Shadows of the Imperial Palace: The Eunuchs (1)
Get posted to the Zhidiangan and you spent the entire day scrubbing the palace. Fail that, and they packed you off to the Duzhijian, where the work was even worse—clearing roads and standing guard whenever the emperor left the grounds.
Other seasons you could grit your teeth and endure. A winter posting was another matter. You stood in cold that froze a man to the marrow, shivering until your whole body felt like ice.
That was why, of the Twenty-Four Directorates to which eunuchs belonged, the Duzhijian sat at the very bottom of the heap.
Better to carry a royal palanquin or hold an imperial umbrella. You wouldn't be hauling it all day, and more to the point, you might actually catch a member of the imperial family's eye.
Those who lasted until the end were designated regulars—doomed to hard labor until they grew old and worn down to nothing. That was what becoming a eunuch meant, if you stayed that long.
You wouldn't starve. But power, ambition—those you had to surrender at the door.
And then, at last, the question I had been waiting for arrived.
"Finally—those who can read! The standard is the Four Books. You will be tested. Lie, and you will be flogged. Mark me well."
There it was. The question I had been waiting for this entire time.
At this point in the dynasty, if there was one thing the eunuchs regretted besides the obvious, it was letters. Literacy. The schoolhouse thread.
The overwhelming majority of eunuchs in this era could not read a single character, and the ink-stained scholar-officials—great and small—looked down on us for it with open contempt. That was precisely why we eunuchs had such difficulty seizing complete hold of politics and power.
It was around this time that the Grand Directors began arguing for the necessity of literacy, and Xuande Emperor Zhu Zhanji would go on to found the Inner Academy, a school to teach eunuchs how to read. The Inner Academy would render distinguished service in our kind's capture of power.
Which meant, here and now, that a eunuch who already knew his letters stood an excellent chance of going straight to the heart of eunuch authority.
"No one?"
A magnificent opportunity had opened, and not a soul stepped forward. They fidgeted, stole glances at one another, or simply bowed their heads.
Had he asked for the Thousand Character Classic, plenty would have come out. But the Analects, the Mencius, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Great Learning—the Four Books were a different creature entirely. To have studied those meant you had been preparing for the provincial examinations.
A born scholar, a man who had sat with Confucius and Mencius and meant to sit the civil service exams, destroying the body his parents gave him to become a eunuch? Confucius himself, the supreme sage of every age, had said it: the body, the hair, and the skin are received from one's parents, and treasuring them is the beginning of filial piety. The thing was unthinkable from the start.
You would be struck from the family registry, and if you escaped a beating from the scholars you had studied beside, you could count yourself lucky.
And yet, in the life before my return, there had been exactly one such man among the eunuchs.
This time, I was here too.
"Here, sir."
I raised my hand high and walked forward. The eunuchs around me turned as one to watch a man advancing with such unhurried confidence, and the batchmates still left in the ranks stared with a mixture of shock and naked envy.
Don't look at me like that.
Thirty-two years of service, and here I was starting again from the bottom. If they had any idea how tedious that felt.
"Oho. So you claim to know the Four Books? I say again: we will test you, and if you cannot answer, you will be flogged."
"Of course, Gonggong."
At any rate, I was here now. Without those thirty-two years behind me, I could never have stepped forward.
And as things fell out this way, I found myself thinking of him.
The one I could never forget. The mortal enemy of my life, the most infamous treacherous minister of his age. The man who, in his later years, goaded a child emperor into a moronic war just to protect his own fortune.
He would be the first class of the Inner Academy, founded a few years from now. A Cultivated Talent, already lettered before he ever entered the palace, and quick-witted besides. Sharp as a tack when it came to reading a room, he caught Xuande Emperor's eye in no time and was promptly made tutor to the young Zhengtong Emperor.
And speak of the devil. Here he came.
The future Eunuch Emperor, Wang Zhen, was walking toward us.
It's been a while, Wang Zhen.
"Eunuch Wang."
"Yes, Gonggong!"
At Yun Bong's summons, Wang Zhen came bustling over in short, quick steps, deepening an already slightly hunched posture as he answered. Six months of diligent training had done their work; his manner was thoroughly that of a palace eunuch.
He's got the eunuch air down cold.
Jin Myeong watched him with an easy, unhurried expression. There was something comic about a fifteen-year-old boy, the flush of youth still on his face, puffing himself up because he had entered the palace a mere half year earlier.
"Zhang Omokpae claims to have read the Four Books. You test him."
"Yes! This humble one shall examine him."
Wang Zhen made a deep bow toward Yun Bong, who had spoken while pointing at Jin Myeong, then turned. The smile that had been playing so brightly toward Yun Bong vanished; the corners of his eyes went sharp in an instant. Sharp enough that a bystander might have wondered why he looked so grave.
Cold. Or murderous. Either word would have fit the look in those eyes.
He knows the Four Books? Did he enter by recommendation, as I did?
Wang Zhen had disliked Jin Myeong from the first glance. For one thing, the young man's looks were considerably above the ordinary. For another, he had apparently mastered letters—the very skill currently on the rise in the eunuch world—and that was enough to set off every alarm Wang Zhen possessed.
A eunuch's foremost asset, then as now, was his appearance. Young, handsome, graceful in his movements, with a voice like a boy's. Add to that a keen sense for the room and a gift for thinking on one's feet, and you had the ideal. In a palace where decadent tastes ran rampant as a matter of course, emperors, consorts, and concubines had always preferred their eunuchs on the feminine side.
Where did this one crawl out of? I have to knock him down here.
If a man with looks like that also had real ability with letters, he would be the most dangerous rival of all. That much beauty combined with literacy was more than enough to land him in the Directorate of Ceremonial—or at the very center of power. And he looked to be around twenty, besides. Unlike Wang Zhen himself, still green, this one could be snatched up by a member of the imperial family or a consort this very day.
It was the instinct of a man who would, in years to come, rise to command ten thousand eunuchs.
"You have read the Four Books?"
"I have, Eunuch Wang."
Jin Myeong answered with a slight bow, and confidence ran through every line of his bearing.
Stop scheming and ask your question, you sly castrated bastard.
To Jin Myeong, who had watched Wang Zhen for thirty-two years, the boy before him was a well so shallow you could see the bottom.
"Then I shall ask you one thing. What are the Three Preservations?"
Wang Zhen put the question. He did not say from which of the Four Books it came, and in that omission a faint, sour jealousy toward Jin Myeong could already be tasted.
Go on, wrack that brain of yours. See if an answer comes.
Outwardly Wang Zhen wore a mask of composure. Inwardly he was delighted. He was certain Jin Myeong could not answer this if he died and came back to life.
Letters have to remain my private weapon. A pity, but this is how the game is played. Even blood family does not share power.
In truth, the question Wang Zhen had asked appeared nowhere in the Four Books. And what eunuch had ever mastered the Four Books cover to cover? Pull a question from somewhere else and there would be no one to catch it. It was a trick that exploited that fact with exquisite meanness—a thoroughly contemptible move.
"Hmm… a sharp question, that."
Yun Bong, the highest-ranking man present, closed his eyes and nodded. The gesture, correctly interpreted, meant that he did not know the answer either. Civil officials watching this would have roared with laughter. What, precisely, was sharp about asking what the Three Preservations were? He was only pretending to know, for the sake of face.
If Yun Bong had been fluent in the Four Books, he would have set the questions himself. Why else call Wang Zhen over?
"Three Preservations? What's that, sitting the exams three times?"
"Even dice games go best of three, don't they? Heh heh heh!"
Yun Bong had seventeen years in the palace and held the post of Shaojian, one rank below the Grand Directors, and even he didn't know. The eunuchs beneath him in grade were hardly going to. Idle nonsense was already circulating through the ranks.
"Silence! Zhang Omokpae, answer Eunuch Wang's question. What are the Three Preservations?"
Yun Bong stepped in and quelled the noise, and every gaze in the courtyard gathered on Jin Myeong. Would he be able to answer? Would he emerge as a new prodigy after Wang Zhen—or be branded a liar from his very first day as a eunuch? Suspicion and expectation mixed in equal measure in those watching eyes.
"Answer, Zhang Omokpae. Or have I made the question too difficult? Shall I ask another?"
Wang Zhen put the question as if speaking for every eunuch present, addressing a Jin Myeong who had not yet opened his mouth. To the others, it looked as though Wang Zhen were genuinely concerned for him. To Jin Myeong, meeting those eyes directly, it looked like something else entirely.
This was mockery, plain and simple. A sneer.
That's right. This is the kind of creature you were. Rotten from the root. Playing games from the opening move.
Having seen straight through the malice coiled behind Wang Zhen's pupils, Jin Myeong glanced once at Yun Bong and the men around them. The low whispers circulating nearby caught on the hearing of a man who possessed Peak Realm inner power.
"Doesn't look like he knows it. Figures. The Four Books aren't the name of somebody's mutt."
"What, so he lied? Trying to grow himself a pair of wings?"
"He's got some nerve, I'll give him that. I could never do that. What if they flog him?"
"With a face like that he could climb the ranks just by breathing. Why gamble like this?"
"Right? The highborn ladies would be fighting each other to take him in. Planning to nibble and suck on him all night, heh heh heh!"
Veterans and new arrivals alike, every last one of them was murmuring.
"It seems the question was too difficult after all. Gonggong! This humble one fears the question he set was overly hard, and would like to ask another—"
Wang Zhen turned toward Yun Bong with a twisted little smile, a snicker in his throat—and that was when Jin Myeong's mouth opened, as if he had been waiting for exactly that moment.
"The Three Preservations refers to the three things a sovereign must uphold. First, that a minister entrusted with affairs of state must never be permitted to bury his own mistakes, nor may the sovereign's deliberations leak beyond the throne. Second, that the power to reward and to punish must never be borrowed by another hand. Third, that the sovereign's authority must never be divided or shared."
The explanation unspooled without a hitch, and as it moved toward its close the faces of the eunuchs around them drained into astonishment.
"Holy shit! I don't know what any of that meant, but that was insanely long. How do you even memorize that?"
"Is that from the Analects? Hey, how many characters are in the Four Books altogether?"
"If I knew that, would I have become a eunuch? Think before you ask, will you?"
"He's got it all… that face, that build, and now the letters too. Did he save the country in a past life? Why would a man that gifted become a eunuch?"
"It's over. That one's the head of our class."
Jin Myeong gave a quiet snort at the reaction around him, turned back to Wang Zhen, and finished.
"Should these three safeguards prove incomplete, it is an omen that the sovereign will be coerced—and murdered. That is all, Eunuch Wang. Well? Is my answer correct?"
He asked, but no one present believed the answer could be wrong. It had been far too long for a bluff, long and yet clean of any padding, and the man delivering it had not wavered once.
"Nnh… it is correct. Most—most impressive."
A collective gasp swept the courtyard at Wang Zhen's admission, given through a faintly sour expression as he worked his mouth.
How did this one know that? He's the real thing. He must have come in the same way I did—reading the classics, then entering the palace.
Wang Zhen's insides had been turned upside down. He could not believe it. He had drawn the question from outside the Four Books precisely so there would be no way to know it—and the answer from this wooden-plaque recruit, who did not even look twenty, had been perfect. Conquering the Four Books and Five Classics by the age of twenty was enough to be called a Cultivated Talent, and this one seemed to have the writings of the Legalist school, which was not even the orthodox lineage, down cold. How could he not be stunned?
"G-Gonggong! Zhang Omokpae has given the correct answer."
"Heh heh! This office saw as much. Eunuch Zhang, excellent! A pillar who will lead our kind's future has entered our ranks. Eunuch Wang, well done as well. A very sharp question!"
"Ah—ah, yes! Gonggong! Thank you, Gonggong!"
Yun Bong, who had no idea that Wang Zhen was desperate to close the matter because he had something to hide, looked from Jin Myeong to Wang Zhen and back again, smiling with genuine pleasure. The more he did, the drier Wang Zhen's mouth became.
Let it go. Let it go. Better all around if we just move on.
What if the wooden-plaque recruit in front of him decided to spill the truth? Yun Bong, ignorant of the real circumstances, had praised the question as sharp more than once. If the truth came out, Yun Bong would be humiliated right along with him. For a Junior Fourth Rank Shaojian—second among the eunuch grades—there was no humiliation quite like that. The world went dark before his eyes.
It's only the first day and I overheated. I could have watched him carefully and dealt with him in due course!
Wang Zhen cursed his own rashness and resolved to leave at once.
"Th-then, this humble one shall take his leave—"
"It would seem, however, that Eunuch Wang was momentarily mistaken."
Just as Wang Zhen tried to hurry off, Jin Myeong—who had been standing until then with an unreadable, almost blank expression—opened his mouth. Look closely and the corners of that mouth were twitching. Inwardly, he was howling with laughter.
I told you to live a little more decently. How many times did I say it, before the return? Consistently, irredeemably rotten.
The bastard was digging his own grave without any help at all. How was he supposed not to laugh?
"Me? What did I—"
Jin Myeong drove the blow home into a Wang Zhen who had been trying to play dumb and run.