Chapter 56 Test of Treason
TEST OF TREASON
They would not tell me what my crime was as they marched me to the palace’s prison, Heaven’s Worship—only that it was treason, something I would be executed for. All afternoon I paced around the ledge of my confinement, mind spinning, trying to figure out exactly what my crime had been.
Confinement was not quite accurate. The prison was built into the side of a mountain, each cell a ledge, and the only thing confining me was a stomach-twisting drop on three sides, far enough beneath me that I could not see individual trees.
Even the Aricine River curving away below was no larger than a finger’s width.
The wind at this altitude was ferocious. Even the ancient pines growing out of the cliff face had to submit to it, bent and trembling like the meadow grasses in Tieza. I huddled in the alcove of my cell, trying not to shiver as the cold penetrated my cloak.
The order to arrest me could not have come from my husband.
That much was certain. Although I had been nervous about facing him—and the inevitable confrontation about my visit to Tieza—I knew he would not jump straight to executing me.
We were familiar enough by now that he would at least talk to me first.
Besides, he would never go through all this bureaucracy, not in ten thousand years. He would put a sword in me, maybe two—and if my crime was severe enough, play cruel games with me until I died more slowly—but he would not do something as impersonal as having guards throw me in prison.
Had one of the concubines finally found an opening to oust me? Had the empress come up with a new way to have me dead?
The third day of my imprisonment, two Azalea guards came to get me. They brought me to the main hall of the East Palace, the Hall of Divine Harmony, the same place my exam with the doctors had taken place nearly a year ago.
There were more people in attendance this time.
There was the usual coterie of courtiers and ministers sitting between the pillars, but also officials who had ridden in from afar.
Their huge banners announced places beyond the heartlands, places I only recognized from maps.
Now that I was no longer Terren’s betrothed but his wife, I supposed my trials had become even more of a spectacle.
As the guards dragged me to the front, I caught a glimpse of Terren, standing at the far side of the hall, alone. But unlike last time, when he kept his thoughts masked, his face now was a dark cloud of fury. His sigil flickered fast with agitation.
What reason was there, I wondered, for him to be so angry he could not even hide it?
A violet-robed magistrate stepped to the front, passing by the empress, Maro, and the rest of the princes.
“We will now conduct a test of treasonous intent, devised by Heaven,” he announced in a sonorous voice.
“It will help determine whether a woman, like Lady Yin, is tainted in her heart. If she is, then the Ancestors will punish her with pain. If she is innocent, she will remain unharmed.”
Several helpers laid down three large scrolls before me and gave me a long elm branch. “Choose one of them to copy,” said the magistrate, and waved a magnanimous sleeve.
I clutched the branch as I blinked at the scrolls before me.
They were Blessings. The two on either end were as the magistrate had described: pain-inflicting spells, meant for torturing prisoners.
The third had no effect. Another girl would have to pray to Heaven for guidance, but since I could read, I knew immediately which was the correct choice.
If she is innocent, she will remain unharmed.
But at the same time, something wasn’t right. Why hadn’t they told me what I was accused of? Why did the empress, surrounded by a crowd of Sun men, seem almost smug?
Why was Terren so angry?
I glanced up at him again, standing in the back behind those hundreds of men, fidgeting with his hands. Whatever crime I had been accused of, it must have implicated him as well. And while that had been the case last time, he’d had Hesin then, and the eunuch would have been able to calm him, and—
Wait. I recognized that anger.
It was not the contemptuous one Terren had displayed at the empress, during our wedding; neither was it the pitying one he often showed me.
It was pure, raw, and unbridled, the kind he had displayed the night I’d convinced him of Hesin’s treason.
The night I’d made him believe the eunuch was working with Maro to get him deposed, by fabricating evidence of my literacy.
This was not a “test of treasonous intent” at all. It was a literacy test.
With enough evidence, an exam might not have been needed. But in the absence of it, the House needed to make certain.
I lifted the elm branch with a shaking hand.
I did not copy the third spell, the safe one, but instead traced one of the torture spells.
I traced it in the uncertain, unpracticed way that somebody who didn’t know how to read might have done, copying the way I had seen Grandpa Har draw that Blessing on the hill.
Not even three characters in, the pain came for me. Shuddering spasms that shook my entire body, making it hard to keep my grip on the branch. I actually did drop it once, but the magistrate just looked at me and said, “Keep going,” and I fumbled to pick it up again.
When it was over, he swapped out the spells for three different ones. “Again.”
I chose another torture spell. This time, the pain was even worse.
It was like every capillary in my body was set on fire, every vein a devouring river of flames.
I bit my cheeks and squeezed my eyes shut to keep from screaming, but that had the added effect of making me pause writing.
The moment the branch stopped moving, the magistrate kicked me with a boot and said, “Keep going,” and I forced my eyes open and completed the spell.
There was a third round after that—I chose the safe one this time, since it would look suspicious if I never got lucky—and then on the fourth, I did scream, I couldn’t help it anymore. The pain was that unbearable. It was like nothing I had ever, ever felt before.
I kept writing. There was a fifth round and a sixth.
Blood dripped out of my nose and my mouth, making scarlet spatters on the floor.
A seventh, an eighth—every time I finished one, the magistrate immediately put out three new ones.
I felt my body weakening over time, my mind slipping.
At some point I fainted. When I woke again, shaking on the ground, there was a fresh set of spells for me to choose from.
“Again,” said the magistrate, without emotion.
I supposed they needed to push me to my breaking point, in case I really was literate and hiding it. I wrote another spell.
“Again.”
Every part of me begged for the agony to be over. If I confessed I was literate, and I’d been plotting to kill Terren, and that I was not actually an empress but a villager who was worth nothing, knew nothing, maybe the pain would finally, finally stop.
I picked up the elm branch and kept writing.
One humid summer when I was nine, maybe ten, I had spent an entire day weeding the rice terraces without break. It had been an oppressively hot day, with no clouds to hide the sun, and I had been tired and so, so thirsty.
So I plopped myself in the paddy, hot water soaking my trousers, and threw a big tantrum. For a long time I screamed and kicked at the reeds, complaining of the heat, and the mosquitoes, and my hurting hands, hoping that Ba would come and tell me I could go inside and rest. But he never did.
When the sun was halfway down, and at last I wiped my eyes and looked up, I saw that Ba was still working silently. He had not even lifted his head up once.
I would never forget the sight of him, hunched over in the haze of heat, pulling up clumps and clumps of sedges. While I had been sitting there feeling sorry for myself, he had been working hard, enduring, suffering.
At nine years old, maybe ten, I had learned the price we must pay to live.
I kept writing. The pain kept coming.
And coming.
And coming.
And—
What happened next I was not aware of at the time. It was only afterwards that Mi Yung and Ciyi filled me in.
Everyone had been pretty sure I was about to die.
The exam had been going on and on, the magistrate ordering more and more rounds.
Blood was leaking from my nose, mouth, and ears.
I wasn’t breathing right. I had just finished a spell—the fourteenth, by Ciyi’s count—and the helpers had been about to put out another set, when Terren said from the back of the room, “That’s enough. ”
The magistrate looked up, annoyed. “Your Highness, we are in the middle of conducting a sacred exam.”
“She has done fourteen rounds of the test already. Is that not enough proof for you?”
“A Heavenly trial cannot be aborted.”
“It can if I say it can.”
“That is not how that works.”
“If she keeps going, she will die.” Despite how quiet Terren’s voice was from where he stood, his anger seemed to shake the entire room.
“She is only a concubine.”
“She is my empress.”
The magistrate heaved a deep sigh and shook his head. “Whatever she is, I am still a representative of His Majesty the Son of Heaven. I do not answer to your commands, only those of the emperor himself. And seeing as he has not given the order—”
“My father?” Terren threw his head back in a laugh, and it was wild and not held back. “That half-dead creature lying like boiled radish in his bed? Tell me, when was the last time he has given any order? The last time he was even coherent?”
The murmuring crowd was stunned into silence. Nobody spoke of the emperor like this. Not even a prince. Not anyone, not ever.
Even the magistrate was too shocked to respond.
Terren used the silence to take echoing steps forward, down the length of the hall, to stand not two paces from the magistrate.
He might have been shorter, but there was no question which of the two men was more dangerous.
“My father is as good as dead. He will never wake up again or regain the ability to overturn his decision to name me heir. Tell me, Magistrate—does that not mean I am effectively emperor?”
“Impudence!” the magistrate screamed. “Treason! Guards, take him!”
The imperial guards stationed along the perimeter of the hall started to move, but immediately froze when the knives on the ceiling began to rattle.
Everyone else became equally still.
Terren looked with pity at the magistrate, whose eyes had begun bulging. The magistrate’s head spun around wildly before his gaze settled on Maro, who was sitting among a group of his own allies. “Prince of Roads,” he said, desperate. “Do something. You heard what he said.”
Maro needed little prompting. He stood, hands in fists, and as he spoke his voice shook with rage. “Even you are not above Heaven, Terren. You might have disrespected your post, the Azalea House, the whole country—but speaking ill of the emperor is the highest level of treason.”
“I spoke merely the truth.”
“True or not, those words were a crime.”
Terren kept looking at him, a dark fire burning in his eyes. “So punish me for it.”
Maro stared at him, but didn’t move.
“Punish me for it,” Terren repeated, louder. “What are you waiting for?”
There was enough hate in the first son’s eyes to end dynasties, but still he didn’t move.
“I thought you were honorable.” Terren sounded almost disappointed. “Patriotic. Pious. Yet you would let the highest level of treason, as you say, go unpunished.”
That finally incensed Maro into motion. He threw himself at Terren, but he had not made it two steps forward when he was forced to halt.
In the time it took to draw breath, the ten thousand swords in the ceiling had dislodged themselves from the lichens and were now swarming in the air.
About a hundred of them hovered around Maro, restricting him from moving; the rest were flying everywhere else around the room.
A few people started to scream, but quickly stopped when they found a blade at their throat.
“It is not a crime,” Terren said through his teeth, “if nobody can punish me for it.”
The swords pressed lower and lower onto Maro until he was forced onto his knees, his head down, his body hunched into a humiliating posture of subservience. He was shaking violently, and his face was twisted with loathing, but he did not speak further.
This seemed to satisfy Terren, because he now stilled the rest of the swords and turned them all to the magistrate. “Any other objections?”
The magistrate’s face was completely white. He did not look capable of speaking either.
Terren laughed without humor, then spun to face the Orchard Palace and the men in blossoms, his suspended swords spinning with him.
“Isan. Perhaps you would like to help our magistrate out.” When he was met with silence, he turned his attention and blades to Kiran and his Southeast Palace, to his sailor friends all averting their eyes.
“How about you, little brother? Perhaps you would champion for resuming his precious trial.” None of them so much as looked at him.
His eyes flicked to the pillar closest to him. “Sun Ai.” He took a few steps towards the empress, who was trembling as she clutched Ruyi tight against her. “Surely you have something to say. You always do.”
He lifted her chin with the edge of a floating knife, and she squeezed her eyes shut, let out a tiny gasp, and did not speak.
He made a sound like a laugh and let her go. Then he swept his eyes across the rest of his audience, all in varying shades of terror. “Well, then. It seems that we are in agreement. I am the emperor. And as emperor, I declare the trial over.”