“I don’t like wine.”
During festivals, my parents had filled my cup with specially prepared plum wine. I had sipped some, but what I really enjoyed was the company of my family.
“Do you want to ruin your first, and probably only, chance?”
She had a point. I grabbed the cup and drank the liquid in three gulps. “Thank you.”
I gave the cup back to her and leaned against the tub. The deaf eunuch began to wash my hair with soap beans, his nails scraping my scalp. “Tell me about the Emperor, Jewel. What have you heard about him? What did the eunuchs tell you?”
There was silence. “He could be many things you imagined and hoped, save for one.”
“What?” A bonfire of heat erupted in my stomach and rushed to my chest then my head. It was so powerful I shivered. Jewel’s drink was much stronger than Mother’s homemade plum wine.
“A lover.”
There was something in her voice, something subtle that made me sit up. “You have met the Emperor before, haven’t you?”
“Hmm?” She turned to me. Her face was wet with vapor.
A lover. Only a woman who had a history with the Emperor would say something like that. “You told me you never met him. But you did. You know him. You know him well.”
She blinked, as though I had wronged her, but I knew I was right. She was hiding something from me. “Are you lying to me, Jewel?”
She sighed. “I would never do that. You are a good friend of mine. If you really wish, I shall gladly tell you my story over the warmth of fire and music someday. I fear I shall bore you.”
“I shall not be bored.” I felt deceived, and the wine simmered in my stomach, burning quietly and persistently.
She drew a line in the water with her finger. The water rippled; the petals leaped up and down. “I was once the Emperor’s favorite. He adored me, giving me a chamber inside the Inner Court and bestowing on me many gifts and servants. He even promoted my father and brothers within the court. But then he exiled me to this place—this doomed Yeting Court—like a slave.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “Why? What did you do?”
“I did nothing. Someone hated me and said something about me, I suppose, so he lost his interest in me.” She paused. “But that was not all. He took everything, and everyone, from me. All my family members, my father and brothers, all the people who served me or were related to me, gone.”
I shivered. That was the most horrific story I had ever heard. “When did that happen?”
“Seven years ago.”
She had been exiled to the Yeting Court for seven years. I stared at a petal in the water. My anger dissipated. “That is a long time.”
“I was eighteen when he exiled me. Now I am twenty-five. I spent my most precious years here, inside the Yeting Court. No one knows me. No one wants me. I am no longer the same girl I used to be. And the Emperor? His wife is dead, and he likes one woman today and another tomorrow, changing them like cups of wine.”
I could not help pitying her. “This must be hard. Do you…” I swallowed the word hate. “Do you still wish to see him?”
“You wish to know if I hate him?” She had read my mind anyway. “Of course I did. For a long time. But then I learned it was not him, really. He was deceived. He still favored me, I knew, or he could have ordered me killed. But that was seven years ago.” She leaned back. “And all these years, I have tried to see him. Giving him unique gifts. He has never summoned me. He perhaps has forgotten me already.” She sighed. “Seven years is a long time.”
That was why she sent the Emperor her portrait—to remind him of her.
I wiped sweat off my face. I was growing hot. “When I see him, I will speak for you.”
“You will?” She sounded delighted, but then she sighed again. “I wish I had not been so naive then. Had I known what kind of a man he was, I would not have ended up here.” A veil of emotion vibrated in her voice. What was it? Regret? Resentment? Determination? Eunuch Ming coughed, and Jewel lifted her head, smiling at me. “But this is your night. You must prepare yourself. Don’t you wish to please him? And become Most Adored?”
“Most Adored?” I had heard of the honorific, an unofficial title referring to a woman who won the Emperor’s favor and received as many bestowals and privileges as the high-ranking ladies. In the past, some of those women with that title had been elevated to Ladies, second only to the Empress, and brought eternal glory to their families. Perhaps that was what I had to do—become Most Adored and then request the Emperor to restore my family’s fortune.
“Yes, you would need to share his bed more than three times during two moon’s cycles, which means he must upset the court bedding schedule—”
“What bedding schedule?” I had never heard of it.
“Oh, I’ll tell you more when you’re ready. For now, all you need to know is you must keep his interest so he’ll summon you again.”