Chapter 3
I woke in the false-smiling consort’s residence.
She said my own palace was not yet ready, so I would stay with her for now.
I knew about her. Jinshu had said she had honey on her lips and a dagger in her heart, and used that clever tongue to charm the emperor senseless every day.
Sure enough, she came to coax me:
“Poor little thing. Have you paid your respects to your late mother since coming here?”
“No.”
I really hadn’t. I’d only played with mud for a while in front of Eunuch Wang. He’d even given me something to wipe my hands with!
“Ah, your mother was trapped in that fire and burned alive to charcoal. It was truly dreadful. Your father was heartbroken, too, though. He ate no meat for a full month in mourning.”
Oh. Perhaps seeing a charred corpse had put him off meat.
Jinshu had taken me to see people who had burned to death: blackened all over, their limbs twisted and curled into a ball.
If the emperor had only one mouthful of rice per meal like me, I reckoned he could eat anything.
Seeing no reaction from me, Consort Zhen tried again. “Was life among the common people hard? Did you ever resent your father for not finding you sooner?”
“It wasn’t hard. Missing my daddy was harder. Everyone else had a mother and father. I didn’t, and people often bullied me…
“I used to dream that my daddy came to see me. Today, when I met Father, I realized the man in my dreams was him!”
Consort Zhen’s face went green again.
She thought I hadn’t noticed the shadow outside. Even if I hadn’t seen it, I could smell the ambergris incense.
When I was little, getting that scent wrong once meant ten strokes of the paddle!
Sure enough, the next moment the emperor rushed in, eyes shining. He stroked my head. “You have suffered so much, my Nian’en!”
“Daddy, the hard times before don’t count. Now your daughter has happiness at last!”
Father and daughter clung to each other and wept.
After that bout of crying, the number of households supporting me doubled.
What a windfall.
Consort Zhen was evidently less pleased. The next day, she invited me to return to my own palace.
A derelict old residence, falling to pieces.
But that was all right. After one visit, Eunuch Wang sent over eight palace maids and eight eunuchs, and they soon put it in order.
An old matron arrived with them.
Once we were away from the others, she solemnly knelt and touched her forehead to the ground before me.
I knelt and bowed to her in turn, thanking her for protecting my sibling through all those years in the palace.
A year after entering the palace, Empress Wang had borne a son, the emperor’s eldest.
To trick General Wang into returning to the capital from Liangzhou, the emperor had even made the boy crown prince.
Unfortunately, the Wang family had later been slaughtered, and the crown prince had become a simpleton. He now lived in the Cold Palace.
“Matron Qin, how many of you are left here?”
Matron Qin lifted her chin proudly. “Ten remain. The palace has been purged many times over the years. Some died, some were crippled, but not one betrayed our master. You may rest assured, young mistress.”
For no reason I could name, I wanted to cry. I hugged Matron Qin’s plump body and thought of Jinshu again.
They had endured inside these palace walls, never knowing what tomorrow would bring, while Jinshu kept her lonely vigil outside.
For that alone, I could not let them down.
Right. I decided I would eat twice as much today.
A frail, slender girl might inspire pity, but fists as big as sandbags ought to work just as well.
Besides, Jinshu wasn’t here.
I gazed at the palace’s red walls and green tiles, a little lost.
Jinshu had always said I was so heedless you could drive a horse through the gaps in my wits. She was forever worrying whether I could survive once I entered the palace.
Now I was here, and I had survived. She, instead, was dead.
The world was so unpredictable. It really did spoil one’s appetite.