CHAPTER 1: THE TEMPLATE

Eric Chen sat cross-legged on Lin’s battered green velvet couch.

They were on Number 5 of Lin’s so-called “short reel education marathon.” The current three-minute video was part of a 2.5H long story in the Rags-to-Riches Talent Rise genre; a genre where an underestimated person (usually a woman) rises from poverty or obscurity to become a top performer. The protagonist in this particular case was a female physician transported back to ancient China with all her medical knowledge intact.

Lin, undeterred by the total lack of medical accuracy, sprawled beside him with the joyous abandon of a housecat. Her long black hair was up in a high, loose ponytail, which bounced with each sharp intake of breath or delighted squeal she made.

“Watch! See how Master Wei uses her own blood to save the dying crown prince?” Her free hand gestured dramatically.

“That’s not how transfusions work,” Eric said, plucking a stray potato chip from his pants and nibbling it. “And the blood wouldn’t swirl around artfully like that.”

“The point is the symbolism. In dramas, blood always means love. Or atonement. Or both.” She clicked to the next episode without waiting for his reply. The sound of ancient zither music filled the room.

He watched the screen, saw a man in archaic garb standing over a woman’s deathbed, face flitting from sorrow to malice. “Hey, that’s the same actor from the last show,” Eric said. “Does he ever get to live past episode ten?”

“Only if his love is pure. And we’re on episode thirty now, pay attention!” Lin said, bursting into laughter. “Wait, wait, watch—there’s a time skip in three, two—”

Eric observed the transition: one second, the deathbed; the next, a windswept hillside, the woman now alive and glowering with supernatural vengeance. He could not deny the raw effectiveness of it, the way the show traded logic for pure emotion and forward momentum. He supposed that was the appeal.

By the time they finished episode forty, she lay half draped across his lap, her face illuminated by the shifting colors of the events unfolding before them.

“Are you even enjoying these, or am I torturing you for no reason?” she asked, tilting her head back.

Eric considered. “It’s…educational but predictable. You know exactly how it ends as soon as you finish the first five episodes. Most of them are just quickfire versions of standard C-dramas with less filler and character development. Let me see: Rebirth/Revenge Plot (重生复仇); Rich CEO Falls for Ordinary Girl (霸道总裁爱上我); Fake Marriage Romances (契约婚姻); Hidden Heir stories (真假千金 / 失散豪门子); Time Travel Romances (穿越爱情). What else?”

Lin stuck out her tongue at him. “You forgot Love Triangle with a Twist (三角恋 + 反转); Pregnancy Misunderstanding (带球跑 / 孩子是你的), and Immortal World Romance (修仙/玄幻爱情).”

She laughed when she saw Eric’s exasperated facial expression. She laughed so hard that she slid off the couch entirely. “You’d make a terrible drama protagonist. You never brood, or pine, or—” She hesitated, then reached up to tug gently at his wrist. “Or take things seriously unless there’s a patient involved.”

“That’s not true,” he said, deadpan, but Lin just grinned and tugged again, pulling him down onto the floor beside her.

“So if you had to pick,” she said, “Time Travel Romance or Rebirth/Revenge?”
He studied her: the earnest glint in her eyes. “Time Travel,” he said finally. “At least then you get a second chance.”

Lin’s smile went soft at the edges. “You’d really go back and change something?”

Eric’s hand hovered over his knee, unsure whether to reach for her or keep a safe distance. “Everyone has something to fix,” he said, then added, more quietly, “Or someone.”

Lin let the moment hang. For a second, the hum of the fridge and the distant echo of a neighbor’s laughter were the only sounds. Then she broke the silence by flicking another video onto the screen.

The episode played out. Neither of them spoke.

After a while, Eric glanced at his watch—23:47, far later than he had intended. He still had rounds at seven, a fact his muscles reminded him of with every sluggish movement. He started to shift upright, but Lin’s head remained on his shoulder, a gentle ballast.

“I should go,” he said, hating how perfunctory it sounded.

Lin’s hand moved, not to stop him, but to rest on his. “Or you could stay until the season finale,” she said.

He hesitated. In the realm of short drama, the next move would be obvious: a lingering look, a sudden confession.

“I can stay one more episode,” he said.

Lin squeezed his hand. “It’s a double-length finale. And, I’m warning you, they live happily ever after.”

He laughed, and this time it surprised even him. “As long as they do it quickly. I need at least six hours of sleep to keep my hands steady.”

They watched. On screen, the heroine turned to face her fate. In the living room, Eric allowed himself, for once, not to know how it would end.

When the credits rolled, neither moved to break the silence. Only after the next auto-played episode began did Eric gently disentangle himself, swearing he’d return the next night to finish the marathon.

She saw him to the door, her hair now wild and loose around her shoulders. She leaned in, almost but not quite kissing him, her eyes crinkled with something that hovered between joy and a dare. He met her lips, kissing her lightly; he was clearly the luckiest man in the world to have met someone like Lin. Then he said good-bye and stepped into the hall, her perfume clinging to his coat.

*

Eric walked out of Lin’s apartment building into a November night that was suddenly and unnecessarily cold. The city was quieter than usual and the hush had an aftertaste: the sticky residue of Lin’s lipstick and perfume, and the distant echo of her laughter. He buttoned his coat, only then realizing that he’d left the jade bangle in his pocket.

He’d bought it that morning from an old woman who claimed it was late Qing, but Eric doubted the provenance. Still, the surface had a certain translucence, a green so pale it looked haunted; and a distinctive flaw in the jade which looked like a fox sitting on its hind legs. He’d planned to hand it over with a half-embarrassed flourish, to say something like “For you. Because you’re impossible to impress.” But the moment had slipped by, as moments with Lin always did, and now the bangle sat in his pocket, heavier than it should have been.

He considered doubling back, but Lin was likely already asleep, wrapped in her blanket burrito, dreaming up new torments for tomorrow’s marathon. The image made him smile. He pressed the bangle between his thumb and palm, feeling the slight temperature drop of the stone against his skin, the way its oval shape fit in the hollow of his hand.

He thought about Lin’s face, haloed by screen glow. He thought about how easily she slipped past his defenses, how she insisted on seeing the good in stories where (almost) everyone died. He imagined her face if he’d given her the bangle: a flicker of genuine surprise, followed by a smile so wide it would break the city in two. It was a small thing, stupid even, but he wanted to see it.

Above, a streetlamp flickered. Eric stepped off the curb, distracted by the possibilities he has just imagined. He didn’t see the bicycle courier until the last possible second.
The impact was less a collision than a surprise: the sensation of onrushing wind, a wheel skidding over his shoe, the crunch of metal against shinbone. Eric’s arms pinwheeled, reflex snapping him upright, but momentum carried him forward. He managed a single, incredulous “Shit—!” before his knees hit the low guardrail and he pitched over it, into the hungry dark of the river.

Cold, black water closed over his head. Eric’s first instinct was to kick, but his shoes dragged and his coat ballooned, turning his arms into deadweights. He remembered, with a scientist’s clarity, that he could not swim.

He thrashed, gasping and groping for the edge as he swallowed water, but the river was too wide, the bank too far. His legs gave out first, then his arms. His last thoughts were not words but color and sensation: Lin’s mulberry eyes, the taste of dried squid, the exact shade of green as the bangle disappeared beneath the water. Then even that was gone. The world narrowed to a single point—a pressure behind the eyes, a pulse in the temples—and then nothing but cold.

CHAPTER 2: THE TORTURE NOVEL

The world returned in increments: first, the steady chill of water against his cheek; then, the rough prickle of stone; finally, a throbbing ache in every joint that was not so much pain as a memory of it. Eric Chen opened his eyes into wet blackness, tasted iron and mildew on his tongue, and thought—absurdly—that he’d survived the river after all.

His left cheek was pressed to flagstone, slick with what he hoped was only water. Around him, the light was thin and jaundiced, stretching in through a barred window somewhere above. It was cold, and his clothing offered nothing against it.

He tried to push himself up. His limbs responded, but the control was off: wrists and elbows that felt too delicate, a hand that was wrong in both shape and size. Fingers fanned across the stone, splayed in a way that reminded him of Lin’s hands when she was miming a ghost story. He had fingernails, grown out longer than he ever kept his own.

There was a shadow in the corner, motionless until a splash of water hit his face, stinging his left eye. Eric recoiled, and the shadow moved—fast, mechanical, like a doll on a string. Before he could scramble away, a hand caught his hair (his hair, impossibly long and straight, a black curtain snaking past his face) and yanked him upright.

His head reeled, the world tipping sideways as he was half-dragged, half-marched across the tiny cell. The stone under his feet was slick with more than water. His bare toes curled reflexively, registering every pock and seam.

The person pulling him was a woman—her grip strong, her face a sharp pale oval. She wore a green robe, stained at the cuffs. Her other hand carried a bucket.

“Awake now, are you?” the woman spat.

Eric tried to speak, but the voice that emerged was thin, slurred. “Where am I?”

The woman’s lips twisted into a cruel smile. Then she dragged him again, this time out into a corridor so dim it barely deserved the name; it stank of ash and human waste. Eric’s bare feet slid across the floor, the sharp pain in his knees telling him the skin there had already split open.

At the far end, an iron-bound door opened onto a larger room. Here, light pulsed with a greasy yellow. Wooden benches lined the walls, and above them, tools: tongs, mallets, paddles, whips. Some were hung with obsessive symmetry, others crusted with old, dark stains.

The woman hurled Eric forward. He landed on the flagstones with a muted yelp, the sound cutting off as a shock of pain radiated up his left side.

Through the haze, he catalogued his injuries: shoulder likely bruised but not dislocated, left patella contusion, shallow abrasions to the jaw and cheek.

“Do you know why you’re here, Yu Lian?” the woman asked.

Eric stared at her, eyes narrowing. “I’m—” He stopped. The name tasted wrong but familiar, like a bad translation. “Who are you?” he tried.

The woman’s eyebrows arched, and a look of surprise and pleasure crossed her face. Eric searched the woman’s face for clues, found nothing except a tight, cold hatred.

“It’s only been a week, and you’re already speaking like a mad woman. So much for your much vaunted education.”

Eric tried to stand but pain flared through his legs. “There’s been a mistake,” he said, desperate to inject logic into the exchange. “I’m not—”

He got no further. The woman’s hand snapped out, open-palm, a ringing slap that cracked across his face. It was so sudden he barely registered the contact—only the white burst of pain and the metallic warmth of blood inside his cheek.

“I’ll tell you what’s a mistake.” The woman’s voice was tremulous now, on the edge of something brittle. “Trusting you. Letting you into my house, treating you like my friend for years, telling you my secrets, letting you meet Minghua.”

Eric managed to look up only to be drenched with another bucket of ice cold water, causing him to shiver so violently that he began gasping. He realized with horror that he was sobbing, tears lost in the deluge.

He fought to orient himself. The woman’s accusations meant nothing to him—Yu Lian, Minghua. The names triggered nothing. Yet he could not ignore the reality of the pain, the wet fabric clinging to his chest, the way his voice trembled on higher notes.

“You’re sick,” he tried, and immediately regretted it. The woman laughed, a sound like a bone breaking.

“Oh, I am,” she said. “And do you know what else? I get to fix it.”

She hauled him up by the hair again—no easy feat, given the weight and length. Eric’s neck screamed in protest as she dragged him to the nearest bench, threw him face-down, and planted a knee in his back. She reached up, grabbed a mallet from the wall, and brought it down hard on his right back.

The pain was so complete it annihilated all thought. He didn’t scream—there wasn’t enough air.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” the woman said, panting. “How do you think it felt for me, hearing you’d seduced Minghua and married him, then spread your legs for every petty merchant in the city? Is your daughter even Minghua’s?”

Eric stared at her, blankly, the words as foreign as the pain. “This isn’t real, I never…” he said, but the sound was a whisper, crumpled and small.

The woman leaned in so close he smelled the sourness of old rice wine on her breath. “Oh, it’s real, Yu Lian. It’s as real as the day Minghua told me he was marrying you.”

She spat on his face.

“Please—” he said, and heard the break in his own voice, a pathetic, high-pitched whine. “Please, I don’t even know you. I’m not—”

The second blow came faster. He saw it, even had time to flinch as the mallet struck his left side. He gasped, choked, and this time heard a distinctly feminine tone spill from his lips.

The woman didn’t let up. She punctuated every question with violence: a cuff to the ear, a wrench of the arm, another slap to the mouth. Eric tried to answer, to say anything, but the words were hot and sticky behind his teeth. He was no longer sure he could distinguish his own thoughts from those of this Yu Lian.

The woman finally paused, exhausted from her ministrations, breath rattling in her lungs. “You’re not even worth killing,” she muttered. “They’ll take you tomorrow, you know. That’s what happens to trash. You’ll go to the pits, or maybe they’ll sell you to the mines. I hope they make you last for a while.”

Eric slumped to the floor, unable to sit up, much less move. His hands shook. The pain was everywhere now, crowding out any attempt at analysis. He shut his eyes, desperate for oblivion, but the woman was not finished.

Eric felt her kneel beside him, her breath hot against his ear whispering. “You know it was all me, right? The rumors of your infidelity, the mishandling of the family accounts, why Minghua hates you, why you’ll never see your daughter again.”

She struck him a final time, once, clean and hard across the mouth. Eric’s head snapped back, and he tasted blood—his own, coppery and slick. His vision blurred, the yellow flames receding into streaks, and for a moment he was aware only of the darkness swelling behind his eyes, a void that hummed with loss and something deeper.

He didn’t fight the darkness. He let it come, let it swallow him, and as he fell he remembered nothing—no names, no faces, not even his own.

*

When he came to again, he was moving. The floor beneath him was rough wood, the rhythmic groan and rattle of wheels a low-frequency throb in his ribs. He couldn’t move his arms; they were pinned awkwardly behind him, wrists clamped tight with wood and rope. The manacle edges had already chewed his skin raw. Every bump in the road sent a needle of agony through his shoulders, which felt wrong in a different, deeper way than the night before.

He was not alone. The cart was crowded—three, maybe four others slumped on the boards, some groaning, some still. Behind the cart about twenty able bodied persons bound with rope walked in single file. His eyes watered, and he closed them, hoping to dull the headache pulsing above his right temple.

He heard the guards before he saw them: boots grinding on gravel, the slap of whips against wood and flesh. They shouted at each other in a dialect he barely understood.

His head hung forward, hair hiding his face. He risked a glance sideways, and saw a boy not more than sixteen, dirt crusted thick under his nails, nose leaking snot into his lap. His head lolled on his chest, mouth open in a slack, empty hunger. Next to him, a woman. Older, maybe fifty. Her eyes were swollen shut, the purple skin around them almost glossy.

The cart jerked, and a bolt of pain shot through his side. He almost blacked out. When his vision cleared, he stared down and saw two unmistakable breasts pressed tight against the thin, filthy cotton of his dress. For a long moment, he simply stared at them, as if the evidence might recede if he looked away long enough.

It didn’t. He could feel the weight of them with every jounce, the sharp tingle of chafed areolae against the cloth. His mind reeled. He wanted to believe this was a fever dream, but the clinical clarity of the sensation was undeniable. Every instinct told him to reach up and check, but the manacles at his wrists made it impossible.

A voice whispered, barely audible over the cart’s rumble. “How long until Luoyang?”

It came from the woman with the ruined face. She wasn’t looking at anyone; her question was for the air. The boy answered, barely above a whisper: “Three days, maybe four. Depends on how long we get held up in Chang’an and the crossings.” His voice was thin and childish, every syllable a confession of fear.

The woman nodded.

“Where do they take us?” another voice said—a man, old, his teeth missing in front.
“To mine salt, lead, silver; anywhere they want,” the woman said.

Eric heard the word and felt a cold bloom in his belly. He stared at the boards beneath him, searching for an escape in their grain.

The hours blurred, marked only by the subtle shifts in light as the cart traced its way down the rutted road. Occasionally, the guards would toss in a gourd of water or a crust of bread, but the scramble for it was savage and left him only with a bloody lip and half a swallow of tepid, soured liquid.

The first night, he tried to sleep, but his body refused. Instead, his mind replayed a looping montage of pain and shame, stitched together from scenes that were not his own.

He saw himself—no, herself—kneeling in a grand tiled courtyard, head bowed as a man in scholar’s robes screamed at her. He recognized the anger, the formal diction, the ritualized cruelty of someone trained to wound with words. The man called her “filth,” “liar,” “unfit for the household of Zhao.” Each syllable hit with a force more terrible than the blows of the previous night.

Later, another memory: a dinner table, small and smoky, the only light a single tallow candle. Two women leaning close, whispering. One of them dabbed her eyes with a sleeve, saying “You mustn’t listen to them. Your heart is clear.” She was the one from the cell—the torturer. Her face was softer, but the eyes were the same: bright, cold, rimmed with envy.

There were other flashes, fragments that made no sense. Ink stains on slender fingers; the taste of plum wine; a child’s voice crying “Mama! Mama!” as small arms wrapped around his waist. The hug, the warmth, the feeling of being needed: these details ached worse than the wounds. The memory would always end the same way: the girl’s face fading, replaced by emptiness.
He wondered if the nightmares belonged to the woman called Yu Lian, or if they were simply his mind’s way of filling the void.

By the second day, the air in the cart was thick with sweat and piss. The boy began to shiver, eyes rolling up in his head. Eric tried to check his pulse, but the chains made it impossible to reach. When the guards next stopped to change horses, they pried the boy out with a hook and left him by the roadside. He didn’t move. The rest of them watched in silence.

On the fourth morning, Eric looked up and saw the walls of Luoyang rising from the plain like a second horizon. He squinted, eyes watering, and made out the shapes of people lining the city gate.

They herded them out, one by one, at a muddy square just inside the city wall. Eric stumbled as the guards unclasped his manacles. The relief was instantaneous but incomplete: his hands and wrists were a horror of bruises, skin puffed and angry, every finger tingling from lack of blood.

He collapsed in the mud, the filthy dress hiked above his knees, and for the first time caught a glimpse of his new body in full daylight. The skin was pale, almost translucent, the legs hairless and slender, the feet oddly small. His face was distorted when he looked down into his reflection in a puddle, but the eyes were sharp, black, and familiar. Somewhere inside, the person called Yu Lian stared back.

He was close to giving in then. He looked up at the wall and wondered how long it would take to die if he jumped and fell headfirst. But when he tried to stand, his knees failed.

The guards moved among them with whips, shoving men into one group, and women into another. Eric was yanked up by the hair—again, always the hair—and steered into a line of women, all staring straight ahead. A short, fat man with bad teeth was walking down the line, appraising them like livestock. When he reached Eric, he paused.

“This one’s trouble,” the man said, poking Eric’s cheek with a stubby finger. “Look at the eyes. Too proud.”

The man grunted, moved on. The guard released him, and Eric staggered forward, numbness replaced by a spike of nausea. The noise of the city was overwhelming—merchants barking, children screaming, gongs and drums in the distance. For a moment, he thought of Lin again, and the jade bangle he’d never given her, and his chest ached with the realization that he might never see her, or himself, again.

He looked down the line at the women, all silent, all doomed, and felt a perverse kinship with them—a scientist’s curiosity at how long he could last, how far he could push this alien vessel before it broke.

He decided, then, that he would not die here. Not yet. Not until he understood why. The thought kept him standing, even as the world wobbled and the stench of the city rose up around him like a tide.

*

The logic of the world had shifted, and Eric Chen was the last to know.

It came to him in pieces, between the agony of his new body and the parade of humiliations that followed: the genre logic, the tropes, the deep, structural cruelty of the narrative. It was a Torture Novel. A web of suffering woven tight as silk, each knot designed to break the heroine—and by extension, him.

He recognized the arc from the endless hours of binge-watching with Lin. The protagonist—a woman of intellect and virtue—would be battered, betrayed, stripped of all dignity, until only a thin thread of will remained. Then, if the story was merciful, she’d claw her way back to power, repaying every injury in kind. There were variations, but this was the shape of it.

And he, somehow, was inside.

He wanted to laugh, or scream, or both, but there wasn’t time. The buyers were already at the line, moving down the row with the eager solemnity of men at a meat market. They prodded arms, checked teeth, lifted skirts to examine thighs for signs of disease. The fat man who’d appraised him earlier circled back, this time with a parchment in hand.

“Name?” he barked, not at Eric, but at the guard beside him.

“Yu Lian,” the guard said. “Daughter of a Junior Official. Used to work in a clinic.”

The man grunted, poked Eric in the side. “She’ll never last on a farm. Too delicate.”

“A Qinglou then?” the guard offered.

The buyer turned. “The Pavilion’s always looking. Otherwise, the foundries.”

Eric stared at the ground, shame and dread colliding in his throat. The rules of the Torture Novel were absolute: there was no dignified way out, only degrees of degradation. He remembered Lin’s recitation, like a warning delivered with popcorn: “First, the downfall; then the rebirth. The world is cruel but she survives.”

A woman in pale silk glided down the row, her eyes sharp as razors. She was older—mid-forties, Eric guessed—but her face was flawless, the kind that owed as much to discipline as to luck. She looked at Eric and did not blink.

“I want this one,” she said, with the bored authority of someone ordering breakfast. “Unusual eyes. Good bones.” She turned to the guard. “What’s her price?”

“Double, for the medical training,” the guard said, more alert now.

The woman rolled her eyes. “Who do you think you’re talking to? You think I can’t tell she’s broken? Give me a better price or you’ll get nothing.” She stepped closer, squatting so they were eye to eye. “Can you speak, girl?”

Eric opened his mouth, found the words, and—betrayed by some inner imperative—said, “Yes, Madam.”

The woman nodded, as if she’d expected no less. “You belong to me now. At the Pavilion, you’ll be called…uhm…Bao Zhu. Obey, and you might live to see spring. Disobey, and I’ll send you to the salt mines.”

Eric nodded, stunned by the precision of her power. The woman rose, and with a flick of her wrist signalled to the attendants.

He was yanked from the line. The other women didn’t look at him; they were locked in their own stories, their own private genres of misery. He stumbled forward, kept upright by two burly guards, and was marched across the square to a waiting litter.

The city of Luoyang unfolded before him in flashes: the noise and stink, the endless rows of whitewashed walls and sloping roofs. It was relatively clean and well-organized by pre-modern standards, and followed the grid-pattern layout typical of Tang cities. Eric passed through wide streets, and designated zones for markets and residences.

Eric tried to take in every detail, desperate for some anchor in his new reality. They passed through a market where children darted between stalls, stealing fruit; then a temple, its doors painted red, where a line of monks knelt in prayer. They passed a wedding procession, the bride’s face hidden behind a veil. He wondered, absurdly, if any of these people had ever watched a web novel adaptation, or if their lives were simply stories performed for the amusement of someone else.

The litter stopped in front of a three-story wooden building, its eaves curved like the wings of a sleeping bird. The air was thick with perfume and the buzzing of bees.

Inside, the Pavilion was a world apart. The entry hall was vast, all redwood and paper lanterns. Girls in silk robes floated past, carrying trays of tea and baskets of fruit. There was music—low, intricate, played on instruments Eric didn’t know—and a constant, susurrating chatter that suggested secrets and intrigue at every turn.

He was led up a back staircase, down a narrow corridor, and into a small, spartan room. The only furniture was a straw mat and a basin of water. The guards left him there, the door locking behind them with a sound like finality.

He sat for a long time, staring at his hands, flexing the fingers and marveling at their strangeness. The wrists were already purple, but the swelling would go down with time.

He drank from the basin, ignoring the taste of dust and tin. He lay back on the mat, and stared at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the plaster with his eyes. For the first time since waking in this nightmare, he allowed himself to think not just about escape, but about what it might mean to survive.

He thought of Lin and wondered if she’d laugh to see him now—a man in a woman’s body, in a genre that made misery an art form. The irony was total, and somehow comforting. He resolved to last longer than any of them. He would play the game. He would learn the rules.

*

The next morning, he was roused by two women in immaculate silk robes. They wore the same smile—polite, impersonal, faintly curious—as they hauled him from the mat and stripped him of the threadbare shift he’d been wearing since the market.

Eric tried to cover himself instinctively, even in this borrowed flesh, but they held his arms out to the side. The shivering started at his fingers and moved up in waves. The air in the Pavilion was cool, scented faintly with plum and camphor, and every inch of his naked skin felt suddenly, hideously exposed.

They led him to a bathing chamber, bright with filtered morning light. A tub of steaming water waited in the center, lined with towels and porcelain bottles. One of the women pressed him to sit, the other poured water over his scalp, then scrubbed at his hair with hands that were brisk but not unkind. They washed his face, his back, his legs, his feet—everywhere, meticulously, like erasing the last traces of the outside world.

He watched his body with the same calculation he reserved for cadavers in the anatomy lab; a calculation now marred with a growing aversion. Until now, he had avoided looking at himself, even when relieving himself during his transport to Luoyang.

The skin was pale, flawless save for the lash marks and bruises. There was a delicacy to the bones, a smallness he’d never known. The breasts were neither too large nor too small, the areolae pink-brown and sensitive to the touch. The waist dipped in, the hips flared, the pubic mound covered with a dense growth of hair.

When the attendant’s hands slipped between his legs, lathering the cleft with powdered Soapnuts, Eric gasped and lurched forward. He tried to look away, but the bronze mirrors on the wall made it impossible to escape the image: a twenty-year-old woman, modest by modern standards but devastatingly feminine by those of the Tang. The contrast to his old self was so complete it bordered on satire.

They finished with a flower-infused oil, massaged into the skin until he gleamed. They dressed him in a robe of soft cotton, not silk, but dyed a brilliant shade of rose. When he looked down, the neckline framed the upper curve of his new chest, hinting at cleavage.
The attendants left, closing the door behind them with a soft click. Alone, Eric stared at his reflection in the mirror.

He approached it, slow, as if the image might leap out and attack. He touched the polished surface, then his own face, searching for traces of himself in the arrangement of features. There were none. The eyes were large and dark, the lashes thick, the jaw narrow and elegant. The lips were full and shaped for perpetual sadness.

He bared his teeth and scowled. He pressed at the bruises on his face, then lifted the robe, examining the arms, the rib cage, the slight pouch of the belly. There was nothing—no trace, no scar, no secret—to tie this body to the one he’d left behind.

With trembling hands, he pulled the robe open, letting it fall to the floor. He scrutinized the breasts, the collarbones, the gentle slope of the thighs. He pressed his palm to the abdomen, and felt the heat of the skin and its softness.

He cupped a breast, expecting revulsion, but feeling only shock at the responsiveness: the way the flesh molded to his hand, the way the nipple tightened at a brush of his thumb. He squeezed, harder than he meant to, and felt a rush of pain, but also something else—an echo of pleasure that made him pull back, shaking.

He crouched on the floor, hands to his face, and waited for the horror to pass. When it didn’t, he examined the rest of himself: the narrow feet, the small toes, the pinkish soles unmarred by callus. He stared at his crotch, unable to look away, the absence there more shocking than any presence.

He poked, prodded, spread the lips with clinical detachment. The anatomy was unexceptional, the labia smooth and symmetrical, the clitoris small but visible. He pressed a finger in, gently, expecting resistance and finding none. The vaginal canal was slick, slightly elastic, unfamiliar in every way. He withdrew the finger, stared at it, then wiped it clean on the robe, feeling like a trespasser in someone else’s home.

He wanted to believe this was a dream, that he’d wake in a hospital bed with tubes in his arms, but the rawness of the sensation—the way the air prickled on his damp skin, the taste of his own breath in his mouth—made denial impossible.

He stood, pulled the robe closed, and cinched it tight at the waist. He sat on the mat, knees drawn to his chest, and tried to conjure his old self: the steady hands, the deep voice, the calm that came with knowing exactly who he was. But the echo was faint, drowned out by the symphony of new signals, new hungers, new fears.

He would not break. He would not surrender to the biology, or to the story that had claimed him.
But for the first time, the possibility of failure—of total, irreversible erasure—seemed not only real, but inevitable. He pressed his hands between his knees and rocked slowly, waiting for the next humiliation to come.

*

The next morning, the Madam summoned him for “assessment.”

She waited in a salon lined with paper screens, a single plum branch in a vase behind her. She wore violet silk, her hair set in elaborate knots and pierced with a gold comb.

“Name,” Madam Liu Mei said.

Eric hesitated. “Yu Lian, Madam.”

The woman’s gaze was direct, unblinking. “Your name is Bao Zhu. You will answer to it henceforth. I hope I will not have to repeat this a third time.” The name meant Precious Pearl.
She slid a piece of paper across the floor. “You are literate?”

“Yes,” he answered, the reflex automatic.

She pointed at a brush and ink. “Write your name. Then write a poem. Any poem.”

He did as instructed, marveling at how the hand knew the shape of every character, the pressure needed for the softest line. He wrote the new name in a fine, crisp script. The poem came next, unbidden: a four-line verse about plum blossoms and winter’s end. He recognized the poem, vaguely, from Lin’s endless recitals, but the lines appeared as if conjured.

The madam read the characters, lips moving in silent appreciation. “Good. You will serve in the front rooms, not the kitchens.” She pointed at a pipa and a guzheng behind her. “Can you play?”

Eric walked forward and took the guzheng instinctively. He sat down, placed the zheng on its stand, and plucked a scale, then a melody, the hands moving faster than thought. The sound was beautiful—clear, mournful, sweet in the way pain is sweet when the wound is fresh.

The madam smiled. “Excellent. There are many with sweeter voices, but few with such hands.” She clapped, and a servant brought a tray of fruit. “Eat,” she said. “Tomorrow, we begin your refinement.”

*

The next days blurred into a regimen of training and transformation. For some reason, Yu Lian knew only the barest minimum of what was expected of a woman of the Tang Dynasty. Eric guessed this was out of family neglect or impoverished circumstances; but how then did she learn to play the guzheng or write with such skill. The only thing he remembered was that Yu Lian’s parents were dead and that her family was now headed by one of her estranged brothers.

They taught him how to walk, how to sit, how to lower his eyes and smile with calculated modesty. Every gesture was measured, every word rehearsed. His old habits—upright posture, blunt speech—were systematically broken and rebuilt.

Eric was draped in a high-waisted skirt that flowed elegantly just beneath the bust, crafted from luxurious silk in rich hues of crimson and emerald. The fabric bore intricate floral and phoenix patterns, shimmering with threads of gold. Over this, he wore a fitted, cross-collared jacket with narrow sleeves, its daring low neckline hinting at allure, a reflection of the era's fashion among elite women.

He would sometimes be given robes with wide, flowing sleeves—known as "water sleeves"— which added grace, especially during dance, allowing for sweeping movements that conveyed emotion. A long, ornate silk sash cinched his waist, cascading in elegant folds, embroidered and adorned with jade ornaments that enhanced the opulence of the ensemble. Beneath it all, a soft inner robe provided comfort, while loose trousers ensured modesty during movement. His hair was styled in an elaborate updo secured with decorative pins made of silver and jade, embellished with peony and lotus motifs that symbolized beauty and refinement.

The first time he tried to walk in the embroidered slippers, he nearly tripped. “Smaller steps,” chided his instructor, a younger courtesan with the face of a disappointed mother. “You are not a farmer.” She tapped his knee with a bamboo rod. “Grace, always grace.”

The art of makeup was a science all its own. The first layer was a finely ground rice powder, creating a flawless, porcelain-like complexion. Next came the red rouge, applied in generous, crescent shapes on his cheeks, imbuing his face with a youthful vibrancy reminiscent of blooming flowers. His eyebrows were carefully crafted, shaped into delicate arcs, enhancing the expressiveness of his eyes. Small decorative dots, known as huadian, were painted between his brows and on his cheeks, adding a touch of elegance and individuality to his visage. Each stroke of makeup transformed Eric, enveloping him in the mystique expected of a courtesan, marking the final steps in his metamorphosis.

He learned the songs, the ancient jokes, the rituals of pouring tea and pouring wine. He learned the proper way to address a scholar, a merchant, a soldier. He learned how to argue a point, and how to lose with dignity. The worst was the etiquette of physical submission. “You must always bow lower than the guest,” said the instructor. “Your hands must never touch unless invited.” She pressed his shoulders down, forcing his face near the floor. The humiliation stung more than any slap.

In the afternoons, the Madam quizzed him on the classics, sometimes for hours. She corrected every error, every mispronunciation. “You are lucky,” she said. “Your mind is sharp, but I detect some willfulness in your spirit. I mean to change that before the month is up.”

There were lessons, too, in self-preservation. One of the older girls—a veteran of the trade—took Bao Zhu under her wing and explained the myriad possibilities.

“Bao Zhu, you are an intelligent and kind girl so I know my words will not be wasted on you. The other girls feel that their beauty will sustain them but there are things which only experience can teach.” The older courtesan’s voice was sharp yet laced with a hint of warmth. “High ranking geji navigate a labyrinth of social hierarchies and political intrigue. Your very survival hinges on your intelligence and emotional acuity.”

Eric nodded, trying to absorb the weight of her words. “What do you mean by emotional acuity?”
“It’s about reading people,” she explained, pacing the small room as if it were a stage. “You must learn to assess a guest’s temperament and intentions swiftly. Know when to flirt, when to retreat, and how to flatter without overstepping.”

“Isn’t it enough to just be charming?” Eric asked, furrowing his brow.

“Charm alone won’t protect you,” she replied, pausing to meet his gaze. “You must master the art of graceful refusal. Use humor or poetry to deflect unwanted advances. Compliment a man’s work or status to soothe his ego, steering the conversation away from intimacy.”

“Like reciting poetry?” he asked, intrigued.

“Precisely. A well-placed verse can redirect attention or express refusal without offense. It elevates the interaction to something more profound,” she said. “When a suitor grows too bold, a clever line about unattainable beauty can create distance, while still flattering him.”

He absorbed her teachings, feeling the weight of their significance. “And what about alliances? How do I build those?”

“Ah, alliances are crucial,” she continued, her tone turning serious. “Your safety often rests on powerful allies—patrons, madams, even sympathetic eunuchs. Cultivate relationships with fellow courtesans and their patrons. Diversifying your connections reduces your vulnerability.”

“But how do I know who to trust?” Eric pressed, anxiety creeping into his voice.

“Understanding power dynamics is key,” she replied. “Know the difference between a scholar, a general, or a provincial governor. Each wields power differently. Be aware of who is under surveillance and who can offer protection—or destruction.”

He nodded slowly, contemplating the complexity of his new world. “And what about managing my reputation?”

“Your mystique is your currency,” she said firmly. “Cultivate an image of unattainability or tragic romance. Use rumors of illness or heartbreak to deter aggressive suitors. Discretion is vital; damaging whispers can ruin you.”

“What else should I know?” Eric asked, eager for more guidance.

“Herbal knowledge is essential,” she advised. “Understand the properties of common herbs—some can protect you from foul intentions. And remember, saving money or receiving gifts can provide a measure of independence.”

“I will learn everything,” Eric promised, the weight of his new identity settling around him like a cloak. “I will navigate this world.”

*

Eric’s medical knowledge was both a blessing and a curse. He understood, immediately, the logic behind the herbal teas and the mineral baths, the tricks for whitening teeth, the pastes for softening hands. He knew the risks in every cosmetic and remedy, and mentally recalled the side effects as if preparing for a case report.

One morning, a cramping ache twisted in his lower abdomen, a pressure that built slowly before crashing over him like a wave. As he rose to relieve himself, he was met with the stark reality of blood staining the sheets.

He had prepared for this moment, having discreetly inquired among his fellow courtesans about the devices and rags available to manage such an occurrence. Clumsily, he reached for the folded cloth pads made of soft, washable cotton that he had set aside, and secured them with a belt designed to hold them in place. The fabric felt strange against his skin, a reminder of the new reality he had to navigate. The sensations of his first period were decidedly unpleasant: the sour, metallic smell; the way the blood pooled and then dried, tacky and hot. The cramps came in waves, unpredictable. His breasts grew tender, the nipples almost raw to the touch.

That night, he sat alone in his cell, robe open to the waist, and pressed both hands to the soft swell of his belly. The skin was warmer, the veins more visible. He traced the line of the hipbone, the gentle curve toward the pubis, and wondered if there was any way back from here.

The next day, the madam tested him with a guest—a low-ranking official with thick fingers and a habit of snorting when he laughed. Eric poured tea, played the guzheng, recited a poem about the moon. The guest was delighted, and declared that Bao Zhu was “even better than the last one, and not nearly as gloomy.”

He understood, then, the power of performance: how even in humiliation there was a strange, compensatory pleasure. It was not who he was, but it could be what he did.

That night, he stole a small bottle of wine from the kitchens, and drank until the pain in his belly faded to a dull throb. He lay on the mat, robe loosened, and watched the candlelight flicker. He thought of Lin—her laugh, her hands, her stubborn refusal to take anything at face value. He tried to imagine what she’d say now, but the memory was slippery, half-lost in the haze of wine and exhaustion. He resolved, for the hundredth time, not to break.

When the next morning came, and with it the summons to serve at a banquet, he rose without complaint, hair pinned high, lips painted red. He had learned the rules. He would play the game.

*

The next three months passed like water through a sieve, every day eroding something Eric once considered essential to his self.

Madam Liu Mei was everywhere: correcting the angle of his bow, the cadence of his voice, the shape of every smile. She taught him the fine points of banter and innuendo, the subtle way to flatter a man’s wit without upstaging him.”

Eric’s body had become a traitor. It woke each morning tuned to the rhythms of the house: the scent of rice porridge, the scrape of sandals on lacquered floor, the opening drone of the guzheng from the main salon. By the second week, he could walk with the required mincing steps; by the fourth, he could pour wine with polished elegance and without wasting a single drop.

The other girls were a study in adaptation. Some hated him—resentful of his “fast track” through the ranks—but most ignored him, locked in their own loops of performance and calculation. The exception was Xue Ling, who’d been at the Pavilion since age fourteen. Her face was plain, but her wit was sharp and cruel as a wire.

“You still hold your chopsticks like a boy,” she told him over dinner, after an older patron had complimented his hands. “Better to pretend to be clumsy. Men enjoy fixing things.”

He learned quickly that Xue Ling was both ally and rival, depending on her mood. She taught him the economics of the Pavilion—who tipped well, who was stingy, which guests to avoid after the third bottle of wine. She could recite a dozen ways to fake a smile and as many ways to make a mark spend double.

At night, after the lamps were doused and the halls fell silent, they’d lie awake in their shared chamber and trade secrets in whispers.

Sleep came in shallow bursts, always ending with the same dream: a little girl with his (her?) eyes, arms reaching up, voice high and insistent. The dream child called him “Mama,” her hands warm and sticky, but the hug always ended with her slipping away, face blurred by tears.
One night, he woke screaming. Xue Ling shushed him, holding his head in her lap.

“It’s just a dream,” she said.

Eric shook with a grief he couldn’t name. The tears were hot, shameful, and endless.

*

The first time he was summoned to entertain at a formal banquet, he felt less fear than anticipation. The salon was hung with paper lanterns, the floor crowded with merchants and minor officials, the air thick with incense and the sound of money.

He played the guzheng, sang two songs, and poured drinks for a table of scholars. They asked for poems, so he recited a new one about plum blossoms, the lines so clean and mournful that the room fell silent.

Afterward, the men crowded around, eager for a word or just to be close to her. One of them—a brute with wine on his breath—pulled him down onto his lap, a gesture half affectionate, half predatory. The man’s hand slid over his waist, cupped the curve of his breasts through the silk robe, fingers squeezing in a way that was both familiar and appalling.

Eric felt the touch as if his body belonged to someone else. He smiled, demure, and waited for the hand to release. The man chuckled, whispered something obscene, and let him go.
Later, back in the private quarters, Xue Ling teased him. “He likes you,” she said. “Next time, let him touch a little longer. He’ll tip better.”

Eric retched in the chamber pot, then rinsed his mouth with tea. He stared at his reflection in the cup, the face now so familiar it hurt.

That night, the dream child returned, arms open wide. But this time, when he tried to embrace her, she did not vanish. She stared back with solemn eyes, and said, “I love you, Mama.”
He woke shaking, with a feeling of gnawing despair.

*

The days continued.

He played the role, and sometimes, at the end of an evening, when the guests applauded or wept at a song, he felt a strange pride. It was not the pride of a surgeon or a man, but something new—hard and bright, forged in the crucible of humiliation.

He drank with the other girls, let them paint his lips and style his hair. He in turn learned to help his fellow courtesans with their dressing and make-up when they were pressed for time. He learned the art of negotiation: when to yield, when to press, how to steer a conversation toward profit or safety.

In quiet moments, he still thought of Lin. He wondered if she would recognize him now, or if she would laugh at the changes. He missed her with a dull, persistent ache, but less with every passing week.

The old life receded. The new one closed around him like a lacquered box.

On the ninety-third night, after another exhausting banquet, he found himself alone in the Pavilion’s garden. The plum trees were in full bloom, petals falling like snow. He sat on a decorative porcelain stool, robe loose at the collar, and stared up at the moon.

He drank straight from the wine bottle, savoring the burn. For the first time, he let himself grieve what was lost—not just the body, but the certainty, the clarity of purpose. The wind shook the branches, and the petals landed in his hair, cold and real. He stood, wiped his mouth, and went back inside, ready to start over.

She would survive this world, and if it demanded the death of Eric Chen, then so be it. She would become Bao Zhu, and she would win.

The last thing she remembered, before sleep claimed her, was the sound of the dream child’s laugh—a bright, clear note that echoed in her new, rewired heart.

CHAPTER 3: BAO ZHU

The surface of the dressing table was a study in calculated disorder: shallow dishes crowded with pastes and powders, combs, and slender rods of jade stacked in artful neglect. At the heart of this array sat a burnished bronze mirror, round as the moon.

Bao Zhu leaned closer to the burnished bronze mirror, her breath fogging the surface in delicate wisps. She studied the contours of her face, the gentle curve of her cheekbones and the delicate arch of her brows. Her eyes, bright and curious, sparkled with a new confidence, reflecting the woman she had become. She reached up, brushing a fingertip along the smooth line of her jaw, tracing the path of her own beauty, each touch a reminder of the strength she had cultivated within.

Her private chamber was an advertisement for success. The silk screens were painted with improbable birds and plum branches. A low platform bed—wide enough for two if an evening grew interesting—was layered in peony-patterned cotton and covered by a thin canopy of gauze. The faint aroma of camellia oil lingered over everything, masking the less romantic odors of rice, sweat, and nervous anticipation that clung to every geji’s suite.

There were those who said that women learned to love themselves only in the appraisal of others; that their beauty was not truly theirs, but a transaction signed in the eyes of men. Bao Zhu thought this unscientific. Even now, after two years of relentless self-observation, she found that her greatest pleasure lay in moments like this: alone at her table, correcting a smudge, coaxing a new shape from the same old bones.

She dipped a cotton swatch into a casket of ground pearl, then tapped it against the heel of her palm until the excess dusted away. With a slow, rotary motion she pressed the powder into her cheeks and brow, building layer over layer until her face gleamed with a quiet, practiced radiance. The sensation was as familiar as flicking back a stray lock of hair, but still—after all this time—faintly absurd. As she worked, the lines of her old life flickered and vanished beneath the sediment: Eric’s square jaw erased into a soft heart; his perpetually furrowed brow smoothed into a delicate arch; his dull, olive skin replaced by a luminous pallor.

She had once—months ago, now—tried to count the exact moment when the horror of her body’s transformation turned into the anticipation of its display. She remembered the first time she caught sight of herself, nude, in a bathhouse mirror: the helpless shock at the mound of her pubis, the uncanny roundness of her thighs, the logic-defying convexity of her chest. She remembered, too, the slow, chemical acclimatization to blood and softness and swelling, the monthly cycle of pain and renewal. If the first weeks had been a horror show, the months that followed were a clinic: she studied herself, mapped the new topography, tested the range of every joint and the strength of every muscle. She experimented—carefully, then recklessly—with pleasure. There were few illusions left.

A knock at the door broke her concentration. Without looking up, she called, “Enter.”

A young maid scurried in, eyes downcast but already grinning at the sight of Bao Zhu’s half-finished face.

“Mistress, your nine o’clock is early, and with some friends. He’s in the blue parlor already, and he brought gifts.” She set a lacquered tray on the table, its contents obscured under a veil of fine silk. “Should I lay out the green?”

She nodded.

The maid bobbed her head and set to work, laying out a series of silk underrobes and a padded outer jacket whose sleeves shimmered with a subtle peony motif. Bao Zhu let her fuss with the layers while she finished her face. It was a small pleasure to have another pair of hands at her disposal, someone to tie the sashes and arrange the trailing cuffs just so. In this, she understood why women never truly needed men.

The maid—her name was Xiu Ying, though Bao Zhu privately called her Little Sparrow for the way she hopped from foot to foot—began to comb out and set Bao Zhu’s hair. There was less oil in it now, and the hair itself was thicker and heavier. She watched Sparrow twist it then secure it with some pins.

“Today, the peony pin,” Bao Zhu decided. “And the smaller jade stick.”

“You’ll be too beautiful, Mistress.” Sparrow’s eyes darted to the mirror, then away. “He’ll forget all his poetry.”

“That’s the plan,” Bao Zhu said. She smiled—a slow, sideways thing that would have been called a smirk in a less pretty mouth.

Sparrow hesitated, then produced a final touch: a glass vial, stoppered with wax. She uncapped it and dabbed a drop behind each of Bao Zhu’s ears. The perfume was unfamiliar, sharp but sweet, with a medicinal aftertaste that cut through the camellia oil. “From Madame Liu herself,” said Sparrow. “A new batch.”

Bao Zhu wrinkled her nose, then let the aroma settle. She rather liked it.

When the last pin was in place, she stood and let the robe slip over her shoulders, the cool silk laying against her skin like a second epidermis. She watched herself in the mirror, noting the way the folds fell, the flash of white at the throat, the understated sliver of ankle visible beneath the hem. She adjusted the sash—tighter than custom demanded—then allowed herself a single, approving nod.

For a moment, she caught Sparrow’s reflection in the polished bronze: the maid’s face openly admiring, as if the effect were alchemy. Bao Zhu remembered how, in her old life, women had been an abstraction, a problem to solve or a standard to envy. Here, they were everything: rivals, allies, confessions in the dark, bodies pressed together in mutual exhaustion. The men came and went, but the sisterhood endured.

She felt a strange affection for the girl and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you,” she said.

Sparrow’s cheeks reddened, and she scurried away to announce her to the client.

Alone again, Bao Zhu surveyed the room one last time. She pressed her hands to her belly, felt the warmth there—the old anxiety replaced, finally, by something like anticipation. She turned to the door, squared her shoulders, and glided out, leaving only the faint echo of perfume to remember her by.

*

The Pavilion was a world of rooms and thresholds, each one a performance waiting to begin.
Bao Zhu would sometimes entertain in her own chambers but preferred a larger room for bigger groups. As she passed the other rooms—one filled with the nervous laughter of new girls, another silent but for the click of beads on a counting table—she allowed herself a small, private smile. There were days when she missed the certainty of her old life, but the rituals of womanhood—the powder, the silks, the sly arch of a brow—were no less intoxicating.

By the time she reached the blue parlor, she was Bao Zhu in every line and angle. A man waiting inside rose when she entered, but she saw in his eyes that he would never know the years of practice, the thousand mornings spent sculpting the person she had become.
She bowed, graceful and precise, and began her day.

***

Earlier that evening, Xue Ling had welcomed the four guests with a bow that spoke of both respect and familiarity.

She offered each visitor a warm towel to cleanse their hands, and presented tea in porcelain cups adorned with intricate designs. The fragrant steam curled into the air, mingling with the soft strains of a guqin, played by a secondary musician hidden in the shadows.

As the guests reclined on plush cushions around a low table, they were treated to an array of seasonal fruits, candied plums, and light pastries, all carefully arranged to entice the eye. A lacquered wine vessel held warmed huangjiu, which flowed into small ceramic cups at the hands of Xue Ling, the rich aroma inviting the first round of toasts. Each man wore his wealth with the self-consciousness of a merchant (or official) class still fighting for legitimacy, the voices booming even in the hush of polite company.

With an air of elegance, Bao Zhu entered, her presence brightening the dimly lit room. She swept a slow glance over the evening’s assembly.

At the head of the table was Zhang Yue who has risen to greet her. Bao Zhu recognized him at once, though he’d changed his beard again. The first time she’d seen him he’d worn it in the thin, scholarly style popular among examination officials; now it was full, a boastful fan that narrowed his cheeks and made his mouth look perpetually amused. He greeted her with a bow and she matched it with a bow so perfectly measured it might have been drawn with a ruler.

“Bao Zhu,” he said, savoring the words. “You are as radiant as spring rain, even in this dim light.”
She smiled, and retired to the seat at his left. “Master Zhang is too generous. The light flatters only because it obscures my faults.”

The men laughed, the sound a collision of three dialects and several grades of inebriation. To her right was a salt merchant whose face, red and craggy, suggested a long familiarity with his own product; across from him, a southerner with the pink, petal-plump hands of a man who’d never carried anything heavier than a brush. The fourth was an official from the Ministry of Works—her first time seeing him in the Pavilion. He looked both hungry and faintly terrified, as if he suspected that at any moment a real noble might kick down the door and denounce the entire gathering.

“Shall we indulge in some poetry tonight?” Bao Zhu proposed, her voice smooth as silk. “What theme shall inspire our verses? Perhaps the ‘Autumn Moon Over the River’ or the poignant ‘Parting at the Willow Bank’?”

The men exchanged glances, their competitive spirits ignited. Each quickly set to work composing a shi or jueju, their pens scratching against paper with fervor. “Moonlight spills on the river, cold and clear,” began one scholar, his voice resonating with emotion. “A lone boat drifts where the reeds appear.”

“Who plays the flute beneath the willow tree?” another added, his tone wistful. “A guest’s heart breaks—home is far from me.”

Bao Zhu smiled. “The flute was mine, though not for sorrow’s sake—I played for you, the moon, and stars awake,” she replied, her words weaving a web of connections that drew laughter and applause from the men.

The banter continued with the usual show of humility, each man apologizing for his lack of learning before unleashing a punishing recitation of poems or city gossip. Bao Zhu let them circle, intervening only to refill cups or pass a new dish.

*

As the evening deepened, candles flickered to life, their soft glow illuminating the room. Incense of sandalwood filled the air, wrapping around them like an embrace.

Bao Zhu stepped forward, her silk ribbon dance a visual poem of grace and emotional expression. Xue Ling accompanied her on the pipa, the notes swirling like whispers of longing. Each pluck of the strings resonated in the air. The guests leaned forward, captivated by the performance, their eyes gleaming with admiration.

As Bao Zhu moved, her body flowed like water, each gesture telling a story of yearning and desire. The men exchanged glances, their expressions shifting from playful banter to rapt attention, as if they were witnessing a rare and delicate flower unfurling.

Zhang Yue, his gaze fixed on her, wore an expression of awe, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile that spoke of unspoken affection. With every graceful turn and sweeping motion, Bao Zhu drew them deeper into her world, where time seemed to suspend. The rhythm of Xue Ling’s pipa echoed the quickening pulse of the room, and as the final note lingered in the air, a hush fell over the gathering. Then, as if released from a spell, thunderous applause erupted, filling the space with an electric energy that made Bao Zhu’s heart race.

“Bravo!” cried one scholar, his voice ringing with enthusiasm. “You’ve captured the very essence of the moonlight!”

“Indeed, my lady, the stars themselves envy your grace,” another added, his tone rich with flattery.

Bao Zhu smiled, feeling a warm flush spread across her cheeks, grateful for their admiration yet aware of the power she wielded in this moment.

In this intimate atmosphere, wine loosened tongues and formality slipped away. Bao Zhu and Xue Ling moved among the guests, refilling cups and engaging each man in turn. Discussions blossomed into deeper conversations about philosophy, the nuances of Confucianism, Daoism, and the delicate dance of court politics. Bao Zhu shared her own story, framed in poetic metaphor, capturing the essence of her origins and dreams unfulfilled.

One guest leaned closer, captivated. “Your words resonate with truth, Lady Bao Zhu. You speak as if you have lived many lives.”

She met his gaze, warmth radiating from her. “Life is a constellation of experiences, woven together through the threads of our choices.”

She waited for the lull that always came, then redirected the conversation.

“Today’s news is all about the Empress Dowager,” she said, eyes cast down as if offering a prayer. “They say her influence has reached even the Ministry of Works. Is that true, Master He?”

The official blanched. The others turned to him, emboldened by the prospect of watching a government man squirm.

“Well, there are… rumors,” he stammered, “but we civil servants know better than to question Heaven’s Mandate. Don’t we, Master Zhang?”

Zhang Yue was not one to let an opportunity pass. “Heaven’s Mandate is a fine thing until your tax rate doubles,” he said. “But I’d rather face the Empress’s edicts than the wit of Lady Bao Zhu.” He turned to her, eyes bright. “You know, she once almost bested a visiting governor at weiqi, losing with some oddly atypical moves I should add; then composed a poem immortalizing her poor luck and sad defeat,” Zhang Yue remarked with a playful grin.

“Oh, that poem,” Bao Zhu replied, feigning modesty as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It hardly deserves mention. I merely captured a fleeting moment of despair. A tragic loss.”

“I remember it well,” the southerner chimed in, licking his lips with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “You likened the governor’s campaign to a bee caught in honey.”

“Ah, but let us not forget,” Bao Zhu continued, waving her hand dismissively, “the honey was far too sweet for his taste, and the poor governor was simply a hapless insect in my web of words.” She offered a soft laugh as she downplayed her triumph.

The table erupted. Even the city official laughed, forgetting his terror for a moment.
Bao Zhu shrugged modestly. “It was not a fair match,” she said. “The governor was distracted by the flute girl. I only seized the moment.”

“Speaking of seizing moments—would you honor us with music?” said Zhang Yue, gesturing toward the guzheng set against the far wall.

She, of course, indulged him. She rose with measured slowness, the silk layers of her robe swirling just enough to suggest the shape beneath. As she crossed to the instrument, she felt all four pairs of eyes on her, counting the steps, the line of her jaw, the way the nape of her neck caught the lamp’s reflection.

She settled behind the guzheng and bent low over the strings. The first note was soft, a ripple on the skin of the air. She played a tune that started sweet and grew darker, slipping from playful to something that spoke of late nights and ancient grief. The table fell silent. Even the girls pouring wine in the corners stopped to listen.

When the song ended, she let the final note fade before standing. The applause was thunderous—well, as thunderous as four drunk men could muster without spilling their wine.
Bao Zhu returned to her place, cheeks artfully flushed. “I thank you,” she said, “but my teacher would say I played it all too fast.”

“Such artistry!” exclaimed the salt merchant, his eyes wide with admiration. “You weave magic with your movements.”

“Indeed, your performance stirs the soul,” added the official, his earlier trepidation forgotten, replaced by awe.

“I found it sublime,” said Zhang Yue. He poured her a fresh cup, his hand steady despite the wine. When their eyes met, she felt a tiny disturbance somewhere under her breastbone—a flutter, like a moth caught in a sleeve.

*

As the evening progressed, the conversation became less formal, more conspiratorial. The salt merchant boasted of his latest contract, the southerner told a story about a corrupt prefect and a fortune-telling monkey. Bao Zhu listened, laughed, and when the moment was right, recited a couplet that flattered both men’s pretensions.

Zhang Yue watched her throughout, his gaze not the raw hunger of most men but a measured, almost scientific curiosity. He asked her about her calligraphy—did she prefer willow-tip or wolf-hair brush?—and nodded, impressed, when she answered with the technical terms and a casual reference to a Tang poet he’d once quoted himself.

It was nearly midnight when he produced a gift: a slim, bone-white box wrapped in blue silk. He set it on the table with a formality that stilled the entire room.

“I commissioned something special,” he said, “in the hope that you’d find it as beautiful as I find you.”

Bao Zhu accepted the box, palms flat, and unfolded the fabric. Inside was a hairpin: jade, with a tiny silver carp at the end, its fins so finely etched she could almost feel them ripple under her finger. For a moment she was speechless—not at the extravagance, but at the delicacy, the way the pin seemed designed to match the slope of her skull exactly.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

“Not as lovely as when you wear it,” he said. There was no guile in his voice.
She handed the pin to Zhang Yue, who slipped it into her hair with a practiced motion. Bao Zhu ran a finger along the cool curve. It was as though a circuit had closed—a completion of something begun years before, in a different world, under the watchful eyes of a woman named Lin.

Zhang Yue stayed close, moving his cushion ever nearer until their sleeves touched. Once, his hand brushed hers, and she did not pull away. Instead, she let her finger rest against the back of his, a contact so faint and so deliberate that she knew he would remember it for days.

*

It was long past midnight by the time the gathering came to an end. Bao Zhu served a final cup of tea, cleansing the palate before farewells. Each guest penned a farewell poem, their expressions a mix of gratitude and melancholy as they prepared to depart.

“Last night beneath the moon so bright,” one wrote, “Her song dissolved my heart’s dark night.”
“Soon dawn arrives, and we must part—her shadow lingers in my heart,” concluded another, his voice thick with emotion.

As the men presented small gifts—jade pendants, calligraphy scrolls, tokens of appreciation—Bao Zhu bowed deeply, whispering a parting verse that echoed with sincerity. The atmosphere held no overt physical farewells; instead, the men departed quietly, their hearts heavy yet uplifted, carrying the night’s beauty with them, transformed by the shared art and intimacy of the evening.

As the guests departed in a haze of drunken joke, Zhang Yue lingered.

“Would you walk with me?” he asked.

She hesitated, the old protocol rising like bile. A courtesan would be wise to avoid this, but this was the Pavilion, and the walk would be brief, and the desire in her chest was real.

“Just for a moment,” she said.

They walked through the empty corridors, past the sleeping rooms and the incense-laden silence of the main hall. On the terrace, moonlight cast the city into alternating bands of silver and black.

Zhang Yue turned to her. “When I first met you, you reminded me of the first spring after mourning. Everything seemed sharper, and I couldn’t help but hope.”

She laughed, quiet, not unkind. “You have a poet’s heart, Master Zhang. I fear it will bring you trouble.”

He smiled. “It already has. I’ve spent a year in Luoyang and found nothing I desired more than your conversation. Or your music. Or your smile.”

She felt the old self—the man, the skeptic—rise up in protest, but it was overruled by the force of his presence, by the way he looked at her as if seeing not just a woman but the whole architecture of her being.

He reached out, barely touching her hair. “May I?” he asked.

She nodded, and he tucked a loose strand behind her ear, his hand lingering for a breath longer than necessary.

“Thank you for tonight,” he said. “And for every night before it.”

She looked down, fingers trembling. “You are welcome, Master Zhang.”

When she returned to her room, the mirror was still warm from the lamps. She sat at the table and removed the new hairpin, weighing it in her palm. The jade was cold, almost alive. She pressed it to her cheek, then set it in a box with the others—a collection grown larger and more precious than any she’d owned in her former life.

She was not sure when it had happened, this transition from terror to longing, from exile to belonging. She only knew that the hunger was real, and that it would not be denied. Even as she slipped between the sheets, robe loose and hair unbound, the pulse of Zhang Yue’s touch remained in her skin, echoing with every beat.

Sleep came, eventually, but it was not the old, clean sleep of the man —the surgeon—she once was. It was the sleep of a woman with secrets, and with hope.

And in her dream, the man with the full beard waited for her on a bridge over the city’s southern canal, offering his hand, and she took it, willingly, and was not afraid.

*

The uppermost floor of the Pavilion was forbidden to all but the most elevated guests. The staff called it “the attic of the immortals.” At the farthest end, tucked behind a screen painted with a phoenix and mandarin ducks, lay the “Fragrant Chamber.”

No one ever called it by its proper name, Xiangge. They called it Tao Tao’s room, as if she had personally annexed the square footage through a kind of territorial osmosis. Bao Zhu climbed the polished stairs with a bottle of grape wine in one hand and a tray of honey-glazed pastries in the other.

Inside, the chamber was a lesson in excess. Wall hangings in fuchsia and gold, the fabric so heavy it pooled on the floor. Two zither tables, one tuned a half-step sharper than the other “for dissonance,” Tao Tao claimed. A wardrobe that ran the length of the far wall, so full of robes and sashes that opening it risked an avalanche of silk. There were always at least two incense cones burning, and sometimes—on nights when she’d entertained a favorite guest—Tao Tao would scatter blossoms on the lacquered floor and let them decay, savoring the fragrance as it changed.

Tonight, Tao Tao sat cross-legged on a pile of silk cushions, robe loose at the shoulder and hair still done up, her face a rare blank. She was nursing a small cup of wine, turning it between her fingers as if divining the future from the swirl.

“You’re late,” she said, not looking up.

Bao Zhu set the wine and snacks on the table and poured herself a cup. “It was a long night and I took a short nap. Master Zhang brought another gift. A jade hairpin this time.”

Tao Tao grimaced. “He is as persistent as mildew.” She shifted, drawing her knees to her chest and letting the robe slip farther down her arm. “Sit with me.”

Bao Zhu did, the cushions yielding to her weight in a way that felt dangerously relaxing. They drank in silence for a moment. The air was filled with the scent of sandalwood, the slow haze of it blurring the sharp outlines of the room. Bao Zhu stroked Tao Tao’s hair as if to pacify her for being late.

Tao Tao broke the quiet. “Did you ever think, when you were a child, that you’d end up here? That you’d be a collector of men, a thief of secrets?” There was no bitterness in her voice, only the kind of curiosity that sharpened every word.

Bao Zhu considered. “I thought I would be a doctor. I was trained in it, at home. My mother was a healer.” This was true, in a roundabout way; she doubted even Tao Tao could parse the tangle of truth and invention in her biography.

Tao Tao nodded as if this made perfect sense. “That’s why you move so quietly. You watch. You diagnose. You never touch unless you must.”

Bao Zhu hid her smile in her cup. “And you? Did you dream of…?” She gestured, encompassing the room, the Pavilion, the city beyond.

“I dreamed of running away,” said Tao Tao. “But when I grew up, I realized there was nowhere else to run. So I stayed.”

Bao Zhu saw the truth in that. For all her extravagance, Tao Tao’s power was real, her influence extending into every corridor and every whisper. The new girls adored her; the older ones envied her but would kill to be in her orbit.

A bell chimed somewhere below—a signal for the final hour of entertainment. For a moment, Bao Zhu imagined all the rooms below, all the little plays unfolding, the entire Pavilion running like a single, elegant clock.

She glanced at Tao Tao, whose face had softened under the wine’s slow assault. Her features were fine, the cheekbones floating above the curve of her mouth, her skin almost incandescent in the candlelight.

Bao Zhu knew her biography intimately, all of it through personal observation or straight from Tao Tao’s mouth. She had been born into a merchant family that succumbed to the weight of debt. She was then sold to this pleasure houses at the tender age of fourteen. Her exceptional mastery of the four classical arts—music, weiqi, calligraphy, and painting was matched only by her shrewd business acumen, which she deftly concealed beneath a veneer of artistic grace and refinement. Endowed with a beauty that echoed the elegance of classical ideals, she was also known as Huaqing (华清), meaning "Flourishing and Pure." She had become the most revered courtesan in Luoyang by the age of twenty.

In the stillness of the room, Bao Zhu found herself once more captivated by the striking resemblance between Tao Tao and Lin. It was as though time had folded back upon itself, weaving together the threads of two lives. Every delicate contour of Tao Tao's face echoed Lin's features with an uncanny precision; the gentle curve of her cheekbones, the soft arch of her brows, and the way her lips curled into a serene smile.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, there was not a single shred of difference in their physical appearance.

*

The first time Bao Zhu met Tao Tao, it was on a morning raw with spring rain. She’d only been at the Pavilion six months, just enough time to earn the trust of the senior staff. Tao Tao’s usual maid was sick, and Bao Zhu was summoned to the Fragrant Chamber for “hair duty.”

She entered carrying a wooden box of pins and combs, bracing for a long morning of tedium and complaint. Instead, she found Tao Tao in a white cotton robe, hair loose to her waist, standing by the window with a scroll in hand.

“Sit,” Tao Tao commanded, and Bao Zhu did. The stool was low, forcing her to look up, which put Tao Tao’s face squarely in her line of sight. She stared, frozen, as the last drops of water fell from Tao Tao’s hair, catching the sunlight and painting tiny prisms across her cheeks.

The resemblance was so profound that for a moment, Bao Zhu’s mind evaporated. It was as if Lin—her Lin—had been pulled through a sieve, and remade in the finer, more brittle mold of Tang Dynasty womanhood. Each glance at Tao Tao conjured a whirlwind of emotions within Bao Zhu, a bittersweet symphony of nostalgia and longing that resonated deep within her heart.

Bao Zhu stared blankly for several seconds and then fumbled her wooden box, scattering pins and combs everywhere.

Tao Tao noticed. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Bao Zhu scrambled to recover, hands shaking. “You remind me of someone. From before.”

Tao Tao’s voice softened. “A sister, maybe?”

Bao Zhu nodded. “Yes. Very much.”

Tao Tao took her hand, the gesture so gentle it undid whatever defenses Bao Zhu had mustered. “I won’t bite,” she said. “Just be gentle. My hair is my fortune.”

The next three days passed in a blur of intimacy. Bao Zhu would arrive each morning, wash and dry Tao Tao’s hair, comb out the knots, then braid and pin it into shapes dictated by the evening’s roster. Sometimes they spoke; more often, they sat in silence, the air thick with the scent of wet hair and the unspoken weight of shared secrets.

The physicality of the work became its own kind of trance. Bao Zhu would stand behind Tao Tao, and run a comb through the hair in long, slow sweeps. She learned the texture by heart: coarser at the scalp, silky at the ends, always a faint trace of Camellia oil from the night before. She learned, too, the topography of Tao Tao’s head—the faint scar above the nape, the ridges where the skull was slightly asymmetrical.

Sometimes Tao Tao would close her eyes, and in those moments Bao Zhu could almost believe she was tending to Lin, that she was forgiven for whatever it was she’d done wrong.

When Tao Tao bathed, Bao Zhu was expected to wait. Sometimes, when she’d finished, Tao Tao would ask her to help with the toweling, to dry her back and neck. The skin was warm, always, and smelled of rice milk and soapberries. The first time she did this, Bao Zhu caught herself staring at the small of Tao Tao’s back, the birthmark there like a dark comma. She looked away, flustered, but Tao Tao only smiled.

“You’re shy for someone who’s seen so much suffering,” she said. “Or maybe your silence is the result of your pain?”

“It’s different,” Bao Zhu replied, her voice thin. “Suffering is easy to fix. This—” she gestured, meaning the room, the moment, the tangle of bodies and hair and unspoken feeling “—is harder.”

Tao Tao seemed to understand. “You’ll get used to it,” she said.

*

Now, more than a year later, their friendship was simply a matter of record. They were confidantes, sometimes co-conspirators; virtually inseparable. The line between affection and attraction was deliberately blurred, but never crossed. They shared everything except men, and even there, the boundary was more performance than prohibition. Certainly, Madam Liu Mei was not displeased that Bao Zhu had found a mentor.

Tao Tao leaned over, her head almost in Bao Zhu’s lap. “Would you help me with my hair tonight? I’m too tired to do it myself.”

Bao Zhu nodded. With delicate fingers, Bao Zhu began the ritual of unpinning Tao Tao's ornate hair accessories. Each jeweled comb and decorative hair stick was removed one by one. Once the pins were safely stored, Bao Zhu gently loosened the structured bun that crowned Tao Tao’s head. As she worked, her wide-toothed comb glided through Tao Tao's long, thick hair, coaxing it down from its elaborate style without causing a single strand to break.

Bao Zhu began the ritual combing, gliding the comb through Tao Tao's hair with meticulous strokes. Starting from the ends, she made her way up to the roots, ensuring each stroke stimulated blood flow and distributed natural oils. She then warmed a light herbal balm infused with camellia oil, gently massaging it into the strands to nourish and protect them. Finally, she loosely braided the locks and tied them in a soft knot.

“You’re gentler than any of the others,” said Tao Tao, closing her eyes.

“It’s because I care,” Bao Zhu replied.

They sat in silence while Bao Zhu finished.

Tao Tao opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust with my hair.”

A laugh threatened, but Bao Zhu swallowed it. “You say that to everyone.”

Tao Tao grinned, the Lin-smile flashing for an instant. “No, you know that’s not true. Only to the ones I love.” Tao Tao stood, wobbling just slightly from the wine. “Will you stay?” she asked.
Bao Zhu hesitated, but only for a breath. “Of course.”

She followed Tao Tao to the sleeping mat, which was a riot of silk and feathers. They lay side by side, shoulders touching, the room spinning just enough to feel safe.

Tao Tao rolled to face her. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything,” Bao Zhu replied.

Tao Tao’s voice was a whisper. “I’ve been sick, every month. Can you… see if it’s something bad? You know, with your doctor’s eyes?”

Bao Zhu nodded, sobering at the request. “I’ll check in the morning. There are things I can do to help.”

They were quiet for a long time.

Eventually, Tao Tao’s breath slowed, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was peaceful, almost childlike. Bao Zhu found herself drifting, too, the boundaries between memory and present blurring as the incense thickened.

In her last waking thought, she saw Lin’s face, and Tao Tao’s, overlapping and merging into a single, luminous image, and she wondered what it would be like to be loved by both at once.

*

Sunlight sifted through the layered curtains, turning the Fragrant Chamber into a kaleidoscope of shifting pink and gold. Bao Zhu woke to the sensation of warm skin pressed to her arm and the faint, tickling breath of Tao Tao, who had somehow in the night migrated closer, so that they now lay cheek-to-cheek on the mess of silk bedding.

For a long minute, Bao Zhu simply watched her—cataloguing the details as she always did, noting the way Tao Tao’s lips relaxed in sleep, the way her shoulder peeked out from under the robe, a pale crescent against the deeper pink of the silk. The resemblance to Lin, once a lacerating shock, had softened over the months into something like comfort.

She extricated herself with care, found a basin and a cloth, and washed her face and hands. When she returned, Tao Tao was already sitting up, squinting at the window.

“You’re an early riser for someone who worked until dawn,” Tao Tao observed, her voice slightly hoarse but musical. She yawned extravagantly and stretched, arching her back with feline satisfaction.

“It’s the only way to stay ahead of the new girls,” Bao Zhu said. She seated herself behind Tao Tao and began to unbraid the night’s tangles, combing out each section with slow, practiced strokes.

Tao Tao sighed contentedly. “You’re so good to me. You have the hands of a healer, but the heart of a gossip.”

Bao Zhu grinned. “That’s what keeps us alive here. If we didn’t talk about men, they would talk about us instead.”

“Let them talk,” said Tao Tao, tilting her head back. “Their stories are always so much duller than ours.”

They giggled, the sound bright as bells in the otherwise quiet room.

“So,” Bao Zhu said, lowering her voice to a mock-serious register, “how is your monthly visitor? Did the herbs I gave you help?”

Tao Tao wrinkled her nose, then shrugged. “The cramps are still there but less, but now I feel… hollow. As if the pain is hiding behind a screen and waiting to pounce.” She looked back over her shoulder, eyes mischievous. “You said you’d check.”

“I promised,” Bao Zhu said, with a dignity just north of teasing. “Lie down and let me examine you.”

Tao Tao arranged herself on the bed, robe hiked to mid-thigh, utterly unconcerned with modesty. Bao Zhu knelt beside her, hands warm from the wash water, and began with the time-honored sequence: palpating the abdomen, pressing gently along the pelvic bone, then shifting her fingers in a pattern that would be identical in a twenty-first-century gynecologist’s office.

“Tell me if anything hurts,” she said.

Tao Tao gave a dramatic gasp as Bao Zhu pressed low on the right side. “There! But only if you plan to write a sad poem about it.”

Bao Zhu smiled, then slipped her hand lower, fingers sliding under the edge of Tao Tao’s robe. “May I?”

Tao Tao nodded, her face open and trusting.

Bao Zhu performed the bimanual exam with the same efficiency she’d once prided herself on in her old life: index and middle finger in, other hand pressing from above, feeling for any irregularity in the tissue. Tao Tao’s vaginal walls were soft, healthy, and the uterus was neither enlarged nor tender. Ovaries felt normal, within the limits of what could be discerned by touch.

“You are in excellent health,” Bao Zhu concluded, withdrawing her hand and covering Tao Tao’s legs with the robe. “I suspect the pain is not solely physical.”

Tao Tao pouted theatrically. “Then what is it? Am I dying of heartbreak?”

“It’s possible,” Bao Zhu said, deadpan. “It’s endemic in the Pavilion. I hear there is no cure except more wine and better gossip.”

Tao Tao rolled onto her side, propped her chin on her fist. “Speaking of gossip—did you hear about Lady Yan in the Lotus House? She’s convinced that the Provincial Governor is going to make her his concubine.”

Bao Zhu laughed. “Lady Yan couldn’t seduce a paper doll. She’s too fond of her own reflection.”
“I hear she practices seducing herself,” Tao Tao said, eyes wicked. “In the moonlight. With a pipa as her only company.”

The two dissolved into laughter, the kind that left them both breathless and faintly embarrassed. When they calmed, Bao Zhu fetched a basin and washed her hands with brisk, clinical precision.
Tao Tao watched her with a sly smile. “You’re so careful. If you ever decide to open your own clinic, I’ll be your first patient. Or maybe your first assistant.”

“You’d terrify the clients,” Bao Zhu retorted. “They’d come for a cure and leave with ten new vices.”

Tao Tao took the ribbing with pride. “That’s what makes life worth living. If I die, I want to go out in a blaze of scandal.”

Bao Zhu studied her friend. “You’re not dying. If anything, you’re more alive than anyone here. But you need to take care of your heart.”

Tao Tao’s mood softened. “He’s never coming back, is he?”

Bao Zhu knew instantly who she meant. “The Autumn Crane? He’s a poet. They all drift. That’s their nature.”

Tao Tao toyed with a lock of her hair. “I thought I could fix him. I thought if I just… sparkled more, he’d stay.”

Bao Zhu placed a hand over Tao Tao’s. “Men are despicable,” she said, her voice low and final. “Don’t believe any of them. If you must, believe only what they do, never what they say.”

Tao Tao turned her palm upward, lacing her fingers with Bao Zhu’s. “Is there anyone you believe?”

Bao Zhu thought of Zhang Yue—of his gentle hand, the earnestness in his eyes, the way he listened as if she were the only person in the world. She thought, too, of Eric’s old self, and the scientific certainty that all men, given time, revealed their true selves.

“No,” she said. “But sometimes, I like to pretend.”

They sat like that, holding hands, the silence filling in around them like water in a cup.
Eventually, the commotion of the Pavilion intruded: the footsteps of servants, the clatter of breakfast trays, the distant call of a manager counting heads for the day’s schedule.

Tao Tao disentangled herself and reached for her robe, slipping it on with a practiced shimmy. “Will you come to the painting room later? I need someone to critique my latest disaster.”

“If I finish with my morning appointments in time, I’ll be there,” said Bao Zhu, smoothing her own robe and pinning her hair up in a simple knot.

Tao Tao grinned, all the old confidence returning. “I’ll make sure there’s plum wine. And scandal.”

They left the room together, Tao Tao striding ahead and Bao Zhu following, her heart unexpectedly light.

As they descended the stairs, Tao Tao glanced back and flashed that Lin-smile again. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” she said.

“And you,” Bao Zhu replied, “are the worst influence.”

They laughed, and their voices rang out over the hush of the waking house.

It happened, as these things often do, on a morning so ordinary it seemed nothing could ever change. The Pavilion hummed with the quiet rituals of breakfast—bowls of sweet millet porridge, steam curling from bamboo baskets, the slap of slippers against lacquered floor. Bao Zhu was in the courtyard, coaxing a reluctant tortoiseshell cat into her lap, when the first scream shattered the air.

The sound came from the back corridor, near the dormitory reserved for the youngest girls. A second scream, shrill and animal, followed by the stampede of bare feet on wood. Bao Zhu was up and moving before her conscious mind had even processed the alarm.

She found the source in a cramped sleeping room, three beds packed tight as a puzzle box. Mei Lin, a girl not yet fifteen, was curled around herself on the mat, knuckles white, sweat pouring down her face. Two of her roommates hovered in the doorway, eyes wide and wild.
“It hurts! It hurts so much!” Mei Lin gasped, clutching her belly.

Bao Zhu dropped to her knees, pushing the other girls aside with a single sweep of her arm. She set her hand on the girl’s forehead—burning—and then on the lower abdomen.

“Tell me where it hurts,” Bao Zhu said, and the girl pointed to the area of the greatest discomfort.
Bao Zhu pressed gently down at the right iliac fossa and elicited the tenderness and guarding she expected. Mei Lin screamed. A cluster of older courtesans gathered, their faces equal parts curiosity and fear. Someone fetched Madame Liu Mei, who arrived in a rustle of brocade and authority.

“What is it?” the Madame demanded.

Bao Zhu didn’t look up. “Her appendix. It’s about to rupture. If we don’t cut it out, she will die within the day.”

A collective gasp sucked the air from the room. The word “cut” was not one courtesans associated with mercy.

Liu Mei’s gaze was sharp and assessing. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Bao Zhu said. “It’s classic. Fever, right sided abdominal pain and guarding.” She glanced at the gathered crowd. “I need hot water, clean cloth, and strong hands to hold her down. Fetch Mafeisan from the herbalist—quickly! We’ll need his help to prepare it.”

The room exploded into action. Bao Zhu sent runners for firewood, called for the Pavilion’s best seamstress (for the silk suture), and selected three girls with steady hands to help. The rest were shooed outside, their nervous whispers rising like bees in a hive.

Within an hour, the largest of the guest rooms was converted into a makeshift operating theater. Mei Lin was laid on a table stripped of its finery and scrubbed with rice vinegar. The air reeked of boiled alcohol and dried poppy. A portable brazier was used to boil water to clean the makeshift surgical instruments and steam swatches of cotton.

Bao Zhu went methodically through the steps: She donned a fresh cotton robe and tied her hair back with a strip of white muslin; washed her hands and arms to the elbow with water that had been boiled and a solution of wine and camphor; then rinsed again for good measure. The array of implements was pitiful—two boning knives from the kitchen, a hooked bodkin for sewing, a tiny copper scoop borrowed from the apothecary.

Mafeisan, the famed anesthetic of Hua Tuo, was administered by mouth—two fat pills, chased with a minimal amount of water. Mei Lin gagged them down, then lolled her head, eyelids fluttering as the drug did its work.

“We must go fast,” Bao Zhu instructed her makeshift team. “When I say press, you press. When I say release, you release.”

They nodded, terrified but obedient.

“Hold her tight,” Bao Zhu commanded.

She began. The first cut was shallow, controlled, the kitchen knife surprisingly sharp. Blood welled up, dark and slow—more than she expected, but controllable with compression with her makeshift cotton swabs. She deepened the incision, parting the tissues with her fingers. Mei Lin barely twitched, her body slack under the Mafeisan.

The deeper she cut, the more the air filled with the iron scent of blood. Sweat stung her eyes. Her own hands began to tremble, but she stilled them by sheer force of will.

At last she reached the abdominal cavity where the appendix lay swollen and purple, and on the verge of bursting. Bao Zhu swiftly performed a double ligation and transection before cleaning the area with water. She then stitched the muscle and skin; and dusted the wound with Liu Huang and covered it with a poultice of coptis and honey.

When it was over, she washed her hands again, then collapsed onto the floor, spent. The other girls sat where they were, stunned by the violence and precision of what they’d just witnessed.
Liu Mei entered, her face unreadable. “Will she live?”

Bao Zhu nodded. “If the fever breaks by tomorrow, she will live.”

*

The next hours were a blur of caretaking and improvisation.

A Chinese physician recommended Shi Gao for Mei Lin’s fever and Bao Zhu changed the dressing twice daily taking care to clean the wound site assiduously. The other girls made Mei Lin drink a mixture of barley water and egg yolk for strength.

Through it all, Bao Zhu was relentless. She barely slept, checking the girl’s pulse, monitoring the color of her lips and the heat of her skin. At midnight, the fever spiked; by dawn, it had retreated. When Mei Lin finally woke, dazed but alive, the entire Pavilion erupted in quiet celebration.
Word spread beyond the Pavilion. Patrons who’d never before visited the women’s quarters now begged for an audience with “the divine-handed geji.” Rumors flew that an Imperial Inspector would soon arrive, desperate to consult her about a sickly child.

*

In the lull after the crisis, Bao Zhu allowed herself a rare indulgence: she slept for twelve straight hours, dreaming of nothing and everything at once. When she finally woke, the sun was high and the Pavilion rang with the sounds of restored normalcy.

She made her rounds, checking on Mei Lin—who was well enough to complain about the taste of the medicine—and then detoured to the roof garden for air.

Tao Tao was there, waiting, perched on a low wall with her legs dangling over the edge.

“You saved her,” Tao Tao said, not moving.

Bao Zhu sat beside her, feeling the weight of the recent events lift. “I did what I had to.”

Tao Tao reached over and took her hand. “You do more than anyone I’ve ever known. But you should learn to celebrate more, no more of this brooding and pining.”

Bao Zhu laughed out loud, hadn’t Lin told him that he didn’t brood and pine enough? But then she remembered to cover her mouth politely with a hand as she had been taught to.

They sat in silence, the city sprawling beneath them, the future as uncertain and intoxicating as wine.

*

The summons arrived with the subtlety of a thunderclap. Madam Liu Mei’s pageboy delivered the note while Bao Zhu was still at breakfast, a slip of paper folded into the shape of a plum blossom. It was the kind of summons that admitted no possibility of delay.

She finished her porridge in three polite bites, wiped her mouth with a damp cloth, and made her way to the Madam’s office. The corridor was lined with fresh camellias, the morning sun slanting through latticed windows and catching on the gold-leaf trim of the door. She paused to compose herself, smoothing her robe and checking the scent of her breath with a quick inhalation, then entered.

Inside, the room was both opulent and clinical. The centerpiece was a desk of black lacquer, set off by an abacus of ivory and onyx beads.

Madame Liu Mei waited behind the desk, her hair in a severe bun pierced by a silver pin. She gestured for Bao Zhu to sit on the low stool opposite.

“You must know,” Liu Mei began, “that your reputation has exceeded the boundaries of this establishment. Even the Imperial Secretariat sent a spy to test your medicine last week. He pretended to have a cough, but what he wanted was an elixir for lust.” She smirked, as if this were a private joke.

Bao Zhu folded her hands and bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I am grateful for your praise, Madam. And for your trust, which I have never taken lightly.”

Liu Mei regarded her with the cold, assessing patience of a surgeon waiting to see if the patient would survive. “You have served me well. You have served this house beyond expectation.” She paused, fingers tapping on the desktop with a mathematician’s rhythm. “Which is why I am offering you a new arrangement. Freedom from half your debt, in exchange for a single night with Zhang Yue.”

Bao Zhu felt the words like an arrhythmic pulse through her chest. For a moment she said nothing, aware of the thrum behind her ears, the tightening of her throat.

“He has asked for you every week since the operation on Mei Lin,” Liu Mei continued, voice soft but relentless. “Obviously, many have asked for you before but I put them all off, explaining that your value is in your rarity. But the time has come to reward his loyalty—and your own. It is a great deal of silver he offers.”

Liu Mei leaned forward, her tone suddenly gentle. “You may refuse. I will not punish you. But if you accept, I will personally halve your contract, and you may choose your own appointments henceforth. Within reason you understand. You will be, in every sense, your own woman.”

Bao Zhu’s mind divided, as it always did in moments of crisis, into two parallel tracks. The first was clinical: a cost-benefit analysis, factoring in the math of years remaining, the value of her name, the likelihood that another, better offer would ever come. There was also the overriding fact that she belonged to the Pavilion and could be gifted at any point to another man—a complete stranger even—for that person to use as he saw fit. Bao Zhu was richly aware that she had no agency over her body, in which case, the current choice presented a rare opportunity.

The second was emotional, a tumble of images and sensations: Zhang Yue’s hands, his beard, the way his eyes lingered on her in conversation, the way her own body had begun to react to his proximity. The ghost of Eric stirred, indignant and embarrassed. But even as the protest rose, it was countered by the memory of Zhang Yue’s voice, the warmth of it, and the growing curiosity—no, hunger—that had crept in every time she pictured him.

She realized she’d been silent too long. She bowed again, lower. “I accept, Madam. With gratitude.”

Liu Mei’s relief was almost visible. She stood, came around the desk, and placed a hand on Bao Zhu’s shoulder. “You are a remarkable woman. Never forget that.”

*

Preparations for the night were meticulous and exhaustive. Bao Zhu returned to her quarters, heart racing with something perilously close to anticipation. She sent Sparrow for jasmine oil, for a bolt of pale blue silk to drape the bed, and for the Pavilion’s most expensive incense, a blend of cinnamon and agarwood meant to stir the blood and cloud the mind.

She bathed with more care than she’d ever taken before, scrubbing until her skin was flushed and tingling, then massaged herself with scented oil until her arms and thighs gleamed in the lamplight. She practiced her smile in the mirror, then, hating herself for the vanity, stopped. The woman who looked back at her was not Eric, not Yu Lian, but someone wholly new: a creature forged in desire, ambition, and relentless adaptation.

The evening approached with the inexorability of the tides. Zhang Yue was announced with a formal bow. He wore a new robe—dark green, embroidered with gold cranes—and carried a scroll tube in one hand and a gift box in the other. When he entered, he seemed momentarily at a loss for words.

“Bao Zhu,” he managed, “I… am deeply honored.”

She bowed in reply, her movements liquid and unhurried. “The honor is mine, Master Zhang.”
He set down the gifts on the table, his hands trembling just enough to be noticed. “I have never… that is, I have not—” He faltered, then gave a sheepish smile. “I am a fool before you.”

She reached out, resting her hand on his. “You are not a fool. You are nervous. And so am I.”
The words seemed to free him. He sat, pouring wine for both of them, and they drank in silence for a minute.

He handed her the scroll, his eyes bright with hope. “I wrote you a poem.”

She unrolled it, heart thumping. The calligraphy was strong and sure, the characters marching in a line of elegant restraint. The poem itself was both clever and vulnerable, describing a night-blooming flower that refused to open until the perfect moon appeared. She read it twice before setting it down.

“It is beautiful,” she said.

He blushed, then smiled.

They spoke for an hour, the conversation ranging from poetry to city gossip to the state of the salt trade. He listened more than he spoke, and when he did interrupt, it was only to praise her or to make a gentle joke at his own expense.

At last, she stood, and he followed. She led him to the bed, the sheets now radiant under the glow of a dozen oil lamps. She sat, smoothing the silk, and motioned for him to join her.

He did, hesitantly. She took his hand again, this time threading her fingers through his.

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Only of disappointing you.”

She smiled, her own fear transforming into something else—excitement, or perhaps relief. She leaned in and kissed him, first on the cheek, then, when he didn’t pull back, full on the lips.

His reaction was immediate. He kissed her back, his hands light on her shoulders. She pressed closer, letting her fingers trace the line of his jaw, the pulse at his throat. He shivered at her touch, and she could feel his desire building, urgent and raw.

He reached for and fumbled a little with the knot of her robe, then, as she guided his hand, slipped the fabric off her shoulder. His eyes widened, as if surprised by the flesh he uncovered.
“Exquisite,” he whispered, almost to himself.

She laughed, low and warm. “That is the wine speaking.”

He shook his head. “No. It is the truth.”

She let the robe slip off entirely, exposing her breasts and belly. She felt the familiar flush of embarrassment, but also a wave of power—he wanted her, and she wanted him, and there was no one left to judge.

He traced her collarbone, then, emboldened, ran his hand down to her waist. She pulled him in, savoring the pressure of his body against hers.

She undressed him with care, relishing the opportunity to invert the old script: she was the initiator, the expert, the one in control. She unfastened his robe, pressed kisses along his chest, then down his abdomen. He gasped when she reached his cock, which was already thick and hot against his thigh.

The sight of it stirred a whirlwind of emotions within Bao Zhu, each one vying for her attention. There was that strange blend of familiarity and alienation that sent shivers down her spine, and a slight tension coiled in her stomach; a reminder of the man she had once been.

Eric’s memories flickered at the edges of her consciousness, mingling with the sensations of her female body. The awareness of her former identity created a discordant hum in her mind, a contrast to the burgeoning desire that bloomed within her. She felt an exhilarating thrill at the sight of his manhood, but it both excited and frightened her. Her instinctual pull toward this embodiment of masculinity awakened something deep within her, igniting a longing she had never anticipated.

She touched him, slow at first, then more confidently, enjoying the way he gasped and shuddered. She stroked him until he was fully hard, then took him in her mouth, using her tongue and lips in the way she’d read about but never practiced. He groaned, bucking his hips involuntarily, and she felt a thrill of accomplishment.

He came quickly, with a soft cry and a rush of heat. She swallowed, savoring the salty aftertaste, then licked him clean with small, careful laps of her tongue.

He slumped back, dazed, his face a portrait of disbelief and bliss.

She crawled up beside him, nestled against his side, and let him recover.

When he could speak, he whispered, “I have never… I did not know it could be this way.”
She smiled, pleased. “There is more, if you want it.”

He did.

She guided him, and this time, he was slower and more attentive, exploring her body with reverence. He kissed her neck, her breasts, her belly. He hesitated at her sex, uncertain, but she guided him, showing him where to touch, how to move his fingers in slow, circular strokes.

She felt her own arousal growing, the wetness gathering between her thighs, the ache building in her core. She wanted him, not in the abstract, not as an obligation, but with a hunger that surprised her.

When he entered her, she was wet and ready for it. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and whispering words of encouragement to him. He moved with a slow, steady rhythm, kissing her all the while, murmuring her name like a prayer.

She closed her eyes, letting the sensation wash over her—the fullness, the heat, the growing tension. She pressed her hands to his back, urging him on, and when the climax came, it was shattering: a tidal wave that left her gasping, trembling, spent.

He finished a few strokes later, collapsing beside her with a groan.

They lay together, tangled in silk and sweat. For a long time, neither spoke.

At last, Zhang Yue rolled onto his side, brushing the hair from her forehead.

“I wish I could stay here forever,” he said. “With you.”

She smiled, touching his face. “Maybe you can.”

He laughed, a sad, sweet sound. “I doubt the world will allow it. But for tonight, I will pretend.”
She kissed him again, slow and lingering.

When he finally left, hours later, she watched him go with a strange sense of loss.

She washed herself, removed the sheets, and sat at the dressing table, staring into the mirror.
Eric’s voice was gone, at least for the moment. The self who had entered this world was gone, too, replaced by someone stronger, braver, more complicated. She touched her lips, remembering the taste of him, and felt no shame.

*

Six months passed in a fever dream of brightness and anticipation. Bao Zhu marked the days not by the cycles of the moon or the drone of the Pavilion’s business, but by the frequency of Zhang Yue’s visits, each one a miniature festival of its own.

Their first encounters, hedged by protocol and nerves, quickly evolved into something more elemental. He would slip into her chamber at odd hours, always under the pretense of some urgent question, but more often than not he simply wanted to see her. To hear her voice, he said. To bask in the logic of her wit, the melody of her laughter.

At first, their time together was a study in boundaries. He respected her space, never crossing the invisible line she drew between conversation and caress unless invited. But as winter yielded to early plum blossoms and the nights grew longer, the lines blurred. They would talk until the candles guttered out, their words drifting from commerce and politics to the secret, subterranean currents of longing and regret.

He brought her books—rare volumes about medicine and music, even the “forbidden” philosophies of the West. He gifted her with delicacies from his travels and commissioned a bracelet of jade and silver and fastened it around her wrist himself.

Sometimes, after fervently caressing her, he would rest his head in her lap and let her stroke his hair, his eyes closed, his face unguarded. In those moments, she saw the boy he must have been, and the man he was determined to become.

Not everyone in the Pavilion looked kindly on their growing intimacy. Xue Ling, always an observer, cornered Bao Zhu one evening as she was preparing for Zhang Yue’s arrival.

“Have you not always said that men are despicable?” Xue Ling said, leaning in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. “He will leave you. They always do.”

Bao Zhu replied without turning. “And if he does, I will survive. Like I have survived everything else.”

Xue Ling shook her head. “You’ve changed. You’re softer. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Bao Zhu smiled, adjusting her hair in the mirror. “Don’t mistake kindness for weakness. I know exactly what I am doing.”

*

Zhang Yue spoke of his ambitions with the hunger of a man who’d spent his entire life just outside the gate. He dreamed of securing a post in the Ministry of Revenue, of rising through the ranks until he could look his ancestors in the eye and say he had accomplished what they had not. He shared these dreams with Bao Zhu as if she were his sole confidant, not a bystander.

One night, as rain lashed the city and the windows rattled in their frames, he whispered his wildest wish: that he would one day return to the Pavilion not as a patron, but as her husband. That he would pay off her debt, install her in a house of their own, and never let her suffer the indignity of another man’s gaze.

“You are too good for this place,” he said, eyes shining with sincerity and wine. “I want to honor you, Bao Zhu. I want to make you my first wife.”

She laughed, a sound that startled even herself. “And what would your family say? What would the world say?”

He cupped her face, gentle but insistent. “The world says many things. I choose which ones to listen to.”

She touched the bracelet on her wrist, feeling the cool press of the jade. She wanted to believe him.

*

Their garden walks became the talk of the Pavilion. Some spoke of her with envy, others with admiration, a few with outright spite. But Bao Zhu and Zhang Yue drifted through the plum trees as if nothing else mattered.

He recited poetry to her, sometimes his own, sometimes the classics. Once, he stole a kiss in the shadows of the garden, his beard tickling her chin, and she pretended to scold him but let him do it again.

She grew to love his hands: the way they trembled when he poured her tea, the way he traced the lines of her palm as if trying to memorize every detail. She loved, too, the small, unspoken kindnesses—how he would step between her and the wind, how he defended the honor of the Pavilion’s lowest-ranking servants.

Even when he was away on business, he sent her letters, folded into squares and sealed with wax. She kept them in a lacquered box beneath her bed, reading them over and over until she could recite them from memory.

*

One night, when he had returned to Luoyang, he took her hands in his and dropped to one knee. From the inside pocket of his robe, he produced a box—red lacquer, trimmed with gold.
She opened it. Inside was a jade pendant finer than any she’d seen, the jade so clear it seemed to glow, the silver fittings hammered to the width of a hair.

“I will ask Madame Liu Mei to set the date,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “I will pay whatever price she demands. You shall be honored above all.”

She couldn’t speak for a moment, so she simply nodded, tears stinging her eyes.

Afterward, when he had left, she pressed the pendant to her lips, letting its chill seep into her bones. She wanted to believe, she truly did. For the first time, the old voice—the one that cautioned, that doubted, that calculated every angle—was silent. She fell asleep with the pendant around her neck, and for once, her dreams were not of escape, but of a future she dared to want.

*

Eight months was all it took. Less than a year.

Zhang Yue came for her in the middle of the day, an hour when desire and danger were supposed to be at their lowest ebb. The Pavilion was abuzz with preparations for the Qixi Festival, a celebration of the annual meeting of Zhinü and Niulang.

Bao Zhu looked out from the second floor of the Pavilion as women stood before an altar praying to Zhinü for improved skills in weaving, embroidery, and needlework—and, perhaps, for love and a good marriage. Every hallway was choked with laughing girls in their best robes, but Zhang Yue’s presence sliced through the frivolity like a blade through fruit.

He arrived with no warning—no sweet cakes, no secret notes, not even a borrowed poem. When Sparrow announced him, her voice trembled so violently that Bao Zhu almost rose to comfort her. Instead, she smoothed her hands over her robe, set her face in a mask of polite indifference, and went to greet her lover.

He was waiting in the West Receiving Room, a small space usually reserved for awkward reunions and business negotiations. The room was airless, every window closed against the afternoon dust, and Zhang Yue stood by the window, his hands folded behind his back.
When she entered, he turned and bowed, lower than any client had ever bowed to her. His face was wrong: the skin too tight, the eyes bloodshot and a shade too dark. She felt the world constrict around her.

“You asked for me?” she said, her voice perfectly balanced.

He nodded, not looking at her. “I am to be married. The contract is signed. Lady Zhao’s family have agreed, and the date is set for next month.”

She waited, refusing to offer him any easy lines.

He swallowed. “You must understand—this is not what I wanted. It is what my family wants. Her dowry will—”

“Open the gates to the Ministry,” she finished for him, lips curling in something like a smile.
He winced. “I will honor my promises. When I have secured my post, I will pay off your debt. I will—”

She raised a hand, cutting him off with the same casual cruelty she’d reserved, in another life, for the worst of her interns. “Don’t. Don’t make this worse than it already is.”

He bowed again, lower this time, as if hoping to disappear into the lacquered floor.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “The world is not kind to dreams. Forgive me.”

He left then, closing the door with a soft click.

She stood motionless for a while, breathing through her teeth. Then she turned and watched his shadow retreat down the corridor, saw the hunched set of his shoulders, the way he avoided looking back.

When he was gone, she returned to her room unhurriedly, closed the doors behind her, and sat on the bench by the window and let the sunlight burn her face.

A few minutes later, Sparrow entered, silent and trembling. She placed a heavy silver ingot on the table, along with a sheet of paper folded in half. On it, in Zhang Yue’s hand, were the words:
“Bao Zhu, forgive me. I am yours forever, but the world is not mine to bend. —Yue”

She read it three times, each time expecting the meaning to change.

When it didn’t, she took the ingot, the note, and the bracelet—the jade bracelet he had given her, now suddenly a joke—and placed them in the lacquered box beneath her bed.

She closed the box. Then, calmly and methodically, she took her favorite jade hairpin, the first precious thing he had given her, raised it over her head, and threw it down violently. The hairpin shattered, green shards skittering across the floor like beetles.

“I will make him taste the salt of his betrayal,” she said, her voice unrecognizable even to herself.

*

Tao Tao found her that evening, sitting on the balcony outside her room, a cup of wine untouched at her side.

“Come inside,” Tao Tao said, her voice gentle. “You’ll catch cold.”

Bao Zhu shook her head, unable to meet her friend’s eyes. “I am not cold. I am burning.”

Tao Tao knelt beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. For a long time, neither spoke.

“I loved him,” Bao Zhu said finally, the words heavy and raw. “I believed in him.”

Tao Tao nodded. “I loved, too. I loved the Autumn Crane. He promised me the moon, but gave me only a poem.”

Bao Zhu looked at her, truly looked, and saw the old wound beneath Tao Tao’s bravado.

“How did you survive?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Tao Tao smiled, sad and sweet. “You survive because you must. And because, eventually, you see that what remains—sisters, wine, music—is better than any man’s promise.”

Bao Zhu let herself lean into the embrace, the tears finally coming, hot and unrestrained. For the first time since her arrival in this world, she let herself be weak, let herself be comforted by another.

They sat together until the lamps guttered out, and the night wrapped them in a cocoon of silence.

*

The next day, Bao Zhu sought out Xue Ling. She found her in the practice room, teaching a new girl to walk.

“I was wrong,” Bao Zhu said, without preamble. “About you. About everything.”

Xue Ling raised an eyebrow. “You’re allowed to be wrong, you know. It’s how we learn.”

Bao Zhu offered a thin smile. “I’m sorry. Sisters will always be better than men.”

Xue Ling laughed, bright and sharp. “You finally figured that out?”

Bao Zhu nodded. “I have. And I want to be a better sister, from now on.”

They hugged, awkward and brief, but it was enough.

*

That night, alone in her chamber, Bao Zhu let the grief take her. She sobbed, face pressed to the pillow, until the sound of it startled even herself. She did not cry as Eric would have—dry-eyed, in secret, already translating the pain into anger or sarcasm. She cried as Yu Lian, as Bao Zhu, as every woman who had ever believed in something impossible and been left with only the echo.

It hurt more than she’d expected. It hurt in places she didn’t know existed. But when the tears were done, she wiped her face, lit a fresh stick of incense, and stood before the mirror.

She no longer saw Eric. She no longer even saw Yu Lian. She saw only herself—tired, red-eyed, but not broken.

She swore, softly, to never be made a fool by a man again. She swore to protect her sisters, to savor what joy she could steal from the world, and to use every scrap of knowledge and power at her disposal to ensure that she—and the women she loved—would never again be left helpless.

As for the world, she decided, that could go to hell.

CHAPTER 4: REVENGE / REBIRTH

Chang’an was not Luoyang.

The capital was swollen with secrets, her markets full of strange tongues and sharper knives. The air was thicker, the crowds more desperate, and the women—well, the women were harder in their laughter and far more skilled at hiding the price of a smile.

Five years had passed since the night Bao Zhu shattered a jade hairpin in Luoyang.

Her robes, once dyed to draw the gaze, were now muted to the color of bruised peaches. Her hair was twisted low and bound with a single string of knotted hemp, and she wore only a thin trace of rouge along her cheekbones, the kind of mark a workhouse mistress might use to feign class. If the effect was deliberate, it was because tonight, she intended to disappear into the darkness of the city’s least forgiving labyrinth.

The workhouse sat on the outer margin of the Southern poor quarter. It was not the worst she had seen, but it was the purest: a paragon of institutional indifference. The roof tiles sagged and the windows were bricked in at random.

Bao Zhu approached with her gaze lowered, but not cowed. Inside, the main corridor was lit by oil lamps suspended at irregular intervals. The first thing she noticed was the silence: no wailing, no fights. She counted two dozen girls in the first room alone, seated at battered looms or bent over warping boards, their eyes blank and fingers a blur.

She presented her token at the desk—an ivory pass stamped with the emblem of the Ward’s medical examiner. The clerk did not look up from his ledger, merely pointed to a corridor lined with paper screens and flicked his wrist in the universal sign for “hurry up.”

She followed the corridor’s bend, counting the doors until she reached the one that matched the note she had been given: Room Seven. She knocked, once, and waited. A young man, perhaps twenty and trying desperately to appear older, opened the door. His face registered neither suspicion nor interest. He let her in, closed the door, and immediately held out his palm.

Bao Zhu removed a coin purse from her sleeve and tipped 50 bronze coins on a string into his hand. “I’m here for the girl, Xiu Ying,” she said.

The man pinched the coins, pocketed them, and gestured toward a bench.

“I know, wait here,” he said, voice flat. “I’ll bring her up.”

She nodded, eyes fixed on the thin crack in the plaster opposite her. Three months she had searched. Three months of bribes and favors traded with men who understood neither gratitude nor pity. The trail had gone cold twice, and each time, she had nearly lost hope. But in the end, all human systems obeyed the same logic: children vanished not for love, not for hatred, but because someone calculated the profit of their pain.

She heard the steps before the door opened. The clerk returned, trailed by a girl so small and hunched that for a moment, Bao Zhu thought he had brought her the wrong one. The child’s hair was hacked short, matted with what looked like dried starch and grease. Her face was thin to the bone and her eyes were swollen; rimmed with darkness and fatigue.

The clerk pulled the girl forward by the scruff of her tunic, as if presenting a stray animal to a new master. “She’s a good worker,” he said. “Never talks, never fights. The headman likes her.” He made a show of brushing lint from her shoulder. “But money is money.”

Bao Zhu’s hands trembled as she drew out the second scroll, this one a carefully forged document of guardianship and redemption. The clerk barely scanned it before stamping it with the chop he carried on a cord around his neck.

“Take her,” he said, with a dismissive flick. “She’s worth less than the cloth she weaves anyway.”

Bao Zhu knelt, so she was eye level with the girl. She reached out, slow and measured, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind the girl’s ear.

“Do you remember me?” she asked, softly.

The girl stared, her expression blank. Then, with the tiniest jerk of the chin, she looked away.
“Xiu Ying,” Bao Zhu said, the name a memory shaped by equal parts guilt and longing. “You’re safe now. You’re coming with me.”

She stood, gestured for the girl to follow. For a moment, the girl did not move, and Bao Zhu’s heart seized. Then the girl shuffled forward, her feet almost silent on the splintered boards.

They left the way they came: past the blank-eyed children, past the indifference of the day clerk, through the dusk-lit corridor and into the dank alleyway. At the threshold, Bao Zhu paused and looked back, as if expecting someone to call her bluff, to drag them both back into the warren, but no one noticed. No one cared.

Only when the main door had swung shut behind them did Bao Zhu allow herself to look closely at her daughter. She crouched again, scanning the child from scalp to toes, her mind unconsciously flipping through what she had to do save her daughter. Bao Zhu fought the urge to cry. Instead, she gathered the child into her arms, the fragile weight of her a jolt, and turned toward the alley where her horse drawn carriage waited.

She walked quickly, the first drops of rain stinging her face, and hoisted the child into the carriage before climbing in after. She pulled the curtains shut and wrapped them both in a spare blanket.

For the first mile, Xiu Ying sat rigid, hands fisted in her lap, gaze fixed on nothing. Bao Zhu tried to catch her eye, tried to say something that would not come out as a command or a plea. In the end, she simply held the girl close, one hand pressed to the sharp angle of her back, the other smoothing the filthy hair with a tenderness she had learned through her years as a woman of The Pavilion.

The city rattled by outside, indifferent as ever. Bao Zhu enumerated every step she would need to take: the baths, the herbs, the type of nutrition. The harder part—the part Eric would have failed at—would be the repair of the spirit. She wondered if it could even be done, or if the girl was already too far gone.

As the ride wore on, Xiu Ying’s head drooped, then fell against Bao Zhu’s shoulder. Her body, which had been stiff as a plank, melted suddenly into sleep. Bao Zhu watched her daughter’s chest rise and fall, each breath a tiny victory against the world that had tried to erase her.

She pressed her lips to the girl’s forehead, wept as much as she needed to, then whispered, both to Xiu Ying and herself, “I’ve got you.”

*

Two weeks after the rescue, The House of Tao woke to the song of silver chimes and the faintest promise of rain.

Its façade, newly painted with a pattern of winding wisteria, looked far too delicate for the city’s noise and weather, but inside it was a fortress of routine and discipline. At six months old, the house had already become a respected Qinglou in Pingkang Ward—part pleasure den, part finishing school, part court for displaced minor nobility. At its center, like a pearl inside a lacquer box, was Tao Tao: now both Madam and its most celebrated ornament.

Bao Zhu returned just after dawn, a faint ache in her arms from the night’s surgery. She had spent the last three hours drawing pus from the Imperial Tutor’s back. When the job was done, the Tutor had pressed a sealed envelope into her palm and nodded, never once meeting her gaze. Bao Zhu slipped away before the man’s moans could curdle into curses. She knew from experience that the gratitude of the great was even more temporary than the ailments of their flesh.

She entered the House of Tao by the side gate. The air inside was always a few degrees warmer than the city, perfumed with sandalwood and agarwood. As she moved through the main corridor, she heard the sounds of a new day assembling itself: the tap of inkstones, the sound of a guzheng being tuned, the low drone of girls reciting poetry under their breath. A pair of maids darted past, one carrying a pot of chrysanthemum tea, the other a tray of plump lychees. Both bowed as she passed, then whispered behind their sleeves, eyes bright.

The House of Tao was structured with the logic of a watchmaker’s shop: every hallway, every room, calibrated to extract maximum value from both guests and residents. Tao Tao’s office was at the center, behind a door painted with a single peony.

The door was half open and Tao Tao was already awake and dressed, her robe a stack of layered blues and greys, subtle but with a slash of crimson at the collar. She was dictating a letter to a scribe, her voice crisp and utterly without preamble. When she saw Bao Zhu, she waved the scribe away and gestured to the seat opposite her.

“You’re back early,” Tao Tao said, eyes scanning Bao Zhu’s face. “How bad was the wound?”

“Not as bad as the Tutor’s patience,” Bao Zhu replied. She let herself sit, shoulders sagging a little. “I doubt he’ll remember a thing by next week. His household will keep it quiet.”

Tao Tao smiled. “Then our reputation for discretion is safe.”

“I never doubted it,” Bao Zhu said.

Bao Zhu glanced at the lacquered cabinet behind Tao Tao’s desk; it was new, but already overflowing with tribute: tea bricks, rare ink, a dragonhead ewer from Persia. “Anything for me?” she asked, teasing.

Tao Tao laughed. “There’s a letter from Suzhou, addressed to Doctor Yu. And some ginseng from Goguryeo.”

“Doctor Yu,” Bao Zhu echoed, savoring the words. “It still sounds like an alias.”

“In this city,” Tao Tao said, “everything is an alias.”

Before Bao Zhu could reply, the door slid open and Xue Ling slipped in, balancing a tray of fruit and a pile of hand-copied broadsheets.

“Lady,” Xue Ling said to Tao Tao, “there’s a visitor in the East Hall. He’s not on the regular list. Says he’s got an urgent message from the city magistrate.”

Tao Tao’s lips compressed to a thin line. “Another bribe, or another threat?”
“He looks nervous,” Xue Ling said. “Probably both.”

“I’ll see to it after breakfast.” Tao Tao eyed Bao Zhu. “Will you check on our special patient?”
Bao Zhu nodded, suddenly more awake. “How is she?”

“Better,” Xue Ling said, and the word carried a gravity it did not deserve. “She asked for you last night.”

Bao Zhu stood, bowed to Tao Tao, and followed Xue Ling through the house’s inner chambers. They walked in silence past the practice rooms, where two junior courtesans rehearsed a complicated flower-dance, past the study where a female scribe copied legal documents.

At the end of the hall, Xue Ling opened the door to Tao Tao’s own suite. Inside, Xiu Ying sat on a cushion by the window, backlit by a lattice of soft morning light. She wore a clean tunic, the sleeves too long for her arms. Her hair was tied in two awkward pigtails with scraps of blue silk. She held a wooden brush but did not use it; instead, she stared at the inkstone in front of her as if hoping it might reveal its secrets by osmosis.

Xue Ling entered first, kneeling next to the girl and placing a bowl of sweet congee in front of her. “You promised to eat two bowls today,” Xue Ling said, gently. “Or I’ll tell Madam you’re lying again.”

Xiu Ying did not look up, but took the bowl with both hands and raised it to her mouth. She drank in three deep gulps, wiped her lips with the sleeve, then set the bowl down with a tiny, deliberate click.

Bao Zhu crouched in front of her daughter, careful to keep her posture nonthreatening. “Does it taste better today?”

Xiu Ying shrugged, her eyes scanning the floor. “It’s warm.”

Bao Zhu reached to touch her cheek, and this time the girl did not flinch. She turned her face into the palm, a subtle, animal gesture of trust.
Xue Ling smiled. “She slept through the night, no sweats, no vomiting. The sores are almost healed.”

Bao Zhu nodded, feeling relief wash over her. She felt, acutely, the gap between what she had once been and what she was now: a woman helpless in the face of her child’s afflictions.
Then Xiu Ying, as if sensing Bao Zhu’s anxiety, looked straight at her and asked, “Are you really my Mother?”

The word caught in the air, suspended like dust in the light. Bao Zhu nodded, throat too tight to speak. She held her child tightly to her breast and let her tears flow freely down her cheeks. When she finally managed to calm herself and to stifle her sobs, she felt Xiu Ying’s callused hands on her cheek wiping away her tears.

With a shaky breath, Bao Zhu finally found her voice, soft yet resolute, and whispered, “Yes, I am your mother.”

*

Night inside The House of Tao came with a different rhythm than morning, as if the building changed pulse when the lamps were lit. Guests drifted in; the hallways echoed with laughter and soft, liquid melodies from the music rooms.

Bao Zhu spent the early hours in the dispensary, organizing jars of medicinal roots and triple-checking the dosages for her next round of appointments. She hummed under her breath—a habit she’d inherited from Eric, who found that the monotony of preparation steadied the nerves before a difficult case.

Tonight’s appointment, however, was not a patient. At least, not in the usual sense.

Sun Yiwen, third son of the city’s wealthiest silk merchant, had been Bao Zhu’s most persistent suitor for the better part of a year. He arrived punctually every two weeks, always with gifts: a rare brush, a vial of imported dye, rare spices from Persia. Each time, he attempted to win her over with some fresh marvel from the West Market or a riddle he swore was unsolvable. And each time, she received him with a politeness that was not quite warmth, and just enough wit to keep him returning.

She had never planned on bedding him the first time. That had been an accident, the result of a wager lost after too much wine and too little sleep. That first time had been comically awkward—he nearly tore her robe in his enthusiasm, and at the last moment had to ask which side of the bed she preferred. But even in the midst of the farce, he had made her laugh, and laughter was the only foreplay she truly needed these days.

Tonight, she prepared with more care than usual. She powdered her face with crushed pearl, applied a touch of vermillion to her cheeks and lips, and selected a robe of deep green silk, cut deliberately low to expose the delicate collarbones and the first hint of breast. She wound her hair into a loose chignon and fixed it with a pair of jade hairpins—a matched set, a rare luxury she’d allowed herself after the last windfall from the Tutor’s household.

When she looked in the mirror, the effect was understated, but she saw what Yiwen would see: a woman at once fragile and invincible, with eyes that betrayed nothing of her former life. She practiced her smile, aiming for the balance between coy and clinical.

At the stroke of ten, Sparrow knocked and ushered Yiwen in. He entered with the air of a man who had read all the proper etiquette manuals and chosen, deliberately, to ignore half of them. He bowed, grinning, and produced a box wrapped in pale blue paper.

“For you,” he said, thrusting it into her hands. “I hope it suits you.”

She opened the box and found, inside, a solid waxy substance of brown, grey and white. “Ambergris,” he said. “From the Arabian Sea. I had to outbid three other fools to get it.”
She lifted the box to her nose. The scent was subtle, animal, faintly sweet, “It’s wonderful,” she said.

He took the seat across from her and poured wine—one cup for her, one for himself. For a while, they talked of nothing: the weather, a rumor about the Empress’s new favorite, a scandal involving a rival merchant’s daughter. Yiwen recited a poem he’d composed that morning, a clever parody of a Tang classic, and she countered with a cryptic line from Wang Bo that left him flummoxed.

It was the same script as always, but tonight there was a new current beneath the banter. Bao Zhu felt it in the way his eyes lingered on her mouth, in the way his knee brushed hers under the table and stayed there, just barely, as if to test her response.

She let her hand fall to his thigh, fingers tracing a lazy circle through the fabric. “You’re in good form tonight,” she said, voice low.

He blushed—he always blushed—but his hand closed over hers and squeezed.
“Will you let me?” he asked, not quite meeting her gaze.

She nodded, this was only the third time she had agreed.

He rose, circled the table, and knelt at her feet. He untied the sash of her robe and let it fall open, exposing the bare skin beneath. He traced his fingers up her leg, over her hip, to the curve of her waist.

Bao Zhu could sense his eagerness, but knew from previous experience that he also had self-control.

He leaned in, his mouth warm on her belly, his hands careful but greedy. She ran her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, guiding his lips gently to her sex, then mewed involuntarily as he pleasured her expertly with his tongue.

They moved to the bed, where he undressed with the gracelessness of a man unaccustomed to his own body. She found it oddly charming—each time he tangled his arm in a sleeve or fumbled a tie, it reminded her that desire was universal and, in the end, always slightly ridiculous.

She lay back, the robe loose around her shoulders, and watched as he hovered above her, uncertain. She drew him down, pressed his head between her breasts, and waited until his breathing matched hers. Then she rolled, smoothly, so she was above him, straddling his hips.

She took his cock in her hand and stroked it, slow, watching as his eyelids closed and his lips parted. She bent and took him into her mouth, using her tongue and lips with a skill that was both learned and instinctive. He groaned, gripping her shoulders, his whole body tensing. She withdrew, letting him throb against her chin, and then slid down onto him, guiding him in with a slow, deliberate push. For an instant, she felt the old panic, the flashback to Eric’s body, the sense of wrongness. But it passed—faster each time now—and was replaced by a sweet, growing pressure that radiated from her pelvis up her spine.

She rode him, using her knees and thighs to control the pace, shifting her angle until each thrust landed in just the right place. She leaned forward, pressing her breasts to his chest, and licked and sucked his ear. He shuddered and came, hard, filling her with heat.

She stayed atop him, savoring the aftershocks, then rolled off and curled beside him, their bodies sticky and tangled in the rumpled sheets.

For a while, neither spoke.

Finally, Yiwen broke the silence. “You are…exceptional.”

She smiled, eyes closed.

“Everything about you is exquisite.”

She kissed his forehead. “You say that because you’re young and inexperienced.”

He laughed, and she felt the sound reverberate through her chest.

They lay together until his breathing slowed, and then he fell asleep, one arm draped across her belly.

*

In the darkness, Bao Zhu counted her heartbeats. She felt his seed inside her, the warmth of it diffusing through her body, and for a moment she wondered what it would be like to let it take root, to bear a child not of necessity but of choice.

She tried to remember what sex had felt like as Eric. She remembered the urgency, the constant need to prove something; performance, whatever men were supposed to want. She remembered the way her body had responded then: quick, sharp, finite. Release, then satisfaction or emptiness.

Now, the pleasure was different. It was slow, blooming, full of echoes. It lasted. Even when it was over, it stayed with her, a humming vibration beneath her skin.

She turned to look at Yiwen, his face slack and vulnerable in sleep. She liked him. She might even have loved him, in a different world. But she knew, with a certainty that bordered on cruelty, that he would never understand her, not really. He was too earnest, too convinced that love was something you could make permanent by wanting it badly enough.

She stroked his hair, careful not to wake him, and let her mind wander.

She thought of Xiu Ying, of the girl’s thin arms and haunted eyes. She thought of Tao Tao and Xue Ling, their laughter and their secrets. She thought of the city outside, with its endless hunger and its violence, and the house she had built inside it—a fortress of silk, a citadel of women.

She thought of Eric, and wondered if any piece of him remained, or if he had been dissolved entirely in the stew of this new life. She hoped so.

She closed her eyes and drifted, the scent of ambergris and wine thick in the air.

*

The hidden room behind The House of Tao’s kitchen had no formal name, but Xue Ling called it the “bee hive” because of all the secrecy which surrounded it. It was less a room than a converted dry cellar, only half-tall and lined with shelves stacked in single-minded, almost military neatness: scrolls, ink tablets, a dozen battered ledgers recording debts and favors owed by (and to) every courtesan and servant in the establishment. Bao Zhu liked it because nobody bothered her there—not the maids, not the drunker guests, not even Tao Tao, who considered it unworthy of her aesthetic standards.

Tonight, it belonged to Bao Zhu and Xue Ling. They sat hunched over the single low table, faces lit by the sullen glow of a grease lamp. The rest of the house was in uproar—some incident in the courtyard or a customer refusing to pay his tab—but the walls here were thick, and the noise came through as a distant, reassuring drone.

Xue Ling was reviewing a small stack of memoranda, each folded with the efficiency of a forger and tied with a string. Her eyes moved quickly, left to right, then down, then back up again. She tapped each note in turn, color-coding with tiny slips of cloth as she went.

“Three items in the last week from the girls,” she said, not looking up. “First: Imperial Tutor’s wife is soliciting an herbalist for sleeping draughts. Second: a rumor that the West Market is flooded with counterfeit lychee wine. Third—” She paused, lips curving into a smirk. “Zhao Minghua will attend the Tutor’s banquet tomorrow. In a private salon, at the south end of the garden.”

Bao Zhu’s mouth went dry at the name; the memories of abuse at the hands of her ex-husband were now as fresh as they would ever be. It had been nearly ten years, and still, it had the power to split her in two. It was as if she had experienced the torment first hand as Yu Lian.
She pressed her palm to the table and kept her voice level. “Alone?”

“With his wife, Lady Zhao, or should I say your one time best friend, Mei Hua,” said Xue Ling. She grinned, showing her sharp teeth. “But that’s a matter of protocol, not preference. She may not even attend.”

Mei Hua—the woman who had beaten her nearly to the point of death when she first arrived in this world; her best friend once upon a time—now she actually knew what that meant; every interaction between them since childhood now as fresh as a wound sustained that morning.
Bao Zhu made a note on the wax tablet between them. “Other guests?”

“The usual mix. A half-dozen minor poets, a couple of rich old men, and the Imperial Tutor himself. Plus the lady from the Lotus Pavilion. She’ll be performing a dance at the intermission.”
Bao Zhu closed her eyes and called up the floor plan of the Tutor’s house—a square, with a rock garden in the center and a ring of shallow reflecting pools. The salon would be set up with screens and low tables, each table attended by a pair of courtesans or entertainers. The real action, as always, would be offstage.

She opened her eyes. “I need you to arrange an introduction. Not for me. For Tao Tao.”
Xue Ling raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going?”

“They’d recognize me. But Tao Tao—she’s the best pipa player in the city now, and everyone knows she’s a favorite of several officials. If she’s there, she’ll draw all the eyes. Minghua won’t be able to resist.”

Xue Ling sat back, folding her arms. “You still want to ruin him?”

“I want him to suffer,” said Bao Zhu, quietly.

Xue Ling studied her for a long time, then nodded. “I’ll make it happen. Tao Tao can be ready by noon.”

They packed up the notes and the lamp, and Bao Zhu made her way upstairs. The rest of the house was in chaos—someone had indeed let an ox into the courtyard, and the junior staff were chasing it in circles, shouting and tripping over their own feet. Bao Zhu watched from the stairs, half amused, half exhausted.

She found Tao Tao in her private chamber, legs folded under her, tuning her pipa with the care of a mother braiding a child’s hair.

“You have an appointment tomorrow,” Bao Zhu said, closing the door behind her.

Tao Tao looked up, eyes narrowing. “Whose?”

“Zhao Minghua. At the Tutor’s house. You’ll play a piece about loss and loyalty. You’ll make him remember everything he’s tried to forget.”

Tao Tao smiled. “What’s the price?”

“You get to keep his shame as a trophy,” said Bao Zhu.

Tao Tao’s fingers plucked a single, mournful note. “Anything for my best friend.”

They shared a look, then Bao Zhu left, closing the door softly behind her.

*

The Tutor’s house was a floating palace of paper and silk, built to impress the easily impressed and terrify the rest. Bao Zhu entered by the servant’s gate, dressed as a wine girl with a wooden tray balanced on her shoulder. Her hair was hidden under a plain kerchief, and her robe—borrowed from the laundry staff—smelled faintly of buckwheat and sweat.

She wove through the maze of screens and lanterns, head down, catching glimpses of the guests as she went. The crowd was bigger than she’d expected: at least forty men, most of them already several cups deep and growing bolder with each round. The women hovered at the margins, eyes bright but voices low, as if waiting for the night to reveal its true purpose.

In the center of the main hall, the Tutor himself presided over a dais, a benign smile frozen on his waxy face. To his left, Zhao Minghua—her former husband—sat in full scholar’s regalia, eyes narrowed to slits. Beside him, Lady Zhao—Mei Hua: younger than Bao Zhu remembered.
Bao Zhu made her way to the rear of the hall, where a serving platform overlooked the musicians.

At the first bell, the musicians took their place. Tao Tao appeared, gliding through the crowd in a robe of midnight blue. Her hair was done up in an elaborate knot, studded with seed pearls and a single silver comb. She looked straight ahead, never meeting the eyes of the men who leered and whispered as she passed.

She sat down, steadied her pipa began to play.

The piece started slow, a rippling of notes that suggested rain against a tiled roof. But as it built, the melody grew more jagged until the entire hall was held in a kind of uneasy suspension. It was a song about heartbreak, but also about survival—a song for women who had been discarded and had learned to make beauty from their own ruins.

Tao Tao’s fingers moved with supernatural speed. At one point, she reached up and adjusted her hair, letting the sleeve fall back to reveal a fresh scar on her forearm. The gesture was so brief, so artfully calculated, that only the women in the room seemed to register it.

When the piece ended, the applause was thunderous. Even the Tutor clapped, his smile cracking for the first time all evening.

Tao Tao bowed, then made her way to the scholar’s table, as Bao Zhu had instructed.
Minghua looked up, eyes hot and greedy. “You play with passion,” he said. “Where did you learn?”

Tao Tao smiled, lowering her lashes. “From someone who understood loss.”

Lady Zhao scowled, clutching her fan so tight the sticks creaked.

Minghua leaned in, lowering his voice. “Perhaps you can teach me. I could use instruction.”

Tao Tao let her smile fade, just a touch. “I doubt it. Some lessons must be lived, not taught.”

There was a ripple of laughter at the table. Minghua flushed, then reached for his cup and drained it in one swallow.

Lady Zhao snapped her fan open. “We should not detain the guest with vulgarities,” she said, voice icy. “The Tutor has a schedule.”

Tao Tao bowed again and retreated to the musician’s platform.
Minghua watched her go, the hunger in his face so naked it almost made Bao Zhu pity him.

*

Back at The House of Tao, the next stage of the plan unfolded.

Bao Zhu assembled a package of forged letters, each written in Minghua’s own calligraphic style. The first was a note professing undying love to Tao Tao, full of self-loathing and confessions about his “unworthy wife.” The second was from Lady Zhao, addressed to a Buddhist nun, lamenting her husband’s “depravities” and her own impending madness. Bao Zhu worked with the best scribe in the Western Ward to ensure the documents were flawless.

She bribed two servants to deliver the letters: one to Lady Zhao’s maid, one to the Tutor’s office.
The results were immediate.

Within a week, Lady Zhao confronted her husband in public, screaming accusations and waving the forged letter in his face. Minghua protested to no avail. The Tutor, always eager for scandal, read the second letter aloud at a private banquet, to the delight of the court elite.

Minghua’s reputation crumbled overnight. His friends deserted him; his business deals soured. Lady Zhao became a minor celebrity, her weeping, and public prayers and lamentations drawing crowds to the city’s temples.

Three weeks later, The House of Tao hosted its own exclusive salon, with the most influential men in Chang’an in attendance. Tao Tao played a new piece—a poem called “The Wife Who Wept at Dawn”—and every listener knew, without being told, who the characters were.

After the performance, Xue Ling approached Bao Zhu on the terrace, a bottle of pear wine in hand.

“You did it,” said Xue Ling. “He’s finished.”

Bao Zhu shrugged, her hands folded in her lap. “He was always finished. I just swept up the ashes.”

*

The final stage required less cunning than patience, less violence than paperwork. It was almost anticlimactic.

The Ministry of Justice clerk met Bao Zhu at a private surgery not far from The House of Tao. He was young and sharp-nosed, with a fringe of downy beard that made him look like an overgrown schoolboy. He had suffered from boils and later headaches—real or imagined—and preferred to receive her treatment in secret, away from the eyes of his superiors.

He arrived early and was served some Long Jing tea by an attendant. When Bao Zhu entered, he rose too fast, knocking over his seat.

“Lady Doctor,” he said, recovering. “An honor.”

She smiled, letting the title amuse her. “You must be feeling better. Here is the prescription for your skin condition. Shall we see to your boils?”

As Bao Zhu lanced and cleaned his infected lesions, the clerk engaged in some small talk to distract himself.

“They say there’s a case coming. A scandal. The Censorate is interested in certain people. High up, but not high enough to be untouchable.” He lowered his voice. “If someone had information, now would be the time.”

She smiled again, warmer now. “What do you dream about, sir?”

He blushed deeper. “Power. And how quickly it can be lost.”

She set a slip of paper on the table by his robes, sealed with a drop of wax. “Then let me give you a gift. For the headaches.”

When Bao Zhu had finished dressing his wounds, he put on his robes and took the proffered paper and slipped it inside his robe. “Will it work?”

“If you’re brave enough to use it,” she said, and took her leave.

*

The “evidence” was not difficult to procure.

Zhao Minghua had never bothered to hide his corruption; he’d simply assumed, as so many men did, that nobody would ever care or dare to hold him to account. It was the way of the land for the favored; among which Minghua was now decidedly not.

There were receipts for bribes disguised as “tribute,” blatant land tax evasion and misuse of state funds, even a note or two condoning nepotism signed in his own hand. Bao Zhu had copied the best ones herself, making only the smallest changes—a date here, a seal there—to ensure their authenticity would be beyond dispute.

Within a week, the Censorate launched an inquiry. Within a month, they had stripped Minghua of his post and his stipend.

The arrest itself was a spectacle. Lady Zhao, now the talk of every tea house in the city, had been pushed to the brink by Bao Zhu’s last campaign of rumor and innuendo. The day before the magistrates arrived, she stood in the courtyard and burned her husband’s official robes, screaming that he was a traitor to the dynasty and a liar in the eyes of Heaven.

The neighbors reported every detail to the Ward Captain, who in turn forwarded the news to the Censorate. When the constables arrived, Lady Zhao was still shrieking, her face streaked with ash and tears, her hair undone and wild. They took Minghua without resistance; Lady Zhao, they sent to a Buddhist nunnery in the hills outside Chang’an.

*

It was six weeks before Bao Zhu visited the nunnery.

She waited for an excuse—a delivery of herbal supplies or perhaps a request for diagnosis from the abbess—but in the end, she simply walked there one morning, following the path as it wound through the winter-bare groves of hawthorn and pine.

The nunnery was smaller than she’d expected. Its walls were patched with clay, the roof sagging at one corner. In the center of the courtyard, a pair of women knelt, pulling weeds from the frost-crusted soil. One was tall and stooped, the other so thin that her shadow barely cast a mark.
Bao Zhu recognized Mei Hua immediately, though the transformation was almost complete. Her head had been shaved, revealing the strange shape of her skull. Her hands were raw and cracked, the knuckles dark with old and healing bruises. She moved slowly, with the care of someone who expected every moment to be her last.

Bao Zhu waited until the other woman left, then approached.

Mei Hua looked up, then back down. “If you’re selling medicine, I have no money.”
“I’m not here to sell anything, Mei Hua,” said Bao Zhu.

Mei Hua raised her gaze gradually, a fleeting spark of recognition rendering her momentarily silent. Then she managed, “Yu Lian…”

Mei Hua crumpled to the ground and stared blankly at the vegetable garden she had been tending. Bao Zhu sat down across from her, her gaze not leaving her former friend’s bowed head. They sat in silence for several seconds, the chill of the air laden with the earthy scent of frost and decaying leaves.

After a moment, Mei Hua's voice broke the stillness, hesitant yet filled with regret. “Why did you do it? All of it—the letters, the rumors, the…everything…”

Bao Zhu met her gaze with unwavering resolve. “Because you destroyed my life. Because you took away my daughter and made her suffer. Because you beat me and reveled in my suffering.”

Mei Hua shook her head slowly, her features etched with sorrow. “No, that’s not the whole truth. I envied you, yes. I hated that you had him when I could only watch from the shadows. But…” Her voice faltered as her hands dug deeper into the soil, seeking solace in the earth. “I thought if I tried hard enough, I could claim what you had for myself.”

Bao Zhu studied her old friend, taking in the rawness of her skin and the emptiness in her gaze. For a fleeting moment, she felt the stirrings of the old Eric—a part of her that remained detached, able to observe suffering without being consumed by it. “You loved him?” she asked, the question hanging between them like a fragile thread.

Mei Hua let out a bitter laugh, a sound tinged with self-loathing. “I thought I did. Perhaps I just craved to be chosen, for once.”

Rising to her feet, Bao Zhu brushed dirt from her back, the motion signaling a shift in their conversation. “We were friends once, as girls.”

Mei Hua looked up, tears shimmering in her eyes, a mix of remorse and the faint spark of recognition illuminating her features. “I remember,” she said, her voice trembling like the fragile leaves in the winter breeze. “You were my protector, always standing between me and the older girls when they sought to belittle me. You taught me how to decipher the subtle shifts in men’s expressions, how to anticipate their desires before they even spoke. I never forgot those lessons or the warmth of your friendship.”

Her gaze dropped to the frost-dusted ground, as if searching for the remnants of the bond they once cherished. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Yu Lian. For the pain I inflicted, for striking you. I was blinded by jealousy—consumed by the life you had, your child, your family. I forgot who I was, forgot who we were...” The confession was thick with regret, echoing the lost innocence of their youth.

Bao Zhu felt the heat of old shame and anger, but also something else: a ghost of the affection that had once bound them together.

“Does it still hurt?”

Lady Zhao shrugged. “Less than previously. The work is honest, the food is plain, the nuns mind their own business. I dream of nothing. It’s peaceful.”

Bao Zhu nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

She reached into her satchel and drew out a packet of dried orange peel and some Chuan Xiong, tied with a blue string. She set it on the ground between them.

“For the headaches,” she said. Bao Zhu—Yu Lian—had treated Mei Hua’s headaches with herbs since they were young girls. She had no idea why she had brought these along; wasn’t she supposed to be gloating over her friend and not treating her ailments?

Mei Hua picked it up, fingers trembling. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Bao Zhu nodded and walked away, through the bare trees and back to the city.

On the long walk home, she turned the memory over and over, like a stone in her hand. She thought of all the things she might have said: I forgive you. I hate you. We were both victims of the same game. But in the end, the only words that mattered were the ones she’d left unspoken.

*

Bao Zhu’s next campaign demanded patience and delicacy.

She began the operation in the West Market, choosing a vendor who traded in exotic scents and oils. The shopkeeper was a Persian with a nose for counterfeits and a talent for memory. She commissioned a small batch of perfume—a blend of bergamot, myrrh, and a rare blue lotus that bloomed only at the edge of the marshes north of the city. She called it “Moon Over the Abandoned Garden.” The formula was meticulously calibrated: a top note of nostalgia, a base note of poison.

It took less than a week for Zhang Yue’s wife, Lady Zhang née Liu, to acquire the vial. She was a collector, after all, and the scent had been engineered to find its way to her through rumor and the invisible threads of envy that tied the women of the capital together. By the time the bottle reached the Liu residence, it had already been the subject of half a dozen lunch conversations and at least one anonymous poem posted to the city’s main gate.

Bao Zhu made sure to monitor every step. She paid the Persian an extra two coins to keep her name from the ledger, and a further coin to the runner who would deliver the corrupted final product. Lady Zhang adored the scent, wore it every night, dabbed it on her wrists and neck before bed, even sprinkled it on her pillows. Within days, the staff whispered of strange occurrences: Lady Zhang speaking to herself in the garden at midnight, insisting she saw a woman in blue reflected in the moonlit pond, and complaining of whispers in the corridor. Within a fortnight, Lady Zhang stopped eating. She locked herself in her chamber and refused to let even the maids near her. She wrote letters to her husband—rambling, desperate letters—accusing him of infidelity, of bringing shame to the family, of plotting to have her murdered and replaced.

Zhang Yue, ever the logician, brought in doctors from three different districts. They bled her, dosed her with poppy and prayed over her. Yet nobody thought to look at the perfume, and even if they had, the toxins would have been untraceable—a chemical ghost.

*

The salt was easier.

The Western Ward bustled with a clandestine network of river barges and pack animals that wound through the city under the cover of night, unloading goods into warehouses overseen by apathetic guards. With a touch of bribery—and some discreet favors from one of the older courtesans at the House of Tao—Bao Zhu gained access to the warehouse supervisor, a man plagued by a chronic ulcer and a fondness for fried fish. She treated his ailment first, building his trust over several visits by bringing him tea and cakes. When the moment was ripe, she suggested that his discomfort could stem from “contaminated” salt and offered to assist with the next delivery.

On the night a shipment destined for Zhang Yue’s personal stock arrived, Bao Zhu and Xue Ling met in the dimly lit warehouse. They unwrapped tightly bound bundles and carefully set aside three sealed bags meant for his family’s personal use—Zigong well salt from Sichuan. They mixed in a fine, silvery powder—arsenic—calculating the dosage precisely: enough to weaken without causing death. Once resealed, the bags were stacked with the others, and the foreman signed off on the shipment as dawn broke, sending the tainted salt on its way.

It took a matter of days for the symptoms to emerge. At first, Zhang Yue felt only fatigue—a paresthesia in the arms and legs, a sense of slowness that no amount of tea or ginseng could shake. He missed appointments and stumbled over his own words in meetings. His son, a beautiful child of six, stopped eating. He complained of stomach aches and spent most of his days curled up on a sleeping mat, crying for no reason. The house physicians were clueless as to the cause and offered ineffective solutions.

Zhang Yue’s reputation began to suffer. Rumors circulated that he had grown soft, lost his sharpness, that his mind was unraveling. Clients transferred their business elsewhere. The city’s poets began to mock him, softly at first, then more brazenly as the news spread. Inside the house, Lady Zhang grew weaker by the day, and started telling the servants that she was being haunted by the ghost of a courtesan she’d once wronged. The staff whispered that a curse had been laid on the household.

*

The collapse happened slowly, then all at once.

By the end of the first month, the household was in crisis. Zhang Yue’s contracts had all but vanished; his name was dropped from invitation lists and his credit lines were quietly cancelled. The family’s standing slipped, increment by increment, until even the servants began to talk back. Lady Zhang, no longer able to eat or stand, was sent to her family’s ancestral home to be cared for by her maiden aunt. The child lingered, frail and listless. Zhang Yue retreated to his study, emerging only for meals, and even then, only to push food around the plate and sip watered wine.

Bao Zhu observed it all from a distance, gathering scraps of intelligence from the market, and from Xue Ling’s spies.

The next morning, Bao Zhu wrote a letter addressed to Zhang Yue, making no effort to disguise her hand: “To lose everything is not the end, but the beginning. You taught me that, once.”

*

It was Tao Tao who finally said the words.

One evening, in the calm of her own room where they often met, she told Bao Zhu directly and firmly, “You must stop. This is not justice.”

Bao Zhu, who had spent the evening preparing medicinal roots for Xiu Ying’s cold, barely looked up. “He deserves it.”

Tao Tao slammed her palm onto the table, sending a brush rolling to the floor. “What about his son? What about his wife who knows nothing of you or Zhang Yue’s infidelity? Is it justice to poison them?”

Bao Zhu’s hands froze, briefly stunned by the edge in Tao Tao’s voice. She could not remember the last time Tao Tao had raised her voice at her. For a moment, she wanted to laugh, to explain that the doses were harmless, reversible, nothing compared to the violence men did to women every day in this city. But her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and instead she whispered: “It’s not supposed to hurt them.”

Tao Tao pressed on. “This is not the woman I know and love. Don’t become a monster just because the world is full of them.”

A third voice, small and uncertain, cut through the argument. Xiu Ying stood in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown several sizes too large for her. She looked from one woman to the other, her face pinched with confusion.

“Why are you fighting?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Tao Tao turned, her expression melting into warmth. “Auntie and mother are not fighting. We’re just… disagreeing about how to fix a broken thing.”

Bao Zhu felt her resolve buckle. She saw, in Xiu Ying’s wide, dark eyes, the flicker of a different kind of future—a future that required courage, not cunning.

A sudden clarity pierced through Bao Zhu's turbulent thoughts, illuminating the shadows that had clouded her judgment. She recognized with unsettling clarity that she had unwittingly become a character in the very narrative she once sought to escape—a tale spun from the threads of revenge and suffering, echoing the melodramatic plots of the novels she had absorbed.

In those stories, vengeance was often portrayed as a righteous crusade, a path paved with the blood of the guilty, yet here she stood, teetering on the precipice of moral decay. The faces of the innocent—Zhang Yue’s son, his wife, even the servants who merely sought to survive—flashed before her eyes, their fates entwined with her own machinations. She felt the sharp sting of realization; she was not the avenger of wrongs but rather a perpetrator of new injustices, perpetuating a cycle of pain that could only lead to further suffering.

The thrill of plotting against her former lover faded and was replaced by a profound sense of disquiet. Bao Zhu felt the fragile strands of her moral compass fray, unraveling under the weight of her ambition. This was not the path of redemption she had envisioned; it was a descent into darkness, where the innocent would pay the price for her thirst for retribution.
She stood, crossed the room, and knelt in front of her daughter.

“Did you ever do something bad because you wanted to feel better?” she asked.

Xiu Ying thought for a moment, then nodded. “Once, at the workhouse, I tripped a girl who stole my bread.”

“And did it make you feel better?”

“No. She cried. I gave her my bread after. She was so hungry.”

Bao Zhu closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Thank you,” she said, kissing the girl’s forehead. Then she turned to face Tao Tao with tears filling her eyes, as if asking for forgiveness.

Tao Tao nodded, relief breaking through her sternness. She walked towards Bao Zhu and held her, stroking her hair with a calm assurance, and that was all the answer she needed to give.

*

Undoing was always harder than doing.

Bao Zhu spent the next two days in the company of an honest physician—a rare breed in Chang’an, and one she had cultivated as a patient and then as a friend. Together, they mapped out a treatment plan: hydration, high-protein meals, and a mix of common herbs to flush the poison and restore the nerves.

She paid a courier to deliver a carefully-worded letter to the Zhang household, suggesting a new dietary regimen to “reverse the wasting,” as the physician had diagnosed it. She bribed a kitchen maid to swap the old salt for a new, pure batch. Tao Tao sent a sampler of dried fruits and seeds, signed with her best wishes.

By the end of the second week, the symptoms in the Zhang household had begun to subside. The boy started eating normally again; Lady Zhao returned to the world of the living, fragile but lucid; and Zhang Yue regained his memory, though not his old strength. The rumors of haunting faded and, within a month, the city found fresh scandals to devour. Bao Zhu told herself she should be pleased. Instead, she felt emptier than she had in years.

On the night of the Lantern Festival, Bao Zhu sat alone in the upper gallery, watching the city light itself up in celebration. Fireworks hissed and exploded in the sky, showering the streets with red and green sparks. Below, the House of Tao was filled with laughter and music. Xue Ling supervised the junior girls as they threaded paper lanterns with silk, and Tao Tao presided over a salon of poets, her laughter rising above even the noise of the party.

For the first time in years, nobody needed her. Not as a healer, not as a strategist, not even as a mother. She drank two cups of warm plum wine, then sought out Tao Tao in the main salon. She found her surrounded by admirers, but as always, her friend made space for her the instant she entered.

“You did the right thing,” Tao Tao said, voice low and earnest.

Bao Zhu sat, wrapping her arms around herself. “How do you know?”

“Because you’ve stopped looking over your shoulder,” said Tao Tao. “You’re not haunted anymore.”

Bao Zhu laughed, soft. “If I asked you to tell me the truth—what kind of person am I?”
Tao Tao took her hand, squeezing gently. “Not a bad person, if that’s what you’re asking. You’re the kind who survives.”

Bao Zhu bowed her head, unable to speak.

Tao Tao leaned in, her lips brushing Bao Zhu’s ear. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
Bao Zhu looked up, and saw not Tao Tao but Lin—her first, her only true friend, alive in every curve of the smile and every glint of the eye.

When the gathering had ended, Tao Tao leaned over and whispered to Bao Zhu. “Come back up with me. I need your help me with my hair. I’m too tired to do it myself.”

“You’re always too tired,” Bao Zhu sighed, but she followed Tao Tao willingly, and they walked arm in arm back to her chambers like two lovers.

In the months that followed, the House of Tao became a small sanctuary for the city’s lost women. Under Bao Zhu’s direction, it transformed into a school and a clinic. Girls came to learn to read, to write, to do simple calculations and keep their own ledgers; even to learn the basics of herbal medicine.

Bao Zhu herself found peace in the work. She slept through the night. She woke each morning with a sense of purpose. She stopped dreaming of old lovers and unfinished business.
Sometimes, at sunset, she and Tao Tao would sit on the roof together, feet dangling over the eaves. They would watch the city settle into dusk, trading stories and predictions about what the next day would bring.

*

He came to her at twilight, when the garden behind The House of Tao was at its emptiest and the air shimmered with the last heat of the day.

Sun Yiwen wore his best robe and brought a basket of grapes, which he placed on the low table with a flourish. He bowed, waited for her to sit, and then poured her a cup of tea, hands trembling only slightly.

"You're nervous," she said.

He shook his head. "Only determined. I have something to say, and I want you to hear it before you interrupt."

She sipped her tea. "Then say it."

He took a breath. "I want to marry you."

She sighed. "Yiwen. We've been through this."

He pressed on. "I'm not the eldest son. I have no inheritance. I can make my own life—my own business. In two years, I will have enough to be independent, and then there is nothing to stop us."

"Except your family. And the entire city," said Bao Zhu, arching an eyebrow. "Even if you succeeded, I could never be anything but a concubine. Is that what you want for me?"

He shook his head, stubborn. "I want you as my wife."

She set her cup down. "Listen to me. A woman like me—a courtesan, twice disgraced, and the mother of a fatherless child—does not become a wife in Chang’an, not unless the man is already an outcast. The neighbors will laugh when they say your name. Your sisters will never visit. Your children—"

He reached for her hand, and she let him, just for the comfort of the touch.

"My father married a tea merchant's daughter," Yiwen said, earnest. "My mother grew up in a brothel. He loved her, and nobody dared say a word."

"Your mother was a second wife. And when she died, the family forgot her name," Bao Zhu countered. "I would rather be alone than live as a shadow."

He looked wounded, but not defeated.

She softened, just a fraction. "Yiwen. You are a good man. The best I've met in this life, and perhaps in the last. But you don't know what it's like to belong to someone and still be invisible. I would rather be your lover and your friend, for as long as this lasts."

He squeezed her hand. "I won't give up. I will make it possible. I will make them respect you."

She smiled, genuinely. "If you can change the world in two years, come find me. Until then—" She released his hand, stood, and brushed invisible dust from her sleeve. "—don't waste your time on hope."

*

But Sun Yiwen kept his promise; and, seven years later, Bao Zhu sat in the courtyard of her home, teaching her three-year-old son to catch ants without crushing them. He was a clever, sturdy child but halfway to being spoiled.

Tao Tao was there, too, fanning herself in the shade, watching the boy and laughing at his misadventures. She wore a summer robe of pale silk, which made her look both impossibly young and, in a strange way, immortal.

Xiu Ying, now eighteen, was in the rear study, balancing the family and business accounts with Sun Yiwen. Bao Zhu could hear the girl’s sharp questions about the family business through the open window: Why is there a different rate for silk for every district? How do you handle the inspectors who want a bribe? How can we improve the accounting and tracking of inventory?

She loved hearing the fight in her daughter’s voice—though sometimes it made her ache to see how much more Xiu Ying wanted from the world than the world wanted to give.

Tao Tao set down her fan. “She reminds me of you when we first met. Not the sadness, but the determination to learn and to succeed.”

Bao Zhu looked at her friend with a gentle smile on her face. She watched her son poke a stick into the ant nest, his brow furrowed in concentration. “I’m glad that she’s free to do what she wants for the moment. I never had that, not really. I want her to keep it as long as she can.”

Later, as dusk fell, the family gathered for dinner in the open courtyard. The little boy snatched with chopsticks, dribbling more than he ate, but nobody scolded him. After the meal, Xiu Ying lingered, picking at a bowl of sweet bean paste.

“Mother,” she said, quietly, when her father had moved away.

Bao Zhu looked up. “Yes?”

“Is it true that you wanted to make me marry the silk inspector’s son?”

Bao Zhu blinked, then smiled. “No, I would never do that. It’s true that I wanted you to have options. But I would never force you into anything you hated.”

Xiu Ying’s shoulders relaxed. “Good. I like someone else.”

Tao Tao, still present, leaned in, conspiratorially. “A poet? Or a merchant?”

Xiu Ying blushed, then grinned. “He’s a foreigner. A translator. He writes letters in five languages, and he always smells like oranges.”

Tao Tao cackled, delighted. “A foreigner! How daring!”

Bao Zhu reached across the table and squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Just promise me that you’ll choose with both your heart and your mind.”

Xiu Ying nodded. “I promise.”

*

The next morning, after breakfast, Xiu Ying left for a lesson with her new tutor, pausing only to ruffle her brother’s hair and wink at her mother. The boy, already sticky with red bean paste, protested, then returned to constructing a palace from lacquered chopsticks.

Bao Zhu and Tao Tao sat in the garden under a pavilion suffused with the memory of a hundred conversations between women.

“Be honest,” Tao Tao said, fanning herself with a lazy wrist. “Is Sun Yiwen still good in bed, or has domestic tranquillity ruined him?”

Bao Zhu laughed so hard she nearly spilled her tea. “What would you know of tranquillity, Xiǎo Míhún (小迷魂;Little Soul-Enchanter)? You can’t sit still long enough for the ink to dry on a love letter.”

Tao Tao feigned outrage, then lowered her voice. “You’re the real Xiǎo Míhún! And stop deflecting. I asked you a serious question.”

Bao Zhu rolled her eyes. “He’s attentive. And generous. If you want me to draw a diagram, I can do that too.”

Tao Tao grinned, pleased; and they sipped their tea, content.

Late in the afternoon, a jewelry merchant passed through the street, singing the old, familiar pitch about everlasting love and the virtues of jade. The women of the house gathered to see his wares.

The trays were full of bangles, earrings, combs, and hairpins—but one bangle, a thick band of white-green stone, caught Bao Zhu’s eye. She asked to see it. The merchant obliged, explaining that it had been recovered from the river, and that though it bore a small flaw—a fracture line, like a sitting fox—it was otherwise immaculate.

Bao Zhu turned it in her hand, her heart thudding. The crack was in exactly the same place as the bangle she had once bought for Lin, the one that never made it to her wrist, the one that Eric had lost in a river of his own. She remembered, in a rush, the face she had once wanted to see—the flicker of surprise, the impossible smile that would have split the world in two. It was a small thing, stupid even, but she had wanted to see it.

She bought the bangle and slipped it onto Tao Tao’s arm. The stone was cold and smooth, and the flaw glinted when the sun hit it.

Tao Tao ran her thumb over the seam, then looked at Bao Zhu.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“For all the trouble,” Bao Zhu said, voice soft. “And for being the best friend I ever had, in any life.”

Tao Tao smiled, and it was the closest thing to Lin’s smile that Bao Zhu had ever seen. They sat together, not talking, not needing to.

Bao Zhu thought of all the lives she had lived—man, woman, mother, monster, lover—and realized that none of it had been wasted. Everything, even the pain, was preserved in the woman she had become. The bangle, with its bright flaw, was a reminder that transformation and second chances were always possible. And that sometimes, if you were really lucky, you could even give a lost gift to the right person, in the right life.

A former military contractor of Earth wakes up as a slave girl in a distant land.

A pastiche of the Gor inspired Zhor stories of which the finest exemplars are Aardvark's The Warrior From Batuk and some short stories by Christopher Leeson. Except I didn't want to deal with all the exotic terminology and tinkered with many of the properties of the serum as well as the world at large.

[Scribe's Note: Transcribed with permission from the Journal of the Lady Zhou Yu]

Chapter 1 Kidnapped

Dear Reader,

As I write this, it has been three years since I was taken from Ki [Earth] to this land which I now call home.

It is evening here in the capital city of Thamud and the palace grounds are covered with that warm autumnal glow which everyone adores. I have asked the grounds men to keep the leaves this way for just another day. Even from the height of the women's quarters of the palace, I can still hear the sounds of the crowds from the souk: the touts announcing offerings from distant lands; the low rumble of the swarm of hagglers who always appear towards the close of the day; and the occasional exclamations of outrage. The faint smell of smoke and roasted poultry wafts into my room with each strong gust of the evening wind.

It would never cross your mind if considering this scene that barely [200 kilometers] away, a battle now rages and men are dying in the most brutal fashion imaginable. They say that the killing will be over before the winter is upon us.

It is a battle which I have done everything in my power to ensure is settled in my city's favor. Yet, I have been told in no uncertain terms that I should take no part in it. I admit that this still fills me with a modicum of irritation but I have come to accept my place in the scheme of things.

Instead, I have been told to practice my vernacular Thamudi by writing this account of my experiences – primarily as an entertainment for my beloved, but also for the edification of any of my fellow sisters who might find themselves in my position.

The closest thing to my previous vocation in the language of my adopted land would be that of a mercenary. Before that, I was a soldier serving in the army of a country which bears many similarities to the Kingdom of Qin which lies to the West of Thamud. In other words, I drew profit from the skillful application of violence.

Thinking back to the day I was taken, it seems clear that we had little chance the moment we accepted payment to travel to a neighboring country for what seemed a simple assignment. The fee was slightly over the market rate to ensure our interest, and transport from our port of arrival completely under the purview of the local contact. Our greed was our undoing as was our over confidence.

The only thing that saved me at least temporarily was the mask which I - in my usual paranoia - had carried in my hand luggage. It was only of marginal use against the toxin which the malefactors pumped into the van ten minutes into our trip, but it was enough to keep me drowsy but awake till the time they opened the back door of the armored transport at our destination. I killed two of them with my bare hands before a group of six rushed me and put me down. Before I blacked out, I saw them casually dispatching some of my friends with projectiles aimed directly at their heads.

When I next awoke, it was in the back of a covered wooden cart and draped with heavy sackcloth. My hands had been carelessly tied behind me with thin rope, and my legs strung together to my hands; but I was not chained to any object.

Beside me were two women, both white; one blonde and the other a brunette. I could not rouse either of them despite my best efforts. I assumed that they had been drugged just as I had been. It took all my self-control not to panic even as I attempted to cut myself free using the sharp metal joinery of the wooden transport.

You see, I was completely naked and could tell immediately what they had done to me. Where once I stood quite tall, I was now much reduced. I had wasted away with barely an ounce of muscle on me or so it seemed to me. I must have weighed no more than an average market lamb. And I was a woman.

Perhaps I have not made myself entirely clear up to this point, or perhaps you have already assumed with respect to my profession that I was once a man. It has only been three years, but my memories of my old body seem like fragments from a previous life; like a missing appendage which I sometimes recall in restless dreams. My movement and my moods have changed so much that I cannot recall what I was like before – it would be like remembering every instance of my life as a young child.

My lack of strength put me at a severe disadvantage which I could not take for granted. I knew could use neither throws nor choke holds; even the idea of breaking one of their major joints or bones would be difficult if I was barehanded. The two men guiding the transport - our captors - had to be incapacitated swiftly and decisively using the element of surprise. My chance would come that evening when they stopped to encamp. I covered myself with the sackcloth and waited.

With the fading light, the cart reached its destination in what I assumed was the center of a small but busy city; the waxing and waning sounds from the exterior being my only clue as to this. I prepared myself as they opened the back of the cart. As the first man reached out to check my body, I kicked him hard in the throat with the heel of my foot. He fell back choking and would not get back up. I expect that he asphyxiated within moments. As the second man rushed to his aid, I jumped from the cart, and struck him hard on the skull with my knee. When he collapsed on to the ground, I kicked him hard across the face to immobilize him, then crushed his head repeatedly on the cobblestones.

I stripped him for clothes and made to escape. I could do nothing for my two fellow captives who remained asleep throughout this, and had no choice but to leave them behind. In the meantime, I unhitched the old nag which had been pulling us through the day and prepared to ride out of the dank alley I had found myself in.

My travels since then have informed me that this was the border town of Aix – the gateway to the Kingdom of Albion - a den of tradesman and smugglers where women such as myself were considered livestock or obedient wives, though only a truly foolish man would ever bring his partner to Aix.

I had been too clumsy in my new body; mercilessly violent but insufficiently silent. The exit to the alleyway was blocked by the time I was ready, ending my last chance of a clean escape. My only choice was to charge them which I did, sending two of them flying. But the nag didn't have it in him and reared up and collapsed in pain soon after. I barely escaped being crushed and was soon pressed face down into the dirt by four men, at least two with knees on my back.

I had lost and prepared myself to suffer the consequences.

In my past life, women served with men on the frontlines of our wars. Most of them from a distance, raining down death from the skies. Those who wished to exchange blows with men face to face were prepared to accept the hard reality of their choice. They had to be prepared to be treated in every way worse than then a male captive of equal position. I was now that woman captive.

There was a heated exchange of unintelligible words behind me. I imagined that some of them wanted to kill me; after all I had taken two of their own and disabled many others. That would have been merciful and just at least. The men soon came to a compromise with a tall man who seemed the leader of the group. But this only after a lengthy harangue after which the group seemed thoroughly cowed if not embarrassed. I knew this did not bode well for me.

I was released like a deadly reptile and then kicked against the wall. I was so small and light that that this simple kick felt like a tremendous force.

“Get up!” their leader demanded in one of the major tongues of Ki. These were the first intelligible words I had heard since my abduction.

There were ten of them, and they took turns beating me savagely only taking care not to strike my face or to break any bones. My mind was still my own but my body was not what it was; not the hardened shell I had built up over the years back on Ki but something altogether weaker. My soft skin would be covered in bruises for the next two weeks. Mine was not a body naturally made to withstand violence.

In the years since then, I have come to realize that no amount of physical activity would allow me to put on muscle beyond a certain point. I was tall for a woman but my strength would always put me at a disadvantage in a fight against men. I have learned to compensate for this with a combination of speed, dexterity, and lethal implements; as ever seasoning my body against pain.

I was fortunate that they did not see me as a woman at that time but as a feral beast that needed taming. They had no interest in my sexual availability, only in revenge and humiliation. I did manage to break the wrists and fingers of at least two of my tormentors before one of them started choking me from behind and I lost consciousness.