Chapter 1

When I entered the palace at thirteen, all I wore in my hair was a plain silver pin.

I spent twenty years within those four red walls, rising from a maid who served tea to a senior palace attendant.

Consorts gave me pearls. The empress rewarded me with little gold ingots.

At the height of my good fortune, I even knelt to receive a string of beads bestowed by the late emperor.

Now, twenty years later, on the day I left the palace, there was still only a plain silver pin in my hair.

And thirty taels of silver in my bundle: my severance money.

The eunuch surnamed Chen kept a strict watch, afraid someone might slip palace property into their belongings.

Yet when he saw me, his fleshy cheeks rose in a smile, and he spoke with courtesy.

“Aunt Feng, have another look. Make sure you haven’t left anything valuable behind.”

I looked back into the room.

A paper kite with a broken wing hung on the wall. Nine-year-old Rongqi had damaged it when he fell. We had said we would mend it and fly it together.

A worn lantern leaned against the table. I had carried it as I ran frantically through a rainy night, searching for Rongqi, who had hidden himself away to cry.

But spring had brought so much rain. We kept saying tomorrow, tomorrow, until we never went at all.

As for the old lantern, it had a hole in it. If you weren’t careful carrying it, a gust could put it out, and you could stumble.

Rongqi no longer needed it, though.

The emperor’s bedchamber blazed with light, as bright at midnight as at noon.

I smiled, unwilling to hold up his work.

“Thank you for your concern. I’ve left nothing behind.”

As I walked out of Canglu Palace, snow began to fall, fine as willow catkins.

“You mentioned long ago that your home was in Suzhou. Will you go home now?”

I paused, then nodded.

It wasn’t true, but that little lie no longer mattered.

“Yes. Yes, I’m going back to Suzhou.”

“If you would only yield a little, Aunt Feng, His Majesty might still—”

“Take care of yourself, Eunuch Chen.”

He was a clever man and said no more. Bowing slightly, he smiled.

“And you, Aunt Feng.”

A tung-oil umbrella was placed in my hand. Chen Jing gave me a solemn bow.

“Let this umbrella see you on your way for me. Thank you for what you did that day.”

I opened it and lifted my eyes. Under the distant eaves, I caught a glimpse of black robes.

Fine snow touched my forehead, sending a little chill through me.

When I looked more closely, it wasn’t a figure at all, but a jackdaw sheltering from the snow.

The snow grew heavier.

Outside the palace walls, some people clung to their reunited families and wept. Others hurried to the posting station to find carts and horses for the journey home.

Only I stood beneath a shop’s eaves, sheltering from the snow, with no idea where to go.

The smell of wontons drifted over, and I realized I was hungry.

I bought a bowl for three copper coins. With no other customers about, the old woman at the stall smiled and struck up a conversation.

“Are you from the palace, miss?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must have seen the emperor?”

I considered it. If she meant Rongqi, I had spent twenty years beside him in Canglu Palace, day after day. I knew his likes and dislikes rather better than he did himself.

If she meant Rongqi after his accession, I had nothing to say.

Seeing my silence, the old woman guessed I wasn’t someone favored in his presence and quickly changed the subject.

“They say Her Majesty is merciful. She begged the emperor to release the palace maids so they could marry.”

I remembered Xu Wanzhen’s face. She lived up to her name: born to a great family, gentle, composed, and proper.

Even when she said something cruel, her face remained soft and kind.

She had told Rongqi that Feng Chun’er was a loyal servant who had devoted twenty years to His Majesty. Now he need only bestow something on her.

If that still seemed insufficient, he could arrange a marriage for Miss Feng. A palace guard or an imperial physician would do—respectable and splendid.

Rongqi said nothing. He merely stared at my back as I knelt on the floor.

I didn’t want it. I bowed my forehead to the ground and invented a lie.

“My home is in Suzhou. I was betrothed there as a child.”

On her phoenix throne, Xu Wanzhen looked delighted, nodding in approval.

“What a devoted pair of lovebirds! We nearly kept you apart!”

Rongqi’s expression changed. The gaze resting on the back of my neck darkened.

He was no longer nine-year-old Rongqi, so hungry he searched rat holes for food, clinging tearfully to the hem of my clothes for fear I might leave.

Once a lame man can walk, the first thing he throws away is his crutch.

The Rongqi before me had eyes still as deep water, betraying neither joy nor anger. After a long silence, he said hoarsely:

“…Very well.”

I bowed and thanked him for his grace.

A careless mouthful of wonton burned my tongue. Coming back to myself, I nodded.

“Yes. Her Majesty is kind and merciful. A very good person.”

“How wonderful. After all those years of fighting, there’ll finally be peace in the world!”

The snow eased, and I picked up my umbrella to leave.

My parents had taken the money from selling me and fled the famine with my little brother.

Traveling with the human broker, I had passed Suzhou by boat.

My homeland lay misty before my eyes in the rain. A Suzhou peddler, roaming far and wide to earn his living, had been moved by the sight to sing a local tune.

“No virtue in your former life, and you’re born in Suzhou;
At thirteen or fourteen, out you go.”

I was thirteen that year. I too had been thrown away.

So when I first entered the palace, afraid that having nobody behind me would make me easy to bully, I lied. I said my home was in Suzhou, that my parents were waiting for me, and that I wouldn’t stay in the palace all my life.

Now, with nowhere to go, I actually found myself wondering whether to buy a boat ticket to Suzhou.

As I was thinking, the sound of bargaining came from the antique shop behind me.

“This was made in the imperial workshops! How could it have come out if my aunt hadn’t left the palace? A hundred taels is a bargain!” A man with a black mole beside his mouth bellowed, “Boy, you don’t know quality when you see it!”

“The workmanship looks genuine, but we’ll have to wait for the proprietor to examine it.” The young shop assistant wiped sweat from his forehead and smiled apologetically.

The man made as if to leave. The assistant nearly cried in his distress. He said it was hard enough to earn his keep, and he dared not agree to so large a purchase. If he made a mistake, he would have to pay for it himself.

I wondered which palace aunt had been capable enough to smuggle out such a large vase under Chen Jing’s famously miserly eye.

Amused, I turned for a look at the slender gu vase.

“This wasn’t made in the imperial workshops.”

The man with the mole glared at me.

“Look at that glaze! Aren’t you afraid such a lie will cost you your teeth?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head.

“I don’t know anything about glazes. It simply doesn’t look like the ones I’ve seen.”

I had served Rongqi’s mother before she took her own life, when she was still the gloriously favored Noble Consort.

In those days, Canglu Palace had not yet become a place of banishment. Wonders from every corner of the world poured into it like the sea.

Rarities most people would never glimpse in a lifetime were so plentiful that its maids grew tired of tidying them every day.

The man rolled up his sleeves to intimidate me, then noticed a tiny seal on the tung-oil umbrella Chen Jing had given me. Knowing when to retreat, he fell silent.

“You don’t know quality! I’m not selling it!”

He left in a huff.

Before the assistant could finish thanking me, an admiring voice came from behind him.

“No wonder I thought your manner and bearing exceptional, miss. So you’re from the palace.”

I dipped in a bow to the plump, middle-aged proprietor before me.

A businessman had a sharp eye. He noticed my unbound hair, the bundle over my arm, and the umbrella leaning by the door, and guessed most of my circumstances.

Dispensing with pleasantries, he had the assistant serve tea.

It was Yulu tea. After we had drunk two cups, Proprietor Jiang laughed heartily.

“The way you spoke up just now showed me you’re a straightforward woman, so I won’t beat about the bush.

“There’s to be a selection of consorts next year. A family I work for wishes to engage a former palace attendant to teach their daughters proper conduct.

“They’ve interviewed quite a few. Some were timid, some shirked their work, and others had never seen anything of the world.

“I can promise that the family will treat you well. Would you be willing?”

With nowhere to stay, I nodded.

“But I have one condition.”