Page 36 of The Poet Empress
Several of the men in the audience snorted. “It makes sense that the prince would enjoy those kinds of games,” someone near the front whispered, “given what his magic is.”
The empress and the doctor were the only ones who did not laugh. The doctor continued his examination, scraping me in a way that should have hurt even worse than the bamboo stick. I should have felt the pain, except I was pretending I was not in the Azalea House. I was pretending that I was back in Guishan that windy afternoon, by the pig, being yelled at by the butcher. The yelling had gone on for so long that all thecustomers around us had stopped their business to stare. By the time Ba finally came to fetch me, I was already in tears.
When the butcher saw Ba, he stopped yelling at me and started yelling at him instead.You should have raised your daughter better. You should have taught her respect. How can you let a girl run wanton like this, without anyone to keep her in line?
I felt awful for getting Ba in trouble, but he hardly seemed bothered at all. He only put a gentle hand on my shoulder as he led me away.Don’t worry, he said.Let’s go home.
Someone far away said, “Lady Yin passes the test. We have determined her to be dutiful.”
Later, my scribe barged into my basin-room while I was still washing myself. “I told you,” he said venomously. “Itoldyou.”
I threw my hands over my breasts and sank further into the bathwater. I was too tired and too hurt to argue with him.
“I told you it was a mistake not to punish Jin Veris. Because you did not, the other concubines have grown bold. Because you did not, your enemies have learned they can hurt you without consequence. And now look, they try even baser tactics in an attempt to kill you. You have only yourself to blame. You and nobody else…” He went on and on.
If I had punished Jin Veris, I would have never known about the rumors in the first place. But Ciyi could not know that.
I let him yell at me, pretending Ba had one strong hand on my shoulder.Don’t worry. Let’s go home.After Ciyi left, I kept washing myself. I kept scrubbing and scrubbing at any place the doctor touched me, but it wasn’t working, I still felt dirty.
23NOT 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 wasnotdone. 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.
