Chapter 1

In the last years of Hongshun came a famine. A peck of rice sold for three thousand five hundred cash. People ate people. The common folk rose up, and heroes past counting bent their backs to it...

The last year, the last day, the last hour. For two months an army had besieged Qingfeng Prefecture, when dozens of shooting stars fell from the sky. One of them, huge, smashed the impregnable south gate of Qingfeng into a great pit. The walls broke in an instant, and fifty li away Yandu lost its last shield. In one stroke the throne changed hands and the realm was made one. History would call it the first year of Yong'an.

That same year, same day, same hour — twenty-five li outside Qingfeng, at the foot of Mount Baiquan, against the outer wall of the Plague God's temple, Qi Qian'er sat curled in a ball, arms around her knees, her head all blood. Hunger shook her whole body. Fright had knocked the soul clean out of her. She only felt dazed, and light, and lost...

A moment ago the ground had heaved and flung her high, and slammed her against the temple wall — hence the blood on her head.

An hour before, she had still been shivering with the mistress and her household in the root cellar of an old courtyard outside the city. When the hunger grew past bearing, the mistress had them draw lots: whoever drew the mark would go out and find food.

Bloody-headed and slow as she was, Qi Qian'er understood now: this too was only one of the mistress's tricks. Why else would it be Wurong, Liuning, and her who drew the marked lots? She couldn't read back then — who knew what was written on them? They only wanted her dead.

However much she hated it, Qi Qian'er stayed balled up and did not move. From inside the Plague God's temple beside her came the clash of weapons, shouts and the sounds of killing, and at last half a severed arm came flying bloody out of the courtyard and landed in front of her.

Her heart lurched. She rolled over to crawl away, but a few paces on she caught sight of the row of big willows at the foot of Mount Baiquan. Her ears rang, and an old image turned over and over in her head.

...Under the big willows, a plump little boy, fat as a bear cub, sat astride a thin child and laughed. The thin child's face was white, sweat all over it, as he crawled slowly forward on the ground. Whenever he stopped, the sturdy boy laid into him with a little whip...

Qi Qian'er, about to bolt, went still as if a steel spike had pinned her to the ground. She told herself over and over: don't be afraid! Don't run... Don't fear, don't run!

She did not run.

And so, against her own nature, she did not do what she had done in her last life — hear the noise, see the severed arm, and go scrambling off in terror, crawling who knew how long until fear and hunger dropped her in a faint. That time it was luck alone that kept her alive. When she came to, she saw a field mouse dart hopping into its hole in a run-wild field. She clawed after it until seven of her ten nails tore loose, and with both hands running blood she dug out a nest of field mice and a little of their hoarded grain. Fool that she was, she even carried the grain back to the cellar, cradling it carefully, and the mistress, seeing she'd done well, rewarded her with one small mouse to fill her belly.

And she had actually been grateful for it — she had kowtowed to Madam.

At the memory, Qi Qian'er slapped herself twice, left hand and right.

From birth she had been shut away in the inner court, no one to raise her, scraping her way to grown. No one had ever told her that to live in this world, however bitter it got, you needed an ounce or two of backbone.

She had no backbone. She had stayed soft as mud, choking down every wrong until she died.

Who could have thought she'd come back?

Glad and furious, grieving and hating all at once, Qi Qian'er crawled backward, step by step, to the spot she'd just left, and forced herself to sit. When her body wanted to flee she raised her arm and bit it till it bled — one bite not enough, so a second, and she even sucked a mouthful of her own blood.

The severed arm lay bleeding half a foot in front of her eyes — the bone stark white, the raw flesh bright red, all of it laid open. There was nothing in her stomach, but she threw up all the same, without a sound.

The terror was past bearing. But — she would not run!

How long passed she didn't know. Smoke rose grey over Qingfeng city, a scream went up from the courtyard, and then everything around fell dead silent.

After a moment a thin, high voice, hardly like a human one, spoke: "All of you — hurry it up. Qingfeng's fallen now. This pitiful handful is all the loyal bones our Hongshun has left, and this little bit is all our Sixth Master's estate comes to. Pack it up clean, cover what needs covering, and mind you don't leave a thread showing."

Low, hoarse voices answered inside the temple, and the sound of things being hauled about. Then someone spoke up: "Chief Steward — all counted, only Young Master Chang the Second is short an arm..."

Before he'd finished, the thin voice cursed him: "You fool of a son — if it's not in this yard then it flew out of it. Go find it, quick!"

Qi Qian'er let her bitten arm go and looked quickly left and right. Where she found the strength she didn't know, but she swept the sour spit-up aside with her arm, then rolled and wrestled her body through a dog-hole hidden under the weeds and into the courtyard of the Plague God's temple.

Late autumn, the old temple. There was movement in the yard, but Qi Qian'er's heart was very quiet. Quietly she lay flat, quietly she crawled... She knew she was different now. She had surely broken through something she had never had before.

Using the taller autumn grass for cover, while they were dragging the bodies over and throwing them down the dry well, while buckets of tung oil glugged in after them, she crawled into the hollow belly of the old pagoda tree.

She had been to this temple before. In the old days, when the mistress starved her light-headed, she and Liuning would crawl out through the dog-hole of the ancestral hall and come here to steal the offering fruit and eat it.

Few in this world dared touch anything of the Plague God's temple. But a person starved half-mad doesn't care which god it is. Even if she met a real bodhisattva, starved as she was, to stay alive she wouldn't mind biting a chunk of flesh off it.

Anyway, that old monk used to say the bodhisattvas gave up their own bodies plenty of times before they reached enlightenment — better it be given to her than to somebody else.

Qi Qian'er knew the old pagoda tree was hollow. She and Liuning used to hide things in it. No one dared steal inside the Plague God's temple; to ordinary folk it was the most fearsome temple in the world, and the moment they saw it from afar they'd give it a wide berth.

The yard was still in a bustle. Curled inside the tree hollow, Qi Qian'er quietly watched the killing. When her teeth chattered she bit her arm; when she couldn't bear to look, she forced her eyelids up with her free hand.

She watched the few men left in the yard throw the bodies down the oil-soaked well. She even counted them: twelve lay on the ground, three moved back and forth hauling corpses, one stood by the gateway — four living men in the yard, all told.

They wore refugees' clothes, but their bodies were thick and strong, unlike anyone else she'd seen. At the least, in the firelight and black smoke, their faces shone dark and oiled.

When the yard had been cleared and the bloodstains scrubbed away, the thin voice under the gateway spoke again: "Tsk — poor things — is it all cleaned up?"

The three men stood in a row, backs bent, and answered: "Reporting to the Chief Steward — all cleaned up."

Two lifetimes of knowing the world, and Qi Qian'er understood at once: this Chief Steward had to be a eunuch out of the palace. In her last life she'd lived first on Quanqian Street, and later, when Scabhead rose in rank and they moved up to the capital, she'd seen plenty of his sort.

What stuck in her memory was that the young ones weren't so bad, but the old eunuchs who'd never done well walked bow-legged and splay-hipped, and you could smell the piss-stink of them before they even reached you.

The thought of Scabhead set old memories churning up and down in her head. The more she thought, the more Qi Qian'er hated herself. Once she had hated Scabhead — hated that his post was small and he was dull and slow, that he couldn't protect his wife and children, that he ignored all she'd done bearing sons and daughters for the Chen family and instead stood on their side.

But she blamed and hated back and forth, and only when she was old, at the very last, did she wake up to it...

She had hated the wrong person all along!

Now she understood. Before she cursed anyone else, she was the useless thing who deserved to be cut a thousand times! She couldn't even protect her own child — she didn't deserve to be called a mother!

In the midst of her unreconciled heart, Qi Qian'er's eyes caught the sharpest stroke of force she would see in all her life. You might even call it beautiful — no, not beautiful, it was clean, quick — like the fine sharp sight of Scabhead in his young strong days swinging his blade to split a pig's head.

The Chief Steward laughed a few ghostly laughs. "Good! Good! Every one of you a fine son of mine. There'll be rewards later, all round. You've all earned merit. Once we're back..." Before he finished, his body suddenly flew up.

First she saw his shape drift out like a ghost, then his two hands shot forward and clamped around the necks of the two nearest men. Before her mind could even catch up, she heard two crisp cracks. Still before she could think, the old eunuch's right arm swung back and clamped — how he put out the strength she couldn't say, but his right shoulder rolled back, there was another small crack, and the man built like a black tower was crushed dead in that instant.

With three dull thuds of falling bodies, Qi Qian'er stared, eyes stretched wide. She couldn't believe it. Three lives? Dead just like that?

Grown men — born of a father, raised by a mother, brought up through shit and piss, whose every scraped bit of skin had torn at their mothers' hearts — dead?

Dead with one crack?

Two lifetimes a muddled woman — she'd been poor, she'd struggled, she'd stewed in anger, she'd been cornered, she'd choked down her grievances till she died... When a neighbor lost a chicken and stood cursing at the street corner, Qi Qian'er would prop herself up on a brick and watch the whole thing start to finish like some great event, then chew it over for two months at least before she'd let it go.

And now — now she was watching men be killed!

Her heart trembled, but not out of fear. Somehow, she found herself longing toward it.

She wanted to do something too.

Dazed, she felt a fire blaze up in her chest, a vast strength, and the killing laid out before her filled her with a savage, aching pleasure.

She watched, greedy beyond words. She wanted this too — wanted a heart as ruthless as a wolf's, as fierce and overbearing as a hawk's. If she could, she would kill this whole thousand-cuts world right now... and then everyone would be clean.

Not moving, she watched the Chief Steward in the yard lift the bodies as easily as chicks and drop them down the well, then carry in more buckets of fresh tung oil from the cart outside and pour the lot in after them.

He threw in a torch, and before long thick black smoke and heat filled the whole yard.

The heat of the flames soon baked up from underground to the roots of the pagoda tree, and climbed from the roots into the hollow. But Qi Qian'er only went on punishing herself, not moving. Her whole head beaded with sweat, and still she did not move.

Again she didn't know how long passed. By the time smoke was towering over Qingfeng city and the black smoke in the yard had thinned a little, Qi Qian'er could finally see clearly: the Chief Steward stood with both hands tucked in his sleeves, staring blankly into the distance...

The old eunuch was crying! A man that cruel — what was he crying for? Qi Qian'er couldn't make sense of it. Then, before his tears had even fallen to the ground, she saw him press a hand to his chest and spit out a mouthful of black blood...

The Chief Steward vomited a long while, then struggled to swallow a few pills he'd brought on him. When it was done he lay back on the ground and laughed, loud and glaring, and rasped out: "It hurts! It hurts! It — it's a relief!!"

The sound was horrible — like the night owl that laughed all night on their roof the evening before the old lady of the house died.

Almost pleasant to the ear...

Qi Qian'er watched the old eunuch with the greediest envy, thinking: if only I were him. So utterly without restraint, so freely his own man... Look — he's not even afraid to die. Dying, and still this pleased with himself.

The old eunuch laughed himself out, then suddenly broke into cursing: "Sixth Master — Sixth Master! What a fine Sixth Master this old slave served... what a righteous, benevolent Sixth Master! Good! Good! Good! Such a careful, cunning, resourceful Sixth Master... It's justice, that's what it is!"

It was stifling in the tree hollow, sweat all over Qi Qian'er's head. She listened to the old eunuch curse on without a stop, and somehow, the more she heard, the more she thought: this old grandpa-eunuch wasn't much of a curser. Set against the aunties back at the camp he fell short by a good deal more than a mu or two of ground.

Again, who knew how long. The old eunuch, tired of cursing maybe, crawled up and made his way, crawling, into the Plague God's temple...

Seeing him crawl off, the breath Qi Qian'er had been holding let go, and she slumped in the tree hollow, tired and starving, and drifted into a daze... By the first grey of dawn she came struggling out of the hollow, shaking. She had to — she felt that if she stayed hidden in the old tree she would die, the wood of it scorching hot as searing flesh.

Once she'd crawled out and the smell of tree sap left her nose, she caught the roast-meat smell hanging all through the yard. The smell of it nearly finished her. Then the roast-meat smell passed and a sickening burnt reek filled the yard instead, and she couldn't hold out.

Where she got the nerve she didn't know, but she crawled out of the hollow and wove her way to the main hall of the Plague God's temple. She'd been thinking the offering fruit on the altar might still be good to eat. But once inside the hall, what she saw was, right in front of the god's altar, a square opening laid bare like the sluice-gate of hell.

Looking higher, the head of the fierce beast the Plague God rode had slipped askew, its mouth turned up to the sky. Looking left and right, there was the Chief Steward, sitting stock-still beneath the beast's head, both eyes round and open.

Was he dead? Heh. He'd thrown up bowls of blood — no way he'd live, you'd think.

Mad with hunger, Qi Qian'er crawled up onto the altar, heedless, grabbed a plate of offering fruit already dried and furred with green mold, and started gnawing.

As she gnawed she thought: all these years, and the mouse-gnawed offering fruit in this temple was still as good as ever!

A pity it was only this one meal. After Qingfeng fell the chaos lasted a good half-month. At first the authorities handed out gruel for a few days, but as the refugees kept pouring in, never mind mold-furred offering fruit — even the bark off the trees and the roots of the grass were gnawed clean.

She chewed for dear life. From the moment Qi Qian'er felt herself come back to life to the moment she choked was no more than half a breath. Her air wouldn't come. She raised a fist and pounded at her own chest, to no use.

Choking, she slowly rolled her eyes back and toppled off the altar.

As she thrashed, a gourd with a gleaming skin and a silver mouth came rolling slowly toward her from under the beast's head.

Qi Qian'er turned her head, saw it, took it up, pulled the stopper, and poured it down her throat — and even though what was in the gourd was wine and not water, she was past caring.

Fierce wine. Qi Qian'er gulped a few big mouthfuls down, and at last felt herself alive again, her chest catching fire as if she'd swallowed lamp oil.

She coughed a few times and looked up at the old eunuch. The blood at the corner of his mouth had dried, but his eyes were bright with laughter as they looked her over.

Qi Qian'er looked at the gourd in her hand, then out at the yard. She was someone who meant to live. At that thought she scrambled up, spun around, and ran — but she'd barely got one foot over the threshold when she heard the old eunuch calling her from behind: "Girl, girl — don't be afraid — come back! I'm dying. Don't be afraid..."

That was true — he'd thrown up so much blood.

Qi Qian'er checked herself, but stood there on the threshold, not moving.

Her heart was pounding hard; she felt that if she so much as opened her mouth it would leap out of her chest. She looked at the old eunuch, then at the black hole in the ground. Two lifetimes of people coming and going, things happening and passing — she had her share of experience...

She had seen what she shouldn't have. And yet this old eunuch truly didn't want to kill her.

Qi Qian'er slowly let out a breath, slowly sat herself down astride the threshold, and drank a few more mouthfuls of the strong wine from the gourd.

The old eunuch was studying this strange girl too. For all his experience, he couldn't read where the girl in front of him came from — not from her dress, but from her eyes, which were odd beyond anything.

He fell to coughing again, coughed a good while, then pressed his chest and asked: "You saw it all, girl?"

Qi Qian'er blinked, looked at the temple gate hanging crooked in the yard, and nodded honestly, thinking all the while: you've thrown up all that blood — why aren't you dead yet?

The old eunuch's brows shot up, and he broke out cackling again: "Ha — Heaven's will! Heaven's will! The way of Heaven is plain to see. Old Heaven above — no one escapes your eye, hahaha!"

Qi Qian'er thought he was thanking the wrong god — this ground belonged to the Plague God himself.

She looked at the Plague God, then at the dim, heavy sky, then turned back to the old eunuch. She didn't remind him. She just watched him laugh, and waited for him to die.

She had never been this bold. But somewhere in the dark a voice told her: she had been soft and rotten her whole life, and today, whatever came, she would not hide.

With something in her belly and a few mouthfuls of wine down, Qi Qian'er's chest burned, the drink went to her head, and her nerve grew bolder and bolder. A great many things came back to her, too.

After Qingfeng fell, some refugees had run to the Plague God's temple. Like her, they'd only meant to find something to eat — but they'd found a hoard of treasure in the temple... and in the scramble to grab it, many of them died.

So that was how it was. The Sixth Master had schemed this old eunuch to death — but the old eunuch had cut off the man's road back to power.

As for who that family was? She wasn't a fool. It was that family, of course — the one that had ruined ten thousand times ten thousand common folk, left the corpses of the starved strewn over the ground, and brought Heaven's punishment down on them all.

That family of beasts had it coming — good riddance to their ruin.

As she thought, Qi Qian'er's head grew heavier and heavier. She drank her wine and leaned back a little, and the old eunuch's thin voice started up again at her ear, in fits and starts: "Girl — do you know what's down there?"

Dizzier now, Qi Qian'er lifted her face to the old eunuch. She was an honest sort, so she answered honestly: "Gold and silver and jewels, what else." Then she curled her lip and mocked him: "And this stuff — can it buy you your life?"

The old eunuch's face froze on the spot.