Chapter 6

The very next day, Wei Tong took Zhang Jiu aside and spoke to him about it in earnest. Zhang Jiu hadn’t yet sunk deep, and what Wei Tong said moved him. For all that both were Liu Jinzhong’s adopted sons, Zhao Hexiang had indeed fared better in their godfather’s favor than Zhang Jiu had; it couldn’t be denied that Zhang Jiu’s original motive for joining the games had been, in part, to get on Zhao Hexiang’s good side. And though Ma Dexi was a culinary eunuch of longer standing than Zhang Jiu, conspiring with Zhao Hexiang was simply too reckless. It was a thing outright forbidden in the Inner Palace. If it were uncovered…

Zhang Jiu shuddered mid-thought. He was carefree, but he was no fool. From that night on, he stayed in the room with Wei Tong in the evenings. Zhao Hexiang and Ma Dexi came looking for the pair several times, and finding them utterly impenetrable, muttered a few curses under their breath and stopped wasting effort on them. As a side effect, the two of them grew much closer with Fugui and Wenxi.

That night, talk filled the room.

“So you two are actually cousins!” Zhang Jiu slapped his thigh. “No wonder the two of you get along so well!” Even children of one father grow up different from each other, let alone cousins; no wonder they seemed so close. Wei Tong saw it differently. Those small, unconscious gestures of intimacy, those half-spoken words, however well hidden, had not escaped Wei Tong’s careful eyes. He merely glanced at the pair once. Whether they loved each other or not, what did it matter?

The slighter Wenxi sensed Wei Tong’s gaze and gave him a faint smile, then bent back over his needle in the dim light, mending a hole in Fugui’s clothes. Fugui frowned at the candle on the table, got down from his bunk to tease the wick with something sharp, brightening the flame, and only then climbed back into his own bed. Watching the scene, Wei Tong smiled softly as well, and settled into quietly listening to Zhang Jiu and Fugui talk.

The New Year was drawing near, and the air in the palace had finally softened a little, the festival cheer diluting the bleak chill of winter. The various palaces and halls had begun their year-end scrubbing. Wei Tong, freshly promoted to culinary eunuch this very year, was spared from that particular labor. On the surface he seemed to have it easy, but in truth, the culinary post was deadly work of its own kind. Every time his rotation came up to carry in the meal service, Wei Tong was scrupulous to the point of paranoia. That food went into the Emperor’s mouth. If anything went wrong with Kangxi because of it, they would all be skinned alive.

Thanks to his meal service duties, Wei Tong did catch glimpses of Kangxi fairly often, but not once did he dare raise his head, and Kangxi, apart from that single occasion of calling out his name and prompting his promotion, had never mentioned such a small person as Wei Tong again. That, too, let Wei Tong breathe easier. At this month’s intelligence handoff, no one had come out to intercept him either. Presumably they had concluded there was nothing more to squeeze from him.

It was precisely then that something happened.

Returning at dusk one day, Wei Tong was chatting with the others in the room. Though mostly the other three did the talking, the atmosphere in the room was warm. Then a sudden clamor arose outside, and before any of them could react, the door was kicked open from without. One look at the man’s clothing told them his rank stood a full level above the culinary eunuchs of Wei Tong’s sort. The man’s face was stern as he scrutinized what the four of them had been doing, then ordered them all out. Only once they were outside did they see that the courtyard was already crowded with people, all exchanging blank looks, none knowing what was happening.

In the middle of the courtyard stood a single chair, occupied by a somewhat plump eunuch whose robes and cap made Wei Tong’s heart give a jump!

Zhang Jiu, seeing the man, froze for a beat before gathering his nerve. “So it is Grandpa Li. Might we ask what brings Grandpa Li here today… Have we, your humble servants, given offense in some way? We beg your pardon here and now.” At Zhang Jiu’s prompting, Wei Tong recognized the man. This was Li Jinchao, the Head Shift Eunuch. Li Jinchao and Liu Jinzhong would both one day serve as deputy chief eunuchs of Kangxi’s middle and late reign, though for now they surely lacked that later glory. And though Li Jinchao and Liu Jinzhong had their frictions and their tripping of each other’s heels, both were devoted to Kangxi.

At the sight of Zhang Jiu, Li Jinchao didn’t put on a stern face, but his words made the whole courtyard’s hearts skip. “None of you have given This Servant any offense. But you would do well to think carefully: have you done anything lately that breaks the rules? Well, search the quarters, and we shall know, won’t we? If you’re clean, then This Servant is glad, and no one need share another’s punishment. But if the search turns up something a little… unclean…” The drawn-out ending lingered in the air, its unspoken meaning leaving the attendants in the courtyard distinctly uneasy.

Li Jinchao had barely finished speaking when an imperial attendant eunuch hurried out from one of the rooms, carrying something that drained the color from every face. Li Jinchao’s expression didn’t change. He lifted the Pai Gow tiles and dice from the tray, turning them over in his hands this way and that, then laughed aloud. “My, my. It really has been a long time since This Servant has seen such little trinkets. Who among you can tell me whose these are?” His voice was soft, gentle even, but with every word that left his lips, even Wei Tong felt his hair stand on end.

Zhao Hexiang and Ma Dexi’s faces went corpse-pale. As everyone instinctively cleared a space, the two men standing in the middle dropped trembling to their knees. “This servant deserves death, this servant deserves death! Please, please spare this servant’s life, Grandpa Li, spare this servant’s life!” They could barely get the words out whole, kowtowing with everything they had. Li Jinchao waved a hand, and men stepped forward to force the pair down. His expression never shifted; he remained perfectly mild. “This Servant would not presume. You are the Emperor’s servants, not This Servant’s. Such words overstep. Twenty slaps of the mouth.”

“Yes!”

The words had barely left Li Jinchao’s mouth before the two eunuchs pinning the pair began dealing blows swift and vicious. In the blink of an eye, all twenty were delivered. Both faces were swollen and scarlet past recognition. Ma Dexi struggled a few times and spat out a mouthful of bloody water, among it one or two broken teeth.

The courtyard was so silent that a falling needle would have been audible. Li Jinchao swept his gaze around, saw everyone standing rigidly to attention, and at last looked somewhat satisfied. “His Majesty is merciful. Before coming, he instructed This Servant: at the year’s turning, if there truly is a scandal, punish only the principals and pardon the accessories entirely. This Servant has nothing more to say. Mark it well in your hearts. The next time, it will not end so gently!”

The crowd assented. Li Jinchao spared not a single glance for the two pinned men, turning on his heel and walking off with his hands clasped behind his back. “Take those two to the Shangfang Court.”

A wave of stifled gasps swept the courtyard.

Wei Tong closed his eyes briefly. He knew those two would never come back.

The Shangfang Court would one day be the Office of Punishment. No maid or eunuch sent through its gates ever came out alive. Truly… so merciful.

Back in the room, none of the four spoke.

He had been sitting alone on his bed for a long while when Zhang Jiu’s voice finally broke the silence. “No wonder it was Grandpa Li who came today, and not my godfather. Wei Tong, you’ve saved me yet again.” Zhang Jiu’s voice was thick with gratitude. Wei Tong shook his head. “Did you not hear what he said just now? Even without me, nothing would have happened to you.” After all, only the two principals had fallen. And to condemn Zhao Hexiang and Ma Dexi as principals on the strength of a few recovered items alone, the affair must have been watched in secret for who knew how long.

Zhang Jiu said in a low voice, “My godfather has taken such a fall this time. If he ever learns I was once part of it, how would I be any different from Zhao Hexiang now? Though… this is an opportunity too…”

His voice dropped lower and lower, and after that, the room knew no other sound that night.

Wei Tong lay with his eyes open, listening to Zhang Jiu’s last, half-voiced words, and understood: Zhang Jiu was not resigned. By seniority, Zhao Hexiang was actually his junior, his shidi in a sense, and yet until today, Zhao Hexiang’s swagger had far outshone his own, purely on the strength of Liu Jinzhong’s favor. With Zhao Hexiang struck down now, how was that not an opening for Zhang Jiu?

Still, feeling the uncharacteristic gloom radiating from Zhang Jiu, Wei Tong felt a faint, formless melancholy. He remembered the Zhang Jiu of two months ago, so straightforwardly guileless that not a shadow of calculation could be read in him. This Imperial Palace truly was one vast dye vat, staining every soul who dwelt within it with its colors.

Only… how had Kangxi known? Wei Tong couldn’t work it out. The scale of Zhao Hexiang’s operation was hardly small by the standards of the eunuchs, but as the saying went, you could hide things from your superiors, never from those below. Even men at the top found it next to impossible to extract one true word. Kangxi was already drowning in the affairs of the court. Who had tipped him off about this? Not Liu Jinzhong; Zhao Hexiang was his adopted son, and the scandal bought him nothing. Not Li Jinchao; at least, nothing in his reaction just now had betrayed it. And Liang Jiugong would hardly volunteer such words just to offend Liu Jinzhong. Liu Jinzhong might not rival Liang Jiugong in Kangxi’s favor, but he was still one of the Emperor’s trusted men. Then who… It couldn’t be someone from Oboi’s side. The more chaos in the palace, the more it proclaimed the weakness of Kangxi’s grip.

In the days that followed, word trickled in that other courtyards had been searched as well, though nothing serious was turned up anywhere, and the offenders were let off with light handling. That, more than anything, convinced Wei Tong that this whole affair had been aimed squarely at the gambling ring, and at nothing else. Every other punishment was measured and mild, without the kill-the-chicken-to-warn-the-monkey flavor of before.

He wracked his brains until they ached and still couldn’t fathom the reason behind it all, so in the end, Wei Tong simply let it go.

As for Zhang Jiu, he had found some lever to pull somewhere. For a stretch of time afterward, he went about with a well-oiled shine on his face and a spring in his step, and grew openly cavalier with everyone else. Only toward the men in the room, and Wei Tong especially, did he remain decent. Watching Zhang Jiu transform in so short a span, Wei Tong felt once more, and deeply, the uncanny nature of the palace eunuch as a breed. Perhaps because of the mutilation of their bodies, some of their minds warped far more easily than an ordinary man’s.

Turning their backs on old ties the moment their fortunes shifted, eyes lighting up at the sight of money: those were only the most basic labels of the type.