Chapter 3
THE JOKE OF GUISHAN
I may have felt powerful that night, but when the sun was high the next day, when we entered the city square with our basket of gifts and Myrna on a leash, I felt a fool.
I was far from the only candidate there vying for Prince Terren’s attention. The fact should not have surprised me, but it did. The whole plaza was filled with young women, at least several dozen. And they were all far better than me—this was the truth, not false modesty.
They were city girls, not girls brought up on the rice paddies. Their skin was not sun-leathered, their cheeks not hollowed, their lips uncharred. Their baskets were filled not with baked buns and prunes, but with flowers, precious stones, and silk cloths.
How could I have ever thought Prince Terren would want me for his court?
My family, who was with me, seemed to have the same worries.
Especially Ma. Ma’s lips went into a thin line as her eyes traveled over the other candidates’ clean, dyed gowns, their sturdy shoes, their painted nails.
I had done my hair in braids for the occasion, but their hair, pinned up in the fashion of the city, made mine seem crude by comparison.
One of the girls near me, who had clearly darkened her brows with ink, actually laughed at us as we passed by.
“He stinks,” her companion said, jabbing a finger at Ba. Everyone around her burst into giggles so falsely dainty that I felt my blood heat.
Bao’s hands balled into tiny fists, but I held him firm. I was angry myself—it nearly broke my heart, watching Ba limp with his shoulders hunched so—but I knew that starting a fight would only make us look even worse.
I joined the end of the line. My family retreated somewhere into the shadows, waiting unseen. I sent a silent prayer to the Ancestors. Let me help my family. Let me help my village. Let Bao go to school.
Let me be chosen.
It was not so long after that the selection began. First, a few local officials arrived to oversee us, and then came representatives from the Azalea House itself.
There was less fanfare than on New Year’s, especially without a prince in a procession.
Only two representatives had ridden in, but we still drew in a breath anyway when we saw their red livery, stark and vivid.
We all stared at their horses, who had leaves for manes and flowers for tails, and smelled not of beasts but far gardens.
They pulled a carriage behind them, which was wreathed in carnations.
One of the representatives descended. He was a smile-faced man with soft features and a singsong voice. “I am Li Ciyi—a eunuch serving under Prince Guan Terren, the Winter Dragon, The One Who Cannot Die, and the Second Son and Heir of the Azalea House.”
The other representative, the one wearing a large sword on his back, did not dismount his horse.
Ciyi went down the line of young women. To the apparent surprise of almost everyone, he did not look into our offering baskets, which were silently collected by the local officials.
The only thing he seemed interested in were our bodies.
He examined our ears, our eyes, our breasts, our teeth.
He got us to take off our shoes so that he might look at our feet.
When he got to me, at the end of the row, his laughter was even crueler than the women from earlier. “You smell like village,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the ground. Ma had told me that city boys preferred girls who were docile and did not speak up, and I thought that possibly Prince Terren, and therefore his representative, might prefer the same.
Ciyi carried on. The appraisal process did not take very long. After two passes down the line, Ciyi pointed at the girl who had laughed at Ba earlier, the one with the painted brows. “You. Let’s go.”
It was as perfunctory as purchasing cabbage from the market.
It did not quite register that I wasn’t chosen until Ciyi was helping the other girl into the carriage. When it did, I was no longer thinking. I left the line where I was standing and raced all the way to the eunuch.
“Please.” The words came pouring out of me before I could stop them. “She doesn’t need it. She’s not hungry. Not the way I am.”
Ciyi regarded me the way he might consider a fly on his rice. “And what does it matter what a peasant like you needs?”
“I know I’m nothing, but please.” I fell onto my knees.
It was so unlike me to beg, but at that moment, I was so desperate I would have done anything.
My stomach panged with hunger, and my muscles still ached fire from the half-day walk.
But I couldn’t think about anything but Bao.
I wanted him to grow up tall and healthy, and I wanted him to go to school in the capital, just like Har Asori, and I wanted him to become the great man that the Blessing said he would.
“I have a brother. He’s young. He’s thin. ”
I did not want to mourn him like I did Little Lark, as I feared I might if the famine continued. That would absolutely break me.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Ciyi’s disgust deepened. “A village girl, an ugly one at that, dreaming of becoming concubine to the Imperial House.”
“Then let the prince laugh,” I said, without thinking.
The eunuch had been in the process of remounting his horse but stopped.
I stood up now, and the words came out angrier than I should have dared.
“If it’s a joke as you say, then let His Highness Prince Terren laugh at my expense.
Bring me back and see if it will please him to show everyone how ugly I am, how filthy, how thin.
Let him laugh at this poor village girl and then behead her—it will be no loss to you. ”
When I said all this, I did not expect him to actually listen to me. I only said what came to my mind out of anger and desperation.
I definitely did not expect him to smile a pearl-toothed smile or wave me into the carriage.
There was hardly any time for goodbyes.
Bao threw himself around my leg and cried and asked me to come back and visit soon. Ma wept.
Ba stood stone-silent; it was his own way of saying he would miss me.