The Last Concubine

and still get what he wanted consumed Hüi’s brain. All his life he had punctiliously made his responsibility to the emperor his first priority—now his entire being cried to him to grab what he wanted! He realized that before this, doing his duty had been easy. Lying with women had been a pleasurable diversion in his busy schedule; making love to Lan’xiu was a sublime experience, one he feared he might never tire of.
    It was not that the act of a man loving a man was thought to be immoral in his society. Taking a male lover if he so chose, seeing as he had discharged his duties to emperor and ancestors by siring male children to carry his name forward, would occasion no censure or even comment. In fact, for the first time, it dawned on Hüi that many might well believe he had taken Jiang as a lover, for they were often together.
    But the exigencies of his life might not permit him to do just as he liked without consideration of his responsibilities. He had always been a private man, and flaunting a male lover was not like him. It would give his enemies ammunition and another avenue of vulnerability to pursue. Besides, it seemed that Lan’xiu preferred to dress and live as a woman, although Hüi did not understand that impulse at all. That in itself created what seemed an insurmountable difficulty.
    Happiness drained away from Hüi Wei, and he groaned in misery. What he ought to do is carry out Lan’xiu’s wish and send him to live in a monastery.
    “One cannot fall in love in a single night!” he cried out in rebuke of himself. “You are infatuated, nothing more. This isn’t real. It will pass.”
    But he knew that was not true. The arrival of Lan’xiu had proved more momentous than even his brother, Wu Min, could have hoped. Taking Lan’xiu had thrown Hüi Wei’s entire life into turmoil, and for the first time, his future was not clear to him. He did not know what to do.
     
     
    C APTAIN W EN was waiting impatiently for his rotation assignment as commander of the household guard to come to an end so he could once again take up the real work of a soldier. Guarding the harem was not precisely challenging work. Located within a fortress city, within the walls that surrounded the palace of General Qiang, within yet another set of walls made of stone and barred with iron, it would have taken a determined man and an army to make it within to carry off any of the wives, who presumably would have proved an unwilling hostage and therefore not easy to handle.
    Seeing as no outsider ever received permission to see the concubines, there could be nothing to motivate such an attack, unless an enemy sought to undo the general with emotional distress. Captain Wen permitted himself a small smile at the thought. General Hüi Wei was a disciplined man, a hardened soldier. He couldn’t imagine the man would show distress even if one of his wives was to be killed. To watch him enter the walls of the household, one would have thought he was there to inspect the barracks. Besides, there were easier ways to get his attention than through the wives.
    Being as he was captain of the guard, Wen knew the true reason his men were stationed there. It was not so much to keep people out as to keep the people inside in . In particular, they were there to keep Second Wife from escaping or hurting any of the other women.
    Being a careful man, Captain Wen had made his observations of Second Wife in the spirit of knowing his enemy. For his taste, her beauty was too obvious, but he had noticed that some of his men were susceptible to the sexual snares she set for them. When Lord Jiang had posted Wen, he had suggested strongly that he change the men’s assignments weekly so that none would have time to fall under Second Wife’s spell and possibly be lured into complicity to enable one of her plots. It puzzled Wen that his men did not respond to the sweeter beauty of some of the other wives, but instead were entranced by the unstable but fascinating Second Wife.
    Therefore Wen found Jiang’s advice to be wise and followed it. To his credit, Second Wife’s schemes had been frustrated at almost every turn, but he found it fatiguing to always try to anticipate the machinations of a woman with nothing but revenge to occupy her clever brain and many empty hours to fill. Wen would welcome a posting to a front line somewhere after this. He needed a nice, relaxing war for a holiday.
    He was usually up before dawn, patrolling the square for