***
As Yi looked down at Sei’s body, he ceased to exist. With a shaking hand, he closed her eyes and laid her gently back down on the floor. He pressed the book against his chest and staggered to his feet.
“Jian?” His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. “Jian?”
He stumbled through the devastation of his home. The shamans had ransacked the pantry, taking everything they could carry. Dishes had been tossed out of the cupboards and onto the floor, where they lay in shattered remains. They’d even taken all the precious spices he’d collected over the years. The spice rack had been one of Sei’s prized possessions.
Even though shamans usually concentrated on food and other essentials in their raids, they’d ransacked the rest of the house. Most of the furniture sat in smoldering piles. The single tapestry in the entry hall hung from its hook, all of it burned away except for the uppermost fringe. Part of the eastern wall of the house had collapsed, letting in warm spring air. Yi recoiled from the sunlight, plunging back into the wreckage.
“Jian?”
He reached his study. His eyes skipped over the smoking remains of his desk and the piles of ash that had once been books. His attention went to the wall where a floor-length tapestry had once hung. It was burned away, revealing a hidden metal door. The door was set into a wall of stone—the stone of the very mountain that sat at the back of the mansion.
Despite the black scorch marks covering both door and wall like bruises, they were otherwise unscathed. The shamans could not have known world monks had enchanted the roots of great mountain trees to barricade the door, or that the roots yielded only to Yi or the World Emperor. Even the door and the wall of the mountainside were reinforced with enchantment. The shamans never had a hope of getting inside the liquid steel vault.
Someone had sent them here on a useless errand—someone in the emperor’s inner circle. The House of Liquid Steel was compromised.
A patch of pale pink caught the corner of his eye. Heart pounding, Yi whirled and rushed across the room. Tears burned his eyes as he heaved away the charred timbers of his once-substantial desk. He screamed incoherently as he kicked and flung timbers across the room.
At first, all he saw was a small triangle of pink. It morphed as he thrashed through the ruined wood pile, one hand still clutching Sei’s poetry book against his heart. The pink triangle became a lopsided square. The lopsided square became a jagged oval. The oval became a large rectangle, looking like the remains of a tattered flag from some bizarre nation.
At last the pale pink sat fully revealed, its true form undeniable: a dress. A pink silk dress covered with small white flowers that were now smeared with soot.
The dress covered the body of a four-year-old child. Her long black hair hung in a braid. In the center of her chest was a huge scorch mark. The lightning strike had burned a hole clean through her heart. Her jade bat pendant—the symbol of Lord Caifu, God of Good Fortune—lay just to the left of the blast that had ended her life.
Yi experienced the sensation of falling. His body remained upright, but his soul crashed to the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces.
Jian.
iv
The Shrine
The moon rose as Yi threw the last shovel of dirt over Sei and Jian. Mother and daughter lay curled together in the cold earth. Starlight glimmered off rising dew.
Nearby were four more mounds of earth, the bodies of those who had worked on the estate. No one had survived the shaman attack.
Yi leaned against the shovel, his mind numb and his body exhausted. He wiped sweat from his eyes. Fire Foot ran unending circles around the estate, glowing in the night like a second sun. It would be many hours before the charge wore off.
As the kylin angled around the ruined Royal Foot, his light illuminated a large shadow lurking at the edge of the tea field. Yi tensed, raising the shovel and dropping into a defensive stance.
Fire Foot veered left and the shadow solidified into a recognizable shape. Yi lowered the shovel, shoulders sagging. It was not a man out there in the dark; it was a shrine. Tall and narrow, it was constructed of holy stones from the caves of Caifu’s Belly, where the god’s holy bats resided.
He approached the shrine he’d built with such care. Within sat a jade statue of Caifu, the fat god smiling as his pet bat perched on his shoulder. Fresh bowls of water sat at the god’s feet. Despite the smell of ash and smoke all around, incense was still strong in the air.
Sei, always so clever with her hands, had carved a carrot into a dragon. The orange dragon rested at Caifu’s feet. To his left was a pomelo, the outer rind carved into a koi fish. A small vase filled with fresh wildflowers sat beside the dragon—Jian’s contribution, no doubt. Sei and Jian made daily offerings to Caifu. When Yi was home, the three of them went to the shrine every morning and murmured mantras to the God of Good Fortune.
To the left was the Royal Foot field, every last delicate plant burned to crispy remains. To the right was the gutted mansion, charred and half collapsed. Caifu’s shrine sat between the two, a beacon of perfection in the midst of a scorched wasteland.
The sight of the shrine—of the smiling god, of the beauty and love that Sei and Jian had laid at his feet—was more than Yi could take.
With a roar, he brought up the shovel and smashed it across the stones. Holy rocks flew in all directions. The next swing of the shovel sent the jade statue tumbling to the ground.
Numbness and exhaustion faded. Rage and strength moved in. Yi grabbed onto them and held on tight, swinging his shovel again and again through the empty night.
v
The Fat Man
“Is this the House of Flowers where the Lady Peony resides?” the man asked.
Tulip stared at him. The man was fat with puffy eyes and he smelled bad. Like he hadn’t bathed in a long time, or maybe he was just a stinky person.
Her mother always told her not to look at the men who came into the House of Flowers, but this man was so fat he blocked the aisle between two tables and there was nowhere else to look, except maybe at the floor. She hated looking at the floor because she always had to look at the floor when she cleaned it, which was all the time.
He must have a large pantry, maybe even his own grain barn, to be so fat. Maybe even his own farm. With lots of pigs for pork and bacon.
“I’m here to see Lady Peony,” the man repeated, looking at her. “Is she—?”
“Are you a farmer?” she asked, unable to take her eyes off his giant stomach. It was even bigger than Master Su’s. Bigger than any she’d ever seen before. Like a giant pork bun covered with a silk overcoat.
“A farmer?” The fat man peered down at her. “Do I look like a farmer to you?” He gestured to his silk overcoat, which was confusing, because what did overcoats have to do with farming?
“I thought maybe you had a pig farm because you have a very nice stomach,” she told him. “It must be nice to have a big belly because you’re never hungry, and it would be really nice to never be hungry . . .” she trailed off. Why was the man’s face turning so red?
“Sir, good afternoon!” Tulip’s mother rushed down the stairs and into the common room. Behind her came a slender man in blue. He took the stairs at a steady pace, not seeming to care that Peony left him behind.
“Kind sir, please ignore the silly child,” she said, her pink silk dress rustling as she slid into the small space between Tulip and the fat man. She was so close that the fat man’s belly wrinkled the pleats of her dress. “I am called Lady Peony. Welcome to the House of Flowers.”
“Ah, so you are the Lady Peony,” said the fat man. The color in his cheeks grew brighter. He gestured at Tulip, who was trying to look around her mother’s skirts. “Is this your child?”
Yes! Tulip wanted to say, but she didn’t dare. She was never allowed to say the name Mother unless she and Peony were alone.
“She is property of our madam, Mistress Wang,” Peony said. “The chil
d keeps the house clean. She’s nothing. I do apologize if she offended you.” Without turning, she gave Tulip a gentle shove backward.
The fat man moved even closer, crushing the dress pleats completely flat. “I am greatly offended by the child, Lady Peony,” he said softly. “But I am sure you can find a way to remedy the situation. Your beauty and talents are renowned, even in the north where I am from.”
Her mother giggled, letting the fat man touch the crystal peony beads dangling around her temples. Tulip had pinned the beads in place when she braided her mother’s hair and twisted it into the elaborate knot atop her head. She loved to brush and braid her mother’s hair and make it beautiful. She did it every morning. Morning was the best time of the day, just the two of them together, and Tulip always got to call her Mother.
Tulip knew she should go outside, but she didn’t like the way the fat man spoke to Peony. She did not like the way he touched the beads she had so carefully pinned in place.
She marched forward and tugged on the embroidered hem of her mother’s dress.
“What are you going to do with that man?” she said loudly.
Peony spun around. “Quiet,” she whispered. “I’m making tofu for him. Go and sweep the yard for Mistress Wang.”
“But you just made tofu for that man.” She gestured in the general direction of the front door, where the slender man in blue had just exited.
“I make tofu for many men. You know this.”
“Why don’t you ever make tofu in the kitchen like Master Su does?”
“Some tofu doesn’t need to be made in kitchens. Be a good girl and go sweep the yard. And remember to stop asking questions. Do you want Mistress Wang to beat you again?”
With that, Peony gave her another gentle push. Tulip hesitated, then thought of Mistress Wang’s leather strap and retreated a few more steps. Her back still hurt from the beating she got two days ago.
She ducked under a nearby table to watch. She liked hiding under tables because Mistress Wang usually never looked under tables, unless she was really, really mad and then it didn’t matter where she hid.
Peony straightened and batted her eyelashes at the fat man, something she always did. Tulip could not figure out what eyelashes had to do with making tofu, but all the women in the House of Flowers said it was important. Tulip had eaten lots of tofu in her life, but she had never seen eyelashes in any of it.
The fat man had his eyes on Peony’s chest, which was strange because the embroidery on the front of her dress wasn’t nearly as elaborate as the embroidery on the hem. He clearly did not know nice embroidery. He was fat, stinky, and stupid. Tulip decided she didn’t like him at all, even if he did have a nice pig farm and got to eat all the time. She wished he would just leave the House of Flowers and quit staring at her mother.
Peony held her hand out to the fat man. “Would you like to walk with me in my garden?” Her lips, painted with gold powder, curved up.
The fat man smiled in a way Tulip had seen other men smile. Peony said the smile meant they were really hungry. Tulip wondered why they only ate tofu if they were so hungry because Master Su made really good pork buns. Pork buns were much more filling than tofu.
“The tofu I make is much more satisfying than any pork bun Master Su could ever make,” Peony had said when Tulip asked.
No matter how hard she tried, she could not imagine any tofu tasting better than Master Su’s pork buns, not even really special tofu.
“Your garden is renowned, Lady Peony,” the fat man said. “I would be most honored to walk there with you.” He took her hand.
Peony led him up the stairs, crystals beads clinking softly with her sway. Her skin shimmered from a light powder dusting. She moved like a cloud.
The fat man moved like a pig that had been given too much slop. Probably just like the pigs on his farm. The stairs creaked beneath his weight, and Tulip hoped they would break and he would fall. It would be much better to see him lying in a stinky heap among broken wood and nails, instead of walking beside Peony and touching her crystal beads.