Page 58 of The Cinders

‘Some of them nobles have a taste for such things.’

Those within earshot laughed far too hard and heartily.Lim drew blood from his tongue where he clamped his teeth to stop from speaking up.Despite the coolness of the day, he had worked up a sweat in the press of bodies, and his thigh felt bruised by how often the slipper, in a dark leather pouch dangling from his waist, poked into him.

A young woman cradling a basket of goose eggs turned, eyes narrowed in angry protest.

‘Watch yourself there’ she cried over the din of the crowd, her eyes darted down low on his body, and Lim wanted to shrink down to nothing when he realised she too had felt the poke of the slipper; but mistook it for an aroused body part misbehaving itself.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he muttered.

Lim shuffled to one side, but only barely so.He’d not risk losing his place; only three people deep from the gates and two harried guards.

As the woman turned away, clucking her tongue in annoyance, she shifted her basket against her hip, raising a freed hand to brush her hair from her face.Lim stared at the token she held; an enlarged wooden coin, whose markings he couldn’t make out, save for the three holes punctured around its central point.The coin was not the first one he’d seen; another fellow had tapped his against his teeth impatiently, and an older woman had hers tucked into the crossover fold of her jacket.

He was shoved forward, now only the young woman with the goose eggs ahead of him.

She handed the nearest guard her token, which he flipped over once in his hand before returning it.

‘Go on.’He jerked the tip of his spear.‘Move along.’

Lim hissed beneath his breath.Surely Ren must have known a token was needed to enter?Had Lim misjudged the man so badly?

Another shove, and he was face-to-face with the sullen, impatient guard whose sour breath scorched Lim’s face.

‘Token.Now.Hurry it up.’

Pressure built at Lim’s back as the sweep of the crowd was interrupted by his hesitation.His heart sought to punch a hole in his chest.

‘I don’t…I haven’t…’

‘Hurry up!’The second guard used the blunt end of his spear to knock at the back of Lim’s legs.

‘Oh, careful there.’Lim jumped, and the hessian draped over the lotus seeds slipped free; drifting to the ground.Suddenly, Master Ren’s words came to him, and Lim shouted over the crowd to be heard.

‘Master Ren…I come at Master Ren’s behest…will you have a lotus seed?’

The guard withdrew the spear, his eyes fixed on the glistening seeds; nestled in the bucket like pearls fresh from the oyster.

‘Give me one.Why did you not speak up earlier, man?Won’t do to keep these from Xinling.She’ll be waiting on them in the kitchens.’

Lim stayed silent as both guards took a seed, popping it into their mouths.One rolled his eyes and uttered a soft groan, whilst the other grinned as he crunched down noisily.

‘Go on then, and don’t delay, man.’

To Lim’s utter astonishment, the guards stepped back, yelling at the crowd behind to stop their pushing, lest the bucket be upset from Lim’s arms.With the swell of unhappy merchants behind him, Lim nodded at the guards before launching into a quick step before they changed their minds.

He’d gone only a few steps when the shout came.‘Wait!Go no further.’

Lim’s burdened heart suffered another frantic burst of beats.He turned slowly, certain he’d find the spear points aimed at his throat.

‘You forgot this.’The guard strode up to him and laid the hessian cloth back over the seeds.‘It’s clean, I’ve checked it over.Here you go.Be careful now, straight to the kitchens with you.’

Lim bowed, low as he dared with his bucket, and moved deeper into Mandarin Feng’s palace.

Feng had chosen the siheyuan style, of course, as did most in the more sophisticated cities of the Middle Kingdom; mimicking the ways of Beijing where the courtyard houses originated.Lim wasn’t overly fond of the design; he thought all the surrounding walls, maze-like pathways, and hemmed-in buildings too suffocating.But he did enjoy the gardens of the siheyuan; the grand spectacle of those planted in the inner courtyard, the peacefulness of those in the Spirit Hall where the ancestors rested, and the seclusion to be found in the hidden places in between buildings in the larger siheyuan.

Like that sunken garden in Kunming, where a prince had once spoken quietly with his beloved carp.The same place a cold-hearted fiend had pulled the fish from the water, and left a man bereft.

‘Out of the way, stop staring at the clouds!’