He’d brought her broth again. He fed it to her with a flat-bottomed spoon. It reminded Han Hong of the blue and white porcelain soup set her mother kept at home, under the bed. The thought made her want to cry. She pushed it far away and concentrated on the task at hand.

She leaned forward, rested her forehead against the bars of her cage and parted her lips. If she bent her head down to an awkward angle, she could find the rim of the spoon with her mouth and sip delicately at the soup. She’d been slow in developing her technique. In the beginning, she’d knocked the spoon frequently, spilling its contents and wincing – not from the physical pain but from the emotional distress of wasting her nourishment. But hunger made her resourceful. She’d started to get the hang of it. She remembered the story her father told her, about his time living through the great famine. He and his brothers had taken to the fields, following mice to their burrows. They sought not only to eat the mice but to steal the few precious kernels of grain that the creatures had stored carefully for the winter. That had been a time of great hunger, and her father and his brothers had used their resources to survive. Now was her time to do the same.

Han Hong swallowed a mouthful of broth. It tasted rich, the result of long-simmered pork bones with generous amounts of ginger and spring onion. She detected notes of white pepper and Chinese rice wine. She guessed, from the thin texture, that he was feeding her a master stock, a base broth yet to be turned into a soup.

Oh, to strike out at her captor and spew the hot soup over his face.

The bars of her cage prevented it. She had no choice but to take the small sustenance he offered, use it to build her strength, so that when the opportunity arose she could use it to escape.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. Han Hong leaned forward again and sipped.