by Jeannie Lin
“No, of course not.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did so.”
“Dismissing you would be the same as cutting off my own hand. I need you, Wu. More important, I owe you a debt.”
“You know that debt was settled long ago, sir.”
They rarely spoke of the incident that had first brought them together. They spoke no more of it now.
“What if this current demand is not to target you, but to attack me?” Li posed. “I certainly have more enemies than you do on my name alone.”
“There was the case with the slave trading ring last year,” Kaifeng suggested. “There were enough people involved for us to offend someone. A lot of dirtied hands.”
A murder had turned into two murders which had turned into a conspiracy.
“You may have something there, Constable. The case was resolved, but perhaps not to everyone’s satisfaction. Such political games are a consequence of living in the capital. Be careful, Wu. Someone wants both of us removed.”
Li Yen was a good read of people and situations, but only of the sort of people and situations he knew very intimately—those of the scholarly elite. Magistrate Li was at a loss when it came to commoners and life among the lanes and alleys. It made their partnership a balanced one. Apparently it took knowledge of politics and the street to survive in this city.
CHAPTER TWO
MINGYU LAID HER head back and let the evening breeze flow over her cheeks as the carriage rolled forward. The air was cool and calming in the final hour before dusk. Drums beat in rhythm throughout the quarter to signal the closing of the official city markets. It was time for merchants to close shop, for city dwellers to make their final purchases and return home.
The silence afterward was a resting period before the drinking houses set out their lanterns and the banquets began. For now, the streets were dim and vacant and Mingyu could watch the pattern of the trees against the buildings.
Summer was gone and autumn was here. The celebration banquet season was over and now began the time when graduates of the imperial exams vied for official assignments. The parties at this time were more intimate affairs where introductions and connections could be made.
“You are beautiful tonight, Elder Sister.”
Little Hong’s eyes glowed with admiration as she looked covetously over Mingyu’s silk robe and the jewels in her hair. The girl was eleven years of age that year, a good time as any to begin her training. They were sisters by profession, not blood. Both of them belonged to the same foster mother.
“Are we going far tonight?” Hong asked.
“Not far. The gathering is at a public garden in the northern part of the ward.”
“Will there be many gentlemen there?”
“Yes.”
Little Hong brightened. “Distinguished scholars? Men of high rank?”
“Of course.”
Little Hong leaned over, looking left and right to try to take in the sights around them. They had just left the main section of the Pingkang li, where most of the pleasure houses were located and where the two of them resided.
“Be mindful of the pipa,” Mingyu said gently when she saw how the girl had the strings pressed against the side of the carriage. “The guests will be very disappointed if I cannot play tonight.”
“Oh, yes! I’m sorry, Elder Sister.”
Hong settled back down into her seat, cradling the instrument in her lap. To the girl, this trip must have seemed like freedom. The courtesans of the Lotus Palace were only allowed to leave if hired out for an event or by special permission.
Mingyu had been in her place once, but it seemed so long ago. Now she was part of the cycle, training another girl into the life: bondage and servitude on one side, poetry and music on the other.
Shops and buildings flowed by on either side of them like an endless river. Mingyu closed her eyes again only to be jolted forward when the carriage lurched to a stop. Little Hong yelped beside her and clutched the pipa to her chest. As they righted themselves, Mingyu could hear the driver yelling at someone.
A boy dressed in ill-fitting rags crouched beside the front wheel. He whimpered as the driver shouted.
“What are you doing, boy? Get out of the street!” The driver made a threatening motion with his crop, but the child remained in the dirt with his hands clutched around his knee.
“Uncle.” Mingyu deliberately used the familiar honorific to address the driver. “Uncle, the boy is terrified.”
“Don’t be fooled, Miss. This street scum is just playing the victim.” He glared back at the boy. “Get up, runt.”
“Are you hurt, child?” She rose to step down from the carriage, holding the edge of her robe away from the dirt as she bent down.
“Be careful,” the driver warned from behind her. “He looks ready to snatch your purse.”
The boy looked nothing of the sort. He stared up at Mingyu with eyes as large as quail eggs. There was a smudge of dirt across one cheek and his bottom lip trembled.
At that moment, an ominous shadow fell over Mingyu, engulfing both her and the child.
“The carriage driver is right. The boy is pretending.”
The deep gravel of the voice set the hairs of her neck on edge. Mingyu let her mask fall in place before straightening to greet the newcomer.
“Constable Wu.”
“Lady Mingyu.”
She hated to be seen lowered before anyone, most of all this demon. His skin was bronzed from being out in the sun like a common laborer and his demeanor was darker still, black as night. Wu Kaifeng towered head and shoulders over her, as he did over everyone in the quarter. Most found him intimidating, but her reaction was much more alarming. She had been drawn to him from her very first sight of the constable. Wu was not a man to be ignored and certainly not a man who could be wooed simply by her beauty or reputation.
When Mingyu had been imprisoned over a year ago on suspicion of murder, Wu had been her jailer. Though she was cleared of any wrongdoing, she’d never forgotten his bleak expression as he’d questioned her or his unyielding touch as he’d bound her hands.
Mingyu tilted her chin up to meet his eyes, refusing to show any fear of him now. “Thank you for your assistance, Constable, but it won’t be needed. Unless you wish to arrest this child for being unfortunate enough to be injured by our carriage.”
“The boy is lying,” Wu repeated. “I saw him hiding on this very corner the other day, watching as you drove by.”
She turned toward the urchin. “Can you stand?”
Mingyu offered her hand, but the boy shook his head feverishly and struggled to his feet by himself.
A wagon carrying baskets of produce had to veer to the side while their carriage was stopped in the middle of the road. Mingyu ignored it and focused on the poor creature in front of her.
“Where are your father and mother?”
“You are very kind, Miss,” he murmured.
The driver snorted loudly.
“He’s luring you in,” Wu Kaifeng stated.
Funny that the constable would assume she was naive. Mingyu had grown up in this quarter. It was her domain and she wasn’t sheltered from the realities of the crowded capital. She knew what her life would have been if Madame Sun hadn’t purchased her and provided for her. There was the street or the brothel.
Maintaining her pleasant expression, Mingyu opened the drawstring on her silk bag and fished out a few coins to press into the boy’s hand. “Be careful, little one. Go home now.”
The little rat at least affected a slight limp as he ran off into the alley.
“He’s on the next street over now, begging coins out of another soft-heart.” Wu wasn’t smug or snide or superior as he said it. He was just as he was—hard and without emotion.
Wu Kaifeng started at her insinuation, but recovered quickly. His expression became once again impenetrable.
Indeed, she had also seen the constable at the roadside stand, staring at her with something akin to interest. No, that wasn’t possible. More like a bird of prey sighting a mouse. Her pulse had quickened at the single glimpse.
“Of course, the constable must believe that he’s entitled to stare for as long as he pleases,” Mingyu taunted. “Everyone else seems to think so, as if I were a painting on the wall.”
“It’s difficult to look at you,” he admitted with a bluntness that stole her breath.
“Meaning?” she asked.
His gaze remained focused on her face, but an odd light flickered in his eyes. Reflexively, her hand flew to her throat before she caught herself. It was a bad habit, a show of weakness.
Curling her fingers tight, Mingyu let the hand drop to her side. “If there’s nothing else.”
She didn’t realize until she spoke that her throat had gone dry. She was almost to the carriage when Wu stopped her.
“There is—”
She turned around.
“—something else,” he finished, his speech off rhythm by just enough to make her uneasy.
He was the one who was difficult to look at. His face lacked any refinement. Wu Kaifeng wasn’t ugly—he was more like a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together. There was no harmony to him, no sense of balance. Wu was long in the face, broad in the nose. The eyes were black and hard and unwavering. A sharp jawline framed his hard mouth, a mouth that she had never seen smile. Yet when all of those features were put together, they created a picture that was inexplicably striking.
“Someone wishes to have me dismissed,” he began.
“What could that possibly have to do with me?”
“You do not like me.”
She didn’t disagree.
“Most of the people I deal with are people from the streets—beggars, thieves, the poor stealing from the poor,” Wu continued. “Those who are caught doing wrong do not dare to bear a grudge, but you—”
“I was found innocent,” she interrupted.
“Your actions were not condemned,” he corrected. “It occurs to me that many of your patrons are men of rank and influence.”
Mingyu laughed in disbelief. “You think I’m out to destroy you by complaining to my lovers?”
The corners of his mouth tightened at her mention of lovers and Mingyu felt a small triumph at being able to pierce his armored shell.
“You needn’t worry, Constable,” she assured, her voice as soft as the breeze. “You must imagine after all that has occurred between us that I stay up late at night, bearing a grudge and plotting your downfall.”
She continued toward the carriage, feeling his gaze on her the entire way. Once she was seated, Mingyu was able to look down upon him from higher ground to deliver her final message. “But why would I waste any time thinking of you at all?”
CHAPTER THREE
MINGYU HELD HER sleeve back with one hand as she poured the hot water into the bowl. Keeping her eyes lowered, she washed and warmed each of the porcelain cups before setting them back onto the tray. A group of four scholars watched her as she performed the tea ritual in so many little perfect steps, all in sequence.
She liked the ritual. For once, her parlor was quiet. There were no voices competing for attention; reciting the classics or a newly composed verse of poetry as they tried to emerge as the cleverest. For once, she didn’t have to speak, either. She didn’t have to smile or laugh or exchange furtive glances.
All she had to do was follow the ritual, concentrate on the breaking of the tea brick into the pot, the washing of the cups, the pouring of the tea. The ceremony was sacred to the scholar-gentlemen who frequented the Lotus Palace. They had all read the Classic of Tea and aspired to cultivate the thoughtfulness and meditative state that only tea could bring about. Wine was for the freeing of the spirit. Tea was for focusing it.
She placed a cup within reach of each of the visitors. There was a department head from the Ministry of Defense as well as a ranking captain of the city garrison. Though a soldier, he was indistinguishable here from any other gentleman. The remaining two were hopefuls seeking placement after passing the civil exams.
The men took their cups in both hands and drank in reverent silence. Mingyu folded her hands in her lap and kept her gaze lowered. She didn’t drink with them. She was an implement in this ritual, like the clay teapot or the cups.
She almost dreaded the moment the most senior member of the party would finish his cup and break the silence. It was easy being a silent fixture. Almost freeing.
“Ah, so serious!”
All heads turned at once toward the entrance. A figure had emerged through the curtain, handsome and youthful in appearance with his characteristic grin on his face.
“Am I too late to join?” Bai Huang asked.
“My lord.” Mingyu was less than warm in her greeting.
“Jinshi.” The senior patrons acknowledged him with a bow and the two hopefuls looked on in awe.
Even if they didn’t recognize Bai’s name, they recognized the significance of his robe. Only scholars who had passed the highest level of the palace exams were allowed the honor of wearing those robes.
Mingyu, for her part, was not impressed. She rose as the nobleman started to engage the officials in conversation. “Lord Bai,” she began, smoothly linking her arm around his. “Madame Sun is expecting you.”
Bai Huang laughed and made his apologies about stumbling into the wrong room as she led him back out through the curtain. That was one of the privileges of being yiji, an elite courtesan. The gentlemen of the quarter tolerated her impertinence. At times, they even revered it.
“You are looking particularly beautiful today,” Lord Bai drawled.
“As beautiful as my sister?” she replied archly.
Lord Bai had married her younger sister—her real sister—Yue-ying at the end of the spring, not long after the new slate of imperial scholars had been announced. It was debatable which was more shocking, that Bai Huang, the notorious flower prince of the Pingkang li, had passed the exams or that he had taken a lowly servant with no name to speak of as his wife soon after.
“That is impossible to say, Lady Mingyu. It would be like comparing the sun and the moon.”
Bai Huang might be an imperial scholar, but he was still a fool. Or at least he attempted to play one in the pleasure quarter.
“I know why you’re here,” she told him firmly. “It’s the same reason you’ve been hovering around me for the last year.”
“Like a bee to a sweet flower,” he recited.
She released his arm and shoved him the last part of the way into the hall. “Insufferable.”
He regained his balance with hardly any effort and turned back to her. His grin faded and was replaced with a serious expression. “Did Yue-ying tell you?”
“She didn’t have to tell me.” Mingyu stood like a sentinel blocking the passage back to the parlor. “I knew your attention had to have some other purpose. You were only here seeking information.”
His gaze darted over her shoulder to assure they were alone. “There are rumors about General Deng. If there’s any truth to them, you don’t want to be associated with him.”
“I’m already associated with the general. He’s my highest-ranking patron and a most kind and generous man.” There. She had even managed to say it without making a face. “I will not allow you to spy on him any longer, or on me.”
“I hear
Deng is arriving in the capital tomorrow. Has he arranged a meeting with you?”
She regarded Bai Huang blankly, saying nothing, revealing nothing.
“If I could speak with him in private,” he suggested.
“Please forgive me, Lord Bai. I’m merely a humble courtesan, not capable of providing what you require.”
Her expression remained pleasant and unassuming, but it was an unmistakable challenge.
Finally Bai sighed. “Be careful, Mingyu.”
“I always am.”
“You’re not.” His sharp look reminded her that she had spent a long time underestimating him. “You’re not careful when your heart is involved.”
His words sent a pang through her chest. “How is Yue-ying?”
Bai Huang’s expression softened. “She’s well. She misses you.”
Mingyu shook her head. She didn’t want to hear of it. She and Bai Huang were now related by marriage, though no one in the Bai family would recognize her as such. Mingyu preferred it that way. It was better for Yue-ying that she start her new life without the shadow of the past hanging over her.
“Tell her not to be sentimental. And to drink the tea I sent to her and...and take good care of her.”
“I will.”
They exchanged bows. Mingyu had been too long away from her guests already, but she took a moment longer to watch as Lord Bai retreated down the stairs. Her sister was fortunate to have found a good man to protect her.
There was a time when Mingyu had been young and vying for notoriety. She had dreamed of catching the attention of a gentleman like that, but she’d since learned that it was better to rely on her own skills for protection. Mingyu’s heart had left the quarter when her sister had left. What remained was her warrior self, which was more than capable of handling Lord Bai, General Deng and any man who sought to challenge or possess her.
* * *
“WHAT DID THE foolhardy Lord Bai wish to speak to you about, hmm?” Madame Sun sat back upon the settee and ran a manicured fingertip along the arm.