Page 92 of The Poet Empress
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.
51REWARD
He wasn’t there when I woke in the morning. That was my first hint that something was wrong. The second was when Wren did not come to walk me to my pavilion, so I had to make my way back alone.
It was a gray day, the rain falling light, barely more than mist on the back of my neck. It made the Cypress Pavilion blurred, so at first I did not see all the carnage. When my foot bumped into Teela’s head, I thought I’d hit a rock.
Then I looked down and saw her eyes, blank. Her neck ended in a bloody stump. I blinked. There was a blood trail next to it, and I followed it to find her organs strung up over the branches of a nearby cypress, like ornaments.
My breaths came very, very slow. My heart might have stopped beating.
Aron, the old gardener, was the next body I found. His corpse hung limp over an azalea bush, blood still smeared over the cobble paths; the rain was too light to have washed it away. Not far away lay Mo, the storyteller. Gutted. Like a fish. Duan the bookkeeper. Fern the scullery maid. Rinan the cook. More heads. More bodies. Feet and limbs not attached to torsos, open hearts. Aunt Ping, so disfigured I did not recognize her at first.
It smelled like the butcher’s stall at the wet market.
I should have screamed, cried, fallen onto my knees. But I was stone, not alive. I dragged my feet towards the rear garden. I found Lin Wren. Lying between two cypress roots, her crane-colored dress in tatters. Seven swords skewered her body. One hand was still twitching.
Beside her, in the wet leaves and mud, sat Terren. Staring out into the rain.
I wanted…
I stood there, trying to gather my thoughts enough to decide what I wanted. I took one slow breath, then another, then another, and then I decided that what I wanted was to make him hurt.
I wanted to take a knife and cut him open. Slowly, hair by hair. I wanted to pour acid on him between each cut until I heard him scream.
I wanted to burn him with a torch. Again slowly. I wanted to melt off that wicked face one drop of flesh at a time.
Then, when he was on his last breath after all the cutting, the burning, I wanted to thrust my hand into his ribs. I wanted to dig my nails into his pulsing heart and squeeze it until it burst—with an ugly, underwhelming whimper.
Suddenly it didn’t matter how many tongues I cut off. How many hands I severed. How many people I pushed out of my way. It did not matter how high a cost I had to pay, so long as it resulted in the thing in front of medead.
Wren’s hand twitched again. She was beyond help, but still alive, still suffering. I went to her, pulled one of the swords out from her torso, and plunged it into her skull.
She stopped moving. Dark blood oozed down her face, as slow and thick as syrup.
Terren looked up, calm. “Wei, I was angry last night. Very much so. But I am not angry anymore.”
My head turned to him. I was glad for the rain-shawl I was wearing and the gray mist between us, because I could not hide the look of hatred on my face even if I tried.
“Besides,someonehad to be punished.” He said it like it was self-evident, a given. “It couldn’t be you this time, since you were the one who helped me. And it couldn’t be that traitor eunuch. He is already barely clinging onto life as is, in his prison cell, and torturing him more would only kill him. I think he would be glad to die, since he once tried to go echo-step with Jinzha. I will not give him the kindness of release.” He gestured at the cypress trees around him, strewn with bodies and organs. “So I came here. To punish, to make myself not angry anymore, but also to reward you.Hesin probably has spies everywhere in my court, including your pavilion. I figured I would clean it up on your behalf, as a gift for helping me.”
I stared at him.
“Don’t worry. They are only servants. I will find you new ones. Better ones.”
I kept staring at him.
He tilted his head. “Wei, are you mad at me?”
Mad.
Mad.
I wasthis closeto taking two steps towards him and throwing my hands around his throat. He would not see it coming at first, but once he had time to react, he would summon his knives and stab me with them, over and over, until my grip loosened and my body thumped onto the mud. But it wouldn’t matter, because I would die knowing how the pulse of his neck-blood felt against my palms, and it would have all beenworth it.
