Chapter 15: A Friend, Bought

Ruoxi's mother set down her teapot and looked at the stranger under her awning.

She looked at the blue robe, the bare hair, and the hands that shook around a tin box.

"You are Y," she said.

"I am," said Mingzhu.

Then the Princess of Great Qiyun bent from the waist in a low bow.

She had never in her life given such a bow to a tea-seller.

"Madam," she said.

"I have wronged your daughter. I came to say so to her, and to thank you for lending her to me."

"I should have asked you first."

Ruoxi's mother glanced at Ruoxi.

"I'll see to the boatmen," she said, and went out to the stall with her teapot, leaving the curtain open a hand's width.

Mingzhu stood in the back room with her head down.

Ruoxi folded her arms and waited.

"I will say it plainly," Mingzhu said.

"I have rehearsed it all night and I will probably do it badly."

"Then do it badly."

"When I was sixteen, I ate alone. Every meal."

"My mother had the Hall, my brother had the throne, and I had a room with six lamps and a table for one."

"The old tasters were frightening, stern women who stood and never spoke. I wanted one person to sit down beside."

"So you wrote a decree."

"I wrote it at my desk with my own seal. I thought of it as a toy."

"I thought it would be a fraud for one season."

Mingzhu looked at her own feet.

"For two years a woman of fifty held the post. She never sat and never smiled."

"Then I watched the kitchen trials from behind a screen, and a girl of sixteen argued with the judge about soy sauce."

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