Inside, it was all wine and music and easy pleasure—a different world from outside. The exhibition had not yet begun, yet the moment she entered she could see others already seated in the rooms above.
They were like the small private booths of a wine house, curtained off so that nothing within could be seen.
She scanned the crowded floor below until she found a gap—a seat she could slip into.
She threaded her way through no small number of people to reach it.
The people here all kept their heads down, as if afraid anyone should learn what they had come to do.
She did the same. When she reached her seat she saw, laid on the table, a mask.
The mask was dark brown, carved with what must be a dragon. Murong Qing guessed it was what the lowest-ranking visitors here wore.
She thought no more of it, put it on, and sat.
—
She seemed to be the last to arrive.
Before long the auction began, and the one presiding appeared to be the very man who had escorted her in.
Though the mask on his face had been changed, his stance and the gestures of his hands gave him away as the same attendant.
"Honored guests, welcome. The women presented today have all entered contract freely, registered and on record. The highest bidder wins; the gavel falls and the matter is settled. No returns, ever. Once bought, rights and duties are clear: life and death, honor and disgrace, all follow the master of the house."
What treasures? Murong Qing propped her chin in her hand and watched.
But the men who came here were hardly going to quibble. They thought only of how to spend their appetites.
The room sank into stillness. From the corner of her eye Murong Qing glimpsed that the curtains of the boxes above had all been drawn fully open; everyone up there wore a mask, and no one could tell who was who.
Only, those masks had to belong to men of the highest privilege—gold inlay, throwing off a faint glint whenever the light touched them.
She felt only disgust. She waited until the introductions were done and the gavel had fallen, and then the carved double doors at both sides swung slowly open.
Women in exquisite dress filed through, eyes lowered—yet none dared lower their heads completely.
Because what these men were choosing was precisely their faces.
Murong Qing tapped the table, uninterested. Her gaze drifted, half without her meaning it, to the man beside her—and his eyes trembled slightly. Unlike everyone around them.
"Friend?"
"Hm?" The man looked at her, puzzled. Without so much as a glance at the women, she had guessed: "You're new here?"
Murong Qing nodded. "Of course. I've heard the beauties here are beyond counting. I've had my fill of the plain-faced nag at home, so I've come out to enjoy myself."
She finished, and all but hawked and spat on the floor like the others.
The man laughed. "If that's how you talk, friend, you've clearly been waiting a long while. But don't worry—this is only the first batch. The early lots are the plainer ones. Later... that's when the gentlemen up top will start using the power in their hands to fight over them."
Murong Qing played ignorant and asked back, "You don't mean the men up there are officials?"
At that the man hushed her at once.
"Never speak of such things here. Everyone wears a mask to hide who they are—and those on the dais least of all can be guessed at. If the wrong ears catch you... you'll die a very ugly death!"
She understood immediately and stopped asking.
She committed it all to memory. What she needed, most likely, was to investigate the men on the dais—but pressing further now would do no good.
All she could do was wait for this business to pass.
She cared nothing for the rest of it.
Until—
The presiding man announced that the women to come were the finest of all, beauties beyond compare. These, then, were the lots reserved for the men on the dais.
The silent watchers above began to bid, falling over one another to speak.
Murong Qing could scarcely believe what their faces might look like—but she could guess well enough.
She pricked up her ears, marking how each man spoke, the state of his voice. Later, perhaps, she could reconstruct something from that alone.
—
When the auction ended, the crowd dispersed through the lower floor, and no one could go up. Murong Qing had no way to pass word out. She had to find some way to reach the place of the men on the dais and see for herself.
Just then her eyes settled on someone behind a curtain—and she remembered that this one had taken no part in any of it, and had not yet left.
She made herself look over without curiosity, careful not to invite trouble.
"Mr. Wu, a moment! Please stay!"
"Hm? What is it?" Murong Qing had been about to leave.
Hailed so suddenly, she thought her identity had been discovered, and her heart began to mutter. Only when she heard it was someone from the dais above summoning her did she nearly freeze on the spot.
"Who is it?"
"You'll have to come up to find out."
Fine. Mule or horse, you find out by leading it out into the open.
And what if it was a good man, after all?
Then again—she turned the thought over—were there good men in a place like this?
Murong Qing followed her guide up through a separate hidden passage, deliberately winding a long way round. She nearly lost her bearings, but made herself memorize the route.
Yet the moment her foot touched the stone step at the top, she nearly stopped dead—because the man at the very top had been waiting for her all along. Judging by his height...
A name rose quickly in Murong Qing's mind. She couldn't be sure—and though the two of them were at odds, she refused, in the end, to believe he would be in a place like this.
"Let her come up!"
"Yes, my lord."
The man made a gesture of invitation, positioning himself so that Murong Qing was bracketed between them.
There was no question of not going up now. Going up was the only correct move.
Her breathing eased down several notches.
Every step out was a step on the edge of a knife. At the last stair below this man she stopped and bowed:
"You summoned me, my lord. What is your business?"
The man behind had already withdrawn—so the "lord" before her changed his expression at once, urgency threading his voice: "Why have you come to this place?"
Murong Qing answered with perfect calm, "For the women, naturally."
"MURONG QING!"
He said her name in a voice pitched for two people's ears only.
She looked up at him, and her composure nearly cracked. Lest this be some trap, she shook her head at once in denial. "My surname is Wu. I am no 'Murong Qing' of your lordship's acquaintance—and besides, isn't Murong Qing a woman's name?"
Without a moment's hesitation the man seized her hand and pulled her into the box. Inside, all was quiet; beneath the din rising from below, Murong Qing could hear nothing but her own heart, pounding and pounding.
She still had no intention of revealing herself.
"Did the Court of Judicial Review send you here alone, or is it Shangguan Jin?" He drew the curtain fully closed.
He paused. Seeing her still inclined to deny it, he deliberately removed his own mask—and a handsome, familiar face appeared before Murong Qing.
Now she could be certain: it was someone she knew.
Also the one person she had no wish to see.
After a long moment she said, "And what manner of question is that, young master Jiang? Are we to have the Jinwu Guard meddling in our investigations now?"