a row with the other apprentices, all of us in our flapping blue robes with white oversleeves. The Empress ate in the Hall of Happiness and Longevity. I could barely see it down the long brick walk. They were setting tables up in there now.
Then came the call. Each of us took a lacquer box on our shoulders and set off in a foot-whispering line. In the hall we laid out the dishes in places chosen by the geomancers and protocol officials of the Western Kitchen. Everything was according to pattern, order, harmony. There were hot and cold dishes, roast fowl, soups, fish fried and steamed and braised, and all manner of sweet and salty northern-style pastries. From the far south came crabs preserved in wine and fresh cold litchi jelly. There was shark’s fin sent by the king of the Philippines, and bird’s nest from the Strait of Malacca.
We set down the plates and withdrew as always. That day we did not return to the Western Kitchen but waited in another hall nearby, empty, wood-dusty, ringing with our footsteps and our chortling jokes. Then we trotted back and packed the food into the dragon-embossed lacquer boxes as usual. We tied them with green and red strings and fixed them to poles.
Yet Old Li, the eunuch who always took my pole, walked up to me and stood there. “Boy,” he said, “you know the Houhai District?”
“Of course, sir,” I said, for I had grown up there.
“Then take this to the Gong family palace. Do you know the road?”
“Like my hand. But honored sir, it is not my place to go there. It is yours.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Curse fate! But it’s urgent. I am being called back. You’ll take it?”
“Yes, honored sir.” Before I had even finished speaking he swung his robes and walked away. His pole was still in my hands.
I shrugged it on. It settled easily into the notch on my shoulder. Prince Gong’s mansion lay near the lake. I knew the spot. I walked toward the back of the palace, for it would be best to leave by the Shen Wu Gate.
Then it was out into the teeming city, my blue and white robes fluttering with importance, the imperial lacquerware bouncing with my steps. People moved out of my way. Crowds parted. I wore the colors of the palace.
At the front gate of the Gong mansion the pole and boxes were recognized at once, though I was not. “Honored lord,” I said to the gatekeeper, “Master Li could not carry these boxes today. I am an unworthy apprentice.”
The gatekeeper called to someone. A gate to the inner gardens opened and a beautiful girl came out with a servant. “Ah! Where’s Uncle Li?”
“He was detained.”
“You came instead?”
“Yes, miss.” I made a reverence.
She put on an amused look and reached into her purse for coins. “What’s inside?” she said.
“Lord Tan made his glazed duck.”
“Ah! Wonderful.” She handed me the coins.
“Pleasure belongs all to me, miss. Thank you.” I closed my fist around them. I bowed low and long, until she and the servant with the food had withdrawn.
Quickly I slipped out to the street. I walked down along the lake with its waving fronds until I was under a pool of yellow light, beneath the buzz and hiss of a gas lamp. Only then did I unfold my hand to look.
Five coins. They looked like —
I bit one. Gold. I had never seen it before, but I knew. I closed my hand tightly again and kept walking, south, away now from the lake.
When I reached Huang Cheng, to return to the palace, I should have turned east. Instead I turned west — toward my family. I would run like light itself. I would be no more than a moment late. Lord Tan would never know.
When I came to my old neighborhood and turned panting around the corner to my own lane, the first thing I saw was my mother sitting outside the doorway on a stool, scrubbing a cabbage. “Zhao Sun,” she said slowly, half stumbling with surprise and wonder. She used my milk name, the name they called me as a baby, which I had not heard for a long, long time. I made an obeisance, but it was stiff. “Liang Wei has returned,” I said, and then she leapt to throw her arms around me.
“Ma,” I said, the single syllable strangling out of my mouth. She was so small! I was tall and strong; I