Shadows of the Imperial Palace: The Eunuchs (3)
This was the rookie eunuchs' quarters.
Supper was done. They were snatching a brief rest before they had to start cleaning the palace halls.
"The Eastern Depot opens in half a year, doesn't it?"
Sprawled across the floor of the quarters, turning over his plans for the days ahead, Jin Myeong found the thought of the Eastern Depot rising unbidden.
The Eastern Depot. An institution of eunuchs, by eunuchs, for eunuchs.
Whether to throw in with the Eastern Depot, or to attach himself to someone in the Zhu clan — that was the question occupying him.
Choosing the Eastern Depot meant seizing the hilt of a blade that could cut through every scrap of intelligence in the Great Ming, and through the necks of every political enemy reckless enough to come charging in. Choosing a powerful figure in the Zhu family meant standing close to the Son of Heaven's own power.
The Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di, had about five years left. Crown Prince Zhu Gaochi — the Hongxi Emperor — would drop dead in the tenth month of his reign. After that, Zhu Gaochi's son, Zhu Zhanji, the Xuande Emperor, would last about a decade.
Wang Zhen had been picked by that same Zhu Zhanji. It wasn't that the little bastard had grabbed hold of a connection — Zhu Zhanji had pulled him in. Pulled him in and appointed him tutor to his own son.
So: the Eastern Depot, living power, or rising power. Which to choose — that was the problem. None of the three looked particularly promising.
If he wanted to rack up enough merit to set foot in the Forbidden City's secret treasury as soon as humanly possible, he needed a more certain path.
A grunt of pain. A strangled cry.
He was still turning it over in his mind when a commotion erupted outside. Focusing true qi into his hearing, he made out the thoroughly satisfying sound of several people getting the living daylights beaten out of them.
"Ah. That. But they came too early, didn't they?"
Were they already doing the discipline-enforcement that used to wait until midnight, after the day's work was done? Whoever these castrated little shits were, their sense of timing was a complete mess.
Wang Zhen, I suppose?
The only one who'd be this worked up that he'd show up earlier than custom dictated was that bastard. Whoever it was, a beating would knock some sense into them.
A short while later, the door to the quarters slammed open, and two rookie eunuchs burst in, gasping for breath.
"Everyone up! The eunuchs from the Directorate of Ceremonial are here!"
"Hurry!"
The rookies who'd been taking their rest scrambled to their feet at their batchmates' frantic voices. Their faces were still dazed, but having heard those scream-like sounds just moments before, they had a rough idea of what was coming.
Then the eunuchs of the Directorate of Ceremonial filed in, Wang Zhen at their head.
"Out of the way, you old fool! Since when does a mere rookie block a superior's path?"
A dull thud. One of the rookies — a man pushing thirty, one of the two who'd just raised the alarm — went sprawling across the floor of the quarters, having taken hits from Zhao Gou, small and compact in build, and from Yang Gwang, whose voice was far too pretty for a man.
"F-forgive me!"
The rookie who'd been rolling on the floor scrambled up, clutching his ringing face, and hurried back to his place.
Wang Zhen took a step forward.
"I am Wang Zhen, Cheongsa of the Directorate of Ceremonial. I am your superior."
Fifteen-year-old Wang Zhen packed the line with all the dignity a superior could muster. Not a soul answered. Of course they didn't. They were shrinking into themselves, bewildered, wondering what on earth this was — and they had already seen blood. They had done nothing wrong, and their superiors had beaten them for no reason at all. The rookies had taken the beating for no reason at all.
"Hooong? How dare you! Your superior asks a question and you don't answer?"
Yang Gwang, all pretty voice and pretty gestures, lit up with fury, both eyes blazing.
"Ah—yes! Cheongsa Wang!"
Answers finally spilled out among the rookies. It had been barely three months since their castration, so among the high, unbroken voices a fair number of deep, adult ones still mixed in.
"Good. You seem to have come to your senses a little."
Wang Zhen nodded, and he and his batchmates smiled with satisfaction at the rookies' taut, terrified bearing.
It was true that among the rookies there were no small number of idlers who had become eunuchs because they wanted wealth and power without the bother of study or martial training. But the great majority had become eunuchs to escape a wretched lot — to eat, to live — enduring the extreme agony of having their manhood cut away.
And here were grown men, from twenty to their thirties, cowering and taking a beating like dogs on a summer's day at the hands of boys who'd entered the palace a mere half-year earlier. It was, in one light, ridiculous. In another, it was pitiful.
Where is he? Why isn't he showing himself?
Wang Zhen was searching for the insolent rookie he'd seen that afternoon. That one who didn't know his place. The one who was young, handsome, and gifted in every direction, and who clearly knew it, and preened accordingly.
You don't even know the difference between heaven and earth! Where are you?
There had been plenty of that sort among his own batchmates, too. Especially the ones a few years older. The old men never picked a fight to begin with — it was always, always the ones just a few years up who tried to press you down with age. That rookie had said he was nineteen. Exactly that type. No question.
Today I'll make you understand, good and proper, just how deep and how wide the palace is.
Words spoken at night are heard by mice; words spoken by day are heard by birds?
No. In the palace, there was no one listening — night or day. The Brocade Guard and the ceremonial troops of the inner court guarded only the inner precincts where the Son of Heaven and the imperial clan resided, and the inner and outer palace walls. Why would they lift a finger to protect eunuchs, or palace women who had not received the Emperor's favor? They were already standing watch until the cartilage in their knees ground to powder. And a considerable number of the eunuchs were Peak Realm masters stronger than they were, besides.
So even if Wang Zhen's gang beat the rookies half to death, there would be no one to hear it and no one to come looking — except other eunuchs.
"You. You there."
"Ah—yes!"
The one who answered Wang Zhen's pointing finger was the rookie who had raised the alarm: Yi Hong, twenty-nine years old.
"Jang Jinmyeong. Where is he?"
"Ah…! Rookie Jang is at the very back, the far—"
Wang Zhen seized him by the collar and hurled him before the answer was even finished.
"Urgh!"
It made no difference that Yi Hong was a grown man and Wang Zhen a boy. Yi Hong knew no martial arts, and he could not withstand the inner power of a youth young enough to be his son. With a crashing clatter he went sprawling once more.
"Let's go."
Footsteps. Wang Zhen and his batchmates walked inward toward where Jin Myeong was said to be, without so much as a glance at the fallen Yi Hong.
At the far end of the quarters, a small, desperately urgent commotion was already in full swing.
"Brother Jang! What are you doing? Get up!"
"Jin Myeong! The inner eunuchs are coming! Get up, now!"
Jin Myeong did not get up. He was still stretched out on the floor. The rookies around him were seized with horror. What kind of madman was this? He was handsome, he was clever, and he'd been taken into the Directorate of Ceremonial — arrogance would have been understandable. But he'd been so agreeable they'd taken him for humble, for a decent sort of person. Looking at him now, wasn't the arrogance past all bounds?
He'd put Eunuch Wang in his place once that afternoon, fine — but the man was still, unmistakably, a superior. How could anyone lie there sprawled out, humming a little tune through his nose, with a superior on the way? No matter how you looked at it, it wasn't normal. Was he dismissing the boy-superiors because they were young? Seeing him now, this wasn't ordinary madness. Get tangled up with him the wrong way and they'd all be attending a funeral together.
At any rate, if they moved carelessly the sparks might fly their way, so they didn't even dare try to pull Jin Myeong to his feet. And the man himself, oblivious to his batchmates burning up inside, went on playing the carefree immortal.
"Hey, Brother Jang! What are you going to do? You'll get us all killed!"
"I don't know, I don't know — they're coming, they're coming, they're coming! They're here! Hup!"
The moment Wang Zhen's gang drew near, the rookies gave up on everything and squeezed their eyes shut.
And then—
"You little shit whose balls ought to be fried up and served for dinner—!"
The moment Wang Zhen laid eyes on Jin Myeong lying there with his legs crossed, the obscenity tore out of him.
Damn, that bastard is loud. What's he yelling for?
A kid that young, kicking and throwing around men old enough to be his father. Somehow he felt like even more of a son of a bitch than he had before the regression.
Anyway, Jin Myeong had no interest in him. By now, that other one ought to be stepping forward. He was waiting for him.
He was in there. A decent one, once you knew him.
Even while he rested, Jin Myeong had been watching him. Watching how he would come out.
"That's enough. Please."
At that precise, exquisite moment, the voice came. The kid. Exactly the same.
A man with a human being's blood running through him. A fine one.
Even after the regression, Jin Myeong had wondered all along whether he would act the same as before. That was why he had held back and waited, even while Wang Zhen's gang threw their fit.
"What? And who the hell is this one?"
Wang Zhen, one step from losing his reason entirely, and the castrated little shits who followed him all turned as one. They looked so excessively, absurdly stunned that they seemed to have lost the power of speech for a moment — and the ninety-eight other rookies, everyone except Jin Myeong and that one, were no different. If anything, the rookies looked more shocked than Wang Zhen's gang, not less.
Didn't expect that, did you?
The current him might not know it, but that one had stepped forward just like this before the regression, too. Back then, the faces on Wang Zhen, the Zhao brat, and the Yang brat had been something to see. They still were. They looked so ridiculous it was almost enough to make a man piss himself laughing.
"I said that's enough. What have the rookies done wrong? Senior Brother Yi — are you all right?"
In the meantime he had turned toward Yi Hong, the one who had suffered the most humiliation at Wang Zhen's gang's hands, and asked.
"Junior Brother Jeong, I'm fine — just calm down…!"
Yi Hong, if anything, was the one worrying about him. Of course he was. Jin Myeong had been surprised the first time he'd seen him, too.
The first time, the boy had been small, spare with words, blank of face — the sort you'd take for genuinely quiet, genuinely timid. Then you found out he was a man with a fire in his chest.
He hadn't had much schooling, but he was clear on principle and sharp in his insight. If he had a single flaw, it was just one. Wait — was it even a flaw? Didn't the flaw belong to the people who had abandoned him?
At any rate: the fact that he had been abandoned twice.
"Fine. I see. So you rookies want to die today. I'll make that insolent mouth of yours nice and well-behaved. Brother Zhao, Brother Yang. Let's begin."
Wang Zhen ground his teeth at the boy's defiant answer. As expected, the shape of it was much the same as before the regression. Only Jin Myeong himself had changed. Everything else was similar.
Time to move. He couldn't let that one take a beating. Get hit the wrong way by a raw beginner who'd only just learned martial arts and couldn't control his strength, and you could take internal injuries there was no coming back from. He was a thousand times the man Wang Zhen was. He needed looking after.
"That's enough, I think? Don't you?"
At last Jin Myeong sat up, taking the words the boy had used and serving them back with only the tone changed. The ones who'd been moving toward him — and everyone else in the quarters — turned as if by reflex, every gaze gathering on him at once.
"Right, then! Time to get up, isn't it? We'd best be heading off for cleaning duty. Isn't that so, rookies? So it would be better for all concerned if you inner eunuchs left off. Don't you think?"
"You— you…!"
Wang Zhen's face said he was about to lose his mind from sheer rage, these wet-behind-the-ears brats coming at him one after another.
Look at Senior Brother Yi's face over there. How do you think he feels? If he'd married early, he'd have a son your age.
If you were going to screw someone over, you'd best remember that you could get screwed over yourself. An eye for an eye. A screwing for a screwing.
"Eunuch Wang. That question you set from the Han Feizi this afternoon — it wasn't with the intention of making a fool of this humble servant, I trust? I was quite at a loss, you see. Though even if that was the intention, it's quite all right. You're still too young to know self-restraint and moderation. In any case, the rookies are due for cleaning duty. The Gonggong who will be leading us should be arriving shortly. Do you mean to go on standing here like this?"
Until the rookies grew familiar with the geography of the imperial palace and its codes of etiquette, eunuchs of Junior Sixth Rank Fengyu and above took charge of leading them. Wang Zhen's gang were barely Proper Ninth Rank. Even belonging to the Directorate of Ceremonial, ignoring superiors several grades above them was not a thing that could be done.
"We have already reported that Wang-gong and we ourselves would take over the escort! So you just worry about saving your own skin! Kyaaah!"
Their faces had gone from red to purple, and at last Yang Gwang of Fujian came charging in.
Good. A fight.
The imperial palace, from time immemorial, was a place where the blood was never dry. That was the natural order of things. But because Jin Myeong had regressed, there was one fact the Wang Zhen trio could not possibly know.
Back when they had been batchmates, before the regression, he had told them.
That his one and only creed — his motto — was ruthlessness.