Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The struggle between the Empress and the Imperial Consort had moved out of the shadows and into the open. Even in the West Third Institute, we could smell the bloody tang of a storm about to break.

Business suddenly came knocking far more often, and every request was more dangerous than the last.

Some wanted to learn the true state of the emperor’s illness. Some wanted to find out who was pulling the strings behind a certain imperial physician.

There were even people who asked, in roundabout ways, whether we could obtain medicine that would make someone sleep without waking, or leave them weak and powerless.

We refused them all.

At a time like this, getting involved in anything could mean being ground to dust.

We accepted only one commission that seemed peripheral.

A second-rank palace maid from the Imperial Consort’s Palace wanted to find a way to send her savings from all these years, along with a thick family letter, out of the palace and into the hands of her critically ill mother.

The price was half her savings, plus secret reports of any unusual movements inside the Imperial Consort’s Palace over the next three months.

It was a dangerous signal.

It meant that even within the Imperial Consort’s core sphere of influence, people had begun looking for a way out.

Through an absolutely secure channel, we anonymously passed this information to a senior palace matron on the Empress’s side, one with whom we had completed several satisfactory transactions before.

This was not out of loyalty to the Empress, but to maintain a dangerous balance.

We had to ensure that no matter which side won in the end, the thread we had hidden in the shadows would not be so easily severed.

At the same time, it was also a way to show our value to whoever might become our new master in the future.

On the night the emperor died, the funeral bells rang through the palace city.

One toll after another, heavy as lead, striking every heart.

We stood in the courtyard, listening to the long, drawn-out peals and watching the flock of crows startled up from the distant palace eaves.

Attendant Li pulled her worn cotton coat tighter around herself and asked softly, “When the new emperor ascends the throne, will there be a general amnesty?”

Consort Zhao looked up at the gray sky beyond the high walls and shook her head.

“Even if there is a general amnesty, it will not reach the ‘dead’ of the cold palace.”

I said nothing.

I was thinking of the things we had hidden inside the well wall.

Not only banknotes, but also several travel permits and household registries under different identities, obtained one after another from the old eunuch who managed household records, bought with heavy bribes and leverage.

The most precious one belonged to a palace maid who had died of illness many years ago, and who had been somewhat similar to me in age and appearance.

Her registered home was in a distant water town south of the Yangtze.

It was time.

The chaos of the old giving way to the new was our only and best cover.

If we waited any longer, once the new emperor secured his throne, the palace factions would reshuffle, and when the thorough investigations and purges began, we might not be able to stay hidden.

I began arranging our final exit.

The first step was to have one person reasonably disappear from the West Third Institute.

We chose Attendant Li.

She was a little older, and in her early years, she had developed a lingering root of a cough illness.

Consort Zhao carefully prepared a prescription. After taking it, a person would, within several days, show symptoms resembling the late stages of consumption: high fever, coughing blood, flushed cheeks, and a floating, rapid pulse.

In a cold palace where medical care was scarce, that illness was almost synonymous with a death sentence.

After Attendant Li took the medicine, she soon fell ill, and her condition worsened by the day.

I had Old Mo go report it, his words earnest and threaded with fear.

He said he was afraid it was a virulent disease, one that might spread to others.

Those above were already overwhelmed by the late emperor’s funeral rites and the transfer of power, so they sent only a young imperial physician.

From a distance, he glanced at the patient’s wax-yellow face and the blood on her handkerchief, then covered his nose and hurriedly gave the order.

“In that case, move her to the abandoned courtyard in the north for isolation. Let Heaven decide her fate.

“As for her belongings, burn them all!”

The abandoned northern courtyard was even more desolate than the West Third Institute.

It was where gravely ill palace servants on the verge of death were placed, and the guards there were only guards in name.

Old Mo and two rough-work old maids rolled the dying Attendant Li away in a tattered mat.

Hidden beneath the mat were the private savings she had accumulated over the years, a half-worn set of palace maid’s clothing, and the identity papers that belonged to her new self.

A few days later, Old Mo brought back the news: the person in the northern courtyard was gone.

We showed an appropriate amount of grief and fear.