The Cicada Knows Neither Spring Nor Autumn - Chapter 1

The ninth year of Chongning, on the night of the fifteenth day of the seventh month.

I first met Little Dog in Qiyun Palace. I had gone there to secretly burn paper offerings for my parents.

The flame had barely caught when I saw something black moving in a corner.

Qiyun Palace had stood abandoned for years. Long ago, the Noble Consort had been confined there for a time.

Thinking it was a stray dog, I went closer, ready to toss it a pastry. Only then did I discover that the figure curled against the wall was a filthy child.

He snatched the osmanthus cake from my hand and stuffed it into his mouth. His coarse clothes were in rags. The half of one arm left bare was covered in wounds, and blood darkened his temple.

I had always survived the palace by being cautious. I wanted no trouble. Yet the child before me was so thin and pitiful that, after a moment’s hesitation, I could not make myself walk away.

I set the entire oiled-paper packet of cakes before him.

“Slow down. They are all yours.”

He kept cramming them down, swallowing without chewing. Soon he began to cough violently. I hurried to pat his back, only to hear a muffled grunt.

His narrow back was covered in lash marks as well. Blood slowly seeped through his clothes.

I asked his name. He ignored me and continued eating.

“Did some lady of the harem cast you aside here?”

He said nothing.

“If you will not tell me,” I said sternly, “I shall give you any name I please. Do not regret it when I start calling you Little Cat or Little Dog.”

I took a few scraps of silver from inside my robe, intending to leave them and go. He suddenly sprang to his feet. Something hidden among his clothes struck together with a clear chime.

His pitch-black eyes fixed on me with an unsettling intensity.

“Fine. Call me Little Dog.”

I frowned, remembering the flash of green I had just glimpsed.

“I was joking. That is no proper name. I had better—”

“Why is it improper?”

A sneer crossed his face.

“I am the bastard born from a palace maid and a eunuch who fornicated before entering the palace. They hid me here after I was born, where I would never see the light of day.”

The bastard born from a palace maid and a eunuch who fornicated before entering the palace.

I was still turning those words over when I lost myself in thought and struck my leg against a stone stool. I hissed in pain.

Little Dog looked up from his book. “Li Jiao, what is wrong with you?”

I glared at him.

“I have told you hundreds of times to call me Qiuchan inside the palace. Palace maids do not have names of their own. What if someone hears you?”

Little Dog raised a brow. “There is not even a ghost in Qiyun Palace. Who could hear?”

Without my noticing, nine autumns had passed since I met him.

I had told him that I was a maid serving the Noble Consort and that my name was Qiuchan. After some thought, I had also given him the name I bore before entering the palace: Li Jiao.

Little Dog told me nothing about himself beyond that first claim about being the illicit child of a maid and a eunuch.

He had already been eight when we met, though he looked no more than five or six. Afterward, I slipped into Qiyun Palace almost every other day to bring him food and medicine.

Later, he saw me writing a letter and begged me to teach him to read. I often read him historical tales or explained the statecraft in *Essentials of Peaceful Governance*.

He was clever. Over the years he shot up until he stood more than a head taller than I did. The aloof, sinister air he had worn at first seldom appeared anymore. Little by little, he seemed more human.

I was always telling him to smile more, so people would like him. In time, he truly did begin to wear a smile often. At last, he looked a little like someone his age.

Sometimes, when I looked at him, I felt the satisfaction of having tamed a feral dog.

But he did not obey me in everything. Not now, for instance.

Without asking, Little Dog pressed a hand to my knee. The pain made me shove him away.

“What are you doing?”

“Quiet.” He gently lifted my trouser leg and exposed the bruises covering my knee. Lowering his eyes, he asked, “How did this happen?”

“It is nothing.” I pushed his hand away. “Children should not interfere in adult affairs.”

I remembered Biyun strutting before me that morning and felt nothing at all.

Biyun and I were both senior maids in Consort Li’s palace. I had entered the palace at ten. Once I learned the rules, I had served at Consort Li’s side ever since.

Her assessment of me was simple: dull and honest, with the occasional spark of cleverness.

Biyun was different. Consort Li had brought her from her natal household. She entered the palace as a senior maid, then watched me rise from the lowest rank of sweeper until I stood as her equal. Naturally, she resented me.

A few days earlier, the Emperor had personally appointed Consort Li to assist the Empress with the preparations for his birthday celebration. The moment Consort Li returned, she placed me in charge.

It was a lucrative assignment.

Biyun endured it for several days before finding an opportunity to denounce me. She claimed that, when the Emperor visited Jiyue Palace, I kept looking around as though I meant to climb into his bed and transform myself from a sparrow into a phoenix.

Beautiful, willful Consort Li had enjoyed the Emperor’s favor for years. Yet she had never borne a child, which made her chronically suspicious.

After all, I had become a senior maid at Jiyue Palace because my “little cleverness” had helped Consort Li please the Emperor more than once.

She did not truly believe Biyun, but she still ordered me to kneel on the stone steps outside the palace gates for three hours as a mild warning.

In my fifteen years inside the palace, I had been beaten and punished too many times to count. Even when my legs went numb with pain and my face showed timid fear, my thoughts remained cold.

Of course I knew the Emperor’s every habit and preference.

I had spent every day since entering the palace watching him.