The Hidden Blade Read Online Free PDF Page A

hot today, and I’m so thirsty. Can I have one, please, please, good Amah?”
    She settled in to await Amah’s usual objections. Even on a sixteenth, Amah could be counted on to hold out for a few minutes. But today the coins were instantly forthcoming. “Don’t drink too fast. The chill wouldn’t be good for your stomach,” was all the advice Amah gave.
    It was odd, but Ying-ying was not about to question her good fortune. She slipped out of the red front gate and bargained with the vendor as if she knew what she was doing. When the vendor finished expressing his dismay at this too-clever girl who surely meant to cheat him out of his livelihood, he lifted a large narrow-mouthed jar and poured her a full bowl of his purple-black concoction.
    She sat down on the doorstep. With every sip she smacked her lips and wiggled her tongue at the supreme tartness of the drink. In between—now that the negotiation was finished and the relationship between them most amicable—she chatted up the vendor and asked for news.
    The outside world fascinated her. It was permitted to her only in the smallest doses. Two nights a year, on the occasions of the Lantern Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, she was allowed to venture as far as the nearest thoroughfare, accompanied by Amah, to admire the multitude of brightly lit lanterns. In spring, Mother took her on a three-day pilgrimage to Taoist temples in the hills outside the city. The rest of the time Ying-ying lived within the confines of the courtyards, rarely permitted out the front gate, and never beyond the end of the alley.
    Merchants who came to call were her greatest source of news, their younger apprentices the only people she knew of her own age. But she did not speak to those boys. Confucius’s rules forbade fraternization between the sexes once beyond age seven. Not to mention that her embroidered silk blouse and expensive jade bangles acted as an additional barrier, keeping the apprentice boys in blue cotton tunics an awed distance away.
    The sun angled lower in the sky. The alley, bordered on either side by courtyard walls, sat almost entirely in the shade. She was still extracting outrageous rumors the vendor had heard of intrigues in the Forbidden Palace when the sound of horse hooves reached her ears.
    Da-ren was arriving.
    She was strictly to be out of sight when he came. Hastily she poured the remainder of the juice down her throat and ran back. Once inside her own rooms, she closed the door and only then opened her window a crack to peek out.
    Her row of rooms was in the same courtyard as Mother’s. Da-ren’s and his servant’s horses would be brought into the first courtyard. While the servant tended to the mounts, Da-ren would cross the second courtyard and enter the third, where Little Plum waited to take his hat.
    Ying-ying kept hoping he’d show up in full court dress, with the kind of intricate embroidery that ruined the eyesight of ten men to complete. He never did. He wore everyday clothes—in silks and brocades, but everyday clothes nevertheless. And his black skullcap, with a rectangle of jade over the forehead, was no fancier than Boss Wu’s.
    But he radiated an aura of authority. Little Plum, who was saucy and pert with the merchants, never spoke an inappropriate word while he was in residence. He wasn’t a particularly handsome man, yet Mother, who now appeared at the door of her suite, looked upon him as if she’d never seen a finer sight.
    More than ever Ying-ying wished he had fathered her. It was no dishonor to be the child of such a powerful man via his acknowledged concubine.
    Unlike being the child of a despised foreign devil.

    In the evening Amah brought Ying-ying’s dinner: rice, a stir-fry of eggs and new tomatoes, a dish of tofu cooked with black mushrooms, and an enormous bowl of steaming peppery broth. She made sure Ying-ying drank all the soup. “It’s to counter the chill from the sour plum juice.”
    The sky had not fully