Yongchang, Year 32. Changwu County.
Dawn crept over the streets, painting them pale jade. Snow drifted down in lazy spirals, dampening the red paper couplets pasted to courtyard gates.
The New Year approached, but the county held no festive spirit. Every door was shut tight, every window barred.
From somewhere inside a darkened house came the sound of coughing—low, ragged, desperately stifled.
A child's voice rose in answer. "Mother, I'll go fetch water."
A long pause. Then a woman's voice, thin as paper: "Don't go far."
"I know."
The door groaned open. A girl of eight or nine stepped out, dressed in a sunflower-yellow silk jacket too fine for her circumstances, her red cotton shoes worn through at the toes. She adjusted the felt cap on her head, hefted a wooden bucket, and made her way into the empty street.
Three months had passed since the sickness came to Changwu County. It moved through households like a reaper, relentless. First came the fever. Then the weakness—victims collapsed into their beds, too feeble to rise. Red blotches bloomed across their skin. In the final days, their bodies ulcerated and rotted while they still breathed. The magistrate's men wrapped the corpses in reed mats and hauled them to the eastern grounds to be burned.
Of the five members of the Lu family, only Lu Tong remained on her feet. A nine-year-old girl, alone, tending to her mother, her father, her sister, her brother.
The well stood by the old temple at the eastern gate. Lu Tong walked west instead.
Snowmelt seeped through the hole in her shoe, numbing her foot to the bone. Her face grew paler with every step.
Five or six li through the county, past streets that grew emptier, past residences that grew grander. She rounded a corner and stopped before a vermilion gate flanked by stone lions—a three-courtyard estate that dwarfed everything nearby.
This was the home of County Magistrate Li Maocai.
The plague had hollowed out the county. The only figures on the streets now were yamen runners dragging handcart loads of bodies. The spring couplets on the magistrate's gate were last year's, their black characters blurred by snow and rain.
But beside the gate stood a carriage, sleek and new. A chestnut horse turned to watch her, then bent to nose at the snow in a roadside hollow.
Lu Tong huddled against the stone lion, hugging her knees, staring at the vermilion doors.
Above, dark clouds gathered. The wind picked up, driving thick flurries before it.
The gate creaked open.
A woman emerged. Her white skirts swayed beneath a hem of pale green embroidered shoes, each adorned with a lustrous pearl. The fabric rippled like mist. Above, white silk wrapped her form, and over her face she wore a moli—a moli—that obscured her features entirely.
She took a step forward.
A small hand caught the edge of her skirt.
She paused. Glanced down.
Lu Tong knelt in the snow, fingers clutching the white silk. "Please," she said, her voice small. "Are you the physician who cured the Li family's young master?"
The woman stood motionless. Then, from behind the veil, came a voice like polished jade—cool and resonant, carrying an eerie detachment. "Why do you ask?"
Lu Tong bit her lip. "I've been waiting here a month. The young master's body was never carried out. You're the only stranger who's entered or left that house."
She lifted her head to gaze up at the veiled figure. "You cured him. Didn't you?"
A month ago, Lu Tong had gone to the medicine shop and seen the Li family carriage. Servants had helped a coughing young man inside—the magistrate's only son, the one person Li Maocai would spend any fortune to save.
She had watched. Waited. One day. Two. Three. Twenty days passed, and no white funeral banner appeared.
The sickness always killed within half a month. Yet the young master lived.
The woman looked down at her. Lu Tong could not see her face, could not read her expression. But she heard the amusement in her voice, casual and unhurried. "Yes. I cured him."
Hope seized Lu Tong's chest.
Three months of plague. Every physician in the county had died or fled. No healer dared come near Changwu anymore. Everyone here was waiting to die.
But this woman had saved the magistrate's son.
"Can you cure the plague?" Lu Tong asked, barely daring to breathe.
The woman laughed softly. "I don't cure plagues. I cure poisons. A plague is simply another kind of poison—and any poison can be undone."
Lu Tong did not fully understand. She only knew how to ask the question that mattered. "Will you save my family?"
Silence. The woman's hidden gaze rested on her, weighing, measuring. Lu Tong's heart hammered.
Then: "Very well."
Relief flooded through her—
"But my price," the woman continued, "is steep."
Lu Tong's voice caught. "How... how much?"
"The magistrate paid eight hundred taels of silver for his son's life." The woman's tone was light, almost playful. "How many people in your family, little one?"
Lu Tong stared.
Her father was a teacher at the local academy—unremarkable, already dismissed since falling ill. Her mother took in embroidery work from the general store. They had always been poor. Now, with no income and the endless cost of medicines, with her sister and brother growing sicker by the day...
Eight hundred taels. They could not even muster eight.
The woman laughed again, soft and low, and stepped past her toward the waiting carriage.
Lu Tong watched her go.
In her mind's eye: the cramped room thick with the bitterness of herbal brews. Her mother's tears. Her father's ragged sighs. Her sister's gentle voice trying to comfort. Her brother's forced, cheerful smile.
She scrambled forward. "Miss!"
The woman paused. Did not turn.
Lu Tong's knees hit the snow.
"My family doesn't have that much silver." Her words tumbled out fast, desperate. "But I can sell myself to you. I can work—I can do all kinds of labor. I'm strong, I endure hardship well—"
She held out her hands, palms up. They were small, pale, childish—but callused at the bases of her fingers. "I do all the chores at home. I can do anything. Please, miss, save my family. I'll serve you for the rest of my life. I'll work like an ox, like a horse—anything—"
Her felt cap had fallen off. Her forehead pressed to the frozen ground, the cold seeping into her skin. Above, the northern wind buffeted the lanterns hanging from the eaves, making them sway.
A long silence.
Then the woman spoke. "Sell yourself to me?"
"I know I'm not worth that much silver." Lu Tong's voice cracked. "But I can do anything. Anything at all..."
Hands lifted her from the snow.
"If you become my servant," the woman said slowly, "you will suffer. Do you understand? You will suffer a great deal. Will you regret it?"
Lu Tong shook her head. "No."
"Good."
The woman bent to retrieve the fallen cap. She placed it back on Lu Tong's head with surprising gentleness, adjusting it just so.
"I will save your family," she said. "And you will come with me. Agreed?"
Lu Tong looked up at her. Nodded.
"What a good child."
The woman took her hand. Her grip was cool and firm.
"Then we have a bargain."