(Street-grilled skewers sound so good right about now.)
Gazing up at the overcast sky,
Maomao
heaved a sigh.
All around her was the most beautiful, glittering world she had ever seen — and
miasma
writhed through the murky,
stagnant
depths.
(It's been three months already, hasn't it? Old man, you're eating properly, right?)
The other day, when she ventured into the forest to gather herbs, she ran into the kidnappers — Villager One, Villager Two, and Villager Three.
A tremendously powerful and thoroughly tiresome marriage campaign — abbreviated as "marriage hunt," the court's woman-hunting operation.
Now, the pay wasn't bad, and after about two years of service one could return to the outside world, so it wasn't the worst job on offer — but that was only if you'd come of your own free will.
For Maomao, who had been making a perfectly decent living as a pharmacist, it was nothing but a tremendous nuisance.
As for the kidnappers — whether they seized young women to sell to eunuchs for drinking money, or to serve as stand-ins for their own daughters, it was all the same to her. Either way, she was the one who ended up paying the price.
Otherwise, she never would have wanted anything to do with a place called the Rear Palace — not for as long as she lived.
Suffocating cosmetics and perfume. Court ladies draped in beautiful robes
had thin smiles
pasted on their lips.
Running a pharmacy had taught her one thing: there was no poison as terrifying as a woman's smile.
It made no difference whether it was the nobles' grand palace or the pleasure quarters at the foot of the castle.
She picked up the laundry basket at her feet and headed deeper into the building. Unlike the front, the inner courtyard was bleak and sparse, with a stone-paved washing area where androgynous servants scrubbed mountains of laundry.
The Rear Palace was, in principle, off-limits to men. Only the kingdom's most noble personage and their blood relatives, along with former men who had lost something precious, were permitted entry. Naturally, she belonged to the last group.
A twisted…
Even so, Maomao figured it was precisely because it made sense that they did things this way.
She set down the basket and glanced at the row of baskets in the adjacent building. They weren't dirty laundry—they were freshly washed items that had been hung out to dry in the sun.
She examined the wooden tags dangling from the handles. They bore drawings of plants alongside numbers.
Among the ladies-in-waiting, there were those who couldn't even read, for some had been snatched up like—
abducted children.
Those taken by force were among them, after all. Before being brought into the palace, they might receive the barest instruction in etiquette, but literacy was another matter entirely. Among girls from the countryside, exceeding fifty percent literacy was considered fortunate.
This could be called the downside of the Rear Palace having grown too large—
a decline in quality,
though quantity had certainly increased.
While it could never hope to rival the former emperor's garden of flowers, the consorts and ladies-in-waiting together numbered two thousand, and with the eunuchs added in, it was a massive household of three thousand.
Maomao was the lowest of the low among the maids, not even holding an official rank. With no patron and having been snatched up merely to pad the numbers, this was entirely fitting for her. Granted, if she had possessed a voluptuous figure like a peony or skin as white as a full moon, there might have been a chance of being made a minor consort. But all Maomao had was healthy, freckled skin and limbs like withered branches.
(Let me get this over with quickly.)
Once she found the basket with the tag bearing a plum blossom and the number seventeen, she quickened her pace. She wanted to get back to her room before the heavy, overcast sky started to cry.
The owner of the laundry was—
a minor consort.
She had been given a private room whose furnishings were more luxurious than those of the other low-ranking consorts, though the décor was rather gaudy. The room's occupant was presumably the daughter of a wealthy merchant or something of the sort. A woman of sufficient rank could have her own personal maid, but a consort of low standing was permitted at most two. This was why maids like Maomao—those with no particular master to serve—ended up hauling laundry like this.
Minor consorts were permitted to have private rooms within the Rear Palace, but these were situated at the very edges of the grounds, where the emperor would seldom lay eyes on them. Still, if summoned even once for—
a night visit,
she could be moved to better quarters, and a second summons meant genuine advancement.
On the other hand,
without having
stirred his desire, a consort who had passed her prime would, unless her family wielded considerable power, have her rank reduced. At worst, she would be—
bestowed upon someone
as a gift. Whether that was fortunate or not depended on the recipient, but as for—
the eunuchs...
The court ladies seemed most afraid of being bestowed upon someone as a gift.
Maomao tapped lightly on the door.
"Leave it there."
The one who opened the door and gave a curt reply was the lady-in-waiting assigned to the room.
Inside, the consort swirled her wine cup, a cloying scent drifting through the air.
Before entering the palace, she had been praised for her beautiful appearance, but in the end, she was probably just a frog in a well.
Overwhelmed by
the gorgeous flowers, her pride broken, she had recently stopped venturing outside her room altogether.
(Nobody ever comes to fetch me when I stay in my room.)
Maomao borrowed the laundry basket from the next room and headed back to the washing area.
There was still plenty of work left.
She hadn't chosen this, but since she was receiving wages, she intended to put in her fair share of labor.
Diligent at heart—that was the former pharmacist Maomao.
If she just worked quietly, she would eventually be allowed out.
There was no way she'd ever be summoned to share the emperor's bed.
Unfortunately, Maomao's thinking was rather naïve.
You never know what will happen—that's life for you.
For a girl of seventeen, she had a remarkably detached outlook, but there were some things even she couldn't suppress.
Curiosity and the thirst for knowledge.
And just a sliver of a sense of justice.
A few days later, Maomao would uncover the truth behind a strange and terrible mystery.
The consecutive deaths of infants born in the Inner Palace.
What was said to be the curse of a consort from the previous generation was, to Maomao, no mystery at all.