by Julie C. Dao
Kang appeared beside her in his human form. Though his face was as round and friendly as ever, Xifeng knew she would always see those lidless eyes and that gash of a mouth whenever she looked at him now. Despite Lihua’s piercing screams, he wore an impassive expression that didn’t completely hide a flicker of satisfaction.
Lady Sun and Lady Meng had each paid the ultimate price. And now Kang’s next victim—and, by default, Xifeng’s—would be the Empress, a woman who had once treated her like a daughter.
But what sorrow and revulsion she felt faded quickly. Lihua was the Fool and had to be eliminated, no matter the cost. No one with a destiny like Xifeng’s could afford to care or love, not when it came to protecting what was rightfully hers. Love is weakness. How right Guma had been.
“Did you do this?” she whispered to Kang.
“I told you Lady Sun once accused me of stealing black spice. She gave me the idea, really. I went back to Bohai’s stores and took some later, though I certainly did not let a concubine catch me,” he added, chuckling.
Xifeng gave a slow nod. Smoked in great quantities, black spice would cause a prolonged, deathlike sleep, but when taken directly through the mouth—as Lihua had—it became a potent toxin. Kang had been slowly poisoning Her Majesty for a year or more, likely in minuscule, undetectable amounts. Xifeng thought of all the times she had noted Empress Lihua’s pallor, her shaking hands, her lack of appetite. Over many months, bit by bit, the substance had built up in her body and her symptoms had worsened . . . into this.
Another scream ripped through the air. Xifeng encountered a devastating scene when she and Kang entered the royal bedchamber. Empress Lihua had been restrained to her bed with sheets and blankets. Telltale red scratches covered her arms and legs, clearly made by her own fingernails. Blood splattered her sheets, which the maidservants were trying to change while avoiding the Empress’s foaming, gnashing mouth.
She looked as Xifeng had never seen her. This was not the gentle, soft-hearted woman who had confessed her desire for a daughter. This was a wild, untamed animal, with blazing eyes like those of the tengaru. The huge, swollen belly on her frail body looked obscene and unnatural, and it shook with the rest of her when she spotted Xifeng.
“Murderess!” the Empress shrieked. “You poisoned me. You . . . poisoned me!”
In her frenzy, one of the sheets tore, releasing her wrist. She immediately used the fingers of her free hand to scratch at her thighs and knees, leaving scarlet tears in their wake. Two eunuchs leapt into action with a new sheet, apologizing to her as they re-bound her wrist.
Bohai stood nearby, perspiration beading his forehead as he crushed leaves into powder. “You must be calm, Your Majesty,” he pleaded. “I’m making something to help you sleep.”
The Empress strained and struggled, her eyes feverish. “It was her, it was her, it was her.”
“Xifeng could not possibly have done what Her Majesty suggests,” Kang said in a low, urgent voice to Bohai and Madam Hong. “The Empress is always surrounded by guards for her protection, and Xifeng is always with her own guards, including myself.”
The physician nodded apologetically. “Her Majesty is too ill to know what she’s saying.” He tipped the medicine into the woman’s mouth as a eunuch held her head. Within minutes, the Empress stopped thrashing and lay still. Her head lolled to one side and at last, it was quiet. “Change the bedclothes now and get me some cloth to dress her wounds,” Bohai told the maids, wiping his forehead, then turned to Xifeng again. “How’s that shoulder of yours?”
Xifeng had forgotten her own injury. “It’s fine. What happened to the Empress?”
“I don’t know,” the physician muttered. “I make her medicine myself every day. I haven’t let another soul touch it, and every morsel of food she eats is tasted by a servant first.”
“Are you certain she’s being poisoned?” Madam Hong asked, wringing her hands.
Bohai nodded, distressed. “She shows indications of long-term poisoning. The dosage has been increased slowly, gradually. Clever to do it in such a way that I wouldn’t recognize the signs until too late.”
“How terrible,” Kang murmured. “I recall the Crown Prince accusing Lady Sun of poisoning the Empress, before she left. Could there be truth in his claim?”
Xifeng nodded in approval. “Perhaps we know at last why she abandoned court. She is far from the reach of the Emperor’s justice by now.” As far as death, in fact.
The physician’s lips thinned. “Lady Sun or no, this has been going on for months . . . perhaps years. There is an imbalance of the elements in Her Majesty’s constitution. The tone of her skin, the vomiting, the seizures and confusion.” He sighed and turned to Kang. “Did you find Lady Meng?”
“I’m sorry to say she drowned herself, sir. I found her body half frozen in the pond. Unfortunately the face has been . . .” The eunuch glanced at Xifeng and Madam Hong in a show of fearing for their delicate sensibilities. “She seems to have lost control of her drinking. She damaged herself with the knife in her frenzy, but I knew it was her from her clothing.”
Xifeng wondered whom he had killed to dress up as Lady Meng. Some unsuspecting maid, perhaps, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. More lives to cover up the lives they’d already taken. More deaths to pull over their innocence like a shroud.
Bohai sighed heavily. “I’ll inspect her later, when I’ve finished here. The Emperor will have to be notified as soon as he awakens.”
“I’ll see a message is sent to him immediately,” Kang promised.
“You need to get some rest,” Bohai told Xifeng. “You’ve had quite an ordeal tonight.”
If only he knew the true ordeal, she thought as she left the room obediently.
If only he knew the Xifeng to whom he had just spoken was a different being from the one whose shoulder he had bound.
The Emperor came as soon as he could to see Xifeng. He dismissed the eunuchs and took her into his arms carefully, to avoid jostling her shoulder. His embrace felt strange and familiar all at once—the sensation of arms around her that did not belong to Wei, of warm hands on her back that were not his. And when he pulled away, she was momentarily surprised to look up into a face that was not Wei’s.
He scanned her face and swore as his anxious gaze returned to her wounded shoulder. “What you must have endured. Thank the gods she did nothing worse.”
“I am sorry for her,” Xifeng said, and meant it. Her final act of kindness to Lady Meng had been to close her staring eyes, shielding her from her last glimpse of the callous world.
Jun dropped his arms, seeming to realize how close they were, and stepped back respectfully. “Bohai told me what the Empress said to you in her feverish state. I apologize for her unjust accusations.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” He turned to the window, where snow fell steadily from an ice-gray sky. “Sometimes I wonder if I corrupt these women merely by being myself. I’ve lost two concubines, and now I may lose my wife as well. There must be something about me that poisons them.” He gave a heavy sigh. “My youngest stepson is ill and dying, and now I have sent my heir, the Crown Prince, to his death.”
“His Highness insisted on going to lead the negiotations for his brother’s life,” Xifeng said gently. “He told me himself how much he worried about the second prince fighting overseas. He will not rest until he brings him home alive.”
“He won’t succeed.”
“But he was very adamant at the council that . . .”
“He won’t succeed,” Jun repeated. There was a long silence before he spoke again. “A letter came months ago. His brother has been killed by the mercenaries who captured him. They are sending his head to me as proof of his death.”
Xifeng stared at his rigid back, at the shape of his bowed head.
“I kept this to myse
lf. I let the whole court believe otherwise, including the Crown Prince, because I knew he’d insist on going if he thought his brother was still alive. And now he sails into enemy territory to save someone who is already dead.” The knuckles of Jun’s tightly clasped hands turned white. “Tell me, Xifeng. Did I do wrong? Will you turn against me, knowing I’ve as good as killed my heir?”
She did not speak, but placed a hand on his warm back. His shoulders rose and fell with the slow, shuddering breath he released.
“He never wanted the throne. He never said as much in my hearing, but we all knew it.” Jun shook his head. “It wasn’t until he publicly condemned Lady Sun at the Moon Festival that I wondered whether he had changed his mind. I knew he hated her for disrespecting his mother. But I suspected it was also a personal attack on me. Perhaps he had decided he did want to be Emperor after all, and sought to discredit and eventually exile me.”
“And so he had to be destroyed.” Lady Sun’s dead face swam behind her closed lids. Xifeng understood him completely—oh, how she understood him.
“I have an old, sick wife and two stepsons who are dead or dying. In time, if Lihua did not recover, I could choose a young Empress to give me sons of my blood and secure the throne. The Crown Prince was the only thing left standing in my way.”
Xifeng came close and put her arms around him, resting her cheek against his back. She might never truly love this man and he might never truly love her, but they needed each other, two ruthless souls driven by fate. “You told me once the hard decisions make us great,” she said softly. “I would not forsake you for doing what you had to do. And you have saved the Crown Prince from his fate, for he never wanted to be Emperor.”
He unclasped his hands and placed them over hers.
“Sometimes it is necessary to do questionable deeds to achieve what the heavens ordain,” Xifeng said, thinking of all she herself had done. “But in our losses, we may gain ourselves. We take what is ours and find solace in the quiet places between death and destruction.”
Jun turned, took her face between his hands, and kissed her. There was no passion in his embrace, such as she had felt with Wei. But his lips held a promise, as his gifts had. Xifeng took them for what they were worth—payment for the services she would deliver as his wife. It was business, a fair trade: he would give her a throne, and she would elevate his kingdom with her beauty and cunning. Their kiss sealed the pact.
The Emperor ran his thumb over her cheek. “You must have your own household and apartments, for your protection. The eunuchs will arrange the level below for your use.”
The level below.
He hadn’t even bothered to mention Lady Sun’s name, and she approved.
The concubines and Empress Lihua were in the past, and Xifeng was his future.
The Empress went into labor on the day of the envoy’s return. The first gong had struck for the morning meal, which everyone in the royal apartments ignored in their frenzy. Several eunuchs went to notify His Majesty, and the midwives set to work. They sent the ladies-in-waiting away, keeping only a few maidservants to bring boiling water and clean cloths.
Xifeng preferred to be away, anyhow. She bundled herself in furs and strolled on the walkway outside her apartments, where an army of eunuchs and craftsmen were still working. She had commanded them to destroy everything inside, especially the gilded tub, and bring in new furnishings. The Emperor had given her leave to commission whatever she liked, regardless of expense, and she wanted to erase every sign that Lady Sun had ever lived there.
She twisted her hands as she walked, instead of tucking them inside her robe. She couldn’t understand her own anxiety. It was a clear, wintry day, the first time the sun had shown its face in a week. Her apartments would be finished soon. And Emperor Jun wanted her by his side at tomorrow night’s banquet, as though she were already his wife.
“A beautiful day,” she said out loud, but the words did not relieve her strange agitation.
There was something portentous about the lucid skies, the birdsong, and the smell of flowers on the air, though spring was but a half-forgotten memory in these depths of winter.
Guma had always said decisions came with responsibility. Every choice, no matter how small, had a consequence. The air held a certain resonance, such as she had felt when she had heard Lihua tell the story of the thousand lanterns for the first time. It was a feeling that something bigger than herself had taken hold. It felt like she had pushed a bale of hay down a hill, and no matter how she chased after it now, there would be no stopping it. She had made her choices and the consequences had begun, though she knew not what they might be.
Kang appeared in a robe of somber brown, befitting the monk-creature she knew him to be. “The envoy has been sighted at the gates of the Imperial City. Shall I accompany you?”
“Of course,” she said lightly. She had grown used to the idea of his clever, unassuming disguise. Didn’t she have one herself, in a way? She summoned two other eunuchs to trail after her as she strode across the Empress’s walkway to the main palace.
“Are you all right?” Kang asked.
The unease she felt throbbed like an old injury, and she wondered if it had anything to do with her still-healing shoulder. “I’m perfectly well,” she said, but by the time they reached the palace balcony and saw men and horses streaming through the gates, Xifeng could no longer deny that part of her anxiety had to do with the envoy.
Until this moment, she had not known she still harbored hope that Wei would return. Perhaps it was fear, too, and an understanding that they could never go back to the way they were, now that he had taken her mother from her.
She watched soldiers dismount and talk and laugh, glad to be home after a long month away. She saw Hideki on his black Dagovadian horse, with Shiro behind him. She returned their greeting, but kept her eyes on the gate, scanning each face that entered. She waited, holding her breath, but there was no Wei. A chill entered her bones that had nothing to do with the winter air, and she thought she knew, at last, what true love felt like. Like the snapping jaws of an alligator trap, like a knife biting into the center of her heart. Like losing all of her lifeblood at once.
He had made real his threat. He had left her forever.
Shiro and Hideki approached and bowed to her, and she struggled to bestow a gracious smile upon them. “I’m delighted to see you both back safely,” she said.
“I enjoyed the journey,” Hideki said heartily. “But Shiro was impatient to get back.”
Xifeng looked into Shiro’s wide, questioning eyes. “Akira is doing well, my friend,” she reassured him. “I sent Bohai’s assistant to her twice every week. He gave her a tonic to help improve her appetite, and she’s been sleeping better, too.”
“Thank you, Xifeng,” he said hoarsely. “If you’ll excuse me, I will go to her now.”
“You have my permission,” she said, pleased, and he left at once.
Hideki’s beard quivered. “I have something for you from Wei.” He reached into the folds of his clothing and drew out an object wrapped in cotton. “He traveled with us midway through the Great Forest, then went west. He said he was going to seek peace.”
Peace in my mother’s death. Xifeng accepted the object, hating herself for hoping Guma’s murderer would return. The cloth fell away to reveal a flat polished stone, rounded like the cap of a mushroom. It was the color of a mushroom, too, but when she regarded it more closely, she saw flecks of blue and gold and purple. It was beautiful as a fallen star.
Hideki watched her with eyes full of pity. “He found it in the ruins of a monastery and asked me to bring it back to you, to remember him by. I believe he means to become a monk.”
She looked bitterly at the stone. “Wei, a monk? I can’t imagine any place more unusual for him.” The silence, the prayer, the plain meals. But he had always longed for simplicity, hadn’t he? She had been th
e one who wanted more.
“There is something else. He sent this through a messenger later, when the envoy came back through the woods.” And even before Hideki gave them to her, Xifeng knew what they would be: nineteen rectangles of fine gold wood, tied up in rough cloth, their etchings as familiar to her as the ridges of her own hands.
She closed her eyes and swayed as she gripped Guma’s cards of fortune.
A barren field, a dying horse, a man with a knife in his back.
Hideki said her name, and his voice came from far away.
A lotus opening to the moon, a vindictive warrior, an Empress with her hair unbound.
“Xifeng?” Hideki repeated anxiously.
And a girl in disguise, with her eyes on the stars and vengeance in her heart . . .
“Guma would never have given up these cards if she were alive.” Xifeng held the deck to her heart. Yet another person lost to her. Yet another who would not return.
Hideki fiddled with the hilt of his sword, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry. Sometimes the ones we love leave us . . .”
“. . . and sometimes we leave them,” Xifeng interrupted, tucking the items into her robes. She didn’t want to hear his platitudes of stale comfort, no matter how well meaning. Wei and Guma were gone, and that was that. “Do you still plan to return to Kamatsu in the spring?”
The soldier looked grateful for the change of subject. “I do. We have been too long away from home, and my heart yearns for the open sea. Shiro hopes to persuade Akira to raise the child there, and the seas will be calmer in the spring for a woman and a baby.”
The image of them all sailing away together made Xifeng feel utterly alone. One happy family, and the final link to the girl she had been and would never be again. “We must have a banquet for you,” she promised, with forced cheer. “You will be our guests of honor.”
But even after they said goodbye and the eunuchs led her back to the city of women, the restlessness lingered. She took her needlework outside onto the balcony, hoping the glacial air would help her concentrate, but the unseasonable birdsong was so distracting, she gave up. She spent the afternoon pacing in the gardens instead, Wei’s stone and Guma’s cards weighing her down with every step.