Chapter 2

Chapter 2

If I didn’t want to be a beggar, how was I supposed to survive?

I knew the answer.

In Tonghua Alley in the north of the city, child snatchers were always lurking around. If a child from any household was left without an adult watching over them, those people would carry them off.

But if the child snatchers caught you, you would either be sold to a brothel or maimed and mutilated to be used for begging.

Neither was a good place to end up.

After thinking it over again and again, I went to the broker house in the east of the city.

Wealthy families often came here to take concubines or buy and sell maidservants, and human traffickers gathered in droves.

But after all, even becoming a little fire-tending maid in a rich household required a clean family background. Why would those old broker women ever look twice at me?

I waited from sunrise until dusk, yet no one asked about me.

Not until the moon hung high in the sky did an old woman suddenly wail, “Of all days to run away, why did she have to choose today?”

“The number of people on the registry has already been fixed. Now that we’re short one, how am I supposed to explain this?”

From the sound of it, a girl who had been meant to be sold into a household had run away.

I hurried over. “Madam, would I do?”

The old woman’s assessing gaze fell on me, and I was both uneasy and nervous.

Before coming here, I had deliberately gone to the moat to wash myself. I had also scrubbed clean the face I usually smeared with soot.

Right now, I should have looked like a fair, clean little girl too, shouldn’t I?

But her eyes landed on my split straw sandals and my ragged clothes, and she shook her head. “No.”

“I don’t want any silver!”

“Still no.”

“Who would take a beggar?”

I lowered my head, a little dejected.

Then I heard someone lean close to the old woman and say by her ear, “What’s wrong with a beggar? No father, no mother-easy to control. If she fills that empty spot, no one will know. Besides, wouldn’t the money from selling her be…”

The old woman gradually grew tempted. After the two of them discussed it for a while, they stuffed me into a carriage.

“From now on, you’ll be called Qiuguo.”

Qiuguo. Qiuguo.

Autumn fruit. The name sounded so complete and sweet.

Before, everyone had called me little beggar. Now, at last, I had a name.

The carriage rocked and swayed, but it did not travel for long before it stopped.

The girls with me all came from poor families and had never ridden in a carriage. Once they got down, they gathered in little groups and vomited everywhere.

My stomach was empty, so there was nothing for me to throw up. Dizzy and light-headed, I raised my head and saw, to my shock, a towering palace gate.

We were actually being sold into the palace.

Before we could react, the palace gate had already opened, and an old matron with a cold, hard face stepped out from inside.

The broker woman fawned as she handed the registry to her. “Fifteen in total. Please count them, Matron.”

The matron did not spare her even the slightest glance. Her cold, sharp eyes swept over each of us in turn while she marked the registry in her hand.

The instant the seal was stamped, the broker woman’s heart finally settled back into place.

“Hurry up and follow Matron!”

“Let me tell you, once you’re in this palace, you’d better be careful. If you offend a master and lose your little lives, no one will be able to save you!”

The broker woman’s shrill voice echoed by my ears.

In the final moment before the palace gate closed, I saw the red sun just rising at the edge of the sky.

It looked like the duck egg yolk at Drunken Fragrance Pavilion, the one that had rolled and rolled until it stopped by my foot.

I smacked my lips, savoring the memory for a moment, then turned and stepped onto that long palace road.

From a beggar despised by all, I had become a palace maid in the towering imperial palace.

That year, I was nine years old.