Havoc in Heaven, Concession Directors

Onstage, "Magu Offers Birthday Blessings" had just finished a passage when the gongs and drums quickened, and the performance switched to "Havoc in Heaven."

At that moment, jade pendants chimed and fragrant breezes drifted through the corridor beside the main hall.

Su Zhengze's concubines had finally appeared.

Leading them, naturally, was Huang, the principal wife.

Huang was nearly fifty. Though she had taken good care of herself, her face had begun to grow fleshy, and her slanting brows and triangular eyes gave her a mean look.

Today she wore a bright-red qipao embroidered with golden peonies. A strand of eastern pearls the size of lotus seeds hung around her neck. Handkerchief in hand, she strode with her head high and chest out, looking less like she had come to watch opera than an empress dowager on tour.

Behind her came the second through sixth concubines, each dressed to the nines. Some wore Suzhou-embroidered brocade, others Western furs, and they carried round fans of every kind. Though they kept their eyes lowered, their gazes kept drifting toward the honored guests below the stage, eager to see who had come today.

Last came the seventh concubine, Qin Xiu.

Unlike the brightly dressed women ahead of her, Qin Xiu wore an understated lake-green qipao of Hangzhou silk, embroidered with only a few delicate sprigs of winter plum.

Her hair was simply pinned in a bun with a jade hairpin.

Head lowered and expression cool, she seemed out of place amid the bustle of the Su Residence courtyard, like a secluded orchid growing in a corner by the wall.

On Qin Xiu's wrist was a somewhat worn women's watch, the cheap one her nephew Qin Geng had bought her a few months earlier, when he was still a rickshaw puller.

Amid all the glittering