Chapter 8 To Shoot Down Suns
TO SHOOT DOWN SUNS
Pity the fish confined to its pond.
It cannot play in the grass. It will never feel the breeze.
How can we claim to have suffered enough?
Pity the fish. It will never swim among trees.
—TSAO TE SHU, LIANG DYNASTY, YEAR 445
I didn’t cry as eunuchs dragged me through the cold rain and deposited me somewhere deep in the East Palace, but only because nothing felt real. It was like everything was still a continuation of that night-story, embellished to be as frightening as possible.
I was not the prince’s betrothed, I tried to tell myself. I was still a girl in Lu’an, dancing with the rest of my village under a clear evening sky, and I had only dreamed the palace.
The pavilion they put me in was huge and empty.
I sat in one corner as servants busied themselves around me—moving furniture, carrying in rattling towers of silver plates, hanging up rain-soaked bundles of embroidered cloth.
For the most part, they ignored me. Only once or twice did one cast a glance over my way, as if to wonder how a village girl had tricked her way into becoming the prince’s betrothed.
The one who would receive the majority of his nights, anything from the full moon to the new.
The one who would, after a betrothal period of three hundred days, wed him.
The one who would—should Terren survive his coronation—become empress.
“Lady Yin, how fortunate you are! I am baffled as to why you are not dancing and singing.”
I looked up, surprised to find a familiar face. It was Li Ciyi, the eunuch who had brought me here from Guishan. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
The eunuch ignored my questions and made a grand gesture encompassing the entire room.
“Ah, is this place not a true marvel to behold? Fit for an empress, I daresay! Look how the hydrangea bushes sprout from the base of the walls; see how the orchids peek their shy faces in from the lattice windows. And the ceilings! Hanging with a thousand blades, just like the main hall! Our prince has put such thought into decorating your new home.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked again, running out of patience. I could not look at him without remembering how he had gone down the line of girls in the city square, like picking cabbages at the wet market.
He cleared his throat theatrically. “I hope you will not be offended, Lady Yin, when I say it is clear you know little of palace politics. But it need not be that way. Everyone knows that all great empresses past have had a trusted chief eunuch advising them. An ally who can slip, like an eel, between the Inner and Outer Courts, who can help you navigate the palace’s intrigue and vicissitudes. ”
“You want my employment?” I was stunned into saying. I had never met someone so shameless. “I thought you said I was a joke.”
His eyes narrowed into crescent moons. “That was when you were nobody, Lady Yin. Now you are to be an empress! The currents of the palace flow faster than a white river; alliances in the House change hands quick as currency. You asked what I want from you, so I will answer you simply and truthfully: I wish to rise with you in station. Should you survive to become empress, I will be the most powerful eunuch in the palace.”
I couldn’t believe we were speaking of currency, as if Zhen had not been cut apart that very morning. As if the prince would not do the same to me without the slightest hesitation. “Why have you let me come to the palace anyway?” I demanded. “Did you know the prince would choose to wed me?”
“Of course not.” He gave me a strange look. “You think that I predicted the assassination? That I could have guessed at the prince’s fickle whims? Lady Yin, I brought you in to collect a gift from the candidate who went after you—no other reason.”
So that was all. A bribe. Someone on Selection Day had wanted to seem better in contrast, and had arranged for the most unworthy candidate to go before her.
I could not even remember if that moon-faced girl had made it.
Terren choosing me had been such a shock that the rest of the selection had passed in a blur.
“See?” Ciyi warbled. “I have been nothing but truthful to you. Now you see you can trust me.”
“I do not want your services,” I said, not kindly. “Even if I desired a chief eunuch, which I do not, it would not be you.”
“Ah, but you have little choice. You underestimate the danger you are in—how insulted the other concubines feel now that a rice farmer was chosen over them, what dreadful lengths they would go to to remove you from your position. I may benefit from this arrangement, but make no mistake: you benefit far more. Without you I will not have my promotion, but without me you will be dead.” The wider Ciyi’s smile grew, the narrower the crescent moons.
“And if you die, what will become of your brother? The one who is young and thin?”
Anger surged through me like wind in a storm. “Go away. I do not wish to speak to you any longer.”
“You still do not trust me, then. I shall prove myself to you with a gift.” He pulled from his sleeve a long, metallic object and offered it to me.
When I didn’t take it, he let it clatter onto the wooden floor.
“This needle, made of mountain silver, turns black in the presence of poison. I suggest you use it on anything another concubine brings you.” He whistled a cheery tune as he left me.
As much as I despised Ciyi, he was not wrong. My purpose was to help my brother and others waiting for me back home. I could not keep standing here feeling sorry for myself, not while the famine was still ravaging Lu’an’s rice paddies and starving its people.
I had to use my new position to save them. Each moment I delayed was a chance that another sister, like Larkspur, could die.
The rain had stopped now, leaving behind a heavy stillness.
In the languid afternoon light, I could see that my pavilion was no longer empty.
The servants had filled it with ornate rosewood tables and elm benches, reed mats and cushions for guests to sit on.
Vases of beautiful porcelain, depicting immortals on misty mountains, held young trees of olive, mandarin, and fig.
The Cypress Pavilion was far bigger than the guest chambers in the Hall of Earthly Sanctity.
It boasted a huge parlor, a crafts room, two bedchambers, a dining area, a sunroom, and a courtyard.
It had both a front garden and a rear garden, which extended deep into the cypress grove.
In the rear garden, I found a maid and a eunuch, sweeping stray leaves off the cobblestones.
When I stepped outside, they dropped their rakes in a hurry and bowed.
“You don’t have to—” I began, but the maid interrupted me.
“May you live a thousand years.” She was young and bright-eyed, and wore her hair in two buns; her shawl bore the red, white, and black coloring found on cranes.
Behind her spray of freckles was a gentle blush, behind her smile a shyness.
“I am Lin Wren, the head attendant for the Cypress Pavilion.”
“And I am your scribe, Tel Pima.” The eunuch had startled-looking brows and a braid that reached his waist. He kept a quill pen tucked behind one ear.
Women might have been forbidden to read, but the more distinguished ones kept male scribes for correspondence. It should not have surprised me that I was assigned one myself.
“I’m glad to meet you both,” I said, and meant it from the heart.
Nobody had spoken to me this kindly in a month.
Then, remembering my purpose, I lowered my head.
“I have a favor to ask. I come from a small village, and the famine has not been kind to it. Are there any provisions I can send back home?”
Instantly, Wren’s face darkened. “I am sorry, Lady Yin, but what you ask is beyond the abilities of this humble servant. Everything in the East Palace is accounted for. Everything that comes in and goes out must be approved by His Highness.”
“You ought to ask the prince himself,” Pima said. “He is, after all, betrothed to you.”
There was no mockery in his tone, but it was hard not to interpret it as so. They picked up their rakes and began sweeping again, signaling the end of that conversation.
For the rest of the afternoon, I tried to speak to the other East Palace workers.
As I wandered through the cypress grove, I made my plea to several others.
But no matter who I asked—from the youngest maid feeding the holly-cats to the oldest eunuch trimming the azalea bushes—their answers were the same.
One of the older maids mending a scarf by the creek, with gray-streaked hair and a face sagging with age, did not even look up or acknowledge me once.
Did they hate me? I wondered, despairing. Did they spurn me for being a lowly villager?
Or did they resent me for being Empress-in-Waiting?
Daylight was fading by the time I made it to the end of the garden, where a plain pavilion sat tucked away between the cypresses. Warm firelight flickered from its windows.
As I approached, I heard laughter and excited conversation, punctuated by what sounded like a story being passed around.
“Long ago, in a world burning with heat, the Archer shot down nine of the ten suns.” When I looked inside, I saw at least twenty maids and eunuchs gathered for dinner. The servants’ quarters, I thought.
I did not dare enter. Once, I might have thought myself one of them, but now I was not so sure.
I was not an empress, certainly, but I was not quite a villager anymore either.
I didn’t know what I was. I stayed outside, close enough to hear their conversation, but not close enough to feel the warmth of their hearth.
It was there, pressed up against the cold wood and hugging my knees, that the prince’s eunuch found me. “Lady Yin,” Hesin said, “His Highness calls you to his bedside.”