“Well, we shall start embroidering,” the Xu Girl ordered and stuffed the piles of handkerchiefs into our hands.
I stared at the vague bird-shaped pattern on the cloth. In my right hand, I held a needle, but it felt like a slippery eel. Crouching carefully, I wrestled it between my thumb and forefinger, suspending my right arm in midair, and traced the edge of the vague pattern.
Soon my eyes were sore, my neck stiff, and my hands cramped, while my mind was knotted like a skein of yarn. When would I see the Emperor?
And I was hungry. I wanted my midday meal.
“So I heard this from the head eunuch when I arrived a few days ago. He said if you wish to see the Emperor, you need his summons,” the Xu Girl said.
I raised my head, surprised. I had assumed that since I was in the palace, I would see him immediately. Perhaps we would all gather in a courtyard, and he would pace before us and ask questions, similar to Father interviewing a group of scribes. But the Xu Girl could be right. The One Above All, the lord of the wind and the sand, the ruler of those flying and those walking, must elude others’ eyes.
“Whom will he summon first?” the girl with a pimple asked, glancing at all of us. “There are fifteen of us.”
“I suppose he will summon us in the order of age, pedigree, or the rank of our family,” the Xu Girl said.
A wave of voices exploded. “Then he would summon you first,” one said, pointing at the other.
“No, I think it’s you,” another added.
They sounded courteous, but a shade of uneasiness lurked in their eyes, telling me that they were not truly friends but rivals.
“If he summons us in the order of rank, shouldn’t he see the titled ladies first?” I said, fingering the needle between my thumb and forefinger. Everyone in the kingdom knew the Emperor had many titled ladies serve him.
“You mean the Four Ladies and the Ladies-in-Waiting?” The Xu Girl dismissed me with a wave. “Perhaps he will summon them first, and then he should see us.”
“But there are so many.” I could tell she disliked my interruption, but she did not seem to know how many titled ladies there were. “If you include all the ladies of nine degrees.”
She glanced at me and then looked down at the handkerchief in her hand. “Nine degrees?”
“Yes.”
The highest ranking of all titled ladies was the Empress, the chief wife, but she had died the previous year, so the Emperor had his consorts, the second-degree ladies, whom we called the Four Ladies; the third-degree ladies, known as the Ladies-in-Waiting; the fourth-degree ladies, the Beauties; the fifth-degree ladies, the Graces; the sixth-degree ladies, the Talents; the seventh-degree ladies, the Baolins; the eighth-degree ladies, the Yunus; and the ninth-degree ladies, the Cainus.
“Where did you learn that?” the Xu Girl asked me without lifting her head.
“From the Sui Book.”
“What book?”
I could tell the Xu Girl, like Big Sister, was not interested in reading, or perhaps she could not read at all. After all, reading was usually reserved for the noble boys. Many women, even the noble ones, did not have the privilege. But Father had given me all types of books: history books, Confucius’s Analects, poems and rhapsodies, and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I had enjoyed reading them. “The history book about the Sui Dynasty. It says the palace women were ranked in nine degrees, like the ministers in the Outer Palace. Emperor Gaozu adopted the same system when he founded his dynasty.”
She waved her hand, frowning. “Fine. Nine degrees of ladies. We know that now. Only a dozen women.”
“No, no. Not a dozen. Each rank consists of a different number of women. There are top-ranking ladies: the four Ladies, and six Ladies-in-Waiting. Then the middle-ranking, the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-degree ladies. Each of those ranks has nine women. And then there are lower-ranking, the seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-degree ladies, and each of those has twenty-seven.”
The Selects stared at me, their mouths open in shock, and the Xu Girl pulled the thread abruptly, looking frustrated. “Twenty-seven lower-ranking women? What is the total of the titled ladies then?”
I added the numbers quickly. “One hundred and eighteen.”
She was quiet. Someone else dropped her needle.
“Are you sure?” the Xu Girl finally asked. “One hundred and eighteen titled women?”
“Yes,” I said. An army of the Emperor’s women. My stomach clenched as the true meaning of that number sank in.
If the Emperor shared one night with each titled woman, it would take him more than three months. About seven months if he ordered a second round, and if he was happy with his bedmates, it would probably take at least a year before he summoned one of us.
“Nobody told me that. You certainly know more than any of us,” the girl with a pimple said with a sigh.