all.
Tang Xiaowan wanted none of it.
She hooked a finger through his belt and murmured, “Gold and jewels are cold. Fourth Master is warm. I only want you.”
Fourth Master Wu split his face in a grin like a contented toad.
Who in Spring Breeze House did not envy Tang Xiaowan? Every other girl had a miserable history, yet she had met Fourth Master Wu the moment she debuted and spent years training him to obey. If Tang Xiaowan asked for the stars, he would not dare bring her the moon instead.
Sometimes he left to fight for months. She would write, If you die out there, this old lady will find herself another man!
Whenever he returned, he came home filthy and cursing, without even taking a bath. Tang Xiaowan never despised him for it.
At times Fourth Master Wu felt as though he were raising a daughter; at others, as though he had acquired another mother. It was his own bitter kind of happiness.
The world outside grew ever more chaotic, and Tang Xiaowan could feel his temper worsening. The Japanese had advanced weapons. More families sold their sons and daughters. Even Spring Breeze House sometimes turned girls away.
Tang Xiaowan looked without expression at a timid little girl reduced to skin and bone. She had never considered herself kind. Which woman in this house had not been sold by parents or brothers? Whatever tenderness they once felt for family had long ago been ground away.
Madam Qian refused the child because an eleven- or twelve-year-old had to be fed for years before she could receive patrons. War had made every mouth expensive, and no one knew what diseases a refugee child might carry.
Tang Xiaowan closed her eyes and ordered an attendant to give the girl several silver dollars.
Madam Qian drew on her pipe and said sourly, “How charitable you are, Xiaowan. No wonder Fourth Master Wu indulges you. Not like us—wicked hearts and hateful faces.”
She resented Tang Xiaowan’s free use of the largest room.
Tang Xiaowan shot her a look. Years beside Fourth Master Wu had put something of a bandit in her bearing, and Madam Qian fell silent.
“It’s good that Madam recognizes her own faults. There’s no need to recite them for us. Too much of it turns the stomach.”
With a cold laugh, Tang Xiaowan swayed away.
She knew perfectly well that before she ever received guests, Madam Qian had built her reputation and later skimmed enough from Fourth Master Wu to buy Spring Breeze House several times over. The woman worshipped money and never stopped trying to clutch more.
Fourth Master Wu fought the Japanese again.
He returned when the moon was sinking. Tang Xiaowan waited at the gates of his residence, hands tucked into a fur muff, a warm cape around her shoulders, pale thighs exposed beneath her qipao to the winter wind.
He bared his teeth, eyes narrowing.
“So you do remember to come back?” she asked.
She rolled her eyes. To him, even that looked flirtatious.
He chuckled in his broken-gong voice. “Should I stay away and watch you sleep with another man?”
Tang Xiaowan raised a hand to strike him. He caught her small, soft fingers, then barked an order. His men dragged forward a half-dead figure.
By lantern light, she could not see the man clearly.
“He says he’s my father-in-law. Japanese soldiers nearly killed him, and I happened to save him. He’s barely breathing. Take a look—is he your father?”
Someone held a lantern to the man’s face.
Zhao Mingyi was skeletal and white-haired, but his features had not changed much.
Tang Xiaowan hardened her heart. “That isn’t my father. My father died years ago.”
The man stirred and forced out a whisper. “Xiaochan…”
Tang Xiaowan froze as if struck by lightning.
Then she rounded on Fourth Master Wu. “Why did you save him? Drag him out and shoot him.”
His eyes bulged. “What nonsense is that? He’s your father!”
“Your father!”
“Fine, fine—my father! A father-in-law is still a father. With you saying that, this trip was worth it. Who knew I’d bring my own father-in-law home?”