Chapter 1

The Tianxiang House was raided on the Mid-Autumn Festival. At the time, I had just fished two steamed buns out of a swill barrel in the back alley.

The waiter emptying the slops spotted me and called with a smile, “Tofu, back again? You’ve come at the right time today. Here—a clay pot chicken just cleared from a table, and there’s rice left too. Soak it in the broth and it’ll be perfect.”

I grinned and bundled most of the chicken into my handkerchief.

Tianxiang House was the finest restaurant in the capital. Its private rooms were reserved for princes and nobles; even the sons of rich families often had to sit in the main hall.

They said such people had enchanted tongues. A dish cooked a moment too long? Throw it out. A fish left more than fifteen minutes between leaving the water and being gutted? Not fresh enough—throw it out. Three grains of salt too many? Out it went.

Every beggar for several streets around knew when Tianxiang House emptied its swill.

So did I.

The old beggar who raised me said I had been smaller than a duck when he found me. He kept me alive on bowl after bowl of rice water begged from Tianxiang House.

That was why I called him Pa.

Every day, Pa and I stood hand in hand outside the restaurant, our mouths watering. Inside, Tianxiang House was warm and bright and fragrant. It felt almost like a mother to me.

The restaurant had fed me mouthful by mouthful as I grew. Whenever I was starving or freezing, whenever city bailiffs chased me through the streets, I would run back to its doors and feel as though I had come home.

Then came that Mid-Autumn Festival, a day when every family should have been reunited.

Tianxiang House was seized.

More than a hundred armed guards surrounded the building. The proprietor, the cooks, the waiters—even every diner in the hall—were bound and dragged away.

One kitchen boy cried that he was innocent. His head hit the ground before the echo faded.

Terrified out of my wits, I curled beneath the swill cart and trembled.

When the soldiers finally left, I stumbled home and burst into wails the moment I saw Pa.

“Pa! They arrested the proprietor! They cut a waiter down with one stroke! The officers said they were hunting an assassin inside the restaurant!”

Pa had seen much of the world. He told me to stop howling and went out to ask what had happened.

Within half a day, rumors had swept across the capital.

At a palace banquet, the emperor’s elderly mother had greedily taken a bite of sticky rice cake and choked. Before the imperial physicians could reach the Hall of Supreme Harmony, she was dead.

I had tasted those cakes before. They were big, round, and wonderfully chewy, yet never stuck to the bowl or teeth. A layer of toasted sesame covered each one. No words could describe how good they smelled when bitten into. Tianxiang House had supplied them to the palace for years as a first-class imperial pastry.

Yet that lump of glutinous rice had choked the old lady to death ten days before her seventieth birthday banquet.

The emperor coughed up blood three times and went mad on the spot. He did not even issue a written edict; a single verbal command sent dozens of people to prison.

After a night of torture, every one of them was hauled to the marketplace and beheaded.

Of that great restaurant, only its young master remained. He had been studying at the Imperial Academy and learned the news too late. Alone, he ran to the capital prefecture and beat the drum of grievance.

A commoner who accused an official received thirty strokes.

A commoner who accused the Son of Heaven deserved death.

That day, every teacher at the Imperial Academy brought his students to kneel outside the prefecture. They knocked their heads against the ground and begged for mercy. Only then was the young master’s life spared.