Chapter 4

Blood ties were a strange and unfathomable thing.

Tang Xiaowan hated Zhao Mingyi. At times she wanted to kill him. Yet the sight of his skeletal misery filled her with pain.

Fourth Master Wu was right. Human beings were wretched creatures.

Zhao Mingyi proved stubbornly hard to kill. Despite his wounds, he survived.

Tang Xiaowan retreated like a turtle into its shell and returned to Spring Breeze House. There, she found Madam Qian ordering attendants to carry a girl outside.

Tang Xiaowan had seen it often. Most women in a brothel eventually fell ill. Those who could be treated were treated. Those who could not were removed before they died under the roof.

The unmarked burial ground was now layered with corpses. People said the stray dogs’ eyes had turned red from eating human flesh.

Madam Qian often told Tang Xiaowan how lucky she was to have won the devotion of Fourth Master Wu.

Tang Xiaowan could only sneer. Devoted? In what sense?

Would he have treated her so well if she had not fought him with her life in her hands? She had never expected to survive becoming his woman. That reckless ferocity was precisely what made her different to him.

What if he had simply shot her?

Would Madam Qian still have called her fortunate?

Did the other women at Spring Breeze House live well? Men deceived them out of affection, money, and bodies. In the end they returned empty-handed and hollow-eyed, living like corpses.

When one became pregnant, Madam Qian had the attendants spread her across a long table and roll her belly with a wooden pin as though kneading dough.

The girl screamed for her father and mother. Blood dripped from the table. Half her life seemed to drain with it, leaving her face wax-yellow.

“If you won’t take care of your body, Mother will do it for you! Remember this, you little whores. If you want to raise a bastard, save enough to buy your freedom and raise it wherever you please. In Spring Breeze House, don’t even think of it!”

Madam Qian threw down the rolling pin with a thunderous crack.

The other girls shivered at the victim’s cries. She remained sickly afterward and was carried away within days. Madam Qian claimed to have found her a better place, but everyone knew she had been dumped at the burial ground to die.

Tang Xiaowan knew better than to interfere.

Yet as she passed the dying woman, fingers caught the hem of her skirt.

“Xiaochan…”

The weak voice seemed to crawl out of the underworld and burrow into Tang Xiaowan’s skull.

No one had called her Zhao Xiaochan in a long time.

Yesterday it had been her father. Today it was a woman dying at Spring Breeze House.

Her luck had clearly turned foul.

Tang Xiaowan stopped and planted the heel of her red leather shoe on the attendant’s instep. He wore soft cloth shoes for convenience. Tears sprang out at once.

“Grandmother, what did this little one do wrong?”

He dared not offend her and pleaded in a softened voice.

“Put her down.”

He glanced through his sweat at Madam Qian.

Madam Qian waddled over, her tone dripping with mockery. “Oh, Xiaowan, you’re such a busy woman now. How do you have time for such trifles?”

Tang Xiaowan refused to trade false courtesies. “Name a price.”

Madam Qian’s eyes lit up before she pursed her lips. “It isn’t about money. Mother isn’t heartless. But Jufang has that disease. Even if you save her, she’ll be useless. Why bother? And don’t leave her here. Since she arrived last year, her funeral face has frightened off my guests. I’ve lost money on her…”

“Fifty silver dollars.”

Tang Xiaowan raised her palm as if she meant to slap Madam Qian.

“You drive too hard a bargain. I paid eighty for her.”

Tang Xiaowan knew she was lying, but she was determined to save Jufang.

“Fifty-five.”

“Sixty.”

“Done.”

Madam Qian jerked her chin at the attendant, who set Jufang down. Tang Xiaowan lifted her heel and he limped away.

Her people counted out sixty heavy silver dollars. Madam Qian grinned from ear to ear and praised Jufang’s good fortune.

Tang Xiaowan owned a residence but rarely stayed there. No one understood why a free woman remained planted in a brothel when she had never received another patron.

Fourth Master Wu disliked it too, but she knew how to wind him around her fingers. He came from no great family and followed no genteel rules. As long as she did not seduce other men, he did not care where she slept.

Tang Xiaowan had Jufang carried to her private residence rather than Fourth Master Wu’s estate.

She barely remembered the people from her old life. Jufang was only a blurred impression.

The woman’s life had been bitter, but whose life at Spring Breeze House was not?

Jufang’s husband had died young. She sold everything to pay for his treatment, then entered the brothel herself because her mother-in-law and daughter were starving. Madam Qian bought her for what remained of her beauty.

The mother-in-law promised to care for the child, took the money, and fled. Jufang’s daughter was sold too.

Before marriage, Jufang had come from the same hometown as Tang Xiaowan. She had recognized Zhao Xiaochan long ago but never dared acknowledge her.

What was there to acknowledge when both had become brothel girls?

Only news that her daughter was alive had driven Jufang to beg Tang Xiaowan. She had to live long enough to find the child.

Tang Xiaowan listened without lifting an eyelid. She ordered others to care for Jufang, then turned and left.

Touching the jade cicada at her throat, she decided her fortunes needed changing. She would visit a temple and burn incense.

If she had known she would meet Japanese soldiers there, she would never have left home.

Fourth Master Wu had assigned several killers to protect her. Japanese soldiers rarely saw a woman of striking beauty. They said women in Japan painted their faces with thick white powder and that noblewomen blackened their teeth—faces that gave nightmares no excuse to stay away.

When Tang Xiaowan appeared wrapped in a fox-fur cloak, she was a rose blooming in winter, allure alive in every glance.

The Japanese commander, Yamasaki Kawakami, nearly drooled.

He claimed to revere Chinese culture and had visited the temple several times. When the monks refused to receive him, he killed two of them to vent his anger.

Then Tang Xiaowan’s bright face emerged into the cold, briefly overwhelming the heavy scent of blood.