Chapter 13
DAYS
Terren’s nights with me infuriated the other concubines. Everywhere I went in the Inner Court, I was met with tense smiles, whispered comments, and probing remarks.
It was not hard to guess why. The prince’s choice to summon me exclusively had robbed them all of what they had come here for.
During my month in the palace, I had come to learn what favors a concubine could pull in a prince’s bedchamber.
Ministerial positions given to fathers, money sent home to mothers, a brother promoted or an uncle pardoned.
I had even heard the legend of Wang Li, who had snuck into an enemy state during the War of the Seasons, attended that state’s selection, and become consort to its king.
After gaining his favor, she had charmed him into ending the invasion of her homeland.
“The only one he ever calls on is you,” Liru Syra reminded me during tea in the mornings. “You must feel very lucky.” Her words were kind, but she spoke in the same tone Aunt Lien did, the year Asori got into school and her own son didn’t.
Noble Consort Kang, during our afternoon strolls in the Palisade Garden, kept bringing up the fact that I was the only one the prince had chosen for himself. “Everybody else was chosen by the empress, Lady Yin. Surely that means he loves you dearly.”
“How did you charm him?” Xu Mie demanded one night. The concubines had gathered together on a candlelit evening to embroider. Mie’s fingers moved deftly as she wove an ibis flying over a misty mountain. “You must tell us your secrets.”
I kept my eyes on my own embroidery and whispered that I did not know. I was hoping the conversation would end as soon as possible. Every time I paused to think about Prince Terren, or his tower, or the knives on the ceiling, my head would not stop throbbing.
But later that week, when Sun Jia asked me that same question, I looked her hard in the eye.
“Perhaps it is because he likes farmers. Perhaps it is because our prince values hard work and strong arms. Perhaps it is because even a future emperor is not above enjoying a bowl of fresh-steamed rice.” With Jia, I seemed unable to help myself.
During the days, Hesin held court on the prince’s behalf in the Hall of Divine Harmony.
All of his concubines were expected to attend.
While Hesin discussed with distinguished guests affairs pertaining to the Outer Court, we would stand neatly by the white lily walls like decorative vases.
During breaks we sang for them, played our instruments, and danced using fans water-brushed with azaleas.
The other girls did everything they could to humiliate me.
Sometimes, when it came my turn to serve tea, they tripped me.
Sometimes I would find my fan painted with rats instead of flowers.
Sometimes when I picked up my erhu—a pear-shaped instrument that I was only beginning to learn—I would find the bow frayed or a string broken.
“The future of Tensha’s imperial family,” one of Hesin’s guests would exclaim, “in the hands of one who would bring a broken erhu to court!”
“That hideous, clumsy woman,” another would cry. “Is she truly our prince’s betrothed? How doomed shall we be if she becomes empress!”
They said things they would never dare to someone like Sun Jia or even Jin Veris.
If Hesin noticed I was being targeted, he said nothing in my defense. He only bowed politely to his guests. “This unworthy servant is most sorry for your troubles. I will bring up your concerns to the prince—and see to it that Lady Yin corrects her behavior.”
Ciyi told me, during our twilight lessons in my bedchamber, what the concubines were hoping to accomplish. “If the prince’s political allies hated you enough, Lady Yin, it would force him to choose a different wife. Even somebody as powerful as our prince is not immune to political pressure.”
Political pressure. I had only a vague idea of what it meant, knowing little of the men’s side of the court. Even so, the thought of anything pressuring Terren seemed absurd.
I do what I please, he had said to Prince Maro, so matter-of-factly. I am the rightful heir.
Still, I was careful. I had not forgotten Terren’s threats from the first night. How if I escaped or got out of our betrothal, I would be killed. If the concubines somehow did manage to depose me, I was under little illusion that Terren would show me mercy.
So I did what I could to survive. I bore the humiliation at court as silently as I did Terren’s nightly torture.
I apologized for spilling tea on the guests and breaking the instruments, for being a source of shame to the Azalea House.
On days there was no court, I stayed far from the other concubines.
I did not join them when they gossiped under the summer sun or on strolls through the Palisade Garden.
When I felt compelled to accept their invitations—to take tea under the magnolia trees, to feed the carp, to work on embroidery—I made sure to stay only where there were guards or eunuchs to keep watch.
Some days, I wondered if I should have punished my poisoner like Ciyi said.
If Terren was a tiger who displayed its fangs bare, if the other concubines were coiled serpents waiting to ambush me, then Empress Sun was a spider, spinning careful webs to trap me.
“She might be our emperor’s wife,” Ciyi warned me, “but she is also the matriarch of the Sun Clan, the greatest of the Great Clans.” He explained to me how Sun men were stationed everywhere in the capital, occupying various positions of power.
The most illustrious of them might have been governors and generals, but even the minor clansmen served as managers or capital officials.
“As for the Sun Clan women, many have been favored consorts or empresses in eras past. So be wary of the empress. She desperately wants her niece in your position, to carry on her clan’s legacy. ”
The empress, however, was impossible to avoid. As Mother of the Inner Court, she held no shortage of gatherings for all of us. “Being a concubine is meant to be an extravagant affair,” she would say grandly. “We ought to all be having the time of our lives!”
As concubines, we were not permitted to leave the palace, so the empress had guests brought to us.
She hired hoop-dancers from East Hu, sword swallowers from the coast, and traveling minstrels from Duerlong.
She invited renowned poets from the capital, who wept as they recited ballads about lovers losing each other in the darkness.
Once, she even brought in two snake handlers from the desert.
They placed a knot of mean vipers in a fenced-in arena and had them fight to their deaths before our eyes.
It was an ugly form of entertainment, but everyone laughed anyway, because the empress had laughed first.
During one of the feasts she held—for no other occasion than to celebrate the waxing of the moon—she had me sit immediately beside her.
“I do not like goji berries,” she told me.
Her servants had laid out rice cakes, to go with clear wine, and Empress Sun picked at them relentlessly. With sharp nails, she scooped out the orange berries one by one, until they lay in a mushy pile at the base of her plate.
Nobody was paying us any attention. In the background, the concubines were chatting among themselves about two handsome dignitaries at court earlier. One of the older girls, Wu Zhao, was joking with a guard stationed by the door.
I had no idea what to do with the empress’s information, so I remained silent. Once again, I had the feeling of being a deer trying to hide a limp.
“Here, try some. See if it isn’t better without them.”
She handed me one of the rice cakes, pocked where she’d dug out the berries with her nails. I had no choice but to reach for it. When I did, she grabbed my wrist without warning and held it high in the air. My loose sleeve slid to my elbow, and her eyes scoured my skin as if checking for cuts.
There had been a cut. Several of them, truthfully, made over the many nights of torment. But there was no trace of them left. Terren had mended them all.
A few weeks later, Empress Sun brought in an opera performer and twelve accompanists, and again had me sit near her.
We watched the performance from the shadowed rear of the Hall of Even Temperaments.
The opera singer’s face was painted paper-white, the lids of her eyes red as cranberries.
Her hair was wrapped in a bejeweled headpiece twice the size of her head, which glittered under the spotlight as she danced.
“Pity the fish confined to its pond,” she sang.
As the other concubines admired the skit, the empress leaned in close to me. “Did you know that if Terren died, all his concubines would get to go free?”
My heart leapt to my throat. I did know this, of course, but I did not like it coming from the empress’s mouth. Her tone was casual, but her gaze was probing.
“It cannot play in the grass,” the opera girl sang. “It will never feel the breeze.”
“Not to mention that the House will give you a sizable bride price,” continued Empress Sun. “More than enough to pay whatever you came here for. Food for your village, perhaps? Money to buy shoes without holes?”
I looked around, panicked. Nobody was near enough to hear us over the music. I could run to one of the guards by the door and tell him the empress was speaking of treason—but who would believe my word over the Sun matriarch’s?
“Your Majesty,” I said hesitantly. “I do not wish my prince to die.”
“Truly?”
“I … I love him very much.”
“Is that so?” Her smile was like a barbed hook.
The accompanying zithers crescendoed, the light dimmed. The concubines gasped with excitement as the singer belted out a poet’s question: “How can we claim to have suffered enough?”
The empress ignored the performance and peered at me closely, as if I were made of glass and she could see inside me.
“Have you heard of the heart-spirit poem, Wei? If you pay a literomancer enough, it is said that they can write even the most powerful of killing spells.” She leaned in as her voice dropped to a whisper.
“And they can cast it during his coronation, when he has to fight the dragon. He will not be invincible then.”
My heart raced. I had no idea what the empress wanted. Was she trying to convince me to assassinate Terren? Was she merely trying to fish treason out of me, to use against him politically?
Either way, I could not take the bait. I put as much despair into my voice as I said, “Your Majesty, I cannot bear imagining the death of my beloved. Have mercy on me, I beg of you, and do not force me to speak of it anymore.”
I must have passed her test, because her smile vanished. Lips pressed into a tight line, she turned her attention back to the opera.
“Pity the fish,” the singing girl lamented. “It will never swim among trees.”