Chapter 7 The Corpse in the Well
In no more than three days, someone from the residence of Duke of Zhenguo came to pay respects.
I had just finished breakfast when Half-Sister strode in, head high. She had dressed with care. Water-red Suzhou embroidery. Rouge from Tianxiang Pavilion. Hairpins and rings chimed all over her. She looked as proud as a crowing rooster.
But she glanced around, saw only me and not Crown Prince, and her sweet smile vanished.
"Wei Wanyue, newly wed, and already keeping an empty room alone." She mocked me, and tossed the letter Father had written down in front of me.
The letter looked like an ordinary family letter. It asked after Crown Princess Your Highness, and so on.
But characters in set places, read together, made a list. It named the servants Duke of Zhenguo had planted in the Eastern Palace and the imperial palace. Fifteen people. Not many. But all of them were trained scouts.
I settled myself and got ready to send people to work. Then I saw Half-Sister watching me with a sneer.
"Tsk, tsk. That mouth of yours used to be so sharp. Now you cannot get out a single word. Your younger sister truly pities you."
I did not open my mouth. Her laugh grew wilder.
"You schemed your way into Crown Princess, and ended up crippled. You still are not fit to be Empress!"
"Father said that once Crown Prince ascends, he will send me into the palace to serve in your place." She lifted her brows, smug. "You had better look after me then."
I smiled, reached out, and gave her two slaps.
Her head was knocked aside. Her hair came loose. The face she had carefully rouged went red in one patch and white in another. She looked a mess.
"You hit me!" She lunged at me, claws out, but Xiao Cui blocked her. "Do not be rude to Your Ladyship."
Half-Sister's eyes went red as she glared at me. After a while she let out a cold laugh.
"Yes. Crown Princess Your Ladyship is truly something."
"But your younger sister heard that someone died in the Eastern Palace again lately?"
"Your Ladyship had better be careful. Do not end up eaten until not even the bones are left!"
She flicked her sleeve and left. She looked as disgusted with me as an aunt.
But she was not wrong. Someone really had died in the Eastern Palace again lately.
I said again because, these two years, people had often vanished strangely in the Eastern Palace.
The dead were mostly servants. There were also daughters of officials, and commoners, who came into the palace for an audience. Men and women both. Without exception, all of them vanished at night.
When they showed up again, they were headless corpses, or only broken arms and leftover limbs. Some did not even leave bones. Only the scent sachets, palace tokens, and such they had carried.
People in the palace said The Emperor was gravely ill, and something evil was at work.
Two days ago, they fished a woman in fine clothes out of a deep well at the southwest corner of the Eastern Palace.
Her face had swollen in the water. Her features were unclear. But her hair was all white. She had to be an old woman.
Disgust filled Crown Prince's eyes. "Which mad old consort ran to the Eastern Palace to seek death."
He ordered them to wrap the corpse in a straw mat and throw it on the unmarked graves.
When the eunuchs lifted the corpse, the old woman's hand hung down.
Stiff. White. Swollen. The right hand was missing three fingers.
I frowned. Lan Zhi seemed to have seen it too. Her face looked strange.
"A Yue, did it scare you?" Crown Prince caught my waist and reached up to stroke my brows and eyes. "Do not look at this filthy thing."
I pretended to be afraid. Inside, I was calm. I had died several times. My nerve had grown.
Strange things in the Eastern Palace were many. None of them was as strange as me dying and starting over, again and again.
I thought that once I found the real Crown Prince, every riddle could come undone.
...
The scouts under Father soon reported back. They said the Eastern Palace really did have a hidden chamber.
It was in Crown Prince's study.