Chapter 2

I was reborn with the memory of my wrongful death.

My new name was Ah Ci. I was born in a remote fishing village hundreds of miles from the capital.

In this life, I had parents.

Mother could make every kind of delicious fish ball. Whenever Father returned from sea, he saved the plumpest fish, laid them in hot oil, and filled our ramshackle hut with their fragrant crackle.

Back then, I remained trapped in the hatred of my former life.

Even at five, I rarely spoke.

Travel permits were checked with brutal strictness throughout the Kingdom of Zhao. To a poor family, a journey of a thousand miles was a gulf they could never cross.

Even the most respected schoolmaster in our village had only left for the county seat twice to sit the examinations. What chance did a little girl like me have? My enemies might grow old in splendor somewhere beyond my reach. Every time I thought of it, fury drove me to eat two whole fish.

But my parents were good to me. They truly loved me.

When village children threw stones and called me an idiot, Mother chased them for miles with a rolling pin, then planted her hands on her hips and bellowed at their mothers in the village square.

Whenever Father came home, he copied the comic actors from the village opera, pulling faces and pinching his fingers into an orchid gesture to make me laugh. He carried me on his shoulders everywhere and boasted to everyone we met.

“Old Li, look at my daughter. Isn’t she pretty?”

They named me Jiang Ci.

They spent several precious coins to ask the schoolmaster for that name.

I still remember Father’s delight. He scratched his head and grinned.

“Porcelain is the most precious kind of treasure. Good. It’s perfect for my daughter.”

I truly did try to accept my new life.

On my ninth birthday, Father hid a new hair ribbon beneath my pillow with trembling hands. Mother had worked for weeks on a new dress, its stitches tiny and dense, some stained with blood from the needle pricks she suffered while sewing late into the night.

I kept my eyes closed and pretended to sleep.

After they left, I curled beneath the blankets and stared at the beams of our little house.

I had to admit that the heart suspended in my chest had slowly returned to its proper place. It was too young and tender to carry the loves and hatreds of another lifetime. Perhaps Heaven thought I had suffered enough and had given me a new life so my soul would no longer wander.

The next morning, I combed my own hair and sat at the table.

“Father. Mother.”

Heavens.

My voice was so soft it seemed made of water. How long had it been since I had spoken so sweetly?

I imagined warm palms against my forehead, affectionate praise, smoke curling from the stove, and a cheerful breakfast together.

None of it happened.

My parents were dead.

They lay on the other side of the wall, hacked to death. To keep their killers from discovering their daughter in the next room, they had not even cried out for help.

The only strangers who had visited the village recently were a band of pearl merchants.

They had left before dawn.

The villagers pitied me and offered to bury my parents, but while they discussed the funeral, I disappeared. I had already returned home, tied my few belongings into a bundle, and hidden behind an ox cart traveling to the county seat to report the murders.

At first, the magistrate treated the case seriously. After he summoned the merchants, however, the investigation quietly ended.

They worked for the Xie household.

Princess Zhaohua was aging and feared that fading beauty would cost her husband’s affection. Xie Zheng, though already in his thirties, had only grown more distinguished, and admirers still swarmed him. Zhaohua therefore trusted an old beauty prescription. Twice a day, she drank and applied crushed pearl powder.

It took me a long time to find the merchants at the largest inn in the neighboring county.

They had rented the entire common room and were drinking themselves senseless. Eventually, they began bragging about my parents.

“Two stubborn old fools. Said the harvest was small and they wanted to keep the pearls. Bah! The princess wanted them. How dared they refuse?”

The pearls were what they had killed for.

Every year, Father saved a few to make into my future dowry.

After murdering my parents, the merchants found a large box in Mother’s wardrobe. It was full and heavy with lustrous, high-quality pearls. They could pocket an enormous sum, so naturally they were delighted.

I slipped into the kitchen.

I mixed one thing after another into their wine. It became smoother, but far more potent, and soon they collapsed across the tables.

Expressionless, I changed the incense burning in the inn.

For a long time, I stared at the axes hanging from their belts. I wanted to seize one and hack them apart, blow by blow, to make them suffer a thousand times what my parents had endured. But I did not dare. I could not erase every trace, and I was still too weak.

It was not the first time I had killed.

But it was the first time I had wept. I sobbed until my body curled into the crack between the door and wall, until there seemed to be no water left inside me.

By the time I left the county, word had spread that several men had drunk themselves to death. Government runners went door to door reading a new prohibition against alcohol.

I never returned to the fishing village.

The scent of home was gone.

I had understood too late that one should enjoy the wind before the clear day passed. Fate had withdrawn its momentary mercy. Perhaps I had been born only to tear the Xie household apart.

At first, I did not know how to begin.

I drifted among beggars and followed the hungry crowds pressing toward the capital.

Then, in a village outside the city, I saw several children with straw tags in their hair. Their families could no longer keep them alive, so their mothers had come to sell a piece of their own flesh. Du San, a steward from the Xie estate, moved among them, selecting girls.

One mother hugged her daughter and wept, bowing again and again as she thanked the buyer for his mercy.

Her daughter was still innocent enough to smile.

“If you sell me, my little brother won’t starve. Mother, I’ll save every coin of my wages. In a few years, I’ll come home and the four of us will live well.”

I do not know what came over me at that moment.

I stood frozen, watching the women cry and laugh, then laugh and cry. Du San showed them a rare kindness. He allowed them to go home, gather their things, wash the children, and bring them back the next morning to be taken to the Xie estate.

I followed that mother and daughter for a long time.

After listening to them cry and laugh until their voices went hoarse, I finally stepped in front of them. I wiped the dirt from my face and opened my palm. A round pearl lay there, glowing with milky light.

“Don’t cry,” I said, my voice rough. “Take the pearl and give them me instead.”