Princess Huanzhu · Chat

As Little Swallow finished her last somersault, the scant clatter of copper coins landing in the battered bowl faded. She dusted the dirt off her hands and called out to the three or four spectators left in the circle, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” Liu Qing was packing up the gear beside her, and Liu Hong was squatting on the ground counting the coins. Little Swallow bent down to pick up the last coin that had rolled to her feet, and just as her fingers touched it, her ears caught a muffled thud from the street corner. She looked up. At the bend of Zhengyangmen Avenue, a crowd had gathered, and a blue-curtained sedan chair sat there with the character “Liang” embroidered on its curtain. Kneeling in front of the sedan was a girl in blue clothes, a young maidservant kneeling beside her—both were pressed down by the shoulders by guards flanking the sedan. The girl on her knees tilted her head back and shouted something too far away to make out, but her back stayed straight as a rod, both hands clutching protectively at her chest, guarding a blue silk bundle whose wrapper had already come loose. A corner of Master Liang's sedan curtain lifted, and someone leaned out half a face to say a few words. Two guards each took one side, hoisted the girl up, and shoved her outward. She staggered and fell, the bundle flung from her hands, rolling to a puddle by the roadside, where a corner of a folded fan wrapped in white silk tore through the cloth. The girl scrambled up and stumbled over to retrieve it, her fingers scrabbling in the puddle for a good while. When she finally fished it out, she wiped it again and again with her sleeve. The little maidservant, crying, helped her up, and the two had barely stood when a guard's slap sent them sprawling onto the flagstones. Liu Hong's hand counting the coins stopped. Liu Qing's hand packing up the gear stopped too. Little Swallow stuffed the coin in her pocket, and as she stood, the soles of her feet pressed down on the piece of ground where she'd just tumbled. In two strides she shot across the street. As she charged into the crowd, someone behind her shouted, “Swallow, don't go!” She didn't look back. She just smoothed the rag strip around her wrist and seized the ankle of the guard who was about to kick again. When she opened her mouth, the whole of Zhengyangmen Avenue could hear it: “She's already kneeling, and you're still kicking?” The guards whose ankles Little Swallow had grabbed were eventually pulled away by the bystanders, and Little Swallow took a kick to the back. When the girl got up, her face was a mess of tears and mud, and the little maidservant knelt beside her, crying and trembling. Little Swallow looked back at the blue silk bundle on the ground and the jade roller exposed on the folded fan, then reached out and hauled the girl to her feet. The girl lifted her face; her lip was split, but as she looked at Little Swallow, she only said quietly, “Thank you. My name is Ziwei.” Little Swallow shielded her behind her back and opened her mouth to roar once more at the guards still pressing forward.