EVERY EVENING, FILTHY boots appeared in the elegant hallways of Primstone Manor. Riding boots, dueling boots, dancing boots. Boots made of bull hide and boots made of snakeskin, boots with glass buttons and boots with silk flowers.
But they all looked like mud clots and dung stains to Ji—because it was his job to clean them.
When he’d been hired as a boot boy three years earlier, his mother had beamed. “We’re so proud of you, Ginaro!”
“I’m Jiyong,” he’d reminded her. He was the youngest of fourteen kids, and his mother only called him the right name by accident.
“You lucky brat!” his third-oldest brother had said, punching his arm. “Just think, you’re wiping mud from noble boots!”
“Yeah, what an honor,” he’d muttered.
His oldest sister had ruffled his hair. “If you work hard and never talk back, maybe one day you’ll become a footman! Or even a butler!”
Ji hadn’t told her that getting promoted from boot boy to footman didn’t sound so great. Either way, you were still down around the toes. And even though butlers ruled the servants, Ji didn’t want to buttle. Sure, he was only thirteen now, but he already knew there was more to life than buttling.
And there was more to life than filthy footwear, too.
Ji rubbed his aching neck and peered down the elegant hallway. Paper lanterns dangled from the ceiling and a painting of the Summer Queen hung over a flower vase, but he barely saw them. Instead, he focused on the rows of dirty boots slumped outside the bedroom doors.
He trudged along, collecting pair after pair. Dozens of wellborn guests were staying at Primstone Manor, which meant ten times as much work for him. They’d come from the city to enjoy the rolling hills, the soothing streams . . . the swan poop.
Ji smelled them before he saw them: a pair of dainty boots smeared with green-black slime. One of the guests must’ve stepped in a pile of swan droppings . . . and slid. Wrinkling his nose, he reached for the boots. They were made of calfskin, with silver baubles shimmering on chains at the ankles, and they reeked.
“Yech,” he muttered, stuffing them into the “extra gross” section of his boot bag.
He’d get a beating if he tracked that stench through the house, so he opened a discreet door in the wood paneling and slipped into a gloomy passage that ran between the walls. Primstone Manor was honeycombed with cramped corridors and stairways, so servants could get around without bothering their betters.
Ji nodded to a chambermaid but didn’t say anything—no one was allowed to speak in the passages—then picked his way down the stairs that plunged into the bowels of the manor.
Below the ground floor, the respectful hush of the upper house turned into a raucous clamor. A visiting nursemaid played cards with three footmen near the rice-wine cellar, and a valet wept to a laundress at the side door. In the kitchen, cleavers chopped, fires crackled, and a scullery maid mashed refried beans.
The hubbub reminded Ji of the old days, when his whole family lived at the same hacienda. He’d missed that sometimes, when he’d first come to Primstone Manor. But everyone knew that servants’ younger kids didn’t stay with their parents for long. At ten or eleven, they were sent to work elsewhere: there was no reason to cry about it.
Ji scurried through the chaos. Cook snapped at an under-cook, who snarled at a kitchen maid. Someone cuffed Ji’s head, but he didn’t stop to see who—or why. He just slipped into the next room.
The scullery was normally used for dishwashing and laundry but served as an extra kitchen when guests came. With all the copper tubs and washing drums shoved against the wall to make room for cooking, Ji had to crawl beneath a trestle table to reach the chimney, the cramped alcove where he worked and slept.
Once inside, he stood to a hunch. The chimney was an abandoned hearth, deep enough to roast a boar. The stone walls were stained with soot, the floor was black with grease, and the ceiling sloped just above Ji’s bowed head.
Still, after staying there for three years, it felt like home.
He sat at his workbench and kicked off his shoes, a pair of crude sandals with leather strips. He eyed his brushes and rags, polish and oil, needles and thread. Then he reached for his second-most-prized possession, a tin box overflowing with shoe decorations: laces, buttons, beads, clips, bangles, and pins.
“Hey, Ji!” Sally’s voice called from the scullery. “Are you in there?”
“No,” he called back.
She crawled into the chimney. “Can I sleep here again?”
“Sure.” Ji frowned at her bloody lip. “You got in another fight?”
“It wasn’t a fight.” Sally wiped her mouth. “It was a duel of honor.”
“Against who? Big Min?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it wasn’t a duel either—it was you getting stomped.”
Sally flopped onto the pile of rags where she slept when she needed to get away from the stables. “He cheated at dice.”
“Who cares? You don’t play for real money.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s the principle that counts.”
“He’s twice your size, Sal.”
She was smaller than Ji, and lighter skinned, with wild curly hair. Everyone had expected her to become a maid like her mothers, but instead, she’d snuck into the stables every morning for months to muck out the stalls. After the grooms got tired of chasing her away, the stablemaster hired her.
“You can’t let that stop you,” she said.
“Of course I could,” Ji told her. “And I would’ve, too.”
“I don’t like cheaters,” she said.
“And yet I’m your best friend.”
“You’re more of a thief than a cheater.” Sally wiped her mouth again, then looked at the dirty boots. “Is that your last bunch tonight?”
“Nah,” Ji told her. “There’s at least two more.”
“Did you find . . .” She wrinkled her nose. “Anything valuable?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, good!”
Ji frowned. “What do you mean, ‘good’?”
“Well . . .” Sally lifted one shoulder. “I’m kind of hoping you won’t find anything.”
“You need me to find something.”
“And I want you to,” Sally told him. “I’m just hoping you don’t.”
Ji looked up at her. “You’re doolally.”
“Roz says I’m conflicted.”
Ji gaped at her. “You told Rozario?”
“Yes?” Sally said, in a little voice.
“About this?” Ji gestured angrily. “You told her what we’re doing?”
“Only because she asked!”
“If someone asks, you’re supposed to lie.”
Sally glared. “You know I’m not good at lying.”
“Lying is easy! Just think about the truth and say literally anything else.”
“You said you trust Roz.”
“I do, but—”
“You said she’s the smartest person you know.”
“She’s the only smart person I know,” Ji snapped.
He turned away from Sally and cleaned a pair of knee boots, scrubbing extra hard so she’d know he was mad. Though he wasn’t that mad, not really. More like terrified. If Butler found out that Ji was stealing boot ornaments, he’d be sent to the gallows. He’d watched a hanging once, and he still saw the woman’s bare feet kicking in his nightmares. Sometimes, he dreamed that it was him hanging from his neck; then he’d wake up in a sweat, gulping for breath.
After finishing the knee boots, he looked at Sally. “What does ‘conflicted’ mean?”
“That’s what I asked Roz,” Sally said, half buried in rags. “It means that I disagree with myself. Like, I want you to find valuable stuff, but I also don’t want you to.”
“That’s not conflicted,” Ji said. “That’s cactus brained.”
Sally toyed with her leather bracelet. “You know I hate stealing.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” Sally admitted.
“Anyway, you’re not stealing,” Ji told her. “I’m stealing.”
“And if they catch you,” Sally said, a stubborn glint in her eyes, “I’ll tell them why you’re stealing.”
“That’s stupid,” he said. “You’d just get yourself hanged, too.”
“I don’t care.”
“What would happen to your brother then?”
She glowered at him and didn’t answer. She knew that if she were hanged, her little brother wouldn’t have a tiny sliver of a ghost of a chance of living to his next birthday.