2. Lessons in Scarlet

The day of the New Moon Banquet began with an eerie stillness, as if the compound itself was holding its breath. No drums beat from the watchtowers. No birds sang in the pagoda tree. The sky was the color of unwashed wool, heavy and withholding, and the air pressed against the skin like a damp shroud.

Yu woke before the others, her body attuned to the rhythms of danger. She lay motionless on her mat, counting the cracks in the ceiling beams, listening to the distant sounds of the kitchen fires being stoked. Today, the buyers would come. Today, everything would change.

She reached beneath her mat and touched the pottery shard, the garrote, the tiny clay vial of concentrated poppy resin that Mei had stolen from the infirmary stores. The objects were cold and patient, like her own heart.

The morning was a blur of preparation. The girls were roused at dawn and herded to the bathhouse, where they were scrubbed with pumice and perfumed water until their skin stung pink. Their hair was unbound, oiled with camellia, and dressed in elaborate coils pinned with bronze and jade. Their faces were painted with the white lead powder, their lips and cheeks stained with carmine, their brows drawn in with lampblack. Yu submitted to the ministrations without resistance, watching her reflection in the polished bronze mirror transform into a stranger.

The woman in the mirror had the face of a courtesan, but her eyes belonged to a wolf.

At midday, the compound gates groaned open for the first time in ten days. A procession of ox-drawn carts and curtained palanquins rumbled into the courtyard, their occupants hidden from view. Servants scurried to unload lacquered chests and clay jars of wine. The smells of roasting meat and exotic spices drifted from the kitchen, mingling with the incense that burned perpetually at the gate shrine.

Aunt Mu presided over the chaos like a general before battle. She had changed into a robe of deep crimson silk embroidered with peonies, the color of celebration and spilled blood. Her face was a mask of white powder, her lips a slash of vermilion. She moved among the girls, inspecting each one with clinical precision, adjusting a pin here, a sash there.

“Remember your training,” she said, her voice carrying through the hall. “You are no longer frontier brutes or market-town peasants. You are products of the Village School. You will speak when spoken to. You will serve with grace. You will make no sound that is not pleasing.” Her gaze swept over them like a blade. “Those who excel tonight will leave this place forever. Those who fail... will wish they had been born as swine.”

As afternoon faded into evening, the first guests arrived. Yu watched from the shadow of the serving hall as they descended from their palanquins: plump merchants in brocade robes, their fingers glittering with jade rings; stern military officers in leather-and-lacquer armor; smooth-faced courtiers whose rank was stitched into every thread of their silk. They were greeted by Aunt Mu with deep bows and murmured pleasantries, their voices a low hum of avarice and anticipation.

Ling appeared at Yu’s elbow, her painted face a study in controlled terror. “I counted fourteen guests so far. Six merchants, four officers, three civil officials, and one I could not identify—he wears no insignia, but the others defer to him.”

“The Commander of the City Guard is among them?”

“Yes. And the Minister of Rites’ senior steward. The man without insignia... I heard Aunt Mu address him as ‘Lord Counselor.’ His robes are plain, but his bearing speaks of high rank.”

Yu filed the information away. The ledger’s names were becoming flesh.

At the hour of the dog, the banquet began. The girls were arranged in two lines and marched into the great hall, which had been transformed for the occasion. Silk banners hung from the rafters, their embroidered phoenixes and dragons rippling in the lamplight. Low tables of polished cypress were arrayed in a horseshoe, laden with bronze vessels of wine, platters of roast duck and river fish, bowls of persimmons and pickled plums. Oil lamps flickered from iron brackets on the pillars, casting dancing shadows that made the painted faces of the guests look like masks from a demon play.

The girls knelt in the center of the horseshoe, heads bowed, hands folded in their laps. Yu positioned herself at the edge of the formation, where she could observe the door and the guards. Two sentries stood at the main entrance. Two more flanked Aunt Mu at the head table. A fifth guarded the rear corridor that led to the kitchens and, beyond them, the servants’ gate.

Five guards. Fourteen guests. A room full of witnesses.

She let her gaze drift to the zither that rested on a carved stand near the head table—the same instrument on which she had played her first, flawless lesson. Beside it sat a bronze incense burner large enough to crack a skull.

The banquet unfolded with the choreographed precision of a court ritual. Aunt Mu rose and delivered a speech of welcome, her words honeyed with flattery for the guests and laced with promises of the evening’s delights. The girls were introduced by name and region of origin, their qualities extolled as if they were thoroughbred horses. The guests applauded politely, their eyes roving over the kneeling forms with the detached assessment of buyers at a slave market.

Then the performances began. Two girls played a duet on the flute and mouth organ, their fingers trembling but their notes true. A third performed a dance with silk ribbons, her movements graceful despite the terror that glistened in her eyes. The guests drank and ate and murmured among themselves, occasionally pointing at a particular girl with a raised cup or a knowing smile.

Yu’s turn came when Aunt Mu summoned her to the zither.

“This one,” Aunt Mu announced, “came to us from the northern frontier, wild as a steppe mare. But the Village School has refined her. She plays the zither with a delicacy that would do credit to a court musician.”

Yu rose and walked to the instrument. The walk seemed to take an eternity. Each step was a calculation, a measurement, a commitment. She knelt before the zither and let her fingers rest on the strings. The silk was cool beneath her touch, the same strings that she had unwound and braided into a weapon now hidden in her sash.

She began to play.

The melody was the same one the eunuch had taught her, but she altered it subtly—a note held too long here, a pause too pregnant there, transforming a simple court tune into something elegiac and unsettling. The guests fell silent. Even Aunt Mu’s smile flickered with something like unease.

As she played, Yu let her gaze move deliberately around the room. She met Ling’s eyes for a heartbeat. Then Mei’s. Then three others, scattered among the kneeling girls. One by one, they gave nearly imperceptible nods.

The melody swelled to its final cadence. Yu’s fingers stilled on the strings. The silence that followed was absolute.

Then the room erupted in applause. The Lord Counselor—the unmarked man whose presence had puzzled Ling—leaned forward in his seat. His face was long and scholarly, his beard trimmed in the style of the high bureaucracy, his eyes dark and unreadable.

“Exquisite,” he said. His voice was soft, but it carried the weight of absolute authority. “Aunt Mu, you have outdone yourself. I shall have words with the Minister of Rites about acquiring this one for his household. Such talent should not be wasted on a provincial post.”

Aunt Mu beamed. “You honor us, Lord Counselor.”

Yu bowed her head in feigned gratitude, but her mind was racing. The Lord Counselor had just revealed himself as the evening’s most powerful guest. If the ledger’s implications were correct, he was also one of Aunt Mu’s most valued clients.

The performances concluded. The serious business of the evening began.

Aunt Mu produced a lacquered tray bearing a small bronze hammer and a set of ivory tally sticks. “My lords, the moment you have awaited. Each of these blossoms may be acquired for your households. The terms are as discussed—a year’s contract, with option for permanent indenture. Those who please may rise to positions of great comfort and influence. Those who disappoint... will be returned for retraining.”

The bidding commenced with the youngest girls, the ones whose eyes were still swollen from weeping. The merchants called out sums in bolts of silk and measures of grain; the officers bid in bronze coin and captured slaves; the courtiers offered intangible favors—tax exemptions, land grants, appointments to minor offices. The ivory tally sticks changed hands with the efficiency of a market transaction.

Yu watched the faces of the girls as they were sold. Some looked relieved, believing the promise of silk and comfort. Others looked hollowed out, their souls already departed from their bodies. One girl—the youngest, barely thirteen—began to tremble uncontrollably as a merchant with yellow teeth and a lecherous smile claimed her for his household. Aunt Mu signaled to a guard, who clamped a hand on the girl’s shoulder and steered her toward the side chamber where the newly purchased were gathered.

The auction moved through the ranks. Ling was claimed by the Commander of the City Guard, a bull-necked man whose laughter boomed through the hall. Mei was purchased by a silk merchant from the southern prefectures. Yu’s name was called just as the wine jars were being refilled for the third time.

“The zither player,” the Lord Counselor said, before anyone else could speak. “I will take her contract personally.”

A ripple of surprise went through the room. Aunt Mu’s eyes widened with avarice. “My Lord Counselor, a wise choice. Her training has been exemplary.”

The hammer struck the tray. The transaction was complete. Yu was now, in the eyes of Zheng law, the property of a man whose name she did not even know.

She rose from the zither and walked toward the side chamber where the other purchased girls were being held. As she passed Ling, her fingers brushed the back of Ling’s hand—a signal, long rehearsed.

In the side chamber, the atmosphere was a strange mixture of relief and dread. The girls who had been sold sat on wooden benches, guarded by a single sentry whose attention was fixed on the banquet hall, where the feasting had resumed with renewed vigor. Wine flowed. Laughter rang. The sounds of debauchery drifted through the curtain that separated the chamber from the hall.

Yu counted fifteen girls in the chamber, including Ling and Mei. The others were a mix of faces she knew and faces she did not—some old hands at the Village School, some newcomers who had not yet learned the full horror of their situation. All were dressed in the rich silks of the auction, their painted faces smeared with tears or set in masks of resignation.

The guard was a young man, barely more than a boy, with the soft cheeks of a conscript. His hand rested on the hilt of his bronze sword, but his posture was slack, his attention consumed by the spectacle in the banquet hall. He did not notice when Yu knelt beside Ling and began to whisper.

“The kitchen gate is unguarded during the serving of the fifth course,” Ling breathed. “The kitchen women are all Aunt Mu’s creatures, but they will be occupied with the wine service. If we can reach the gate, we can follow the alley to the eastern canal.”

“The wall?”

“A drainage grate. The bars are rusted through. I tested them three nights ago.”

Yu nodded. The plan was as solid as any desperate gamble could be. They would wait until the feast reached its most chaotic peak, when the guests were too drunk and distracted to notice a quiet exodus. The guard would be dealt with. The kitchen gate would be breached. The canal would carry them to the outer city, where the darkness would swallow them.

But the plan required a diversion. And the diversion required a sacrifice.

Mei volunteered before Yu could ask. “I will create the diversion,” she said, her voice steady despite the trembling of her hands. “When the moment comes, I will overturn the wine table and set fire to the silk hangings. The confusion will give you time to reach the kitchen.”

“You will be caught,” Yu said. “Aunt Mu will—”

“I know what Aunt Mu will do.” Mei’s eyes were bright with tears, but her jaw was set. “I have nothing left. My family is dead. My village is ash. The silk merchant who bought me tonight... I have heard stories of what he does to his household women. I would rather die here, on my own terms, than in his bed.”

Yu wanted to argue, but there was no time. The sounds from the banquet hall were reaching a crescendo. The guard was shifting restlessly by the curtain, his attention now wholly absorbed by the spectacle of the Lord Counselor’s toast. Aunt Mu’s voice rang out, shrill with triumph, announcing yet another round of bidding for the remaining girls.

“Go,” Mei said. “When you see the flames, run.”

Yu squeezed Mei’s hand, then rose and moved toward the rear of the chamber, where the curtained doorway led to the corridor and the kitchens beyond. Ling followed, along with three other girls who had been recruited to the conspiracy. The rest remained on their benches, some too terrified to move, others too broken to hope.

The diversion came sooner than expected.

A crash of bronze vessels. A shriek of rage. A bloom of orange light as oil lamps overturned and silk ignited. The banquet hall erupted in chaos—guests shouting, guards running, Aunt Mu’s voice rising above the din in a howl of fury. Through the curtain, Yu glimpsed Mei standing in the center of the inferno, her silk robes ablaze, her face transfigured by a terrible, triumphant smile.

Then Yu was running, the others at her heels, through the corridor and into the steam-filled chaos of the kitchen. Servants scattered before them. A cook lunged with a cleaver, but Yu sidestepped and drove the pottery shard into his forearm. He fell back, howling. The kitchen gate loomed ahead, its iron beam heavy with rust.

Ling and Yu threw their combined weight against the beam. It groaned, shifted, and crashed to the flagstones. The gate swung open onto the alley beyond, a narrow corridor of darkness between adobe walls.

“Go!” Yu shouted. “To the canal!”

The girls fled into the night. Yu lingered for a heartbeat, her gaze sweeping the kitchen. On the hearth, a pot of oil bubbled, forgotten in the chaos. She seized it and hurled it into the corridor behind her, where it shattered and spread across the flagstones in a glistening slick. Anyone who pursued would slip and fall. It would buy them precious seconds.

Then she too was running, her silk slippers shredding on the rough stones of the alley, her breath tearing from her lungs in ragged gasps. Behind her, the Village School burned. The flames had spread beyond the banquet hall, feeding on the ancient timbers and the oil-soaked silks, painting the night sky in shades of orange and crimson.

The drainage grate was exactly where Ling had said it would be—a rusted iron grille set into the base of the outer wall, half-hidden by weeds. The bars were eaten through with decay; a few kicks from Ling’s heel snapped them free. One by one, the girls squeezed through the narrow opening and dropped into the murky water of the canal below.

Yu went last. As she lowered herself into the darkness, she cast one final glance back at the compound. The flames had reached the main gate. The plaque that bore the three characters—Xiang Xiao, the Village School—was sheathed in fire, the lacquer bubbling and peeling away. Silhouettes of guards ran back and forth against the blaze, their shouts carrying on the wind.

Then the water closed over her head, cold and foul and alive with unseen things. She surfaced, gasping, and struck out for the far bank, where the others were already pulling themselves onto the muddy shore.

For a long moment, no one spoke. They huddled together in the shadow of the canal wall, shivering and smoke-stained, listening to the distant clamor of the fire. Five girls had escaped. Fifteen had been sold. Mei was dead. The ledger was still hidden beneath Yu’s sleeping mat.

No. Not hidden.

The realization struck Yu like a physical blow. In the chaos of the escape, she had left the ledger behind. The bamboo slips, the names, the evidence of corruption that could bring down Aunt Mu’s entire network—all of it was still inside the compound, beneath a floorboard that the fire would inevitably consume.

Unless someone found it first.

“The ledger,” Ling whispered, reading her face. “You left it.”

“I left it.”

“Then we go back.”

“You cannot go back.” The voice came from the darkness above them, calm and cultivated, utterly out of place in the reeking canal. “But you will not need to.”

A figure stepped into the faint glow of the burning compound. He was tall and angular, wrapped in a plain traveling cloak, his face half-hidden by the brim of a woven hat. When he pushed the hat back, the firelight revealed the long, scholarly features of the Lord Counselor.

Behind him, half a dozen armed men emerged from the shadows. Their swords were drawn. Their eyes were pitiless.

“You played the zither beautifully,” the Lord Counselor said to Yu. “But I have always believed that the most interesting performances are the ones that happen after the music ends. Don’t you agree?”

Yu’s hand closed around the pottery shard, still slick with the cook’s blood.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she said.

“On the contrary.” The Lord Counselor smiled, and it was the smile of a man who had never been refused anything in his life. “You have a great deal to say. And I intend to hear all of it.”

The armed men closed in. The firelight danced on the canal water like liquid copper. Somewhere in the distance, a watchtower bell began to toll, calling the city guard to arms.

And somewhere in the burning compound, beneath a loose floorboard in a hall full of abandoned sleeping mats, the ledger waited in the darkness, its secrets still intact.