by Julie C. Dao
“You were laughing in your sleep.” Dandan blushed even more.
Xifeng paused. All week, she had dreamed of murdering the concubine in various violent ways and burying her in a cave of serpents. “I’m sorry. I’ve been having nightmares,” she lied.
“It didn’t sound like a nightmare,” Mei observed.
Xifeng shrugged and turned to see something sticking out from under her pillow. It was the bundle of black incense. Had she clutched it in her sleep? She hurriedly tucked it out of sight, and a piece of her dream returned: that monk she had seen at the trading post, only this time he had been watching her from Lady Sun’s room of bronze mirrors. She brushed her fingers over her face again—in the dream, the cut Guma had given her had returned in all of its bloody glory.
She scurried through the rain to morning prayer and then made her way to the banquet hall, where two eunuchs were placing fresh beeswax candles into the lanterns to mark the start of the hour. She found Kang sitting alone, glowering at a table full of merry, gambling eunuchs. Each time one of them rolled a pair of stone dice, they all erupted into groans and cheers.
Kang stabbed at his porridge. “They’re having their monthly outing in the Imperial City today. A select group of them goes to market to buy silks and spices. I, of course, am never chosen, though I have the best eye among them for silks.”
“Don’t sit around and wait. Why not ask if you can go?”
“I’ve asked a hundred times,” he protested. “I asked before you came in and they told me I’m a disgrace who stinks of urine.”
Xifeng rolled her eyes, knowing he referred to many eunuchs’ tendency to wet their beds. It was an unfortunate effect of the procedure they underwent, particularly if they’d had the bad luck to have an inexperienced knifer. “That insult should have been directed at Master Yu,” she said without thinking, remembering the chief eunuch’s stench, and Kang let out a great roar of laughter. “Don’t you dare tell anyone I said that.”
“Who would I tell? The Empress, who alone doesn’t loathe me?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t wish to annoy him or Madam Hong any further. I’m the only lady they haven’t asked to help Her Majesty with festival planning.”
The upcoming Festival of the Summer Moon celebrated the first full moon of the season. It marked a momentous occasion in which the Empress and her chosen ladies and eunuchs joined the Emperor in the main palace for a banquet and a moon-viewing party. Xifeng had seen other girls sewing costumes and practicing music for the performance that would follow.
Kang’s mouth lifted humorlessly. “Too busy cleaning up Shenshi’s shit, are you?”
Xifeng scowled. “I’m supposed to be a lady-in-waiting, not a glorified maidservant. Likely today she’ll ask me to clean her balcony with a paintbrush. She’s trying to break me, but it won’t work.”
“She thinks she’s the Empress already,” the eunuch sneered. “She threatens to leave the Emperor all the time. Threatens him. She’s forever accusing him of going after her ladies.”
“Leave the Emperor? Where on earth would she go?”
“It’s something she says whenever she wants more of his attention. He always sends gifts after a tantrum.” The gambling eunuchs erupted into laughter and Kang’s face darkened. “She had me beaten once with a bamboo cane, you know. Master Yu did it with enthusiasm.”
Xifeng winced. “What did you do to her?”
“Do you know what black spice is?” She shook her head. “It comes from a poppy plant grown near the Gulf of Talon and costs more than our lives put together. In small amounts, it’s medicine for pain. It relaxes you, gives you the sensation of ultimate well-being. But when smoked in large amounts, it brings . . . visions.”
Images swirled in Xifeng’s mind: a dark room full of smoke, and sticks of jet incense glowing with fire. A chill danced across her skin. “What sort of visions?”
Kang leaned forward. “Some say you can see the future. But I’ve never been stupid enough to smoke enough for that. And I’ve never gone snooping around the Imperial physician’s cupboards looking for some, yet Lady Sun accused me all the same.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She hates me because I don’t worship her like the other eunuchs. Lady Sun may be arrogant, but she’s not an imbecile. She knows when someone doesn’t like her. She hasn’t the gift to make people love her, so she takes revenge on them.”
“She falsely accused you of stealing and had you beaten . . . for nothing.” The concubine repulsed her, but Xifeng couldn’t help admiring her gall. She knew how to deal with enemies.
Kang lowered his tunic over one shoulder so she could see the long, raised scars, stark white against his skin. “This was the punishment I received.”
Xifeng hissed through her teeth. Her back ached in sympathy as she remembered her own scars from Guma. “Why hasn’t anything been done about her?”
“Everyone’s scared of how much power she wields over the Emperor. Not even the Empress can control her, as these prove.” Kang gestured to his injuries. “And she knows having people beaten will irritate Her Majesty.”
The Empress’s tired, gentle face appeared in Xifeng’s mind. What patience she must have to endure Lady Sun, toying with her husband and grappling for her throne. “I’m sorry for Her Majesty. No wonder she looks so ill. She barely ate a thing the day I met her.”
“She’s had no appetite for a long time. Was that you I saw outside the door of her apartments yesterday, delivering something?”
“You don’t miss a move I make, do you? I made a poultice to help encourage her to eat. It’s the kind I used to make for my aunt.” Guma had always demanded the poultice during spells of illness. It was a simple, soothing herbal mixture of ginger and crushed rose hips, sewn skillfully into a cotton pouch and placed in one’s tea.
But Kang did not tease her about flattering the Empress, as she expected him to. “Her Majesty will appreciate it. The gods know she needs all the strength she can get with a thorn in her side like Lady Sun. But aside from the concubine’s children and beauty, she has nothing to keep the Emperor. Soon he’ll grow tired of her.”
“She’s not that beautiful,” Xifeng seethed.
“She humiliated me, and now she’s doing the same to you. I tell you I would gladly see her dead.” Kang’s eyes gleamed with undisguised malevolence. “Promise you’ll be careful. She’s gifted when it comes to stirring up trouble for others, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I promise,” she said, and he patted her arm.
It was a dangerous gamble to despise this favorite concubine of the Emperor, she knew. But if Lady Sun had never been challenged before, it was high time someone taught her a lesson. And who better than Xifeng?
Iron striking iron might create a spark, and a spark might be just what she needed to change her fortunes.
• • •
An hour later, Xifeng squatted in the pouring rain, contemplating even more brutal ways in which she would like Lady Sun to expire.
The woman had sweetly ordered her out into the storm to collect mud for her beautifying routine, citing that soil soaked with fresh rain was best for her complexion. She had not given Xifeng anything to cover herself, nor had she provided anything with which to dig. So Xifeng crouched in a corner of the garden, scraping her nails in the dirt and splattering herself as she deposited it into a bucket. But at least it was warm summer rain, and at least she was out in the fresh air, away from the cloying perfume of the concubine’s apartments. And there was something soothing about the way the mud squelched in her fingers.
Xifeng stood up and stretched, glancing around the empty garden. She wished the evil wretch Shenshi attended to his bodily needs here, so she might add some of it to the concubine’s mud mask. The bucket was full, but she didn’t want to return yet. She set it under a table to protect it from the r
ain and walked over to the wall. There was a slight overhang of stones along the top, which sheltered her somewhat.
She closed her eyes, wondering how long she would be able to hide out here before Lady Sun sent someone to fetch her. Unless the Emperor had come calling, which would no doubt put her well out of the concubine’s mind. What kind of man could attach himself to such a cruel, hateful woman? But Lady Sun likely didn’t show him that side of herself.
It had been many weeks since Xifeng had arrived at the palace, and still she had never seen Emperor Jun. The closest she’d gotten was when he came to visit the Empress, accompanied by a retinue of simpering eunuchs who shielded him from view with frilly silk screens. Perhaps he was fat, with triple chins and liver spots, and preferred to travel undetected.
Xifeng grinned at the idea of Lady Sun having to feign passion for an aging, overweight Emperor with a loud, smelly belch. But, of course, if her own destiny were to come true, it would soon be Xifeng having to pretend.
Yes, it was time to find out what the illustrious Emperor Jun was like.
But before she had time to finish the thought, her feet began to sink. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, as though the soaking earth were swallowing her. She screamed, gripped by panic as she sank into a muddy hole chest-high, her arms desperately flailing for purchase.
“Help!” she cried, but there was no one to hear her.
Her frantic fingers seized a clump of grass as her legs dangled into nothingness. She couldn’t die . . . not here, not now. Not such a pathetic death, with all she had done and all she had left to do. She gritted her teeth and pulled with all her strength.
But her hands slipped, and she screamed again as her body sank through the ground.
She landed in a heap on a hard stone floor, groaning. The sound of the rain was muffled down here, like someone had shut a window, and a few drops splattered onto her face from the muddy hole above. Xifeng pulled herself up, wincing at the sting in her leg, though nothing felt broken.
The light illuminated a stone passageway, similar to the one she and Kang had traveled through a month ago. But this one seemed more crudely made, with only a dirt ceiling and a few stones placed halfheartedly on the walls.
Somehow, she had ended up back in the tunnels below the city of women. This must be one of the passages Kang had warned her about, the dangerous old ones that might cave in or contain poisonous air. She glanced warily at the dirt ceiling, hoping the rest of it wouldn’t collapse on her because of the rain.
“Hello?” she called, hoping a eunuch guard would respond, but there was only silence. How far was she from the main passageway? The winding passage led into blackness on both sides. The familiar anxiety crept over her—that sickening feeling of being enclosed by the earth—and she took a few deep breaths. Kang had told her three exits led out of the city of women, and she was bound to find one before long.
She had fallen straight down against the wall. She didn’t know where the passage on the right might lead, but the left would likely take her back to the entrance she had come through on her first day. She limped in that direction, wishing she had a torch.
If the air in this tunnel was deadly, it might be a long time before they found her body.
Xifeng continued calling out as she walked, hoping a eunuch would hear her. The passage branched and she continued down the tunnel she thought might lead her back to the entrance. Was it her imagination, or did the ground slope downward as she walked? Beneath her thin cotton shoes, the stones were warm and slick with moisture. The air became thick and heavy, drawing beads of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. A primal, earthy smell emanated from somewhere below.
Suddenly, her foot stepped into nothingness. She cried out and dug her nails into the dirt wall. But further observation revealed not a hole, but a set of stone steps winding down into the darkness. She stared in disbelief. Who would build such a thing in this place?
Her rational mind told her to turn back and take the other tunnel, but another voice spoke within. It reminded her of how she’d felt when Guma read her cards, or when she had talked to the tengaru queen, or when Wei had told her the Crown Prince wanted her in the palace. It was a feeling of destiny come full circle, of belonging to this place in some strange way.
Xifeng, the voice crooned. The creature stirred beneath her heart, caressing her rib cage.
Something waited for her below, and she wanted—needed—to find out what it was.
She hugged the wall as she descended, trying not to slip. The darkness seemed to recede, or perhaps her eyes had grown used to it. A dozen more steps, and the warmth and the dripping sound intensified. Abruptly, she reached the bottom and found a flat stone floor leading to a vast emptiness that stretched out before her.
Xifeng stood in a cavernous space with walls of rough, unhewn stone. Shimmering rays of light crept through holes in the rock ceiling dozens of feet above her, illuminating the edge where the floor ended and the water began—a slow stream swirling in the depths, steaming and billowing gusts of hot air around her. Along one wall, a sheet of the scalding water poured from a crevice in the ceiling. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps when she realized she could see her own reflection in the waterfall as clearly as if it had been still water . . . or a mirror.
“A hot spring,” she murmured in disbelief, the hairs rising on her arms and neck. “What sorcery is this?”
She had half dismissed these natural wonders as fables, for how could water be naturally hot? The rivers and swamps near her town had always been cool even in summer. But the stories she’d read claimed some waters ran deep into the bowels of the earth, where the Dragon Lords had once stoked the fires from which all mankind had sprung. It had been a privilege of kings and queens to bathe in such water.
The springs did not lie calmly as the Imperial ponds did, far above. They did not shine or trickle as the streams in the Great Forest had done. This water gurgled. It belched. It shoved along fissures and fractures in the rock, forcing its way along with a ferocity she had to admire. It bubbled in a glorious ugliness that was almost beauty.
There was a small outcropping of boulders alongside the waterfall, which Xifeng climbed gingerly. It was like a balcony overlooking the rest of the cavern. My own private court, she thought. Some of the water had collected on the boulders, forming a sizable, quiet pool protected from the barreling stream. She dipped a few fingers in. The water was hot, but not unpleasant—it felt comforting against her rough skin. Boldly, she stuck her whole hand in, fluttering her fingers in the silken water and enjoying the serenity of this secret, forgotten place.
Xifeng sat on the boulder, watching the springs roar, her unease melting away. A thick coating of dust lined the floor, with no footsteps other than her own. It looked as though no one had been here in years . . . perhaps centuries.
The stairs meant someone had known about these springs once. One of the Empress’s ancestors had likely bathed here long ago, and it had been abandoned or become inaccessible.
Xifeng liked the idea of a place where no one could find her—a hidden sanctuary, tucked away just for her. She peeled off her rain-soaked clothes and laid them on a boulder to dry, enjoying the hot air on her skin. She dipped her feet into the pool and searched with her toes for the shallow bottom, then immersed her entire body, gasping at the heat. She had already grown used to the thick, sour smell of the water, and splashed some of it on her face and hair.
“My own gilded tub,” she told the darkness.
The pockets of light seemed to twinkle at her, and her skin prickled with the awareness she had felt in the tengaru clearing. This was an ancient place of rooted memory—a cavern etched in stone while kingdoms rose and fell and gods created the world above. The water vibrated with a deep undercurrent of magic, and she thought if she allowed it to, it might pierce her body and enter her lifeblood.
She stepped
out of the pool naked and faced the waterfall, echoing Lady Sun’s gesture as she ran a hand over her smooth, bare stomach. The steam licked at her skin as she stared deep into the glassy mirror of water, certain there was nothing in the world lovelier than what she saw within. That face like a flower in the first flush of spring, and the curve of those breasts and hips like the outline of a priceless marble vase.
Nothing, not even Lady Sun at the height of her seductive power, could rival it.
Fairest, the voice within her whispered.
Xifeng tilted her face, a pale moon in the evening of the water. She felt like a goddess in the shimmering light. She was a poem come to life, and each vein was a lyric.
She had been so wrong to doubt her destiny, to assume the cards were mistaken. This struggle, this difficult beginning, was only a trial to test her strength and her mettle as Empress.
Fairest of all.
“You have nothing to fear,” she murmured. Though she herself spoke the words, they came from another place, another world. The swirling of the steam was like the slithering within her. “You have only to hear me and to do as I ask.”
Trust me. I will help you, my child, the voice said, and it was so like Guma’s that Xifeng cried out in love and longing, hands outstretched for a face in the dark.
Her aunt was here, and she would help her. She would not beat her anymore, but love her as a mother should. Together, they would vanquish their enemies. Xifeng wished she had the bundle of incense hidden in her bed, so its fumes could mingle with the steam and she might see Guma before her once more.
A sound came at the edge of hearing. Xifeng turned her head quickly and the movement broke the spell.
Once again she was alone, and there was no one and nothing in the darkness.
Why are you so sleepy today?” Madam Hong snapped.
Xifeng wiped her watering eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve been having nightmares . . .”
“Well, work faster or I’ll give you something else to have nightmares about.” The woman turned to scold another girl nearby.