Zen slipped his gloves back on and, with two fingers, pulled the shopkeeper’s eyes shut. “Peace be upon your soul,” he murmured, “and may you find the Path home.”
Then he stood, drew his black peacoat tightly around him, and stepped out of the ravaged shop. Within moments, the shadows had swallowed him, and he was no more than a silhouette in the night.
To know the future,
one must first understand the past.
—Kontencian Analects (Classic of Society),3:9
Lan remembered the exact words her mother had said to her about her future:You will succeed me as Imperial Advisor,she’d said as she stood, framed in the rosewood fretwork of their study window, watching Lan trace her calligraphy. Her mother’s hair was a sweep of black ink, her silken páo robes pale and fluttering in the breeze of the spring solstice.The kingdom will be your duty. You will protect the weak and find the balance in the world.
It had all seemed possible, once.
She wondered what her mother would think if she saw Lan now.
The dusk bells had long finished tolling by the time she arrived at the Teahouse. Known in Hin as the Méi’tíng Chá’guan, and directly translated into Elantian as the Rose Pavilion Teahouse, it sat below King’s Hills, the richest area of Haak’gong, where the Elantians had established themselves.
From where she stood, Lan could see the foreign houses rising on the mountains cupping the eastern border of the city:sharp, multilayered metal-and-marble buildings that stood like pale sentries, standing watch over the conquered lands from the highest points in the city. King’s Hills overlooked King Alessander’s Road, once known as the Four Gods’ Road: the most prosperous stretch of Haak’gong, packed to bursting with restaurants, shops, and services alight with the burning gold of alchemical lamps from dusk to dawn.
Meanwhile, the rest of Haak’gong, which stretched below the evemarket to the Bay of Southern Winds, continued to fall into ruin, its people reduced to starving in trash-packed slums.
But, oh, how the Elantians had adored Hin culture: enough to preserve the most beautiful portions of it and capture it for their own use.
There was no better example than the Rose Pavilion Teahouse.
Lan stumbled down the back alley of the Teahouse, where the gutters were streaked with grease and runoff from the kitchens. She turned down a familiar corner and pried open a thin bamboo door.
Immediately she was accosted by the smells of sizzling food, the hot rush of steam billowing from vats of boiling water. Several kitchen girls in gray linen smocks knelt, scrubbing dishes by the door; they called out to her as she barreled past. “ ’Scuse me—sorry, Cook—running late—”
“Did you girls spit in my pots again?” bellowed Li the cook, emerging red-faced and sweaty from a cloud of steam.
“No!” Lan yelled back, but this reminded her: she needed to think of what to do with all the winnings she’d scraped together from flattening the other songgirls at spit-in-the-pot. Rich women played spit with fancy decks of gold-lined cards and bejeweled fingers; penniless waifs played spit with stolen pots and quick-working mouths.
She heard Li yell something back at her, and she caught thescallion pie he flung at her head and tore off a chunk. “Thanks, Uncle Li!” she called, her voice muffled as she ducked through the partition to the stairs to the basement. This back corridor was hidden from sight from the main dining room of the Teahouse by a wall of paper screens; through it she could hear the chatter of patrons and the clinking of cutlery. The corridor smelled of roses, the signature perfume of the Teahouse and the national flower of the Elantians. Madam Meng might be ruthless and amoral, but one had to admit she was an excellent businesswoman.
Lan flew down the staircase and burst into the dressing room, stumbling straight through the cluster of her fellow songgirls and eliciting a wave of protests in her path. Ignoring them, she shoved through to the very front and began to undress, peeling off her now-sticky hemp shift and lathering soap and cold water from a stone basin sink. A few glares andhmphs, and within moments the other songgirls were back to chattering about the big show tonight, their variety of dialects weaving together like birdsong.
“Lanlan, where in the Ten Hells have you been?”
A girl’s reflection was outlined in the mirror beneath the yellow lantern light, a collection of features that was everything Lan was not: soft rosy cheeks, gentle doe eyes, cherry lips, currently pursed in a look of concern.
If there was one person Lan hated to worry, it was Ying’hua—Ying, in the new age. Ying was the only person in this world who knew Lan’s truename—the one she’d had before the Elantians came and required the Hin to identify by a monosyllabic moniker. Apparently, three syllables was too long for the hypocrites, who themselves held godsawful-sounding names like Nicholass and Jonasson and Alessander. Lan often fell asleep murmuring the names of high-ranking Elantian officials to herself, twisting her tongue around thestrange syllables so they would come smoother and faster and she could use the names to her advantage (which currently meant working them into bawdy songs as she did chores at the Teahouse).
“The Madam decided to have a last-minute rehearsal earlier this afternoon,” Ying continued to chide as she began attacking Lan’s hair with a brush. “Apparently there are some high-ranking Elantian officials attending tonight.Royal Magicians.”This last part was spoken in half-fear, half-awe. “We were looking for you everywhere.”
“Really?” Ice spread through Lan’s veins at the thought of having missed one of the Madam’s orders. “Did the Madam say anything?”
“She just asked if we knew where you were. I covered for you.” Ying’s gaze grew sharp as Lan loosed a breath. “Wherewereyou?”
“Sorry,” Lan said to her friend, splashing her face with water again and toweling off with her own hemp shift. “Was just down at the evemarket.”
Ying sucked in her cheeks, eyes brimming with disapproval. Without another word, she snatched the evening’s performance outfit from the drawer that belonged to Lan and began to dress her. “I don’t get why you always want to go there,” she fussed, pulling on a silk sleeve. “Songgirls from the Teahouse mustn’t be seen mingling in that area, or we’ll get in trouble. Besides, it’s so…dirty. And you’ll get tanned—even more than you are now. You’ll look like someone from an ancient clan!”
Lan refrained from rolling her eyes. Ying loved the soft comforts and small luxuries the Teahouse offered, but Lan was far too restless. Still, she thought as she tilted her head to swipe rouge over her cheeks and lips, she’d learned that sometimes kind lies were better than hard truths. She could nevertell Ying why she had been at Old Wei’s in the first place; why it was there that she disappeared to a few times a moon.
She studied her face in the looking glass, a few shades darker than Madam Meng would prefer. The Elantian standards of Hin beauty meant snow-pale faces, willowy figures—but Lan couldn’t help how she’d been born. If anything, she’d decided she would rather stick out like a thorn in the White Angels’ eyes.
“Nothing wrong with that,” she replied, poking out her tongue. “Besides, aren’t we all meant to be descended from the clans somewhat?” Even post-Conquest, it was regarded as somewhat of a taboo among Hin to speak of the clans—the Ninety-Nine Clans, they were once called. All Lan knew was that they had threatened the peace and stability of the Middle Kingdom and had been defeated by Emperor Yán’lóng, establishing the peace and prosperity that had been the era of the Last Kingdom. The clans had quickly disbanded or faded into obscurity, taking on the mainstream Hin identity to avoid imperial persecution.
