39 Ch. 39: Rouge
Zhao Suiyan fiddled with the one piece of fine jewelry that wasn't a gift from the emperor and grit her teeth. It was a fine, cloisonne bangle, elaborate in both color and design. Her mother had slipped it on her wrist the last time she had seen her.
It had been a month since she had been carried into the imperial palace and true to her father's word, she had received no assistance from her family. Zhao Suiyan remembered how her official mother had diligently collected a few hundred silver taels to send to her di-born sister when she had first entered the palace, so that the now Imperial Concubine Zhao could be comfortable within the harem and have all her needs attended to.
Despite belonging to the most powerful man in the empire, being a member of his harem was not dissimilar from growing up in the backyard of the Zhao Mansion: those who were favored or had a strong backer could live comfortably. Those who did not could live a life worse than a dog's.
Zhao Suiyan had entered the palace with a low rank and she had not even seen the emperor's face ever since their fateful encounter. It was also well known that she did not share any sisterly solidarity with the well-favored Imperial Concubine Zhao. As a result, none of the servants and staff of the palace gave her any face.
The young cairen could not eat well either: her daily meals consisted of simple white buns that lacked filling and lukewarm porridge without a single vegetable, let alone meat. Neither could she rest and plot comfortably as the one servant she had been assigned from the Housing Bureau somehow always failed to clean off the caked-on dirt and dust of her old-fashioned quarters. Even at that moment, right beneath her feet, was a carpet that had probably been woven when the emperor's father was still a prince.
Opportunities to meet the emperor were frequent as the emperor favored Zhongcui Palace, but Zhao Suiyan's kind sister would always send a few servants to prevent her from sneaking out and catching the emperor's attention.
"Her Highness, the Imperial Concubine has stated that even if you are on the verge of death, us slaves cannot leave our post. So please don't make it hard for us!"
Zhao Suiyan could still remember the shock of hearing the simpering voice and arrogant smile of Zhongcui Palace's head eunuch as she had stood at her front entrance in a loose evening robe and unbound hair, ready to rush to her sister's palace and beautifully cry before the emperor that she had suffered a nightmare. She had seen her mother perform this before and it worked immensely well at drawing her father to her mother's quarters, even on nights when her father was meant to spend the evening in his wife's bed.
However, her sister was more capable than her birth mother . On the day Zhao Suiyan had gone to cry, more than a few of her sister's staff had already blocked the way to the main hall as if the imperial concubine had foreseen what she intended to do.
Just beyond her sister's menacing servants, she could see the emperor's personal staff and litter, as well as the eunuch she had met on the day the empress had forced her to kneel in shame. No matter how Zhao Suiyan begged and pleaded, she was not allowed in to see her sister. Poaching the emperor in this way proved to be as impossible as snatching a star out of the sky.
With her first tactic thoroughly blocked, Zhao Suiyan had been forced to resort to other equally unsucessful tricks. The young cairen clenched the bracelet in her hand tighter as she then reflected on the sole occasion she had escaped from her tiny side hall in Zhongcui Palace to go for a walk in the imperial gardens.
The days in the palace were long and Zhao Suiyan's money was short. She could not buy herself any loyalty in the palace yet, not without a prominent background or the emperor's favor. But her meager funds was able to buy information, which was more precious than the gems she longed to wear someday.
According to a lowly sweeping eunuch who cleaned away debris in the imperial garden, the emperor was fond of going after his lunch on days when he didn't have court affairs to take care of in the Hall of Mental Cultivation. Naturally, Zhao Suiyan was unaware of the dangers the garden posed to low-ranked concubines such as herself, so when Jin Xiu had brought back the news, she was incredibly eager to show her face before the emperor and acquire the dragon favor in one fell swoop.
On this unlucky day, Zhao Suiyan had taken special care of her appearance. A few humbling days in the palace had changed her initial approach completely. Both she and Imperial Concubine Zhao had similar features and coloring. Zhao Suiyan wanted to make her own mark in front of the emperor, but first she needed an opportunity. Since her sister was so favored, surely the emperor would notice another beauty who was 4 or 5 points similar to her?
Rather than the overly seductive appearance she had tried out a few nights before, she had gone for a muted dusty rose skirt that hovered between the shades of red and pink. Her makeup had been done to appear especially charming, with a heavy blush and a charming dot at the corner of her right eye. Using gentle, airy steps that betrayed her past dance experience, Zhao Suiyan swayed into the garden with a faint smile on her face.
But in her heart, each step felt like walking on grass barefoot as she was forced to become someone she hated most vehemently. The cairen even swore she could hear the imperial concubine's taunts ringing her ears, causing her gentle smile to falter momentarily.
"Your highness," Jin Xiu said worriedly as she felt a tremble run through the arm that she supported. Better than anyone else, Jin Xiu understood the warring emotions of her master.
"I know," Zhao Suiyan said through gritted teeth. She swore that once she gained the emperor's favor, she would devote herself to making sure the imperial concubine would be banished to the cold palace forever.
The arm that was not supported by Jin Xiu revealed a slightly exposed wrist, one that was connected to a pale hand that hypnotically fanned at her blushing appearance with a round fan. Devoted to playing her part, Zhao Suiyan signaled to Jin Xiu to guide her to the side of the path. Although her fiery temper did not suit the demure appearance she had cultivated, Zhao Suiyan believed she truly resembled a fairy as she bent down to smell some flowers while a smiling Jin Xiu accompanied her.
Anyone who lay eyes on her would know what her aim was that day. But alas, rather than encounter the man she had pledged her body to for the rest of her life, Zhao Suiyan ran into Li Zhaorong, whose family's high status had brought two other concubines to roost under her wing, Bai Cairen and Su Meiren. The head of the Li family was in charge of the Censorate, which was a bureau that kept officials of the imperial court in line with the threat of impeachment before the emperor. Even the empress showed three points of respect before Li Zhaorong, lest she write a letter back to her family that the empress was abusing power in the harem.
The three of them and their maids were laughing amongst themselves as they strolled down the path, only for them to stop abruptly as their gaze landed on Zhao Suiyan's seductive performance of enjoying the flowers.
"Greetings, Sisters." With Jin Xiu's assistance, Zhao Suiyan dropped into the appropriate curtsey for the two concubines who were ranked above her. She had already expected to encounter some difficulty, but her heart dropped when neither gave leave for her to rise. This meant that they would make trouble for her.
"Sisters?" Bai Cairen was eager to bite and draw blood for her master. She had only been favored once when she had arrived at the palace nearly 3 years prior and her natal family was a poor magistrate of a distant province. Like a dog, everything the forgotten cairen ate and wore depended on Li Zhaorong's goodwill and she had become adept at earning treats from her master. "Your sister is in Zhongcui Palace, who are you to call her highnesses your sisters?"
Li Zhaorong looked on dispassionately, silently acquiescing to Bai Cairen's rude treatment of Zhao Suiyan. Bai Cairen's voice was high-pitched and needling, abrasive in a way that Zhao Suiyan was unaccustomed to. In fact, Zhao Suiyan looked down immensely on Bai Cairen who shared the same rank as herself, but the current situation did not allow for retaliation. Bai Cairen was serving as Li Zhaorong's mouthpiece so to object to Bai Cairen, meant to object to Li Zhaorong.
"Greetings, Her Highness Li Zhaorong. Greetings, Her Highness Su Meiren," Zhao Suiyan repeated with the less familiar and far more formal greeting.
Su Meiren, a quiet, scholarly beauty from Imperial Censor Su's family, nodded at Zhao Suiyan to acquiesce her from the greeting. But Li Zhaorong, the higher-ranking woman of the two and far sterner in appearance, still did not oblige.
A faint burn spread through Zhao Suiyan's thighs as her knees began to quiver. 2 passing maids greeted the higher-ranking concubines and looked on at her humiliation with wide eyes. Zhao Cairen knew that within a few hours, the palace would be abound with whispers of her embarrassment.
Li Zhaorong strolled forward and a cold finger suddenly pulled Zhao Suiyan's face up to meet hers.
"You look pretty," Li Zhaorong sighed. "Why didn't I notice you were this pretty when you went to drink the empress' tea for the first time?"
Bai Cairen scurried closer. Her bitter nature had given her premature wrinkles around her brow, lending to her mean appearance.
She spoke to Li Zhaorong in a mocking, fawning voice. "Your Highness, please don't dirty your hands, allow me to handle her."
The cold, soft hands were replaced by rougher ones that gripped Zhao Suiyan's chin too tight for comfort. She grit her teeth as a thumb from Bai Cairen's hand rudely swept across her lips and cheek, ruining the careful makeup she had put on.
Bai Cairen brought the offending thumb to her nose and sniffed. "This rouge smells like flower petals. How can a mere cairen afford this kind of makeup?" she asked Zhao Suiyan rudely.
"Replying to Her Highness," Zhao Suiyan skipped over Bai Cairen and responded directly to Li Zhaorong. "This is makeup that I bought from home."
"And this," Bai Cairen's tone grew venomous at Zhao Cairen's snub. She brought another hand and swiped fiercely at the fake beauty mole under Zhao Suiyan's eye. A streak of sudden pain brought out a stubborn tear as Zhao Suiyan's skin stung from the cut that had been made with Bai Cairen's long nails.
Jin Xiu was also still in the greeting posture as Zhao Suiyan but she bit her lip at the injustice done by Bai Cairen. Despite being of the same rank as Zhao Cairen, Bai Cairen was acting on behalf of the higher ranked Li Zhaorong, which was the only reason why she could get away with her current actions.
"Oh. Sorry. My hand slipped," Bai Cairen chuckled insincerely. Her nasty gaze lit up at the line of red that bloomed under Zhao Suiyan's eye, like a predator that had drawn blood. "The cosmetics on your face made it very slippery to touch."
Something hot began to slowly drip down Zhao Suiyan's right cheek and she fought the urge to wipe it away. She did not even want to imagine what she looked like now as her hard work was undone in a few, mere seconds.
"Do you know your crime?" Li Zhaoron asked directly, her voice still infuriatingly calm.
Zhao Suiyan lowered herself onto her smarting knees. "Please tell me what I have done wrong," she said, mistakenly referring to herself as "I" instead of "this concubine". Behind her, Jin Xiu cringed at the mistake. Since Zhao Suiyan was new to the palace, she was still adjusting to the correct honorifics with which she should refer to those of higher rank.
She had not received an etiquette momo when her decree had been sent to the palace, so Zhao Suiyan did not undergo the typically required lessons on how to conduct herself as a member of the imperial harem. In addition, once she had arrived, the Imperial Concubine Zhao had treated Zhao Suiyan like air and did not arrange for an etiquette momo either, the way she would typically be expected to as the master of Zhongcui Palace. Perhaps Zhao Suiyan's older sister had predicted that her little sister and her temper would encounter such a situation.
Unknowing of all this underlying plot at that particular moment, Zhao Suiyan couldn't help but wonder if this had been a deliberate ploy by one of the masters of the harem so she would humiliate herself just then as she knelt on the hard ground. As she later learned, she was not wrong with her assumption.
"I? I? In front of Her Highness Li Zhaorong, you dare refer to yourself as "I"?" Bai Cairen scolded. Her quick tongue and brusque demeanor allowed Li Zhaorong to haughtily stand back and maintain her aura as a serious master of the harem.
Zhao Suiyan bit her tongue, keeping her eyes lowered so that the burning rage within them couldn't be seen.
"This concubine has sinned," Zhao Suiyan apologized to Li Zhaorong.
She gave up on attempting to navigate out of the situation. No matter what she said or did, from the moment she appeared in front of the well-favored Li Zhaorong, she had done something wrong.
"How have you sinned?" Li Zhaorong asked. Her tone was neither rude nor polite, but rather matter-of-fact. She admired her nails painted with fresh dankou and seemed to have already forgotten about Zhao Suiyan kneeling before her. It occurred to the kneeling cairen that this was simply routine for Li Zhaorong. In her eyes, Zhao Suiyan was yet another pesky girl who needed to be put in her place.
In her eyes, Zhao Suiyan was nothing. Li Zhaorong was bored already, which added a further layer of insult to Zhao Suiyan's humiliation.
"This concubine… This concubine…" Zhao Suiyan stuttered, unable to admit a viable reason. It was one thing for her di-born sister to look down on her. But in a palace where Zhao Suiyan believed she had shed her previous shell as a shu-born daughter, she could hardly stand Li Zhaorong's casual arrogance towards herself.
"No wonder His Majesty has never wandered into her side hall," Bai Cairen sneered, peeling back the paper-thin cover of Zhao Suiyan's shame.
"Alright," Li Zhaorong sighed finally.
Bai Cairen covered her ugly, malicious grin with a silk handkerchief that glistened in the sun. It looked as if it were made of good quality material, which meant that she had no doubt been gifted by Li Zhaorong.
There was a faint disappointment in the zhaorong's seductive almond-shaped eyes. "Zhao Cairen lacks etiquette and has dressed up beyond her station with the intent to seduce the emperor and distract him from his affairs. She will kneel for 2 shichen," she ordered in simple but brutal words.
A heavy hat was placed upon Zhao Suiyan's head, likening her to a lowly woman who did not have a good upbringing. For a girl hailing from an official family such as herself, the words hurt almost as much as a physical blow to the face.
"This concubine accepts Li Zhaorong's punishment," Zhao Suiyan replied in a voice barely above a whisper. Her jaw was clenched so tight she was beginning to see stars in the middle of the sunny day.
Zhao Suiyan moved to the side of the path, her feet brushing against exotic flowers, and Li Zhaorong and her elaborate skirts swished past without another look. Su Meiren gave her a look of mild pity while Bai Cairen smiled triumphantly and ran to Li Zhaorong's side to ply her with compliments. Li Zhaorong's contingent of maids and eunuchs also followed behind save for one who was meant to supervise Li Zhaorong's punishment from afar, each one giving Zhao Suiyan their own look of veiled contempt. Their footsteps soon faded into the distance and then it was just Zhao Suiyan and Jin Xiu left to kneel on the stone path underneath a sun that grew warmer by the second.
"Your highness," Jin Xiu whimpered after a few minutes had passed. She could not predict how her mistress' temper would flare, "Is your face okay?"
A drop of blood fell to the ground, then another. Zhao Suiyan didn't say anything. From Jin Xiu's point of view, Zhao Suiyan was like a reed fighting against the wind, alone in her misery.
It took a while for Zhao Suiyan to respond. A few nameless concubines walked by and snickered, too low-ranked to do little more. Passing maids and eunuchs looked and whispered. There was no one to protect her from the barbs – not her concubine mother, so far away at the Zhao Mansion, and certainly not her father or her family name.
"Say," Zhao Suiyan said after the first shichen had passed. By then, the skin on her forehead had begun to acquire a true blush, a sunburn from the overhead heat. "There will be another draft soon."
"Y-Yes, your highness," Jin Xiu answered. They spoke quietly, so they wouldn't be scolded by the overseeing maid.
"I must be favored before then," Zhao Suiyan said firmly.
"This slave will do anything she can to make it so, Your Highness!" Jin Xiu cried, overcome with emotion.
"Silence!" barked the overseer, taking a few steps closer so they could no longer speak to one another.
That day scarred Zhao Suiyan in more ways than one as she looked at the faint scab under her right eye. Whenever she stood, bent over, or touched her knees, she could still feel the bruising pain from kneeling in the imperial garden. For a brief time, her lack of favor was a blessing as she healed. She could not imagine standing before the emperor with purple marks on her knees and a forehead that was a different color from the snowy peaks on her chest.
There were rushed footsteps, dragging the unfavored cairen from her thoughts, and suddenly Jin Xiu's excited face came into view.
"Your Highness! Your Highness!" Her loyal maidservant did not look as despondent as she had in the past few days. The dim lighting within Zhao Cuiyan's bedroom somehow managed to sparkle in the maid's eyes as she hastily greeted Zhao Suiyan. There must be good news, Zhao Suiyan thought, sitting up straight and setting her last remaining bracelet back in her jewelry box.
Displaying a rare moment of kindness, Zhao Suiyan gestured towards her cooling cup of tea. "Drink, then speak."
"Thank you, Your Highness," Jin Xiu did not hesitate to take a few, large gulps from the cup, thanking Zhao Suiyan once again before she looked left and right.
Confirming that there were no lurkers, like the second-class cleaning maid who was unadept in her role, she whispered to Zhao Suiyan.
"One of the concubines is pregnant!" The earth-shattering news started a gasp out of Zhao Suiyan, whose mood had been catatonic for the past few days. It was as if she were injected with chicken blood. Slowly, a sense of rage and jealousy began to cause her breath to come out faster and faster.
"She is with child? Who? Not my sister?" Zhao Suiyan repeated slowly.
Jin Xiu nodded with great vigor, but then a pensive expression overcame her.
"What?" Her mistress asked, voice sharper than broken glass. "You don't dare to say who?" Zhao Suiyan's previous kindness with the cup of tea seemed long forgotten as she stared at Jin Xiu sharply.
Jin Xiu swallowed heavily. "It is not the imperial concubine. I heard from our maid in the Laundry Office. She saw a laundry maid who was bribed by one of Mu Guiren's maids. When she followed, she noticed that when Mu Guiren's undergarments were soaked in water, the bloodstains were... were fake."
Zhao Suiyan had naturally never done her own laundry before as a young lady from an official family. She was skeptical of the validity of the news Jin Xiu had brought.
"How sure was she? Did you let her take my money even though the blood could be real?" Zhao Suiyan barked.
"When I asked her again she... she said she was certain. She said that she had washed enough garments to know the difference between red ink and blood."
"Fake bloodstains and red ink. Perhaps what she said is true then," Zhao Suiyan darkly mused with less hesitation. "Mu Guiren, you are clever. But not clever enough."
