Wiping the tears from her face, Peony slid open the door leading to the corridor, looked both ways, and saw no one. She tiptoed down the corridor. Through the paper-paned walls, she heard courtesans chattering while they bathed and dressed for the night’s festivities. She cringed, anticipating shrill voices calling her name. Miraculously, no summons came. She was free to plot her escape.

She lumbered down a narrow passage and up three steps to the privy, a small shed attached to the house, and slipped inside. The light from a barred window illuminated the cramped room with a hole in the floor. The stench of urine and feces enveloped Peony, but she was blessedly alone. She reached up, removed a loose board from the ceiling, and inserted her hand into the open space under the roof.

After she’d been convicted of theft and sentenced to the pleasure quarter three years ago, she’d continued stealing—money from clients, trinkets from the other women, food from the kitchen. At first she’d hidden the loot in her room, but Minami had found it and beaten her badly.

“You’ll learn your lesson,” he’d said when she pleaded for mercy.

Instead, Peony found a better hiding place in the privy, where no one would stay long enough to inspect the ceiling. Now she pulled out a black lacquer box, one handspan square. Lovingly she caressed the floral design inlaid in mother-of-pearl on the cover. This, stolen from a traveling merchant, was the most beautiful thing she’d acquired since arriving at the Half Moon. Yet the box had less value than what was inside: her passage to liberty.

As she anticipated a life far away from the pleasure quarter, Peony’s excitement invoked the same sensations she always got from stealing. Her heart thudded; her breathing quickened. A thrilling sense of power flooded her. She had known and craved this feeling since childhood, when she’d stolen for the first time—a beautiful doll, taken from a peddler of toys. The pleasure derived from the ill-gotten items was secondary to the joy of stealing. She felt invincible. So had it happened with the prize concealed inside the lacquer box.

One sultry summer night last month, the revelry in the Half Moon had reached its bawdy zenith. Drunken clients sang and clapped to the music of samisen, flute, and drum.

“The river is rising, rising—”

“Lift up your skirts so they don’t get wet!”

Forced to dance for the clients, Peony raised her skirt above her ankles. The other courtesans tittered; the men hooted and yelled. Tears of shame trickled down Peony’s cheeks as she reluctantly hopped, spun, and exposed first her bowed calves, then her heavy thighs.

“Higher! Higher!”