Chapter 4

The young master did not speak for three whole days. He stared at the yellow mud wall, his anguished wailing slowly fading into silent tears.

In those three days, he drank only two bowls of thin rice water.

Pa clicked his tongue and shook his head. “The boy means to die. I fear we won’t keep him alive.”

I had heard how easily a determined person could kill himself: a length of rope, a pair of shears, one hard bite of the tongue. For days, I did not dare close my eyes. I kept prodding the young master to make sure he still breathed.

“Little beggar, what are you doing?”

Starvation had weakened his voice to a thread, but he was still clever. He saw through my furtive movements immediately and smiled bleakly.

“My parents’ and siblings’ bones still lie unburied at the mass grave. They are waiting for me to lay them to rest. How could I dare die?”

He braced himself upright, shaking with pain, and actually bowed to me with folded hands.

“May I know my benefactor’s name?”

The young master had asked my name!

My heart thudded. I hurriedly brushed the dust from my clothes and stood straight.

“Me? I’m called Tofu.”

“Tofu…”

I grinned. “Pa says poor people who can’t afford chicken or fish love tofu best. Three copper coins buy a big slab, and even a woman recovering from childbirth needs it to make milk.”

Tofu was a delicacy in the slums.

Pa said I was the treasure he had found there.

On the day we buried the Cheng family, the young master finally showed a little will to live.

“Tofu, do not call me Young Master anymore,” he said. “I am the son of a condemned criminal. The title may bring trouble upon you. Call me by my name.”

“My name is Liangting.”

Pa and I blinked, then both agreed.

When we returned home, Liangting raised a hand and traced a character on the crumbling wall.

One.

As luck would have it, I knew that character.

It was the first day of Liangting’s new life.

It was also his first day learning to be a beggar.

How many beggars lived in the capital?

Three thousand seven hundred and some, according to a government notice.

Pa called that nonsense. On his journey to the capital, he had met people from Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shaanxi, Henan—refugees and beggar children from everywhere, all traveling toward the capital.

The imperial family seized the officials’ land. The officials seized the landlords’ land. Tenant farmers could pay neither rent nor government levies. Rather than be conscripted, ordinary people fled.

All the refugees under heaven dreamed of reaching the splendid capital and begging for a mouthful beneath the emperor’s own feet.

The moon hung high above the branches. Liangting stared blankly at the beggars sleeping all across the ground.

They wore open jackets and no shoes. Some held nursing infants. Most were skin and bone and covered in wounds. The few who were strong looked numb and vacant.

Afraid he would be frightened, I tugged him down beside me.

“The master of this house gives out porridge on the fifth and sixteenth of every month. His family uses plenty of rice, so it’s thick.”

“But there are only two big pots. If we’re late, there won’t be any left.”

Waiting for dawn had never felt so long.

Liangting was silent all night. He leaned against the stone steps before the mansion and gazed up at the stars.

I knew he was thinking of his parents.

“Tofu, can you read?” he asked. “You’re bright and quick. You could wait tables in a restaurant or serve as a maid in a household with daughters. How did you become a beggar?”

His praise made my face hot. I scratched my ear.

“You’re teasing me, Young Master. I don’t know a single character, and I’m registered as a lowborn. What could I do? Maids in rich houses are clean and respectable. They know how to arrange hair and make sweets. Waiters have clever tongues and can rattle off a whole string of lucky blessings.”

“Pa says lowborn people without fields or money can only beg. We need friends around us so no one bullies us. Girls especially can’t leave home. There are bad people everywhere who might sell us to brothels.”

“I’ve been waiting to turn fourteen so I could work at Tianxiang House. They only hired waiters over fourteen. I was two months away.”

Liangting closed his eyes and weakly clasped my hand.

“It will get better. You are kind by nature, a good girl. It will not always be this hard.”

Strange—he was a year younger than I, yet every word he spoke carried a scholar’s dignity.

When the porridge shed opened at dawn, dozens of beggars surged forward. The wealthy donor and his family were startled. They wondered aloud why the number of refugees had grown so much in the past two years.

The bowls were scalding. Liangting could barely hold his. He copied the others, gulping the porridge down and enduring the burn.

That winter was bitterly cold. The pain from his broken wrist nearly took half his life. After the first snow, a savage fever seized him.

I emptied the last half-tael of silver from beneath our bed and carried him to the physician at Benevolent Heart Clinic. The man only told me to prepare a coffin. The wound had festered and poisoned his blood. Saving him required two rare medicines costing twenty taels.

I collapsed into the snow, feeling as though heaven and earth had both barred their doors.

Liangting lay across my back and somehow still managed a laugh.

“Tofu, saving me truly was a ruinous bargain. When I die, bury me on that hill beside my family.”

“Once I am below, I will ask the gods to reward you and Uncle, and pray that you soon become rich.”

I shook with rage. Reaching behind me, I slapped him wildly across the face and cursed him for the first time.

“Die, die, die! You think only of how to die, never of how to live!”

“Look at this street. Who here hasn’t suffered more than you? There are so many wretched people in this world—do they all spend every day trying to kill themselves? Beggars, performers, night-soil carriers—which one doesn’t grit their teeth, swallow their tears, and keep living?”

“They say one meal must be repaid with a gushing spring. I ate more than a thousand meals from your family. I’m a year older than you too. If you don’t despise me, call me Elder Sister.”

“No matter how bitter or difficult it gets, your sister will save your hand.”

His hot tears soaked my neck, but Liangting did not call me sister.

I turned to look.

He had already lost consciousness from the fever.