Chapter 1

The chief eunuch sent word that Noble Consort Zheng was pestering the emperor in the imperial study, insisting that he take her on his southern tour.

I put down my account book and raised my eyes. “Does she think the southern tour is a pleasure trip?”

The young eunuch took his cue from me. “Someone born among the common folk could hardly compare with Your Majesty, whose every thought is for the disaster victims.”

I asked Aunt Jiayi to massage the back of my head. Lately, Zheng Xinyu had been giving me terrible headaches.

She was remarkable, I would grant her that. Two years earlier, amid the strange portents of seven stars aligning, she had appeared out of thin air at a rain-praying ceremony. Days of rain followed, stretching into weeks. The people immediately hailed her as a holy maiden, and the emperor made her a consort.

In two short years, she had borne a son and a daughter. Without power or connections, she had clawed her way up to the rank of noble consort.

Now, with her son only just born and unable to speak, she was already plotting to take the crown prince’s position from my son Qi Ju, the eldest son born to the empress.

The emperor had even lost his senses long enough to ask me, in a roundabout way, whether I might prefer Ju to become an idle prince someday.

I was furious and deeply hurt. To preserve the emperor’s dignity, I complained only to Jiayi, in private.

“I was born the legitimate daughter of the Duke Who Upholds the State, a nobleman of the first rank. I entered the palace as crown princess. When His Majesty ascended the throne, I became mistress of the inner palace. Why should my son bow to anyone else?”

Had Ju been less able or less virtuous than the other princes, that would have been another matter. But to make him yield to a babe in swaddling clothes merely to indulge a favored concubine—I could never accept it.

“His Majesty must understand that too. He only asked in passing; he has done nothing rash. Please do not let it hurt you, Your Majesty.”

Jiayi comforted me. She had come with me from my father’s household as part of my bridal retinue, and all these years she had always known how to care for me.

There was something else Zheng Xinyu had done to anger me.

Flooding had struck six prefectures in Jiangnan that year. The autumn harvest was bound to be poor. Months before, I had ordered the inner palace to cut its spending so we could save money for relief after the harvest.

Yet when I examined the accounts, I found that her residence alone was still spending extravagantly. She had ignored every word I said.

The inner palace was full of beauties, each competing to outshine the next. Why did the emperor favor such an unhinged woman?

I could not understand it. Before Zheng Xinyu, even Consort Xu—my close friend since girlhood, accomplished in both letters and martial skills, with beauty enough to topple a kingdom—had never enjoyed such favor.

I had teased Consort Xu about it. How had the legitimate daughter of the General Who Guards the State, who came first among the women in the autumn hunt’s horse race every year, been bested by a stray girl who could not even read through the Four Books and Five Classics?

Consort Xu poured my tea herself. She had always been forthright and refused to suffer in silence. “Your Majesty is more exalted than I am. Yet in the end, aren’t you reduced to passing your idle hours here with me?”

“Xu Susu!” In private, I loved to call her by her girlhood name. “Beg my pardon this instant, or I shall slap you myself!”

“Yes, yes. This lowly consort admits her fault, Your Majesty.”

I had been sickly as a child, while Xu Susu was strong and healthy, equally at home with books and weapons. Whenever the noble boys and girls gathered to play, she had always looked after me. Our friendship had grown deep over nearly twenty years.

But though Xu Susu was willing to indulge me, the emperor was not.

He seemed unable to see my hurt. Instead, he kept telling me that Noble Consort Zheng was a stranger here, without friends or family, and that I should take more care of her and put her at ease.

Sometimes I could not help retorting, “If she is a holy maiden, why should she need a mere mortal like me to look after her?”

Then Zheng Xinyu would shed pitiful tears. She would say that Her Majesty had already been very kind, while making every effort to look as though I had bullied her.

I did not understand. Why did she do it? I had never bullied her. The thought had never crossed my mind.

When I lived at home, my mother had managed the entire household as its principal wife, and she had never mistreated Father’s concubines.

She taught me that we were unlike ordinary families. Every marriage involved countless ties of interest, power, and affection. To become a public laughingstock over petty jealousy was beneath us.

So from my days as crown princess in the Eastern Palace, I had treated the crown prince’s lesser consorts generously. After becoming empress, I remained fair to them all. I had never thought of grinding anyone beneath my heel.

I was already empress of the realm. Why should I compete with those pretty songbirds for a moment’s satisfaction?

At first, then, I paid little attention to Zheng Xinyu’s peculiar behavior.

An innocent person had nothing to prove. I could scarcely be bothered to explain myself. How could I have known that my neglect would allow such a calamity to grow?