Chapter 5 The Fate of Concubines
THE FATE OF CONCUBINES
O Tensha, Motherland!
The birthplace of culture. The resting place of great men.
All the world fears the poem written in Tenshan pen.
—TANG GEWEN, AZALEA DYNASTY, YEAR 589
I wish I could say I listened to Minma’s warning. That I kept on being afraid of the Azalea House women, or the prince and his knives, or even of Prince Maro and his plans to regain the Crown.
But when my attendant led me to where I would be staying—a warm, lantern-lit room, nestled deep within the rustling peony bushes—all I could manage was a childlike awe.
Vivid rugs, curtains, and tapestries blooming with live flowers covered every surface.
Paper lanterns sitting on every table guarded against the chill of night.
I saw things I had only ever heard about in stories: bronze mirrors, and porcelain cups, and lacquered furniture made of what I guessed was sandalwood.
By one of the latticed windows, a cat with holly leaves for fur sat watching me, tail flicking as it soaked in the moonlight. It was yet another sign of the magic inherent in the Azalea House. I felt like a little girl again under its gaze, knowing nothing about the world.
Connected to my chambers was a basin-room.
When I went inside, looking for a place to wash myself, I found a bath already drawn, still warm and scented with hibiscus petals.
For a long time, I worked on scraping the thick layer of mud off my body—from my brittle black hair to my calloused soles, to beneath my bit fingernails.
I wondered if it was enough for me to be clean, or if there was some ineffable part of me that was and would always be village.
When dinner came, there was enough food to feed a whole family.
The cook named each dish as he set it down. “Braised chicken with mung bean. Shrimp and abalone dumplings. Egg flower soup. Thousand-year fig cakes, to promote beauty and longevity.…” By the time he left, there were more than a hundred plates on the table.
At first I just stood there numbly, as if I had forgotten what food even was.
Even the rice here was different—white and pristine.
I had rarely ever had a bowl of pure rice like this before, without mixing in bran or tree bark or plants we foraged from the hills.
Even on New Year’s, we could have only watery porridge.
New Year’s had not been that long ago. I still had the image of Ba giving the one extra bowl to Bao burning in my mind. I still remembered how he had eaten his own portion slowly, one grain at a time, so that he would finish at the same time as his son.
Now I had all this for only myself.
I should have resented the Azalea House for it.
Instead, I ate so quickly that the soup burned my tongue.
For the first time, the constant ache in my belly vanished, like a shadow scared away by the sun, and that was when I understood—really understood—why village girls wanted to marry city boys and city girls wanted to marry princes.
I wanted to stay here forever.
I would want it even if I had to fight the women in the palace and dodge Terren’s knives. Even if I had to be planted, over and over again, until I grew them a son. So long as I was never hungry again, I thought, they could do to me anything they pleased.
But wishing was not enough to make something so. If that were the case, Larkspur would still be alive.
I was reminded again of how little chance I had to be chosen when I glimpsed the other girls the next morning.
They were milling under the courtyard’s pear trees, in the haze of dawn, walking gracefully and speaking gently.
When they laughed, they covered their mouths so that only their eyes showed.
“I am from the province of North Lan,” I overheard one of the girls say. “My family owns three tribute houses near the prairies. We hold feasts for several city officials each month.”
“That’s impressive,” her companion replied, in a tone that suggested it was not. “My unworthy family only owns an entire fleet of merchant ships. Sadly, we only get to hold feasts for hundreds of foreign dignitaries every week.”
It was from these overheard conversations that I learned who the other candidates were: daughters of ministers, scholars, and high-ranking officials. There was even a niece of the empress here, the Sun Clan’s Jia. The more I learned about them, the more foolish I felt.
How could I have ever thought the prince would choose me? I had already been unsuitable compared to the candidates in Guishan. Compared to the women here, I felt like a weed trying to flower among lotuses.
There were other things the women whispered about, from speculation on the succession war between the five princes to rumors about how ill the emperor truly was.
It was said that he had not spoken a coherent word in months, that switching his heir to Prince Terren had been one of his last lucid decisions.
Mostly, there was gossip about the concubines from previous generations.
They were so envious of each other.
They were all so spoiled by their emperors.
They fought each other so viciously. Most imperial concubines do.
The more of it I heard, the more uneasy I grew. It was said that of Emperor Muzha’s Inner Court, which had once been full of thirty women, only the empress and one other remained. Some had been deemed unworthy and dismissed; some had fled of their own accord. Most had died.
The girls spoke of knives, and poison, and drownings on moonless nights.
The palace eunuchs, always smiling with smugness or pity, informed us that the deaths were only accidents.
On the third day, our lessons began.
A gong woke us up at dawn, before birdsong.
I joined the hundreds of candidates in the courtyard to sit in tidy rows, on grass still wet with dew.
While the pear trees showered down blossoms, the House brought in a rotation of instructors to teach us how to be proper concubines—how to dress, and walk, and speak to people of rank.
There was even a senior concubine, the last remaining from the emperor’s court, to teach us how to please a man.
Lady Chara, a frail woman with jutting cheekbones, spoke quietly and without smiling.
“It is important that you never skip to the main activity.” Her voice was like a wind’s whisper.
“You must first cultivate desire in your prince, for as long as he permits you. This allows magic to build up in him, so that his seeds will come out as potent as possible. The difficulty of an imperial child being conceived, you must understand, is far higher than that of an ordinary one. It is vanishingly rare for a seed to be viable—only male seeds are strong enough to hold Heaven’s magic, and even so, only the tiniest fraction of them survive to be born. ”
She explained that our emperor had to plant many, many times to get our five seal-bearing princes—Maro, Terren, Isan, Kiran, and Ruyi. And even so, five was unusually high. In many eras past, it was considered lucky to receive even two, to guarantee the line of succession.
I supposed that was why they needed so many of us.
“That is why techniques are so important. They help us improve our chances. It is a lot like literomancers and their poetry. Pleasing rhythms can draw out magic no matter its source—Heaven, the Ancestors, or our prince. The one I will teach you now was developed in the early years of the Sun Dynasty, by a mistress of the Wenning Emperor. It is called the Allure of the Snake.” Two maids held up a bamboo pole, and Lady Chara demonstrated.
My eyes went wide as I watched. Ma had told me the childmaking activity was only natural, that every girl in Tensha was born knowing how to do it. I had never even considered that she might be wrong, that it was something that had to be taught.
Beside me, the other girls practiced on imagined bamboo of their own, and I tried clumsily to mimic their motions.
When Lady Chara finished teaching us this technique, she moved on to others.
Moth’s Flutter, Crane’s Glide, Twirl of the Calla Lily.
They all seemed very similar to me, but a furtive glimpse at the other concubines told me they had a much more intuitive grasp of the lesson.
Possibly they had all learned their duty already, long before they had come to the palace.
Minma, I noticed, was not following her own advice.
Instead of being careful of the other girls like she told me to, she was trying to befriend everyone.
Her father must have given her spells to use here, to copy onto the earth and mend palace gowns, because I saw her offering slips of paper to the others, to gain favor.
During breaks, I saw her whispering with Tu Yan, a general’s sister, and later that morning, trying to form an alliance with Aika and Tiron, both daughters of scholars.
Once, she even tried ingratiating herself to Sun Jia.
But the empress’s niece only looked at her with disgust, like Minma had done to Ba back home. “A literomancer’s daughter,” Jia sneered, kicking mud onto Minma’s gown. “If your father’s spells are worth anything, how come he has not been brought to the palace, to work for the emperor?”
Minma didn’t react. She simply brushed it off and moved on. Not even ten breaths later, she had seated herself by one of the trellis tables under the pear trees, to share tea with Yuan Lily and Liru Syra.
Maybe, I thought uncertainly, I ought to make alliances of my own. I decided to forget about our prior enmity and approach Minma. “May I sit with you?”
Her sharp eyes flicked up to meet mine. For a long time, she only looked at me in silence.
It was Syra, with a face powdered like a moth, who broke it. “Do you know her?”
Instantly Minma scowled. “Her? Why would I know her? I have never spoken to that unsightly creature even once.”
“Look, she’s even tied her sash on the wrong side,” Lily chimed in. “Has she never worn a gown in her life?”
They were still laughing when I ducked out of sight.