chapter 1
Three new women arrived at the army brothel, and the overseer told me to wash and dress them.
Clean, untouched newcomers had to be presented to the General first.
Just as the three of us had been more than half a year ago.
Of that batch—me, Yingzhi, and Andai—only Yingzhi caught the General’s eye.
Once he chose you, you served him alone. If he did not, you belonged to the endless stream of men passing through the camp.
The three newcomers clearly knew the rules. The prettiest slipped five copper coins into my palm and whispered, “Please don’t think it too little, Sister. If the General chooses me, I’ll make it up to you with a gold ingot. Can you tell me what he likes?”
Every woman brought there was pitiful. Those five coins were all she had, and she stared at me as if I were her last hope.
I took a red sachet from inside my robe, tied it around her waist, and murmured, “The General favors red. This may help you.”
She went away delighted, only to be drugged and carried into his tent.
The General chose none of them. Those he rejected were condemned, like me, to become common camp prostitutes.
Every one of us had been a virgin before taking our first soldier. None of us wanted this life. The first time, they drugged us unconscious. By the time we woke, it was already too late.
Some tried to die. Most decided that even a wretched life was better than death.
The girl named Xiaochun did not try to kill herself. Tears slipped down her face as she told me, “Sister Dani, I won’t be able to give you that gold ingot after all.”
She did not know I was the one who had cost her that chance. The General did not like red. He hated it, because it was the color of blood.
I could not let him choose her. If he did, Yingzhi would be thrown back into our tent.
More than half a year earlier, the three of us had been transported to the camp together.
My looks were too ordinary for a brothel. Once a military prostitute entered the registry, redeeming her was almost impossible, but the army paid nearly as much as a pleasure house even for a plain girl. So my father sold me there.
Andai was a captured subject of the enemy realm. Female prisoners from either side had always suffered the same fate in the other’s hands. The soldiers did not treat her as human. Whenever the war went badly, they used her as an outlet for their rage.
Yingzhi alone had come from a wealthy household. The old matriarch had prized her as a senior maid. She once wore gold and silver and had nearly become the young master’s concubine.
But she failed at the final step. The new mistress would not even grant her the dignity of leaving the estate. She sold Yingzhi here instead.
On the first day we met, Yingzhi spent the last of her money buying a large piece of meat from the guards. Dividing it among us, she said, “Meeting at all is a kind of fate. Let’s look after each other. As long as we stay alive, there may still be a future.”
Not only had she survived, she became the General’s woman on our very first night. By then, she had remained at his side longer than anyone before her.
Every other woman had been discarded into the common tents within three months. Eight months had passed, and Yingzhi still lived in the General’s tent.
She had helped us enormously.
After eight months, Andai had been tormented until only a breath of life remained. Even that breath was sustained by the meat and medicine Yingzhi sent.
I could not put my feelings toward Andai into words. Without her country, perhaps there would have been no army brothel, and my father might only have sold me cheaply as a kitchen maid in some rich household.
But when I met her, she was only a girl, younger and thinner than I was. I could not harden my heart and watch her die.
Everyone has those they hold closer than others. In that place, Yingzhi and Andai were mine.
So when Yingzhi came asking for help that day, I did as she asked. I gave Xiaochun the red sachet.
In return, I received a pill Yingzhi had gone through endless trouble to obtain.
Every ten days, women in the army brothel had to drink a contraceptive brew. Yingzhi said that after taking this pill, the brew would stop working.
Military prostitutes were forbidden to become pregnant. But if a woman conceived despite taking the medicine, it was deemed an act of Heaven’s mercy and the pregnancy could not be ended. If a soldier claimed the child, she would be struck from the registry and sent to his home village as his wife, there to give birth.
Unless their parents were as utterly heartless as mine, or their families had committed a grave crime, or they were prisoners of war, ordinary women were hard to obtain for this trade. That scarcity also meant release was rare. Even money could seldom buy freedom.
Yet rumor had it that three years before, one military prostitute had escaped precisely because she became pregnant.
Yingzhi gripped my hands, trembling with excitement. “Of the three of us, at least one must leave this hell. When the time comes, I’ll give you all the money I’ve saved. Go somewhere no one knows you, buy a house and fields, raise a plump little baby, and live an ordinary life for Andai and me as well.”
Three months later, the army physician took my pulse again and again before finally saying, “Yang Dani, congratulations. You are with child.”
We were in the infirmary when he said it. In an instant, every wounded soldier lying inside erupted.
“A baby? Which bed are you from, whore? Maybe I’ve slept with you. Could be mine.”
“Looks like Number Six to me. I was with her last month. It’s got to be mine.”
“Dani, it’s me, Old Liu. I visit you all the time. Give the child my name.”
No one thought the baby unclean.
That was the army. A man could be whole today and missing an arm or leg tomorrow—or lying cold as a corpse.
Those with children at home did not care as much. But plenty of soldiers had joined the army childless. If they died on the battlefield, it comforted them to think someone bearing their surname might burn paper offerings for them during the festivals.
For my first month there, I hated every last one of them. I hated them enough to want to poison the entire camp with rat poison. Yet as I went on hating them, some vanished forever without me doing a thing.
The fortunate ended in a pit behind the hill. The unlucky left no one who even knew where their bodies lay.
Little by little, numbness replaced hatred. I no longer knew whom to blame.
The next day, even more men came looking for me. The overseer set aside a separate tent for me. At least a dozen people waited outside, carrying vegetables, fish, even a pig’s head.
Every greedy gaze was fixed on my belly.
Only one soldier came empty-handed. His name was Chen Shitou. He waited until the others had left, then dropped to his knees and kowtowed.
“Miss Yang, I’m about to go into battle with the vanguard. My parents have no child but me. I need to leave them something to remember me by. Please—give this child to me.
“I came with empty hands because I don’t want to waste money. I want to leave every coin I have to you and the baby, along with my death benefit.”
I remembered him. He was the only man who had ever climbed into my bed without sleeping with me.
That had been two months earlier, when he was chosen for the vanguard unit.
The vanguard fought in the first rank. The veterans said that if two men out of ten returned alive, it counted as a great victory. They received the finest food, the strongest liquor, and the largest death benefits—but they also fought closest to death.
Chen Shitou stumbled in drunk that night and held me, touching me over and over. Then he broke down sobbing.
“I’m only seventeen. I’ve never had a wife. I don’t even know what a woman is like.”
My heart softened. I held him and soothed him. “Don’t cry. Tonight, you’ll find out.”
He looked at me, his face reddening with embarrassment. “Miss, I’m sorry. I touched you because I was too curious. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything else. If I did, my parents would thrash me. Go to sleep. I’ll leave once you’re asleep.”
His parents had raised him so well that I never saw him a second time in the army brothel.