The Fifteenth Day

On the fifteenth day of the eighth month the Empress heard petitions in the Hall of Still Water, and for the first time in the Tenth Year of the Wen Era, the Emperor came to listen.

He arrived without announcement, which was itself an announcement. The Emperor Li Chengxu was thirty-one, lean, and had the habit of standing at the edge of a room as though he had wandered into it by mistake. The Empress rose for her husband and he waved her down again, and the eunuchs along the walls bowed so low their caps nearly touched the floor. Pei Rong, the Chief Steward, bowed lowest. Gao Fu, the Keeper of Seals, could not bow at all from his stool, and the Emperor crossed the hall and put a hand on the old man's shoulder instead, which was worth more than any bow in the room.

Shen Yuelan knelt at the foot of the dais with the receiving roll in her sleeve and her cousin two steps behind her. Shen Yuling had been brought in to carry the lacquered tray on which petitions were laid, which was Attendant's work, and she carried it with both hands and her eyes fixed on the floor. Nobody looking at the two of them from the dais could have mistaken one for the other: one in the pale green of a Lady, one in the undyed grey of an Attendant, one kneeling and one standing.

"The Lady Shen," said the Empress, "petitions concerning the tribute silk."

Yuelan read the roll aloud. Four thousand bolts in three grades. Eight hundred of first-grade silk for the altar cloths. Two thousand of second-grade silk for the officials' robes. Twelve hundred of third-grade silk for the attendants and the stores. Signed by Secretary Shen Guo of the seventh grade. Countersigned by the clerk Ma Deshun. Stamped with the seal of the Ministry of Rites.

"And three hundred bolts of the second grade are gone," the Empress said. "Not the first grade, which would be sacrilege and would be noticed at the altar. Not the third grade, which nobody counts. The second grade, which is the grade of men who wear robes and keep ledgers."

"Your Majesty," said Pei Rong smoothly, "the Ministry's own finding is that the shortfall occurred at the southern lock, before the roll was signed, and that Secretary Shen signed for silk he did not count. It is a seventh-grade error. It is not a crime. The Minister of Rites asks only that the secretary be reduced one grade, to the eighth, and the matter closed before the Autumn Rites."

Reduced to the eighth grade. Yuelan kept her face still. A secretary of the eighth grade kept no rolls and signed nothing; it was a polite way of saying that her father would spend the rest of his life copying almanacs.

"The Keeper of Seals has a different finding," said the Empress. "Gao Fu."

Gao Fu did not raise his voice. He never had. "The clerk's countersignature was made after the Ministry's stamp, not before. I have compared the ink. On a roll stamped at the Ministry, the stamp is the last thing applied. On this roll it was not. Someone opened the roll after it was stamped, and wrote on it, and that someone was not Secretary Shen, because the secretary's signature is under the stamp where it should be."

There was a silence in the hall that the Moon Carp, under the floor, could probably have heard.

"Then the question is not whether the secretary counted," said the Emperor from the wall, "but who wrote on a stamped roll, and why." He looked at Pei Rong, who looked at the floor. "The Minister will want to know that. Send him the Keeper's finding. Not the Ministry's."

"The Ministry is my brother's house," said the Empress quietly. "I will send it to him under my own seal, so that he cannot say it was not sent."

And so the lotus seal changed hands that afternoon, for the first time in Yuelan's memory, and she saw it happen. The Empress took the white jade block from its lacquered box and placed it in Gao Fu's two hands. "The Autumn Rites are twenty-four days away," she said. "The rolls of the rites must be stamped in the outer court, where the altar is, and the Keeper of Seals must carry the seal to do it. Carry the Keeper's finding with the same seal, to the same Ministry, and bring both the seal and an answer back to me." Gao Fu bowed over the box. Pei Rong watched it go with an expression Yuelan could not read, and did not try to.

She thought that was the end of her part, and she was wrong.

"Lady Shen," the Emperor said. He had come away from the wall. "How long have you held the second rank?"

"Two years, Your Majesty. Since the Eighth Year."

"Two years as a Lady." He glanced at his wife, and his wife inclined her head a fraction, and Yuelan understood that this had been decided before the hall was opened. "A Lady who reads a roll aloud in the Hall of Still Water and does not stumble, and who finds a Concubine's pearl pin in the laundry before the Chief Steward can put it in a ledger, is not a Lady. From today you are Concubine Shen. The third rank. You will have the eastern courtyard of the Western Pavilion, and your Attendant cousin may serve there, since she carries water so faithfully."

Yuelan touched her forehead to the floor. Behind her she heard the lacquered tray tremble in Yuling's hands, and then steady.

A Lady had a chamber. A Concubine had a courtyard. It was the difference between a woman the court could forget and a woman the court had to name. It was also, she knew as she rose, a target painted on her back in the sight of every Consort and Noble Consort who had taken longer to climb and had less to show for it.

The hall emptied. Yuelan stood in her new rank on the walk above the pond and watched Gao Fu go slowly toward the Gate of Returning Clouds with the lacquered box against his chest and two eunuchs at his elbows, bound for the outer court and the Ministry of Rites and her father.

"Concubine Shen."

The Consort Dowager Zhou had come up beside her without a sound, silver powder on her cheekbones. She was holding a letter. It was folded small, sealed with red wax, and the wax bore no device at all.

"The Keeper is going to the outer court," the Consort Dowager said. "I am not permitted to. Nor are you. But he is a kind old man, and if a Concubine asked him to carry a letter from the Hall of Lasting Autumn to a certain house in the outer court, he would do it, and he would not ask what was in it." She held it out. "I have not asked you what was in your roll. Do not ask me what is in this."

Yuelan looked at the blank wax. She thought about the captain of the northern garrison who had died before his widow entered the palace, and about Concubine Zhou's edges, and about an old woman who had lived through two emperors and knew the Minister's climb grade by grade.

"Which house?"

"The Keeper will know it when I tell him. You need only tell him that I ask."

Yuelan took the letter and ran, as a Concubine should not run, and caught Gao Fu at the gate.

He took the letter, and turned it over, and looked at the blank wax for a long moment. "From the Hall of Lasting Autumn," he said. It was not a question. "Very well. I will carry it. I carry everything." He tucked it into the lacquered box beside the lotus seal, and the two eunuchs lifted him through the Gate of Returning Clouds, and the gate closed.

She stood there a long while after. The question she could not put down was not the silk anymore. It was the letter with no device on the wax, and what the Consort Dowager had sent into the outer court, and to whom.

Behind her, in the eastern courtyard that was now hers, her cousin was setting down a basin of water, and laughing with her mouth open, because for once there was something to laugh at.