With the help of the hostel owner’s clue, the Guards expanded their search and found the two men, who were connected to the son of a chieftain of the Western Turks, the enemy of our kingdom.
The imperial cavalry, followed by many conscripted peasant soldiers, was soon dispatched to the border near the Western Turks’ territory. A punitive war started, turning the border towns into rubble, and many garrisons were established and enforced. Forts were built; more paid soldiers were enlisted. The news of the dust of the war and the cries of the dead were told in the palace for months.
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I heard it all from within the safety of the Inner Court’s walls. Sometimes I thought it ironic that an evil plot had provided me with an entrance to a life I had dreamed about, but such was the design of life, that one could never foretell.
Inside the Inner Court, the maids looked much more splendid than the Selects did. They wore bright pink robes and long, transparent shawls. Their makeup was colorful, and they wore jade hairpins in their Cloudy Chignons. They glanced at me curiously, whispering among themselves. Obviously they knew I had saved the Emperor’s life, but when I nodded at them, they looked away.
When I passed the courtyards, flocks of golden orioles leaped and dove before me; roses, chrysanthemums, asters, and azaleas bloomed by the paths winding through gardens of peonies. In the large, silvery lakes, blue water lilies floated placidly, while frogs croaked and goldfish swam near the red-roofed pavilions. The land rose slightly in the distance and blended into the cloudy horizon; from afar, it seemed as if a garden had grown in the sky.
The beautiful scenery reminded me of the garden at home. The creation of a garden was meant to duplicate the paradise of the afterlife, Father had said, and its most important feature was the rocks, which must be placed carefully to resemble the islands of Penglai, the haunts of the Eight Immortals. I had seen many shapes of rocks in Father’s one-acre garden, but in the Inner Court, the scale of the garden and the number of unique rocks surprised me. There were rocks with perfectly smooth edges resembling giant eggs, rocks with perforated holes like beehives, rocks with deep hollows as wide as windows, and rocks bearing grotesque angles and shapes that suggested the peaks and valleys of the Tai mountain.
Father would have been happy to see that lovely garden.
I wished to tell him that I still remembered the promise I had made at our family’s grave site. I wished to tell him too that I still remembered how he had raised me and what he had wanted for me when he was alive. Born a humble man, Father had started out with selling lumber, built his fortune with his mere hands, and rose to be a powerful man who helped destroy a dynasty and found another. He wanted me, his daughter, his heir, to accomplish more than what he had achieved, to perpetuate his fame, and to reach a height no ordinary men, or women, could possibly dream of.
I would not disappoint him.
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I was assigned to a bedchamber in a walled compound at the west side of the court. The eight other Talents were my roommates, and the Graces and Beauties shared the other houses in the compound. The area was far from the Quarters of the Pure Lotus, where the Four Ladies resided. The Quarters, I heard, encompassed many pavilions, courtyards with painted roofs, man-made lakes, and scented arboretums with perennial flowers.
I wished to meet the Four Ladies and see what they looked like. The Noble Lady was the daughter of the late Sui Emperor, I remembered. I did not know anything about the Pure Lady, Lady Virtue, or Lady Obedience.
Jewel, to my dismay, had become the Emperor’s Most Adored, and she had moved to the Quarters. I would perhaps run into her someday, but I wished with all my heart I would not have to see her again.
I was ordered to start etiquette training, which court protocol dictated that every titled woman must learn. The classroom, located in a wooded area near a hill, was decorated with five plaques written with Confucius’s virtues: courtesy, tolerance, faith, wisdom, and filial piety. Training with me were twenty-six other girls: Beauties, Graces, and Talents. Later, I learned they were ordered to go there every six months to refresh their training, and I was the only one who was new.