Chapter 50 Noble Causes #2
He hadn’t killed the carp. He hadn’t killed Taifong. He had killed many, many people, done many wicked deeds, but he had not done everything he had been accused of.
I voiced a suspicion I’d had for a long time. “Your mother. Lady Autumn. Everyone believes you killed her. But you didn’t, did you?”
He dropped his jar.
It fell onto a rug this time and didn’t break; instead, rice wine poured out its opening, drenching the bottom of his floor-length gown.
He blinked. Then he blinked again. “I…” His breathing had become fast and shallow, his eyes unfocused. “I…”
Ten long heartbeats passed, and he was still standing frozen in the same position, utterly incapable of speaking.
I was honestly shocked. I had intended to get a reaction out of him—insinuate that Hesin had killed Lady Autumn to get his post, if my guess was a lucky one—while fishing for truths to write my poem.
But I had not expected anything near this extreme.
For a while I could do nothing but stand there, watching the quick rise and fall of his chest, his hands clenching on nothing.
“Wei,” he finally croaked out. “Give…”
He couldn’t finish his sentence, but I knew what he wanted.
I went to his wine shelf and handed him a jar, which he finished very quickly.
Then he gestured for another one, which I also gave him.
He slid against the wall and sank to the ground, hugging it like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
The wine was helping. He still wasn’t breathing right, but two more jars later, he seemed almost normal again—the meanness in his eyes having returned and redoubled—except for the fact that he was really, really drunk.
There was knocking. Hesin had arrived.
When I opened the door, the eunuch’s eyes burned into me with hate.
His eyes narrowed even further when he took in the scene—all the shattered glass and spilled wine, the prince huddled on the ground under the windowsill with more empty jars next to him.
The entire room reeked of fermented rice. “Wei, what have you done?”
I looked up at him innocently. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You are so impatient for him to die, it seems, that you will not even wait to finish your poem. But don’t you know? Wine cannot kill him. Once the Aricine Ward is cast on someone, the only thing its wearer can die of is old age.”
“Poem?” I pretended to be hung up on that word.
Hesin scoffed and held up the piece of paper in his hand. “Recognize this?”
I widened my eyes with feigned terror, which made him look at me with contempt and turn to Terren. “Your Highness, it is a good thing that you summoned me. I was just about to come to you with proof that your wife is literate. She has been writing your heart-spirit poem.”
“Is that so?” Terren slurred. “Or have you realized that Wei is onto you, and are coming to me with evidence against her first?”
“Your Highness,” Hesin said, baffled.
His laugh was dark with menace. “Never mind. Say your piece, Hesin.”
“Perhaps we should hold this discussion tomorrow instead, when you are of clearer mind.”
“No. Now.” He made an incomprehensible gesture. “I want this resolved tonight.”
Hesin looked as if he was about to protest, but at last took a deep breath and spoke.
“Two nights ago, I discovered Lady Yin in the middle of writing a heart-spirit poem. She burned it before I could seize it as evidence. But she has not managed to destroy all of it. It took me a while, but I found a piece of it in her storerooms.”
He placed the paper on the table, but Terren did not move from his wall. “The spell you speak of is a complicated one. You expect me to believe that a girl—an illiterate village girl, at that—is writing it? You could not think of a single more plausible lie?”
“It is not a lie,” Hesin said, sounding frustrated. “What I have here is definitely a heart-spirit poem—I have confirmed it with a palace literomancer. And Your Highness is one yourself, so once you read it, you will see it for what it is right away.”
Terren’s face was a mask of anger. He tried to get up but fell back to the ground. He summoned an unsheathed sword from the ceiling and, using it as a walking stick, finally made it to the table.
He unrolled the scroll in front of us. The more he read, the greater his fury. His sigil flickered like a caged flame, and when he spoke, there was so much menace in his words even I shuddered. “Hesin, you are getting older. Your game is off.”
“I’m not sure what—”
“This is a heart-spirit poem. The calligraphy does look like an amateur’s.
I’ll give it to you: this piece of evidence could have fooled the public.
But you are delusional to try it with me.
” The danger in his voice was raw, his sigil afire, the blades hanging from the white wisteria ceiling beginning to rattle.
“I have read a thousand poems by him. I have written a thousand more with him. Yong Hesin, did you really think I wouldn’t recognize a poem written by my brother? ”
Hesin stared at him. Then he looked at me. I could tell the exact moment he realized he’d been set up. “Your Highness,” he said with a new franticness, “calm down and listen to me. Wei did this. She orchestrated this meeting. She has been working with the West Palace—”
The eunuch cried out in pain. One of the knives from the ceiling had shot down and cut cleanly through his elbow, cleaving off the hand with the 忠/Zhong scar. It landed on the ground with a sickening thump as Hesin fell to his knees, stump dripping blood onto the dragon rug.
“She?” Terren bellowed. “You think a stupid, illiterate woman could get her hands on my brother’s writing? That she is capable of orchestrating? Tell me, eunuch, just how long have you been colluding with Maro?”
Hesin gritted his teeth and met Terren’s eyes. “Don’t be a fool. Wei deceives you. She once confessed to me that she hates you. If you just think, for even a moment—”
A scream tore from the eunuch’s mouth. Another dagger had stabbed into his bloody stump, burying itself in his flesh all the way to its hilt.
“Knives cannot be fools,” Terren spat. “Swords do not know the concept of hate. A sharp enough edge does not fear being deceived, and a strong enough weapon does not need to think to win.”
“Please,” Hesin gasped through his pain, his face a sheen of sweat. “Terren, your life is in danger—”
The dagger twisted. The eunuch shrieked with agony and collapsed onto the ground, spattering droplets of blood everywhere.
“No, it is not.” Terren looked down with disdain at Hesin’s limp body. “Crown or no Crown, I am the most powerful man in the nation. Nobody can contest me. Not one person in the world can hurt me.”
Guards came and dragged the old eunuch away, leaving his severed hand behind. As soon as the door was closed, Terren sank to the floor and buried his head in his sleeves, shaking uncontrollably. I just stood there, unable to take my eyes off that hand.
It became hard to breathe.
First I had cut off a tongue, and now I had cut off a hand. And I was not even finished. If someone told a younger version of me about the Wei who lived in the palace, that little girl would have been disgusted.