The Sack of the Summer Palace

Herbs, tinctures, tisanes-

The retinue drew up on the Summer Palace early the next day, and neither soldiers nor scullions had their noon meal, for the premises must be secured, the winter guard relieved, a disorganized army of opportunist vermin beaten back, and the royal suite, at least, made hospitable for its occupants. Thus, Lin Ben and the other novice boxers were shown the perimeter, the main patrol routes, and the entry points both public and secret; while Chesa was shown the invisible ways, the passages by which a servant might take a dish from kitchen to table, or a used-up sheet from bed to laundry, and not tax the delicate sensibilities of the gentry with her stained clothes or her flushed physiognomy. 

She was also entrusted with the location of the key to the wine cellar, a closely kept secret from all men there present save the royal sommelier. "Why grant me the privilege?" she asked of the Mistress of House, a fit woman in her middle years named Mme Jampa. 

"I need someone who isn't good at anything to fetch wine on short notice," the Mistress of House said with an arch look. "Most of your young friends aren't good at anything either, but they're pretty enough to have caught a brother's eye, and I don't trust their addled heads. But you," she said cheerily, "you look like the kind will die a spinster."

A routine swiftly developed, directed by the Mistress of House with occasional assistance from Colonel Gawang, Marshal of the Summer Guard. Now, both Mistress and Marshal viewed the young men and women in their care as disadvantaged protégés, caught up, through no fault but the exigency of late birth, in a constant war between great Purpose and wayward Nature. Purpose was a force of plain-spoken soldiers in colorless array, where Nature flew bright banners, blew brazen horns, and fought exclusively with pleasing and elegant maneuvers. Yet, though the methods of Purpose were dull and common (that is to say: ceaseless application of the will), the diversity of its strategies was legion, fitted by Heaven to each man or maid; whereas the splendor and variety of Nature reduced, in the end, to feints in aid of the lowest and most ancient objective. Gawang and Mme Jampa were staunchly for Purpose—wherefore shifts were long, duties arduous, and the more seasoned members of each corps, whose blood had cooled with marriage or long years, served as an informal chaperonage. In this environment, so good-heartedly engineered to enervate the young, Lin Ben and Chesa were hard put to lay eyes on one another in the first several weeks of the royal summering. Such frustration only honed Chesa’s interest when the mouse-marked maid, Aditi, came to her with a request for the wine-cellar key.

"Well," Chesa responded, full of the dignity of her charge, "you can hardly expect me to dispense wine to any laundress who comes along."

"Nor would I dream of doing so," said Aditi, "but I am a particular laundress, and I have a particular mission. The King's door-guards thirst, you see."

"I see," said Chesa with a bit of a smirk. "And whose favor is it you wish to curry? Perhaps you will steal the Bear in Winter from Shakti? Or sozzle serious Lin Ben into your arms." 

Aditi laughed pleasantly enough. "I do not know Lin Ben," she said, "and Shakti may keep her bear, well may he warm her. No, the door-guards are a more weathered species than those two. Perhaps you were at the soirée in the catacombs?"

"I was not," said Chesa, with perhaps too strong an effort at nonchalance. "What there transpired?"

"This and that," said Aditi, "but principally this: The King's afternoon guards, Gregarious Lin and the Iron Rhetorician, made a game of lurking in the passages out of the dry cistern where we met, and poaching those of our friends who chose to retire for more intimate conversation. These men of the Green Morning like nothing better than to frustrate their brothers, as they endured frustration in their turn."

"I imagine they seek to avoid becoming uncles," said Chesa.

Aditi waved off the conjecture. "If there are a hundred Green Morning brothers," she said, "then every one of them is uncle to two hundred bastards, and perhaps a few sons by marriage besides. In any case, I care not for their reasons. The point is to provide them some alternative diversion."

"What is amiss with their present one?" said Chesa.

"Oh, come," said Aditi. "First and foremost, you ought to show some solidarity to your generation, for we are the future of Uä and it will not do for us to become parched of good feeling before our time. Secondarily, you ought to consider your own interests; for I think you yourself hanker for discourse á deux, perhaps with a young warrior of a 'serious' turn of mind."

"I'm sure your insinuation eludes me," said Chesa. "In any case, I cannot have the entire domestic corps at once planted with the seeds of bastards; come spring, I shall be the last woman standing in the kitchen."

"Such outcomes may, of course, be prevented with some reliability," said Aditi.

"Yes," said Chesa. “To hear you tell it, Gregarious Lin and the Iron Rhetorician are supremely reliable."

"I mean to say that even the most intimate colloquy need not result in squalling obligation," said Aditi. "Come, do you northmen know no folkways? There are herbs, tinctures, tisanes—sheaths—"

"The Red and White, laundress!" said Chesa, though not without an enjoyable frisson. "Have a care!"

"Very well," said Aditi. "One shall I have, and no more. But, Chesa, now I have two things to offer for your service."

“I suppose you must enumerate them.”

"First, the opportunity to converse uninterrupted with Lin Ben—or any other boxer of requisite seriousness," Aditi amended with a defensive motion of the hands, "And, second, the wherewithal to deepen that conversation to whatever degree desired, without fear of being hobbled with suckling chains."

"Surely," said Chesa, "you cannot hope to sway me with talk of sheaths."

Aditi crossed her arms beneath her breasts and raised a single, eloquent eyebrow.