“What am I going to do?” Jinshi gazed mournfully at the paper. “What do you wish to do?” his taciturn aide asked, likewise
looking at the document. The situation was enough to make any man despair. “This is a list of names,” Gaoshun observed.
“Fengming’s family, and their known associates.”
Fengming was already dead, and her clan and family relations would be spared total annihilation, but her relatives were to be
subject to the confiscation of all their assets and would each be punished with mutilation, though to varying degrees of severity.
Jinshi could be grateful, at least, that there had been no sign of any instructions from Consort Ah-Duo. Fengming was to be
held to have acted alone.
Among the associates were a number of clients who engaged her family’s services. Jinshi had always taken the clan to be simple apiarists, but they seemed to have their hands in quite a few
cookie jars.
“Eighty of their girls serve at the rear palace,” Gaoshun remarked.
“Eighty out of two thousand. A respectable ratio.”
“I should say so,” Gaoshun said, watching his master furrow his brow. “Shall they be discharged?”
“Can that be done?” “If you wish it.”
If he wished it. Whatever Jinshi told him, Gaoshun would see done. Whether it was right or not. Just or not.
Jinshi sighed, a long, slow exhalation of breath. He recognized at least one of the names on the list of associates. The purchasers of a kidnapped apothecary’s daughter.
“What to do about this…” he mused. All he had to do was choose. But he sat in fear of how she would look at him,
depending on what he decided to do. It was so simple to give an order. But how would she take it, if it was contrary to what she
wanted?
Maomao saw the divide between herself and Jinshi as that
between a commoner and a noble. No matter how distasteful the command, he suspected she would ultimately accept it. But he saw it making the gulf between them that much wider.
But—send her away? He waffled. She wasn’t here voluntarily, that much was true. Yet could he end her service at his own whim? And what if the ever-perceptive girl caught a whiff of it?
“Master Jinshi,” Gaoshun said, as Jinshi turned the questions over and over in his mind. “Was she not a very fortuitous pawn?”
His aide’s words were coldly rational. Jinshi ran a hand across his brow.
⭘⬤⭘
“A mass dismissal?”
“Yep,” Xiaolan said, munching on a dried persimmon. Maomao had helped herself to a few persimmons from the fruit orchard,
then discreetly hung them under the eaves of the Jade Pavilion to dry. If anyone had noticed, she would have been in a spot of
trouble. In fact, she actually was: there was no way Hongniang
would fail to notice the fruit. Gaoshun had arrived at just the right moment to save her skin. When Hongniang discovered that he was quite fond of persimmons, she said she would let it go “this
one time,” with a conspiratorial wink.
“I guess it’s like, you know how sometimes they slaughter everyone related to a case like this? All the girls from all the
merchant houses they had dealings with are going to have to quit. That’s what I heard.”
Xiaolan’s explanation left something to be desired, but Maomao nodded. Not sure I like where this is going. Got a bad feeling
about it, she thought. And her bad feelings had an unfortunate tendency to be accurate.
Maomao’s nominal family was a business and sometimes
engaged in commerce. Fengming’s family were beekeepers, so there could well be a connection between them.
It’d be tough on me if they fired me now, Maomao thought.
Besides, she was starting to like her life here. True, there was no question she would be happy to be able to go home to the
pleasure district, but as soon as she got there, she would wind up in the clutches of the old madam, a woman who wouldn’t let the smallest coin go unnoticed. Maomao still hadn’t sent her any customers since Lihaku’s visit. A fact that would not have escaped her calculating mind.
She really will start selling me this time.
Maomao said goodbye to Xiaolan, then set off to find a person she would normally have had no interest whatsoever in seeing.
“How unusual. And breathing so hard,” the gorgeous eunuch
said lightly. They were by the main gate of the rear palace, where Maomao had only arrived after visiting the residences of all four of the favored consorts. She struggled to muster a biting riposte, but Jinshi said, “Calm down. You’re bright red.” On the nymph-like
face was a shadow of alarm.
“I—I h-have to… to talk to you,” Maomao managed between gasps. Jinshi almost seemed to smile, and yet, for some reason she couldn’t guess, there was a hint of melancholy in the
expression, too.
“Very well. Let’s speak inside.”
She felt a little bad for the Matron of the Serving Women, who (for the first time in a while) was forced to wait outside while Maomao and Jinshi used her office. Maomao gave the woman a
polite bow as she passed; it seemed she had been terribly busy of late handling Ah-Duo’s departure. By the time Maomao got inside, Jinshi was already sitting in a chair, eyeing a piece of paper on the desk. “I presume you wanted to ask me about the mass dismissal taking place.”
“Yes, sir. What’s to happen to me?”
Instead of answering, Jinshi showed her the paper. It was of excellent material—and among the names on it was Maomao’s.
“So I’m to be let go.”
What do I do? she thought. She could hardly insist they keep her on. She was all too keenly aware that she was only an
ordinary serving woman. She studiously maintained a neutral expression, wary lest her face should seem to show any hint of
flattery. The result, though, was that she looked at Jinshi exactly
as she always did: as though staring at a caterpillar.
“What do you want to do?” Jinshi’s voice was devoid of its usual honeyed tone. Indeed, he nearly seemed like a pleading
child himself. In fact, he sounded just like he had the night before Consort Ah-Duo left. His face, though, remained frozen, grave.
“I’m only a servant. At a word, I can be put to menial labor, cooking. Even tasting food for poison.”
She was only telling the truth. If she was ordered to do
something, she would do it, so long as it was within her power, and she liked to think she would do it well. She wouldn’t
complain, even if she had to take a bit of a pay cut. If it put some distance between her and having to sell her body, she would do whatever it took to wrangle some new customers.
So please, just don’t cut me loose…
Maomao felt she had said, as clearly as she possibly could: Let me stay. But the young man’s expression remained unmoved; he offered only a small exhalation, his eyes flitting away for the
barest second.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll make sure you receive adequate
compensation.” The young man’s voice was cold, and he looked down at the desk so she couldn’t read his expression.
The negotiations had failed.
⭘⬤⭘
How many days now, Gaoshun wondered with a sigh, had his master been cagey and withdrawn? It wasn’t interfering with his work, but when they got back to his room, he would only sit in a corner brooding, and Gaoshun was frankly getting a little tired of it. Jinshi was casting a cloud over the entire place. The boy with the enchanting smile and the captivating voice was not there.
Maomao had left the week after receiving official notice of her dismissal. She had never been unduly warm, but she was also
never rude, and she had gone from place to place in the rear palace to formally thank all her various acquaintances and
benefactors.
Consort Gyokuyou had been openly opposed to Maomao’s
dismissal, but when she heard that the decision came from Jinshi, she didn’t continue to push the matter. She did, though, leave him
with a parting shot: “Don’t come crying to me if you find out you wish you hadn’t done this.”
“Are you certain you shouldn’t have stopped her, sir?” “Don’t say a word.”
Gaoshun crossed his arms, frowning. A memory from the past came back to him. How much strife there had been when the
young man lost a favorite toy. How Gaoshun had suffered to give him something newer, and more enticing still!
Perhaps he shouldn’t think of her as a toy. Perhaps Jinshi had chosen not to stop her as his way of refusing to treat her as an object. What point would it serve, then, to find some other
remarkable lady?
It all portended a great deal of trouble.
“If no substitute will do, the only recourse is to the original,” Gaoshun murmured, so quietly that Jinshi didn’t hear him. One person in particular flashed through his mind. A military officer well acquainted with the girl’s family. “A great deal of trouble
though it is.” The long-suffering Gaoshun scratched the back of his neck.
