Chapter 23 Not Magic
NOT MAGIC
Terren summoned me that very night.
He was not doing anything when I entered—neither reading letters, nor writing spells, nor skinning peacocks. Instead, he greeted me directly at the door, as if impatient to see me. “Who was it?”
I didn’t understand his question at first. “Your Highness?”
He gave me a glass stare, as if he thought I was deliberately playing dumb. “Who did you perform with. To pass the test.”
I hesitated. I knew what happened to concubines when they were suspected of bedding a man other than their prince, when their sanctity was found not to have been preserved. But I was not sure how to tell the truth in a way that he would believe me.
“Don’t worry,” he surprised me by saying. “I am only curious. I will not punish you for it.”
Probably he wanted to know so that he could kill the other person, for knowing his secret. “There was nobody, Your Highness. I did it to myself.”
Only saying it aloud did the significance of what I’d done hit me.
The childmaking act had been so valuable that they had recruited hundreds of girls from all over the country.
So valuable that they’d spent a whole month teaching us how to do it, that they would have a girl executed—and a prince deposed—when it was not done.
It was an act worth everything to the Azalea House, and I had faked it.
Perhaps it was not magic after all.
Terren considered me for a moment longer, but he must have believed me in the end, because he didn’t kill me. For the first night ever, he didn’t even hurt me.
He was already up by the time I stirred awake. He sat at his window, the one overlooking the autumn valley, sipping at hot pu’er tea. “Hesin says the rumors were started by that Sun girl,” he said, without looking at me. “What was her name again?”
“Sun Jia.”
“Yes, her.” His smile became twisted. “Now that you are awake, shall we go punish her?”
Punish. The way he said that word chilled me and made me instinctively want to protect her. Actually, I imagined myself saying, I do not know if Hesin is correct. Rumors could have come from anywhere, Your Highness.
But then I thought of the humiliation I had suffered during court. The smashed porcelain, the awful words, the poison that she had told Veris to slip me.
I thought of the rumors meant to have me executed, which had led to the bamboo forest and the blood on my hands. The rumors that had led to the cold instruments crawling all over my body, a feeling I could not forget no matter how much I tried.
“Yes,” I said softly. “Let us punish her.”
Everyone was staring at us when we entered.
It wasn’t unusual for me to hold a gathering in the Cypress Pavilion, but it was unusual for me to be accompanied by Terren. It might have been the first time he’d stepped inside his Inner Court at all.
The concubines stood rigid as we made our way to the dais. “Your Highness,” they said in unison, not taking their eyes off the prince. “May you live a thousand years.”
There was awe in their voices, mixed with envy, with fear.
I was ashamed at how thrilled I felt. For the first time, instead of cowering from my monster, I was walking at its side. For the first time, when it opened its foul, bloodthirsty jaws, it would not be to bite me but someone else.
Let them be afraid, a wicked part of me thought. Let them tremble at those raised knives.
Let them realize that even girls from the cities are not invincible.
We got to my dais. Terren gave a disdainful look at the elevated cushion I’d been sitting on during my meetings.
Without a word his sigil flashed, and a bouquet of new swords erupted from the polished wood, hilts tangling with white lilies and flowering ivies, edges interlocking to form two makeshift thrones.
He sank into one of them. I sat on the other, cold and uncomfortable. He said to his concubines, in a slow drawl, “Surely, you have all heard what happened by now.”
They shifted uneasily. Liru Syra looked on the verge of tears, and the two oldest girls, twin sisters Nere and Rai, had found each other’s hand and gripped it until their knuckles went white.
“Sun Jia.” His eyes flicked to the empress’s niece, standing by one of the pillars. “I hear you have started this.”
Jia actually looked pleased that her name was called.
She was still wearing that haughty smile of hers as she stepped forward, as if delighted that the prince was finally paying her attention.
“Of course it was me,” she said. “You see, I was very concerned about Your Highness and the future of our imperial sons. I had my suspicions that this creature”—she jabbed a finger at me—“was lying about her duties. So of course I had to discuss it with others and find out if it was true. I did not mean for you to be caught up in the rumors too, Your Highness.”
The sad part was, I believed her. Sun Jia had no reason to want Prince Terren deposed. She was still playing the game. She still wanted to become empress.
Terren didn’t deign to respond to her. He merely floated one of the blades from my ceiling into my hand. “The punishment for spreading untrue rumors is a tongue cut off. As it is you she has wronged, Wei, you should be the one to do the honors.”
Jia paled. “Wait. I didn’t mean—you can’t be serious—”
I turned the knife over in my hand, and again that shameful thrill shuddered through me.
“Do you know what my last name is?” She was panicking now.
“The Sun Clan is the greatest in all of Tensha! We’ve been allies to the Crown since the days of the Lixi Emperor!
” Her terrified eyes darted to the prince.
“Have you forgotten how many martial men my father has pledged for your coronation? Aren’t you afraid that he’ll withdraw support?
How will you fight the dragon without us? ”
An amused smile crossed Terren’s face. “Let me tell you a secret, Jia. A secret I trust you will never spill, considering that soon you will have no tongue.” He leaned forward on his throne and said, so quietly only Jia and I could hear it, “The coronation. I plan to do it alone.”
Jia’s lip began to tremble. I could tell the exact moment when she realized that everything she thought protected her—her family name, her clan’s political support—did not matter. Not for this prince.
She had been playing the wrong game.
“I do not need allies to tame the dragon,” he continued, in a voice like dark syrup, “seeing as only the weak need help. But, as you are aware, I am not weak. I am very powerful.” He made a broad gesture encompassing the Cypress Pavilion, and—I guessed—the entire palace beyond.
“All this is a charade, Jia. It’s theater. ”
She tried to bolt.
She flung herself towards the exit, but the guards stationed there blocked her path with outstretched swords.
She stumbled backwards and fell to her knees before one of the concubines at the back.
“Suwen, help me. We are friends, are we not?” She tried to cling to her legs, but Wang Suwen gave her an indifferent kick.
Jia’s panicked gaze then went to Jin Veris. Sobbing, she crawled towards her. “Say something, Veris. We were working together to kill that peasant girl, weren’t we? We are allies!”
Veris did not even look at her.
“Guards,” Terren said. “Bring her to my betrothed.”
They did. Two Azalea guards in red pushed her forward with unsheathed swords, like herding a dog, until she was on her hands and knees before me.
“The empress will avenge me!” Jia screeched, only half-coherent.
“She is not going to let this go, village cur. She is going to chop you into pieces and bury you in the mud where you belong.” But when her threats didn’t sway me, she turned to begging.
“Please, Lady Yin. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
” Tears dribbled down her cheek. “Please have mercy on me. If a man loses his tongue, at least he can read and write. But a woman without a tongue is no more than an animal!”
Animal. I thought of that pig, splayed out on the table in Guishan, and suddenly had trouble breathing. Sweat loosened my grip around the blade.
Don’t do it, I could almost hear Ma saying. Keep your head down and stay out of trouble.
Her coarse voice fought with Ciyi’s oily one. If you refuse to be cruel, someone will be cruel to you first.
“Please, Lady Yin, mercy,” Jia sobbed. She knocked her forehead to the wood before my feet over and over.
I remembered how I felt, kneeling on that hill where we buried Larkspur, wishing for a day that all little children could learn to read, even poor ones, even girls.
Your mercy will cost you your life.
I remembered Bao’s wide eyes as he clung to me on New Year’s. I remembered the Rui sisters, believing in me, giving me the leash to their goat. I remembered Ba’s strong hand on my shoulder at the wet market, shielding me from the butcher’s yelling, guiding me home.
You are still thinking like a villager, not an empress.
I raised the knife. The guards held her mouth open for me, muffling her screams, and the blood was dark and warm.