Chapter 5

The first thing Wei Tong did after becoming a culinary eunuch was drag Zhang Jiu aside and extract from him every last rule and caution governing the post, after which he went to ask the man whose opportunity he had snatched mid-flight.

Zhang Jiu could help with the first matter, but the second was beyond him. Wei Tong wasn’t too disappointed; it was what he’d expected. For all that Zhang Jiu was Liu Jinzhong’s adopted son, Liu Jinzhong had more than one adopted son. Matters like these were probably known to Liu Jinzhong alone.

That afternoon, Wei Tong moved into Zhang Jiu’s room. As he left, apart from Chen Dali, everyone else’s words dripped with vinegar, as if they wished they could trade places with him body and soul.

Though the affair of that day had been hushed up, and most people knew nothing of what had happened, Chen Dali did know, and he watched Wei Tong with some worry. Wei Tong broke into a smile and said softly, “I’m fine.” Wei Tong had delicate, handsome features, and usually wore a face of wood. When that face suddenly smiled, it was like spring thawing, and it noticeably lifted the spirits of the men gathered around. In the end, they even managed some genuinely heartfelt congratulations.

Zhang Jiu’s room slept four, and one bunk happened to be empty. With a little tidying, Wei Tong moved his bedding right in. Once his things were put away, seeing that the two men across the room were absent, Wei Tong felt no particular curiosity and was about to fetch a basin for water when Zhang Jiu grabbed his arm, eyes glittering mysteriously. “Hey, hey, Wei Tong. Do you know who those two across the room are?”

Wei Tong gave him a look. Though he had memorized most of the people in Qingning Palace, he only truly committed the important ones to memory; the unimportant ones got a passing impression. Still, he did in fact know who lodged in Zhang Jiu’s room.

Seeing that Wei Tong wasn’t talking, Zhang Jiu assumed he didn’t know and wriggled his eyebrows meaningfully. “Fugui and Wenxi! You know, the two from those rumors, heh heh, those rumors.” Wei Tong knew them. Word was that Fugui and Wenxi had entered the palace together, been assigned to the same posts together, and someone claimed to have seen the pair being intimate, the kind of pairing the palace folk called a couple. Gossip like that traveled fast among the low ranks, though it was half true and half false, and no one could say which was which.

Wei Tong shot Zhang Jiu a resigned look. Even if the two really were a pair, what business was it of theirs? It was all rumor, and no one took it seriously. Nothing disgusted Wei Tong more than gossiping about others. How could you know whether words that left your mouth might, someday, cost you your life? Better to say as little as possible. Same principle as with certain kinds of knowledge: the less, the better.

The next day, Wei Tong formally took up the post. He rose at the same hour as before, the sky still black, the wind biting, and he stood at the very back of the line. At his right hand stood another newly promoted eunuch, a man named Zhao Hexiang. Zhao Hexiang looked honest and thickset enough, but his eyes had a habit of darting up and down, roaming restlessly whenever he spoke with someone. Word was that he was one of Liu Jinzhong’s favored adopted sons, taken in after Zhang Jiu.

On his first day, Wei Tong dared not slack. Arriving safely at the Imperial Kitchen, he observed far more carefully than on his last visit. At the front, speaking with Liu Jinzhong, was none other than Zhao Zhendou, the chief overseer of the Imperial Kitchen. The two looked extremely familiar with each other. In the gap while they talked, the culinary eunuchs dispersed to collect the day’s menus and provisions.

Wei Tong, brand new, was not entrusted with anything important, lest an error drag everyone else down with him, but what he was handed was, paradoxically, the heaviest load. He weighed the boxes in his hands and understood. Newcomers were always the ones put through the wringer; it was a rite of passage. But Zhao Hexiang let it show.

That evening, after three round trips, Wei Tong had barely breathed a sigh of relief before Zhao Hexiang and Ma Dexi, another culinary eunuch, pulled him aside. “Wei Tong, listen, once you’ve played this game one round, you’ll understand the appeal. Sure you won’t have a go?” Faced with the roomful of seasoned gamblers, Wei Tong manufactured an excuse and slipped free. He’d gambled for a stretch back in the modern world, too. That rush of tension and thrill, that get-rich-overnight fever, kept people pouring money in endlessly. After he’d pulled himself back from the cliff’s edge, he never touched it again. Just now, while they’d been talking, Wei Tong had tried to peer into the room, and had glimpsed, faintly, Zhang Jiu inside.

Even if Zhao Hexiang and Ma Dexi both had backers standing behind them, gathering for gambling like this was audacious to the point of madness. It was outright forbidden by palace law, and they dared. If it were discovered, this would be no small matter. And why was Zhang Jiu in there… Had he picked up the gambling bug too?

In truth, the only reason Zhao Hexiang and the others had come looking for Wei Tong at all was that he was quiet and close-mouthed; even if they couldn’t reel him in, he wasn’t the type to run his mouth. But did Liu Jinzhong know about this? Or was it just some little gathering they’d only just started? From the look of it, the scale was still small.

Just as Wei Tong was about to tidy up and turn in, Wenxi and Fugui came in through the door.

The four of them hardly knew one another yet, so Wei Tong greeted them with a smile and climbed into bed. Seeing that Wei Tong meant to sleep, the two kept their movements light, tidied up on quiet feet, and put out the lamp. Though Wei Tong’s eyes were closed, he never actually slept through any of it. That whole in-together, out-together routine; no one would believe it if you said they weren’t close.

As he drifted off, he was thinking he ought to see Xuan within the next day or two, and at the moment sleep truly took him, his eyes snapped open again out of instinct. Speak of the devil and the devil appears, he thought. One mention, and here it comes.

This time, he materialized standing right in front of the folding screen. No movement came from the far side; presumably Xuan was not yet asleep. With nothing to do, Wei Tong occupied himself studying the screen. The screen was not fixed and unchanging. At first, it had borne a landscape painting so lifelike that Wei Tong had mistaken it for reality on first sight, but as time passed it seemed to have faded somewhat, though the difference was slight, too subtle for him to make out.

Just then, Xuan’s voice came through. “Wei?” Wei Tong answered, “It’s me.” He dared not give his full name, offering only his surname, and in his current station, he could hardly have a courtesy name anyway.

“Something is wrong with this screen, I think.” Xuan had evidently noticed the difference as well. Wei Tong walked up to the screen, confirmed he still couldn’t get around it, pulled a chair over and sat down beside it. “Still can’t get past it. No telling what this thing actually is.”

“Heh. If one day this screen turns transparent, or vanishes altogether, then at last I may see your face,” Xuan said with a light laugh. Wei Tong went still. If the screen truly turned transparent, the two of them would effectively be meeting face to face… And frankly, that would be a deeply bad development. The only reason he and Xuan could coexist peacefully now was that they were, in effect, anonymous online friends: once awake, each remembered nothing of the other’s voice; there were no interests binding them and no knowledge of what the other actually was. But once faces were known, there was always risk. What if the other man was someone in the palace? Someone with access to the Imperial Palace?

Wei Tong knew perfectly well how Xuan’s attitude would turn the moment he learned Wei Tong was a eunuch. Even in the modern era, plenty of people looked down on eunuchs; in ancient times, men were reviled outright as cut ones. Wei Tong would not gamble his life on Xuan being some rare soul above such prejudice. But then again, thinking it over, he relaxed a little. There was no saying the screen would turn transparent; he would simply keep the worry filed away for now. Still, that voice of Xuan’s really did sound somehow familiar at times…

“Wei? Wei?” Xuan had called several times before Wei Tong snapped out of it, and he suddenly burst out laughing. This “Wei” really did sound just like “hey, hey.” “Xuan, sorry, I drifted off just now. What were you saying?”

Xuan seemed to pause a moment before answering. “Are you carrying some trouble? You seem rather gloomy.” Since growing familiar with Wei Tong, Xuan’s original cold and reticent persona had begun to crumble, revealing a streak of youthful boyishness, and his words had multiplied.

Wei Tong thought to himself, the reason for my gloom isn’t exactly something I can share with outsiders… Ha. When had he started talking in such stilted literary phrases? “Nothing serious. Just ran into a couple of human dregs. Rotting themselves and dragging others down with them. Utterly worthless.” The thought of Zhao Hexiang and Ma Dexi from earlier had slipped out of him. Gambling was poison, plain and simple.

“Human dregs?” Xuan echoed, puzzled.

Wei Tong rummaged through his mind for a long while before finding the words to explain. “Dregs, as in sediment and filth. Put a man in front of it and you get a word for wicked people.”

Xuan sounded enlightened. “So what did they do?”

“Gathered to gamble, pulled newcomers into the water. Then the interest compounds. The house never loses; it’s the bettors who bleed. The thrill of the wager only draws people deeper, until it consumes them. In a sense, there’s no real difference between a gambler and a murderer.” The words came pouring out before Wei Tong could stop them. Were there not enough examples in the world of families ruined, wives scattered, children lost, all to the gaming table?

Xuan seemed genuinely taken aback by this thing so far removed from his own life, and only after a pause did he say, “So you believe gambling to be an evil?”

“It isn’t a question of good or evil. A small wager is a pleasant diversion. It’s only that nothing in this world, carried to excess, does any good.” Wei Tong shook his head, then remembered Xuan couldn’t see him, and said it aloud.

“Well said.” Something in Xuan’s tone had turned grave, as if a memory had stirred. Wei Tong heard it and laughed at himself, ruefully. Why was it that every topic he brought up lately turned so deadly serious? He was truly ruining the atmosphere.

Just as he was searching for something to break the silence, Xuan spoke first.

“Does Wei have a courtesy name?” The question swerved a full hundred and eighty degrees from everything before it. Wei Tong smiled. Xuan really could be a considerate soul when he chose. Aloud, he answered in the negative, “I’m not yet of age.” Even if he were, a eunuch had no need of a courtesy name.

“Then when you come of age, might I choose one for you?” Though Wei Tong said little, Xuan knew he had no parents and no kin of any kind. To anyone else, such an offer would overstep every boundary. But for all his years in this world, Wei Tong had never quite grasped the true weight of a courtesy name, and he answered with a soft laugh, “Then I’ll be in your debt.”

Xuan really was a good friend.