Chapter 2

Yang Wentong had not come alone. He had brought several servants, men and women.

Basin after basin of hot water was carried in. At last the maids scrubbed me into something human again. I had never felt so light. The clean face in the bronze mirror was one I hardly dared recognize.

A woman called Matron Tian exclaimed happily, “That face! The very image of my lady in her youth. There’s no mistake. There simply can’t be.”

With that unmistakable face, I climbed into a carriage and went back to the capital with them.

As we passed Beggars’ Alley, a grimy little face came running up. The child clung to the carriage and called, “Kind sir! Please, kind sir, give me something to eat!”

I lifted the curtain. She looked seven or eight, but I knew better. Thin as she was, a child who had grown that big among beggars had to be at least ten.

A servant tossed a steamed bun into her bowl. As I watched her wolf it down, I said to Yang Wentong, “I want to take her to the capital with me.”

I was still not used to calling him my brother. It was the first thing I had asked for in these past few days. Delighted, he had the little beggar washed and brought to my carriage.

Inside, everything was clean and fragrant. She knelt and knocked her forehead against the floor, again and again. “Thank you, miss. I’ll work myself to the bone to repay you. I’m ten, but I’m so lowly I don’t even have a name. Please give me one, miss.”

Most little beggars had no names. Neither had I. Lainiang only meant I was a little rogue.

“What do you like eating best?” I asked.

She swallowed. “Meatballs. I love meatballs best. Last New Year, I snatched half of one from a slop bucket. It tasted so good I nearly swallowed my tongue.”

I smiled. “All right. From now on, you’re Meatball. And you shall have meatballs three times a day.”

As the carriage passed through the city gate, Meatball lifted the curtain to look out. There was a little reluctance in her eyes, and a little fear. At last she could not help asking, “Miss, why did you bring me?”

I stroked her head reassuringly. “Because you’re clever.”

A little beggar raised on other people’s handouts learned to say whatever each person wanted to hear. She had seen that the Yang family’s carriage belonged to people kind enough to stop. As soon as she climbed in, she knew to speak as a servant. More important, she had reached the age of ten and was still a little beggar.

There were very few female beggars in Huai City. Wherever a woman went, someone wanted a bite of her.

When I was seven, someone had taken me to the back door of a brothel and held out a bowl of braised pork. “Be good. Go through this door, and you’ll have all the meat you can eat.”

My belly was empty, and the smell of meat made everything inside me churn. I lifted a foot to step inside.

But for once, Heaven was kind to me. A body was carried through that door, covered in wounds, without a patch of unmarked skin.

I knew her. She was one of the brothel’s ordinary prostitutes. Once, when she was in a good mood, she had given me a piece of flatbread.

I turned and ran. After that, I never even dared pass the brothel’s back door.

Little Meatball was still among the beggars. Still alive. Then she had to be a hardhearted little thing, like me.

Yang Wentong was too good. If everyone in his family was that good, I needed someone of my own kind with me, so I would not feel quite so afraid.