Chapter 1

On the day of the selection, the other candidates were desperate to cinch their waists into willow twigs and powder their faces into moons.

I tucked a little packet of powdered ginger into my sleeve. When my turn came, I took a discreet sniff, and tears and snot streamed down together.

The matron in charge jumped. “Lady Wen, what’s the matter with you?”

Clapping a hand over my nose, I said weakly, “I haven’t recovered from my cold. I fear I might offend my betters.”

My name tablet was set aside. But my father had died on famine-relief duty in a frontier prefecture, and the emperor remembered his service. He gave me the rank of Selected Lady and packed me off to recuperate in a side hall of the Cold Court.

By rights, I should have been sent out of the palace. But the empress saw how sickly I looked and casually excused me from paying my respects for three months, telling me only to rest in the Cold Court.

And so I had a rank and no presence whatsoever.

The Cold Court was a fine place.

Far from the emperor, far from his consorts, and far from Fengyi Palace, where we were supposed to pay our respects.

There was just one drawback.

The Imperial Kitchens put less effort into my meals with every passing day.

On the first day, there was still a little dish of shredded chicken.

By the third, it was greens and tofu.

On the seventh, tofu and greens.

By the tenth, the tofu was gone. Only the greens remained.

My maid Xiaoman stamped her foot in fury. “My lady, you’re a Selected Lady, at least! How can they feed you this every day?”

I stuffed greens into my mouth. “It’s edible. That’s enough. Eat too well in the harem and people start taking an interest in you.”

Xiaoman looked at me as though I were a block of tofu without the slightest ambition.

She didn’t understand.

Before entering the palace, I’d traveled through famine-stricken prefectures with my father. I’d seen people crack each other’s skulls for half a bowl of porridge.

A bed in the palace, food to eat, and no need to get up early for work—that was already a considerable blessing.

During his relief work, Father worried most about people tampering with grain, medicine, and accounts. He often kept me close, trailing after him like a little tail.

The smell of damp grain stores, the signs of clashing medicinal ingredients, the pages in a ledger where fraud was easiest to hide—I learned all that then.

I couldn’t tell fortunes. I’d simply seen a great deal.

As for the emperor turning over my name tablet to summon me?

All the better if he didn’t.

I heard that Emperor Xiao Yan had reigned for six years and ruled with a cold, hard hand. His consorts were either pieces in the great clans’ games or counterweights in court politics.

Whoever he visited, he wasn’t merely there to sleep.

That was the kind of person I feared most.

His arrival meant trouble.

Fortunately, he already had two sons and several daughters. There was no danger of leaving the succession empty, and a Selected Lady like me had even less reason to push herself forward.

I didn’t want trouble.

I wanted sleep.

I disliked getting involved. But if trouble rolled right up to my feet and someone’s life was caught underneath it, I couldn’t pretend not to see.

My peaceful days lasted less than a month before Consort Xian’s weeping woke me.

She had lost the white jade pendant the empress dowager had given her.

It had belonged to the late emperor. The empress dowager had presented it to her in person as a reward for devoted care during her illness.

If Consort Xian failed to find it, she might merely lose favor—or the empress dowager might suspect her of disrespect.

Everyone in the palace was turning out boxes and cupboards. Someone was even poking bamboo poles into the abandoned well outside the Cold Court.

Robbed of my afternoon nap, I pushed the door open, hair sticking up in every direction.

“Stop poking.” I yawned. “Under the third brick on the rim.”

Several eunuchs turned to look at me with remarkably identical expressions.

They all thought I was still asleep.

Xiaoman tugged frantically at my sleeve. “My lady!”

I rubbed my eyes. “Really. There’s fresh mud around the edge of that brick. And just now, two gray sparrows flew in from the west. One landed on the rim; the other pecked at the crack.

“Jade belongs to the element of earth; white corresponds to the west. People in a hurry to hide something tend to choose somewhere neither too close nor too far away. Try digging. You’ve nothing to lose.”

The eunuchs exchanged looks.

Their leader was probably desperate enough to try anything. He waved someone over to prise up the brick.

Seven or eight minutes later, they pulled an oilpaper packet containing the white jade pendant from beneath it.

Silence fell.

So complete a silence that I heard my own stomach growl.

That evening, the senior maid from Consort Xian’s palace delivered a food box herself.

A pot of chicken soup with ham and bamboo shoots, a dish of crab-roe tofu, and a plate of scallion pancakes.

Consort Xian also rewarded me with a bolt of plain satin.

Xiaoman hugged the satin, her eyes shining with excitement.

Mine shone too, over the chicken soup.

The next day, Consort Xian discovered that the thief was a second-rank maid from her own palace.

Someone from Consort De’s household had put her up to it. The plan was to slip the pendant under Consort Xian’s pillow and “discover” it during the empress dowager’s birthday celebrations, proving that she had staged the whole affair to win favor.

Consort Xian smashed an entire tea set in her fury.

On hearing the story, I merely drained my chicken soup.

Xiaoman asked, “My lady, can you really tell fortunes?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then how did you know?”

“Fresh mud beside the brick. All the eunuchs were looking down the well. Nobody looked at their feet.”

Xiaoman was quiet for a long time. “What about the sparrows?”

“Made that up,” I said earnestly. “You have to make things sound a little mystical before anyone will agree to dig.”