Chapter 2

The water had gone lukewarm. Su Xiu didn’t seem to notice.

“Hongzhi, I loathe Master Zhao.”

Her voice was barely audible.

“When he lies beside me, I feel as though there’s a breathing corpse in my bed. But if I lose his favor… I don’t know what will happen to me. Perhaps what happened to the Second Madam.”

I’d heard a little about her. A beautiful woman with a vicious temper.

When she’d first arrived, the master had liked that about her. She’d thought herself something special and cursed out everyone in the household, even the First Madam.

But no flower stays in bloom forever. In less than six months he’d tired of her.

She couldn’t bear the change. To get back at him, she took up with the family groom.

Master Zhao and the First Madam caught them in bed. Both were beaten to death in the courtyard, rolled in straw mats, and hauled away.

The wild dogs probably got them.

“Sometimes I really envy you, Hongzhi,” Su Xiu murmured, looking at me.

Me?

What was there to envy about a servant?

Outside, everything was in turmoil. The Qing had fallen and the Republic had come. The emperor was gone; now there was a president. There was fighting every day.

I was a poor family’s daughter. My own older brother had sold me to pay for a wife.

He’d meant to sell me to a brothel, but the Zhao household offered more, so he’d brought me here, pleased as anything.

Steward Liu groped me whenever no one was looking. Old Nanny Wang, who shared my room, had feet that stank to high heaven. Xiaolan talked in her sleep and ground her teeth.

I lived on the masters’ leftovers. When your mistress fell out of favor, even the other servants treated you accordingly. Some days I lived worse than a dog.

The Fifth Madam didn’t know how lucky she was.

I had to look out for myself.

By the time I’d finished washing her feet, I could barely stay awake. I went back to our room, lay down amid the snores, and fell straight asleep.

In my dream, I was Master Zhao’s sixth concubine. I had a room of my own.

Every night, the big red lantern hung outside my door.