Jinshi had finished his bath and was savoring a cup of wine. It seemed as
if everything that came up these days was a fresh headache. He was at something of a loss. As if everything else vying for his attention hadn’t been enough, just the other day, he had nearly been killed.
After what they had learned in the mortuary, the matter of Suirei had been taken care of with the utmost circumspection. That was the most convenient for everyone. He queried the mortuary workers who had supposedly brought in coffins while Suirei’s body had been there, but strangely, they claimed not to have received any such requests.
About the court lady Suirei herself, much remained uncertain. The reason she had been so close with the doctor was because her guardian had been the physician’s own teacher. Apparently, this teacher had seen Suirei’s
talent for medicine and had adopted her as his daughter some years ago, but little more was known than that.
Jinshi saw that this situation wasn’t likely to go away anytime soon, but that was nothing new. There were many problems that went unresolved, simply piling up. The most he could do with such issues was to bear them in mind for the future. He had to focus on what he could do at this moment.
Jinshi was surprised by the crackling of charcoal, but when he looked outside he saw the world had gone white with snow. It was getting chilly. He picked his robe up from off the couch where it lay and slipped it on.
A metallic tinkling came from the entrance; the building was designed so that it could be heard from almost anywhere. Jinshi knew who it was likely to be.
As he’d expected, his aide, with his perpetually furrowed brow, entered the room.
“She’s safely back,” Gaoshun said.
“Sorry to put you to such trouble all the time.”
Jinshi had instructed Gaoshun to see Maomao back whenever the hour got late. It had been in saving Jinshi, after all, that she had hurt her leg. He
worried that if he left her to her own devices, the wound would open again.
That wasn’t the only thing that concerned him, though. There was also the eccentric, Lakan. As far as Jinshi could tell, the man was telling the truth about being Maomao’s biological father, but Maomao’s attitude on the
subject made it more than clear that their relationship was not the usual one. The general consensus in the palace was that you could never be sure what Lakan might do, and Jinshi preferred to take no chances.
Lakan had had something to do with Maomao’s reaching the altar during the ritual, as well. No doubt the soldier who’d struck her was by now deeply regretting his actions.
One of Jinshi’s saving graces was that unlike some other people of the court, Gaoshun could read him well enough to know when to leave him alone to do his work. This was, after all, the man who had been assigned to Jinshi as a tutor practically from the moment he was weaned.
Notwithstanding a brief separation when Gaoshun had been sent to do other work, he was certainly among those who knew Jinshi best. When he considered that Gaoshun’s own wife had been his wetnurse, Jinshi saw that he might never outlive his debt to this man.
“We’ll be at the rear palace tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.” Gaoshun brought out two bowls and a pot. It was full of a sickly sweet liquid; they had to drink it every day in order for it to have its full effect.
Gaoshun poured the contents of the pot into the two silver bowls, and
then he took the first sip. It was a role Maomao might have eagerly assumed, but there would have been no point in having her taste it. It had no effect on women. Gaoshun frowned even deeper as he drank the stuff down, and then he waited a few moments.
“I think it’s all right. Nothing unusual.”
Nothing unusual—except the flavor was always unusual. The mixture contained a powdered variety of potato imported from another land, one with a very particular side effect.
The potato flour was just one of several ingredients Jinshi and Gaoshun had to take on a daily basis.
“Very well.” Jinshi picked up his bowl, pinched his nose, and drained it
in a single long gulp. He wiped flecks of the liquid from his mouth with the back of his hand, then accepted a cup of cold water from Suiren. Five years
drinking this stuff, and he’d never gotten used to it.
“You shouldn’t hold your nose like that when people are watching,” Suiren said.
“I know that.”
“It makes you look like such a little boy when you do.”
“I know that.” Jinshi sat down on the couch, pouting. His tone of voice,
the way he spoke, the way he walked and moved: he had to constantly pay attention to all of it.
The eunuch Jinshi was twenty-four years of age. He straightened up, striving to put on his best official face, but the taste of the medicine still lingered in his mouth, making his lip curl.
Gaoshun frowned. “You needn’t drink it, sir, if you detest it so.” “This is what makes me who I am. As a eunuch.”
It had been five years since the current Emperor had taken over the rear palace. Five years—now nearly six—that Jinshi had continued to wear this twisted mask. Year after year taking the medicine that made him not a man. He did it even though the Emperor had told him he could do as he wished around the lower-ranked consorts, and any ladies less prestigious than they. Gaoshun touched a hand to the furrows in his brow. “If you do this long enough, you’ll never regain the function.”
Jinshi spat out his water at that. He put his hand to his mouth with a reproachful look at Gaoshun. Gaoshun looked back at him, as if to communicate that every now and again he would have his say.
“Well, the same is true of you!” Jinshi said.
“Not so. Why, just last month, a grandchild was born to me.” Gaoshun’s point seemed to be that his children were already grown; he had no need to produce more offspring.
“How old are you again?” “Thirty-seven.”
If Jinshi had his facts straight, Gaoshun had married at sixteen, and the couple had had one child each year for the next three years. Jinshi’s milk brothers. He was particularly close with Gaoshun’s youngest son. In fact, the lad had made himself helpful just the other day, during the food- poisoning case involving the seaweed. The young man who had accompanied Maomao to the official’s house—that had been him.
“Which of the two elder brothers is it?”
“My eldest son. And I think my youngest could stand to find himself a wife sometime soon.”
“He’s only nineteen.”
“Yes. Just the same as you, milord.”
Gaoshun specifically refrained from using the name Jinshi. Jinshi was a twenty-four-year-old man who had become a eunuch five years earlier. He couldn’t possibly be nineteen.
Gaoshun clearly thought he was making some sort of point, Jinshi observed. Maybe he felt Jinshi should hurry up and get himself some female companions, as the Emperor had done. Jinshi crossed his legs and looked at Gaoshun as innocently as he could.
“I want to hold my grandchild. Soon.” So let’s finish this assignment quickly, he seemed to be saying.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Gaoshun accepted some hot tea from Suiren and took a sip. Jinshi, ignoring his aide’s baleful look, drank the rest of his water.
Another routine round of visits to the Emperor’s ladies had gone without a hitch. Consort Loulan seemed to be integrating into the rear palace without any trouble. The move to bring her in had been somewhat forceful, so it wouldn’t have been surprising if her presence had caused discord, but neither Consort Gyokuyou or Consort Lihua were short-tempered enough to let the new girl get to them. Yes, there had been the contretemps between the two of them after the births of their respective children, but that had been exceptional; since then they had maintained a distant but cordial relationship.
As for Consort Lishu, she was much too retiring to be the one to start any fights. It was always possible her ladies-in-waiting could goad her into it, though; he would have to keep an eye on the situation.
The residence of the former consort Ah-Duo had become a sorry sight to him under its new occupant. Under the old mistress, there had been not a frivolous furnishing to be seen, but now that the new one had moved in, the pavilion had become an eye-watering riot of ostentatious displays.
Consort Loulan’s father was a man of whom the former emperor—or rather, more precisely, the former empress dowager—had been quite fond; it was under him that the number of palace women had ballooned to fully
three thousand.
At present, Consort Gyokuyou was foremost in His Majesty’s affections, and Consort Lihua next, but as ruler he could not limit his nocturnal visits only to those concubines he most favored. If the rear palace helped maintain the balance of power within the imperial court, it could likewise upset that balance. The Emperor couldn’t afford to mishandle Loulan, and was (Jinshi was given to understand) taking care to visit her at least once every ten days.
This could not but dismay the other consorts. Yes, His Majesty was visiting them more often than Loulan, yet who knew who would conceive a child and when, and who wouldn’t?
Even so, compatibility did mean something, and it was clear that Loulan didn’t excite the Emperor’s interest in the same way as some of his other ladies. Looking at her, Jinshi thought perhaps he could understand why.
Back when the apothecary’s daughter had given her “class,” Loulan had been bedecked with a most unexpected accessory, an outlandish ornament featuring the plumes of a bird from the southern lands. But although sometimes Loulan dressed herself in the style of the southern lands, other times she was clad in an outfit from the northern tribes. No sooner had she put on the garments of the east than she traded them for a dress from the west. And each time, her hair and makeup changed to complement her outfit. It was enough to make the Emperor feel like he was seeing a different person every time he visited. Under those circumstances, he claimed, it was hard for him to get in the mood.
Consort Lishu was another who posed a challenge to “mood,” but for different reasons. The Emperor viscerally rejected his father’s preferences, and refused to touch, let alone bed, a girl who could still have passed for a child.
The Empress Dowager’s belly bore a great scar, for she had given birth
to His Present Majesty very young, her body too small for the task. The birth canal had been too narrow, the child delivered by slitting her open. It had been questionable whether the mother would survive the delivery, but she and her child had both emerged safely. The surgery, it seemed, had been performed by a doctor recently returned from foreign lands. His skill had been so superlative, in fact, that although she was scarred, the Empress Dowager’s ability to bear children was left intact, and more than ten years
later she conceived and bore again. To the end of his life, these were the only offspring the former emperor ever had.
There was, however, a complication. The physician who had attended the first delivery for the Empress Dowager (then a consort) found himself attending almost exclusively on Her Majesty, precisely because of his actions during that first, difficult delivery. A child born to the consort of the crown prince at the same time was neglected, with tragic consequences.
How could Jinshi not wonder what things might be like now if the current Emperor’s first child had lived?
He shook his head: there was nothing to gain from meaningless fantasies. And he further thought that His Majesty ought to hurry up and get about the business of producing a new crown prince. On this point, he and Gaoshun were of the same mind. After the “lecture,” the Emperor’s visits had increased substantially. The fruits of Maomao’s labors might come sooner than expected.
During Jinshi’s visit, Consort Gyokuyou’s chief lady-in-waiting,
Hongniang, had confessed something to him with concern. The Emperor had called at the Jade Pavilion yet again the day before, and her mistress was looking quite fatigued. Hongniang worried for her. The disheveled appearance of her jet-black hair bespoke the great effort to which the lady- in-waiting was putting herself. Gaoshun seemed to relate to her. Hongniang, for her part, didn’t seem averse to Gaoshun at all, but as he already had a wife to look after and hen-peck him (each as necessary), they would have to disabuse her of any interest sooner or later.
All this led Jinshi to believe he had the perfect solution. Gyokuyou agreed without a second thought. Hongniang made a point to look put-upon, but quietly seemed to welcome the idea. She said as much to the three ladies-in-waiting who had been eavesdropping at the door.
It seemed Jinshi had made the right choice.
○●○
“The rear palace, sir?”
“That’s right. Back to your favorite job.”
Maomao was polishing a silver eating vessel to a mirror-like shine.
When she was certain it didn’t have so much as a smudge on it, she put it
back on the shelf. Her leg still wasn’t quite better, so she did a lot of her work sitting in a chair, but Suiren made sure that she did have work to do. A real stickler, that woman was.
Jinshi was eating a tangerine. Very literally: he wasn’t even peeling it himself. Suiren did that, carefully removing the thin rind and setting each piece on a plate in front of him. What a spoiled brat.
The old attendant seemed to have a habit of indulging Jinshi. She would bundle him in a cotton jacket when it was cold, or cool down his tea because it was hot. An adult man should’ve been embarrassed to be treated that way.
“It would appear Consort Gyokuyou has ceased to walk the path of the moon.”
The “path of the moon” was a polite term for menstruation. So she might be pregnant, Maomao thought. Two separate attempts had been made to poison the consort while she was pregnant with Princess Lingli. The culprit had never been found. Maomao could understand why Jinshi might be uneasy.
“And when am I to begin my new assignment?” “Would today be possible?”
“Possible? I would positively prefer it.”
As men were not allowed in the rear palace, she would be free of any possibility of bumping into the one person she didn’t want to meet—whose name she didn’t even want to hear. Perhaps Jinshi had arranged this change of workplace out of consideration for her, or perhaps it was simply an opportune coincidence for him. Maomao decided she didn’t care which.
She thought she was exercising admirable self-restraint, but then Suiren said, “Ah, good news, my dear?” Apparently Maomao wasn’t hiding it as well as she thought.
“Not to speak of,” she said.
“Too bad for me. I thought I’d finally found a protégé worthy of my training.”
Maomao, a touch terrified by the grinning Suiren, determined to finish her work as quickly as she could.
