The perfect mother system

Chapter 8:The Revenge Begins

Three weeks had passed since Kate arrived at the Lu estate.

She had spent those three weeks learning everything there was to learn about the place. Not in an obvious way, not by asking questions that would raise eyebrows or moving through spaces she had not been invited into, but in the quiet steady way that observant people gather information. Through conversations with servants. Through the patterns of the day. Through paying attention to what was said and what was deliberately left unsaid, which was often more informative than anything else.

The estate had a rhythm to it now that had not existed before she arrived. She had not imposed the rhythm. She had simply noticed where things were not working and made small adjustments, the way you adjust a door that does not hang quite right on its hinges. The kitchen ran more efficiently because she had reorganised the morning supply schedule. The outer courtyard was better maintained because she had spoken to the head groundsman not as someone issuing orders but as someone genuinely interested in his work. The junior maids moved through the house with less anxiety because the thing they had all been anxious about for eleven years had been removed on Kate's first afternoon.

The servants respected her.

It was not the careful fearful respect that Madam Chu had demanded and extracted through years of petty authority. It was something quieter and more durable than that. Kate had learned the name of every person who worked in the estate within the first week. She remembered details. She noticed when someone was tired or unwell and adjusted their duties without making a performance of it. She was fair in a place that had not always been fair, and people noticed fairness the way they notice sunlight after a long time indoors.

Xiao Lin had become her shadow.

The girl was seventeen, small and quick with sharp eyes that missed very little. She had been in the Lu estate for two years, brought in as a junior maid and immediately placed under Madam Chu's particular attention, which had meant two years of the worst assignments and the sharpest criticisms and the kind of daily diminishment that was designed to make a person feel like nothing. Kate had noticed her on the first day, had seen the way she flinched at sudden movements and watched doorways when she thought no one was looking.

She had asked for Xiao Lin to be assigned to her personally.

The girl had arrived at Kate's quarters that first morning looking like someone waiting to be told what she had done wrong. Kate had sat her down, given her tea, and spoken to her plainly about what she expected and what she did not. Xiao Lin had listened with wide careful eyes and then, very slowly, the flinching had begun to stop.

By the third week she was following Kate through the estate with the quiet fierce loyalty of someone who had decided that this particular person was worth following anywhere.

It was Xiao Lin that Kate thought of when the system chimed late one night.

Kate was sitting at the small desk in her room, the lamp burning low, going through the household accounts the way she did most evenings. The estate finances were in reasonable order but there were gaps that Madam Chu had created over eleven years of helping herself to what was not hers, and Kate was methodically documenting each one.

The system chimed.

Ding. Mission progress recognised. Host has successfully stabilised the Lu estate domestic environment. New items unlocked in the System Mall.

Kate set down her brush and turned her attention inward.

The mall interface opened the way it always did, familiar now after weeks of occasional use. She scrolled through the existing inventory out of habit and then stopped.

Two new items had appeared at the bottom of the list.

Acne Poison — 80 points. Effects: gradual onset. Causes persistent skin breakouts resistant to common treatments. Disguisable as cosmetic product.

Stink Poison — 80 points. Effects: gradual onset. Causes persistent unpleasant body odour resistant to perfume or bathing. Disguisable as cosmetic product.

Kate read both entries twice.

Then she sat back in her chair and looked at the ceiling for a long moment.

She thought about the morning she had left the General's mansion. Her sister in deep rose silk, laughing with both hands of her maids flanking her. Her stepmother in green, standing with that careful dignified posture, satisfaction sitting openly on her face. She thought about the years of quiet cruelty that the original Kate Chen had endured in that mansion. The things taken from her. The words used against her. The deliberate and consistent work of making her feel like she was less than nothing.

She thought about Mei Chen's voice. You would do well to understand your station.

Kate purchased both items without further deliberation.

Ding. Acne Poison acquired. Ding. Stink Poison acquired. Current balance: 690 points.

She sat forward and began to plan.

The items needed to be disguised as something that would be accepted without suspicion. That was the first requirement. Her sister and stepmother were not unintelligent women. They would not accept something from Kate without examining it, because they knew her well enough to know that she had reason to want revenge, even if they believed she was too weak to act on it.

Which meant the gift could not come from a woman with reason for revenge.

It needed to come from a dutiful and humble sister who had settled into her new life and wanted to share a small piece of her good fortune with the family she had left behind.

Kate called for Xiao Lin.

The girl appeared within minutes, which meant she had been close by, which meant she had been keeping watch the way she had developed a habit of doing in the evenings. Kate looked at her and decided, not for the first time, that she had made a very good choice with this particular person.

She explained what she needed. Not everything. Enough.

A gift box, beautifully wrapped, containing two items presented as rare beauty products from a supplier connected to the Lu estate. A note in Kate's handwriting, warm and sisterly and completely convincing. A courier who could be trusted to deliver it without questions or conversation. The kind of delivery that looked like generosity and nothing else.

Xiao Lin listened without interrupting. When Kate finished she nodded once with the expression of someone who had understood not just the instructions but the intention behind them.

"I know a courier," she said simply. "He is discreet."

"Good," Kate said.

The box was prepared the following morning. Kate wrapped the items herself, tucking them into the kind of beautiful cloth packaging that spoke of care and expense. She wrote the note with deliberate warmth, each word chosen to sound exactly like a younger sister who bore no grudges and wished only well for the family she had come from. She signed it with her name and added a small detail about life at the Lu estate that would make Mei and her stepmother feel that Kate was doing reasonably well but not threateningly well.

Just well enough to be generous.

Xiao Lin dispatched the courier before midday. Kate watched from her window as the package left the estate and then returned to her accounts as though nothing had happened.

She was reviewing the east wing supply records that evening when she heard it.

A merchant had arrived at the outer gate with a delivery of fabric for the household stores. Kate could hear the transaction being handled in the courtyard below her window, the merchant's voice carrying in the still evening air as he spoke with the receiving servant. She was not paying particular attention until she heard him mention, in the casual way that merchants mention things they have heard on the road, that there had been some unusual talk coming from the direction of the General Chen mansion recently.

Kate set down her brush.

The merchant had not elaborated. He had moved on to discussing the quality of the fabric almost immediately, the way people move on from gossip when it is only half formed and they are more interested in completing their transaction. But Kate had heard the pause in the receiving servant's response. The slight uptick of interest that meant the information had registered.

She sat very still and listened.

Nothing more came.

She picked up her brush and looked at the accounts in front of her without seeing them.

The package had only been sent that morning. It was too soon for anything to have happened. The merchant's gossip was something else, something that had been in motion before Kate's gift had even arrived.

Which meant something was already happening at the General's mansion.

Something that had started without her.

She did not know what it was yet. She did not know if it was connected to her or entirely separate, if it was small or significant, if it would help her or complicate things in ways she had not planned for.

She would find out.

She set down her brush, closed the accounts ledger, and looked out the window at the dark courtyard of the Lu estate.

Somewhere across the city, in a mansion where she had never been wanted, something was beginning.

She intended to find out exactly what.