Chapter 1

Back then, my father’s career was flourishing. He was full of confidence and ambition, until an unexpected incident brought him into my mother’s bed.

Mother was the most celebrated courtesan in her brothel. Everyone said she would stoop to anything to attach herself to a powerful man. She must have drugged him; how else could she have succeeded?

His political enemies were watching, so Father had no choice but to swallow his resentment and take her as a concubine. On the night she entered his household, Madam Qin beat her black and blue and drove her into the woodshed. Mother developed a high fever that same night, but Madam Qin forbade anyone to call a doctor.

The fever lasted three days. In the end, Father feared that a death would damage his reputation and sent for a physician. Mother survived, but the fever left her mute and somewhat simple-minded.

A month later, she was found to be carrying me. Perhaps Madam Qin decided that a simpleton could no longer threaten her, for she allowed Mother out of the woodshed to rest during her pregnancy.

My elder half sister, Qin Yiyi, was only three months older than me, yet our positions could not have been further apart. She was the exalted daughter of the principal wife. I was a concubine’s lowly child.

Father considered me a disgrace and would scarcely look at me. Servants knew how to read their masters’ wishes. To please him and Madam Qin, they tormented Mother and me without respite.

We lived in the woodshed, ate slops, and wore clothes discarded even by the lowest-ranking maids.

I remember one of Qin Yiyi’s birthdays. The household had prepared every delicacy imaginable. I had not eaten in three days, and I secretly picked up half a birthday bun she had left behind. When she caught me, she overturned the table.

Madam Qin declared it an ill omen and ordered the family punishment: thirty vicious strokes with a thorn branch as thick as a child’s arm.

The branch bristled with sharp thorns. Each blow drove dozens, even hundreds, into the flesh. The pain went through you to the bone.

Mother and I had suffered this punishment many times. Each beating left us covered in wounds that took half a year, sometimes a full year, to heal.

Father looked down at me coldly. “A lowborn woman’s child is just as lowborn. Once the whipping is done, break her hand. Teach her not to covet what isn’t hers!”

At eight years old, I was beaten bloody and had a hand broken over half a birthday bun Qin Yiyi did not want. My simple-minded mother knelt outside Father’s study for a day and a night without food or water before he finally allowed a doctor to bandage it.

I lay in the woodshed for a year before my injuries healed. It was the closest I had ever come to death.

After that, I understood that I was no different from a stray dog in Father’s eyes. If I displeased him, he could have me beaten to death at any moment.

I learned to watch people’s faces, to flatter Qin Yiyi as hard as I could. I became the servant who washed her feet and the person on whom she took out her anger.

I served her without a shred of dignity. Only by keeping her happy could Mother and I occasionally eat our fill.

I endured because I knew a girl could marry once she came of age. Even if Father did not treat me as a human being, his reputation would oblige him to find me a reasonably respectable husband.

Marriage would deliver me from this misery. I bore everything for that hope.

But when Qin Yiyi came of age, an imperial decree arrived, summoning her to serve the emperor in the palace. I was to accompany her as a maid.

The news made the world spin around me. Mother pulled me down to kneel beside her outside Father’s study. We hoped he might remember I was his daughter and let me marry into an ordinary family. It was useless. We received another savage beating instead.

Father regarded me coldly. “Help Yiyi in the palace, and you and your mother may still have a comfortable life.”

With that, he swept away.

Only then did I understand. Mother and I had been allowed to stay alive in that household all these years because of my face, not because I had bowed and scraped.

I had inherited the extraordinary beauty that made Mother a celebrated courtesan. She was their leverage over me. All along, we had been playthings in their hands.