Empress in Danger

by Zoey Gong

  “I didn’t do it!” I yell. “You’ll learn the truth. You’ll see. She’ll kill you all before she is done.”

  Through a small gap in the door, I can see the guards turn their backs on me. I slap the door one more time for good measure before turning to survey my situation.

  Ever since Lady An’s death, the Cold Palace has sat empty, but I never dared to approach it to see the inside. But now, I can see that it looks just as old and weathered on the inside as it does on the outside. The Cold Palace is a very small palace, little more than one large, open room. There are a few scattered rugs on the floor, but not enough to cover all of it. There are a few chairs and tables, but they are splintered and broken. I doubt I could even sit on one without toppling over. There is a wooden bed frame to one side of the room with a tattered blanket on top of it. It’s not even a kang for warmth.

  I suddenly realize how cold it is in the room. I let out a shuddering breath and tuck my hands under my armpits. As I exhale, fog dances lightly in front of my face. It is not yet deep winter, it is not snowing yet, but it is still quite cold at night. I bitterly realize that I am no longer accustomed to sleeping without heat and plenty of blankets.

  I notice that there is an old brazier sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. It is not even on a stand. I kneel down next to it and realize it is full of fresh coal and hay. Sitting next to the brazier, I see a bit of flint and steel. It dawns on me that past ladies who were locked in here did not know how to start a fire on their own. Thankfully, how to start a fire is something that comes back to me easily. I arrange the hay in the middle of the brazier and surround it with the coal. After tapping the flint and steel together a couple of times, the hay alights. I move the coals over the fire, and soon the coal is burning hot and bright.

  I let out a sigh of relief as I warm my hands over the glowing coals. I lean back and take a couple of calming breaths. As I stretch my neck, though, I look up, and see the tattered remains of a white scarf blowing gently in the warm breeze that wafts up from the brazier. I let out a cry and scoot away as far as I can, coming to rest against the door.

  There are ghosts here.

  Is that the remnant of the same scarf Lady An used to hang herself? Or some other poor, unfortunate lady who was sent here to carry out her own execution?

  I pull my knees to my chest and rest my forehead on them as despair takes over. I’m going to die in here.

  26

  A light tapping sound on the door wakes me. I’m not sure how I managed to fall asleep in this dismal place. The boards on the bed were so warped and cracked, it was more comfortable to lie on the floor. Besides, the bed was too far from the brazier to get any warmth, so I laid the ratty blanket on the floor beside the brazier and wrapped myself up, leaving only my face exposed. All through the night, the old building creaked and moaned. Shadows danced in the light of the brazier, and I heard scurrying and scratching from mice in the walls. I didn’t see any ghosts, but I felt their presence. A heavy sadness permeated the air and seemed to crush me with the weight of it.

  At first, I think I’ve imagined the tapping sound. But after I come out of the fog of sleep, I realize the sound is real. I sit up quickly and take a deep breath, which makes me sneeze as I disturb the dust that has settled around me overnight. I jump to my feet and rush to the door, peeking through the cracked wood.

  “Nuwa?” I ask hopefully. I should have known better.

  “No,” Lihua says a little too cheerfully. “It’s me.”

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “I thought you must be hungry,” she says, and I see that she is carrying a tray with a teapot, teacup, and a bowl of steaming porridge. My mouth waters and my stomach growls, but I don’t want to take anything from the woman who accused me of murder and had me locked in this place.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” I say even though I know it is stupid. It wouldn’t do for me to die in here of starvation, but I can’t stop myself. Besides, what if the food is poisoned? She stabbed Fenfeng with her own bare hands. Poisoning me must be so easy compared to that.

  Lihua tuts her tongue a few times and places the tray on the ground outside the door. “Well, if you change your mind, I’m sure the guards will give it to you.” I notice that the guards have stepped far enough away that they most likely cannot hear what we are saying.

  “Why did you do it?” I ask her, keeping my voice low. “Why did you kill Fenfeng?”

  “I didn’t,” she says confidently. “You did.”

  “Stop it,” I hiss at her. “Honghui isn’t here to hear your lies. Tell me the truth. What did I do to you? You have everything you could ever want.”

  “Not everything,” Lihua says. She leans in close. “I’m not empress yet.”

  I scoff. “Why would you want to be empress? It’s a difficult, thankless job. If I could, I’d give you the position.”

  “Exactly!” Lihua says. “You don’t want what you have, but you can’t give it to me either. The only way I can climb any higher is if you are dead. That’s how you got the position, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t kill to get it,” I say. “I wish with every ounce of my being that Caihong was still here.”

  She waves my words away as if they mean nothing. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t change the past.”

  “But why kill Fenfeng?” I ask. “She liked you, didn’t she? She would have helped you plot against me if you’d asked her. She hated me.”

  Lihua shrugs. “I couldn’t get close enough to kill you. After she took me into her household, I couldn’t make your tea anymore.”

  I feel sick suddenly at the idea that she had already been poisoning me with the tea. “Did…did you poison my tea?”

  “Yes,” she says, “but not in the way you think. If I’d killed you back then, Yanmei would have been made empress, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “I couldn’t kill you until my position was so high, it was guaranteed that I would be the next empress. So, I just gave you something to stop your monthly bleed so you would think you were pregnant. That way Honghui would have to take other women into his bed.”

  “You made me think I was pregnant so that Honghui couldn’t sleep with me anymore,” I say, feeling so stupid. So used. Once again, I feel a pang of loss for the baby that never existed. “But how did you know you would get pregnant?”

  “I didn’t,” she says. “I just had to pray.”

  I scoff. “You would never leave something like that up to chance. It had to do with the ghost woman, didn’t it?”

  “You’re catching on,” she says. “I learned a lot from my mother before she died. I sent my servants out into the Peking streets to find a pregnant girl that looked like me. After all, Mother found you. There had to be more poor, pitiful street people out there willing to hand over their child for a price. Your parents sold you easily enough.”

  “I chose to come here,” I say, slapping the door. “My parents never would have sold me.”

  She shrugs. “Believe what you want.”

  “But why did it matter if she looked like you?” I ask.

  “Well, there was no chance the child was going to look like Honghui, so it needed to look like my child.”

  I sigh at my own stupidity. Of course, it made perfect sense. “But you didn’t know she’d have a boy.”

  “True,” Lihua says. “I figured if the baby were a girl, Honghui would at least see my potential and take me back to his bed again and again in an attempt to get a son. I could just do it over and over again until I had a son. But at least I don’t need to go through all that again.”

  “Did you have to kill the poor woman?” I say. “She did what you asked. Surely she would have kept your secret.”

  “I couldn’t know that,” Lihua says. “Poor people have such shifting loyalties. They will go to whoever gives them the most money without a second thought.”

  “So, what happens now?” I ask.
“You know I’m not going to let you poison me.”

  “It would be in your best interest if you did,” she says. “It’s only a matter of time before Honghui sends you a white scarf.”

  I feel like crumpling into myself at her words. I don’t want to believe her. Surely Honghui would not think so poorly of me. But I’m in here while Lihua is out there feeding him more and more lies, poisoning his mind against me.

  “I won’t do it,” I tell her, forcing my fears to the side for the moment. I can’t let Lihua think she’s beaten me. “I’ll never admit guilt by taking my own life.”

  “Then you’ll probably starve,” Lihua says easily. “I don’t think Honghui has it in himself to have you executed. He really is smitten with you, the poor idiot. You should teach me how you managed to get him to fall in love with you.”

  “You could start by not being a murdering monster,” I say.

  Lihua laughs. “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Your mother would be horrified at what you’ve done,” I say, and Lihua’s face drops for a moment. “She sacrificed everything to keep you out of here. To give you a different life.”

  “Mother was selfish,” she spits. Her anger surprises me. “She thought so very little of me. She thought I would be a lowly, insignificant concubine for the rest of my life. She had no idea how high I could climb. If she had believed in me for even a moment, she never would have stood in my way.”

  “Did you kill her too?” I ask. “Is that how she died? She never would have let you come here if she had lived.”

  “You know,” Lihua says thoughtfully, “you’re not as stupid as I thought you were.”

  “That means a lot coming from you,” I say. She blinks. I don’t think she meant her words to be a compliment. She screws up her face and lifts her chin.

  “I’ll keep bringing food to you,” she says. “I’m sure you’ll see reason soon enough.” She spins around on her pot-bottom shoes and walks away from me quickly, as if to escape some biting retort I might shoot at her. I wish I had one, but I don’t.

  I let out a sigh and lean against the door. My stomach growls again. “Stop it,” I whisper. “We’ve gone hungry before. You’re just spoiled.” I needed to get used to being hungry again. I don’t know for sure how long it takes for someone to actually die of starvation. I myself never went more than a day or two completely without food. I would often give up meals for my younger siblings, but I had to eat eventually. But I know some of our neighbors fared worse. Occasionally, we would hear rumors of someone starving and not being found for days or weeks. Usually an old and forgotten relative of people who had gone to find work at the docks or in another part of the city. I wondered how long it would take Honghui to forget me.

  I picked at the bottom of a window frame. The wood was rotten and flaked away easily. I pulled at it a little more forcefully with the tips of my fingers, wondering if it would give way enough for me to eventually open the window, but I cried out in pain as a splinter stuck one of my fingers, causing it to bleed. I sucked on the finger and used my teeth to pull the splinter out. I sighed in frustration.

  “What do you mean?” I heard a woman’s voice say loudly from the front of the palace. The guards replied, but I couldn’t make out their words. “That’s ridiculous!” the woman went on. I went to the door and peeked through the crack. My heart swelled when I saw Yanmei there holding a tray of food.

  “I am the empress’s lady, not Liling,” Yanmei was saying. My mouth watered at the sight of the bowls of food she was carrying on a tray. Still, the guards held up their hands, keeping her from approaching the door. I was about to yell out, to order them to let her pass, when I heard a scratching sound coming from the back of the room. At first, I thought it was a rat, or maybe a bird, and was going to ignore it, but the scratching grew louder. I walked toward the window, scanning the room for any errant vermin, and heard a whispered voice.

  “Daiyu?”

  “Dongmei!” I run to the window and peek through a crack before nearly bursting into tears at the sight of the little girl. “Oh, my darling! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to help you,” she says.

  I choke out a laugh as the tears start to fall. “You sweet, kind child. Please, don’t worry about me. Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  “How?” she asks, and I am speechless.

  “What do you mean?” I manage to ask.

  “How will everything be fine?”

  “I…I don’t know,” I have to admit.

  “Then listen to me,” she says, and I’m dumbfounded. This is more than she has said to me in the whole time since my return to the Forbidden City. “If I can get you out of the Cold Palace, can you get out of the Forbidden City?”

  I think back to the time I climbed a tree to scale the wall of the Forbidden City in a foolish attempt to find my family. It seemed so long ago now.

  “Yes,” I say. “I think so.” I haven’t checked to see if the tree is still there, if its limbs are still low enough for me to reach. I’ve had to reason to want to leave since I had wanted to return this time. But I have to hope everything is as it was before.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do.” She starts to turn away.

  “Wait,” I say. “Why are you doing this? I thought you hated me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” she says, and her face looks hurt. My heart swells.

  “I did write to you,” I tell her. “Every week. I missed you so much.”

  “I know,” she says, and she reaches into her sleeve. To my surprise, she pulls out a letter that I recognize as one I sent her from the Temple of Grief.

  “Where did you get that?” I ask.

  “Fiyanggu gave me all your letters,” she says. “In secret. Jiangfei doesn’t even know. I couldn’t risk Grandmother—” Her voice catches for a moment. “I couldn’t risk Grandmother finding out. She would have been furious.”

  “Then…then why were you so angry with me?” I ask.

  “You still left me!” she says, stomping her foot and shoving the letter back into her sleeve.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, trying to calm her down and shush her. “I understand.”

  Dongmei wipes at her cheeks with her sleeve. “I didn’t know if you would stay this time or not. And I guess you won’t. But I’d rather you run away again than die.”

  “Dongmei…” I run my fingers over the crack in the door. How I wish to hold her hand, or at least touch her face. But I can’t. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”

  “Me too,” Dongmei says.

  “Go on, now!” I hear one of guards yell, and Dongmei hears it too.

  “I have to go,” she says.

  “I love you!” I call out to her.

  “I love you too, Mama,” she says. “I’ll get you out of there somehow.” Then, she runs off around the side of the building and out of sight.

  “Mama…” I whisper as I sink down to the floor. Her words lift my soul and stab my heart. I wish I didn’t have to leave her or Jiangfei again. It hurts so much to leave them. But I am also reminded about how much I miss my own mother. She surely must miss me as well.

  I remember Tao Fashi at the Temple of Grief. She once asked me what I really wanted. Did I want to return to the Forbidden City, or did I want to find my family. I didn’t hesitate to say that I wanted to find my parents. Now, it seems that I might finally have that chance. I don’t know how Dongmei plans to get me out of the Cold Palace, but if she does, I will find my way home.

  I will find my mother.

  27

  The little bit of hope I had been feeling starts to fade as day turns to night. What can Dongmei do to help me? I admire her strength, but she’s just a little girl. Of course, she’s not alone. Yanmei was obviously distracting the guards so that they would not hear her talking to me. Dongmei, Yanmei, Nuwa, Jinhai. Individually, they are all smart, clever people. Together, surely they will be able to come up with som
e sort of plan to help me.

  “Why are you slacking?” I hear someone back in a gruff voice. When I peek out the door, I have to stifle a gasp when I see Jinhai in a guard’s uniform.

  “What do you mean?” one of the guards asks.

  “You look like you are about to fall asleep on the job,” Jinhai says. “No, sir!” the guard says. Jinhai and the man argue back and forth for a minute, but I lose the conversation when I hear tapping on the back window. I rush over and about faint when I see Honghui standing there.

  “What…what are you doing here?” I ask. Honghui holds a finger to his lips as he uses a metal bar to pry loose the plank that is holding the window shut. I hear Jinhai’s voice rising louder, and the guards replying in kind. Honghui opens the shudders and helps me climb through. He then closes the shudder and replaces the plank as best he can. He then grabs my hand and we sneak through the bushes of the garden around the Cold Palace, snaking our way through the gardens and down the paths of the inner court until we reach an empty building, one that I remember having secret trysts with Honghui in when I was just a concubine to Emperor Guozhi.

  “What’s going on?” I whisper as he closes the door.

  “I’m breaking you out, you little fool,” he says. “Dongmei says you know how to get out of the Forbidden City on your own.”

  “Dongmei? What? How? Why?” I’m so confused.

  “Because I love you,” he says. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Then why not just release me?” I ask.

  “I can’t,” he says, shaking his head in dismay. “Someone killed the dowager empress. Someone has to be held accountable.”

  “Then arrest Liling,” I say. “She is the one who did it.”