Back to the Imperial Palace (7)
"Grand Mother—no, Holy Mother, and Elder Mun as well—I would ask that you give this serious consideration. Relocating Shengmu Palace to Shuntian Prefecture."
The sudden gravity in his voice snuffed the good humor right out of the room. The family wiped the laughter from their faces and turned as one to watch the Grand Mother and him.
"In my view, Holy Mother, it would be best to establish the palace in Shuntian Prefecture."
The Forbidden City would finish construction next year, and the Yongle Emperor intended to move the capital to Shuntian Prefecture in the first month of the year after that. He could not simply leave his family behind and go alone. He fully intended to make Shengmu Palace the greatest sect in the world—and for that, they had to be kept close, both to him and to the imperial capital. The Forbidden City would become Shengmu Palace's weapon, and a well of silver that would never run dry.
A short while later, the Grand Mother and Jin Myeong sent the exhausted family off to rest and sat down to exchange views on the relocation and the formal founding of the palace. They also took the time to demonstrate the Sunflower Manual and to go over the general principles of the martial arts before finally adjourning.
He had been about to settle in and train the Sunflower Manual when a figure caught his eye through the window: Shanghua, sitting alone in the rear-garden pavilion, gazing out over the pond.
"What are you doing? Why aren't you asleep?"
"Huh? Oh. I just… I couldn't sleep."
"Couldn't sleep, my foot—your eyes are swimming with it. Keep this up, Sister, and you'll get wrinkles. The eunu—I mean, I read in a medical text that you have to drink plenty of water and sleep well if you want to keep a pretty face."
That damned word eunuch kept slipping out. For all the playfulness in his tone, though, Shanghua's face remained clouded.
"Myeong-ah. Are you really all right?"
"Me? I told you I'm fine. Just watch. From now on, I'll protect every last one of our family."
"You're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
Her large, clear eyes trembled. Her face was drawn and weary, but filled as it was with worry and care, it was almost painfully beautiful.
"So my sister's been worrying herself sick over me?"
"Of course I—!"
"Come here."
He caught Shanghua—who was already nodding as if to say of course I have—and pulled her straight into his arms.
"Ah!"
She startled and tensed for a heartbeat, then went still and let herself be held. As always, she smelled wonderful.
"I'm really fine. Thank you for worrying about me."
"…Yeah."
The next morning, Jin Myeong left the house and went looking for You Jiu's workshop. And so began the first step toward becoming the most virile eunuch.
If you're wondering whether he'd gone to get castrated—he had not. As if he would cut that off. He had the Huanxu.
Not just anyone could become a eunuch. You did not become one by simply hacking off your manhood and calling it done. Anyone who castrated himself on a whim, declaring he meant to enter palace service, was punished under the law for the crime of cutting off his own genitals.
The Imperial Ban on Private Castration: a decree forbidding the common people from performing castration of their own accord. It had been instituted, in part, to stop the ugly practice of nobles and men of power forcing castration on those who did not want it. In a period like this one, when the Ministry of Rites was officially selecting eunuchs, that was one thing. Castrate yourself at some random hour because you fancied becoming a eunuch, and you, the family that knowingly looked the other way, the guarantor who stood surety, and the knife-man who performed the cut could all find yourselves bound to the rack.
A short while later, Jin Myeong arrived at the Yu Family Manor and went straight in search of You Jiu. The workshop was quiet; the day's work had not yet begun.
"You've come looking for a Treasure, have you?"
"That's right, Knife-man."
"A young fellow like you, losing a precious Treasure? Didn't you keep it when you were cut? If you'd had it done at my place, I'd have stored it nice and safe for you. Did you do it at home?"
You Jiu's voice oozed. The man did love the sound of his own mouth. He was going to sell it the moment the silver hit the table anyway.
"That's how it happened."
At present, Jin Myeong was impersonating a eunuch who had already been castrated and entered the palace. To become a eunuch, he needed to obtain a Treasure from You Jiu.
"You know the going rate. Did you bring the money?"
A Treasure—Bao—was the name given to the jar in which a workshop stored the three precious things cut from a eunuch. One rod. Two stones. However you put it, the Treasure was a vital object. It was a eunuch's prize possession and a necessity besides: without one, you could not become a eunuch in the first place, and even a serving eunuch could not be promoted without one. There were regular inspections, and surprise inspections too, to confirm that the Treasure was intact and accounted for.
The reason was the women of the imperial palace. Put simply, they were terrified a eunuch and one of the Emperor's women might take a shine to each other. Imagine one of the eunuchs who lived in the palace around the clock turning out not to be a eunuch at all—and happening to catch the eye of a palace lady the Emperor himself had marked. Imagine that palace lady, or a consort, ending up with child. The Emperor, struck from behind, would be apoplectic. The assembled ministers would howl that a eunuch and a woman had ruined the imperial line and the very altars of the state. The pregnant woman and her clan? She would be driven out at once, or worse, put to a lingering death, and her family stood a fair chance of being wiped out to the last soul. The eunuch who had dallied with her, his household, the high-ranking eunuch or clan that had recommended and guaranteed him, and the Ministry of Rites officials who had selected him—all of them would be caught in it. A truly dizzying prospect. A blood wind, in the most literal sense. One after another, necks and limbs would part company under the executioner's blade.
"How much, Knife-man?"
"You've heard the rates, more or less. Thirty taels of silver to borrow. Fifty to buy outright."
"I'll buy it. Fifty taels."
Even after selection, the Treasures were inspected on a regular schedule to prevent just such a catastrophe. And if a man had failed to keep his Treasure at the time of castration, or had stored it privately and then lost or damaged it? He did what Jin Myeong was doing now: went to a workshop and borrowed one, or bought one. You could borrow from another eunuch, too. Castration itself cost six taels of silver—the price of a thatched cottage. Fifty taels… it was enough to make your head spin. Which only went to show how important the thing was to a eunuch, and how brisk the demand.
"Fine. But if you mean to buy, I'll need to see your credentials."
"Credentials? I was under the impression silver would suffice."
"Ahem. Well, yes, ordinarily—but this is the last selection of the year, and the yamen has tightened its supervision."
You Jiu sidled closer, glanced around, and dropped his voice to a whisper. What he meant, in short, was prove you're a eunuch. A wooden identity plaque issued upon selection, a letter of recommendation from a high-ranking eunuch, a guarantor's bond stamped by the Ministry of Rites—something of that sort. Produce it.
"Is that so? Hmm."
"You haven't got one? Don't tell me you came to buy on someone else's behalf… or you've got some other idea in mind? Tut, tut."
You Jiu had decided Jin Myeong was here to purchase a Treasure so he could infiltrate the palace disguised as a eunuch. His eyes narrowed to slits. He looked ready to call the government soldiers overseeing the workshop at the first wrong move.
If this were a problem that could be solved by beating the man down with martial arts or putting a knife to his throat, that would have been convenient. But if the knife-man died, or if he somehow managed to report it, eunuch selection would halt on the spot. Jin Myeong's description would be posted all over Yingtianfu, and the Brocade Guard would turn the city inside out. There was no need to solve it the hard way. He had already prepared for this.
"How unpleasant. Are you questioning this official?"
He set a small wooden plaque down on the table with a tap.
"A wooden identity plaque… You look young to have been promoted already. Do cut me some slack—this is the knife-man's life, it is. One slip and they say you've smuggled a spy into the imperial palace, and off comes your head. Eunuch Ming Jin, I see!"
"The goods?"
"A moment."
The instant he verified the plaque, You Jiu's entire manner changed. He disappeared into the back of the workshop. Jin Myeong had carved the plaque precisely because he had known it would come to this. As if a man who had once risen to Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch—second among all eunuchs—would fail to anticipate a situation like this. Ming Jin had been one of his batchmates in the previous life; he had died of illness around this time. Jin Myeong knew the look of those plaques down to the last grain of the wood. Carving one had been nothing.
"Here you are, Eunuch Ming. It belonged to a man who died taking the cut last year, so there won't be any trouble down the line."
"My thanks. I'll be going, then."
"Do come again. I'll see you get a bargain. Heh heh!"
A bargain, his ass. That bastard was begging for a beating. If Jin Myeong hadn't needed to become a eunuch all over again, he would have started by putting this one in the ground.
Damn it. Just looking at this bastard made that place ache all over again.
Not long after, the day arrived. The Ministry of Rites' eunuch selection.
"We will begin with a physical examination. Form lines of ten. Let this official be clear in advance: anyone with a defect in one or more limbs—fingers and toes included—or anyone with a chronic illness, is disqualified."
A Principal Clerk of the sixth rank from the Ministry of Rites sat as chief examiner, with an eighth-rank assistant, a ninth-rank clerk, physicians, and others keeping the applicants in order. Nobody present was ignorant of what the Principal Clerk had just said, but a fair number had still slipped in hoping to hide some flaw. It was that kind of world—hard enough to make a living that people took the chance. And some, no doubt, were here on ambition alone.
"When an examiner stands before you, open your Treasure and present it."
The officials moved down the lines, inspecting each applicant's body, health, state of castration, and Treasure. A short while later, it was Jin Myeong's turn.
"Row six, strip!"
He roared it back with the rest of the applicants, then stripped. He had always had confidence in his body. Half a year of the Sunflower Manual and foundational external arts had forged it into something that would have made an examiner's eyes go wide—ah. Right. That part wasn't there. Not at the moment.
"Name."
"Zhang Jin Myeong."
"Tall… handsome face… Hmm. Any chronic illness?"
"None."
"Let's see. The genitals…"
The examiner's gaze, which had been traveling over Jin Myeong's face and torso, dropped. He checked the castration. The result—
"Clean work. Treasure's in order too. Good—passed!"
"Passed."
Of course it was. The Huanxu, hailed as the greatest body-morphing art in a thousand years of martial history, had disguised his body as perfectly castrated. The proof was standing right there: the examiner hadn't shown a flicker of suspicion. He had called the work clean. That was precisely why Jin Myeong had nearly howled with joy when he found the Huanxu on the Painted Wanderer's corpse. It meant he could pass as a eunuch without ever being cut.
"Good. Next."
The examiner wrote the character for Passed in a fine hand on one corner of the document he was holding and stamped it with a small seal. It marked him as a highest-priority candidate. Eunuchs did every menial labor the palace required, but castration left the flesh slack and the bones and sinews soft, so a man lost his strength. Those castrated around adulthood or after retained a little more of it. That was why they skimmed for candidates who were strong and well-built from the start.
Getting that seal had been the first objective, in any case. The stamp the Ministry of Rites put on you carried real weight once you reached the Directorate of Ceremonial, which administered the eunuchs. It was one of the things that decided whether a newly passed eunuch was dumped into a post emptying chamber pots or placed somewhere that actually mattered. Then again, with a face and a frame like his, the odds of being sent to scrub floors were vanishingly small.
And so, less than a year after he had finished living as a eunuch, he became one all over again. Not a castrated eunuch. The most virile eunuch.
The following day, the newly minted eunuchs changed into their issued uniforms and assembled at the Directorate of Ceremonial.
"I am Yun Bong, Junior Attendant of the Directorate of Ceremonial. I sincerely welcome all of you who have now wedded yourselves to the palace. You will each have become eunuchs for your own reasons, but…"
Director Yun. The man talked as much now as he ever had. Yun Bong was Korean by origin—the same man who would, in about ten years, become Grand Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial. Before Wang Zhen, he had been one of the heads of the eunuch ranks. He was a problematic creature in his own right; the short version was abuse of power and naked self-interest. Being Korean, he was often sent as an envoy to Joseon, where he leaned on the court to have official posts conferred on his relatives and plundered staggering quantities of goods on every visit. The Joseon king and his son, sick of it, twice petitioned that eunuchs not be sent as envoys. The Emperor refused both times.
At any rate, just as Jin Myeong was approaching the point of dying of boredom—well past a quarter-hour into it—Yun Bong's oration finally ended.
"…And so, we will now begin the assignments. First: those of you who are confident in heavy labor, step forward."
At that, several dozen of the sturdiest among the newly passed came forward. Fresh from selection, delighted, they rushed out without a thought in their heads. The greenhorns. They had no idea they had just flung open the door to a living hell. What did you give a strong man to do? The ones who had just gone out would be hauling the imperial family's palanquins and parasols until they dropped. Not that they had anything left to drop.
"Next: those with a trade! Step forward."
House carpenters, furniture makers, blacksmiths, jewelers, grooms, cooks—men of every craft hurried out, jostling to be first. And yet if you hung back, hoping to land something easy, that created a problem of its own. For the eunuchs left standing until the very end, there was only one fate waiting.
Getting your life thoroughly wrecked.