SU TANG (素醣)

  Day 16, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  I wondered how many people had to die for the Yun Dynasty to be born. Some part of me wanted to cry for the children who’d never see another sunrise. Children whose futures were lopped off mid-bloom because someone wanted a shinier title. And now? Forgotten so thoroughly that all that was left of them was a number tucked neatly into the footnotes of a history book.

  What did they do that was so bad that even the royalty were stripped of their names?

  The sun crept lazily over the horizon, stretching golden fingers across the floorboards like it, too, didn’t want to get up today. I sat up and cracked my neck, then gave my spine a good stretch as a reward for surviving a night that seemed to want me dead by cold exposure alone.

  Rows of thin mattresses lined either side of the dorm, each one harbouring a maidservant in varying stages of undignified sleep. Some were so peaceful they looked carved out of wood. Others flailed like drowning squid, snoring with mouths gaping wide enough to catch flies and dreams alike. And then there were those whose sleep was frozen in expressions of pure fear.

  The draft had been whistling all night. It was the sort of ghostly howl that reminded me that nature didn’t care about freezing us to death in our sleep. The thin blanket barely qualified as a handkerchief. But morning came. Somehow, it always did.

  I cleared my throat and peeled off the pathetic excuse of warmth. The air bit at my ankles the moment I moved, like winter had personally chosen vengeance. Navigating through the battlefield of limbs and snoring, I tiptoed toward the front door, wincing as I stepped over someone’s hair bun that had come undone in the night.

  On the way, I passed a cupboard where the chamber pots were kept. I grabbed one of the less cracked ones, then shuffled the reminder of the distance to the exit. Time to get this day started.

  Which, naturally, exploded open.

  A flash of fire, and a familiar shrill voice like nails down a chalkboard: “It’s her! Grab her!”

  Oh, perfect. Not even a full sunrise and trouble had clocked in for work. Trouble, in the form of a death angel who printed lotuses wherever they walked. Courtesy of a recommendation I had made.

  She must have figured out what the lotus steps actually meant.

  With what I considered pretty impressive reflexes for someone running on two hours of sleep, I ducked past a grabbing hand, slipped across the sleeping and masses, and dove into the laundry basket like a mouse in a teacup. It smelled like old soap and wet regrets, but I held my breath and curled tight.

  Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, they’d go away. Maybe they’d forget about me. Maybe pigs would fly.

  Shouts filled the dorm. And my fellow maidservants groaned in response. No one was going to get their beauty sleep. And guess whose fault that was? Right. Mine.

  Ju Ying had always been warning me:

  Zip it. Don’t cause trouble. That’s all.

  But no. I just had to run my mouth.

  “If you can’t find that little vixen, burn the dormitory!”

  Wait. What?

  I pressed my face against a little slit in the laundry basket and watched as Zhao Lili’s cloak brushed past, its white trimming the only bright thing in the dark. How could something so beautiful and clean, clothe someone with such a vain and dirty heart?

  She wouldn’t burn the room. She wouldn’t dare.

  Smoke slithered between bedrolls like it had somewhere to be. Fire. Real, roaring, life-eating fire. I stayed buried for exactly three seconds longer before the searing heat started to toast my eyebrows.

  I scrambled, threw off the pile of laundry, tripped over it anyway, and tumbled onto the burning floor. Coughing and spluttering like a dying cat, I stood. The room—now hot to suffocation and drenched in toxic fumes—triggered my claustrophobia. The air bit into my lungs like it wanted to claw them out. My vision cracked like glass, blurred and unfocussed, as tears boiled as soon as they formed.

  The air grasped at my lungs with the nerve of a leech, draining away all feeling and leaving me numb. Hot air rippled off the scorched floorboards like slithering cobras awakened by a snake charmer. Spitting, cracking, clacking, slapping, surrounded me in a disorganised cacophony of noises I could not comprehend.

  Would I die here?

  I scoffed.

  Because of course. Of course, she’d burn down the entire dorm just to get to me. Who was I kidding? We were servants. We were dispensable, faceless, nameless things. We had no rights.

  A ceiling beam crashed nearby. I jumped back, then bundled up the fly-away bits of my clothes as the flames raced for my robes like hungry dogs. My feet stung with every step—blisters already forming—as I staggered toward a sudden gust of cooler air. It was instinct, nothing more. But my legs gave out before I reached it.

  And I fell.

  Into softness.

  For one stupid, blissful second, I thought it was a mattress.

  It wasn’t.

  A smell hit me then—not the smoke, not the sour linens—but burning meat. I gagged, recoiling from the realisation. Not a mattress. A person. A maidservant I had just been sleeping beside. A girl. I didn’t even know her name.

  But she was gone.

  Because I had brought the fire here.

  My chest clenched so tight I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Just rows. Rows and rows. Charred bodies that had faces. Names. Lives. I clutched my head as if it would stop the memories from forming.

  What had I done?

  This was my fault.

  I had brought the wolves to the sheep’s paddock. Because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Because I thought no one would dare go that far. Because I was impatient, snide, and convinced the world bent to cleverness. I should have listened to Ju Ying.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Strong hands yanked me up.

  I kicked.

  Fought.

  Then gave up. Let them have their victory. They already won.

  As they dragged me through the charcoaled sleeping mats and the blackened bodies, I peered ahead amidst the fire.

  There, like the devil himself, stood a lady. She was wreathed in flames like it adored her. Her robes still gleamed like freshly fallen snow so perfectly it looked unreal. Her pale hands clasped neatly together, as if she were an angel praying.

  So, she was the kind of person Ju Ying wanted to keep me from.

  No, not a person.

  Not even a monster.

  She was a demon.

  ***

  It was my second time in the Palace of Peonies.

  Servants still knelt along the walls in stiff rows, heads bowed so low their foreheads nearly touched the cold stone. Eunuchs still stood at attention like carved obsidian pillars.

  Everything was the same. The hall still loomed with that same oppressive grandeur, heavy with gilded carvings and hidden threats. And it stirred a familiar memory within me: one of fear.

  But there was one difference.

  The sounds.

  There was wailing. Crying, moaning, shrieking…painful noises that dragged through the halls like the last notes of a dying instrument. When I closed my eyes, I pretended they were for the dead. All those rows of white-shrouded bodies laid out like chess pieces in checkmate, outside the smouldering remains of the servant dormitory. I imagined the sobs came from the survivors, their lungs ash-choked, their throats blistered and dry, their skin freckled with soot and burns.

  But that was just wishful thinking.

  The wails only came from the one who caused it all.

  Zhao Lili wept with such theatrical remorse in front of Empress Huangmei that even seasoned performers would’ve given her a standing ovation. She knelt at the base of the Empress’s dais on a padded mat, her cheeks streaked with tears, her makeup perfectly ruined in a way that made it look like an aesthetic choice. Her voice trembled in all the right places. Her hands fluttered like frightened butterflies. No one, not a single court lady or eunuch, would dare to blame her. Not out loud.

  “She made a fool of me! Look, āyí,” she shrieked, ripping her beaded slippers off with a vengeance, “I listened to the stupid words of this slave! I didn’t mean to offend His Majesty! I was... misled!”

  At the head of the room, Empress Huangmei reclined on a phoenix-carved dais draped in golden silk. Her expression was unreadable, but her fingers, sheathed in ornate nail guards, tapped against the armrest in a slow, ominous rhythm.

  “Do you know your mistake?” the Empress said, her voice velvet-wrapped steel.

  “āyí, it wasn’t me—it was her!” Zhao Lili pointed directly at me and, like some deranged merchant hawking guilt, hurled her wooden shoe at my head.

  It hit. Of course it hit.

  I barely flinched. The dull thwack of impact felt oddly appropriate, like punctuation on the last sentence of a very stupid paragraph I had written for myself.

  Empress Huangmei finally deigned to look at me. There was no warmth in it. I hadn’t expected any. After the banquet disaster and the demolition of Zhao Lili’s dignity, I was essentially gift-wrapped for execution. And yet…

  She didn’t scold me. Not directly. Her gaze danced between Zhao Lili and me, heavy with calculation. I didn’t like it. And I liked it even less when she flicked her fingers toward Ying Yue.

  “I punish Zhao Lili to one month of solitary confinement. She will copy the History of the Yun Dynasty in full.”

  “āyí!” Zhao Lili wailed.

  “Copy out the entire history of the world.” Zhao Lili cowered back. “Do you want to anger me more?”

  The only appropriate reaction was silence.

  Even Zhao Lili knew that.

  The Empress’s tone sharpened: “You want to blame a servant for your poor choices. A noble lady, misled by a maid? How utterly humiliating. You’ve been outwitted by someone you deem beneath you. Shameful.”

  And that’s when it hit me. Not the shoe. The strategy.

  I was the punishment. Or rather, forgiving Zhao Lili would be my punishment.

  If I refused to forgive her, I would be seen as an arrogant social climber, trying to drag down the Empress’s beloved niece. But if I did forgive her—after she nearly killed everyone in the servant dormitory—the other servants would never trust me again. No friends. No home. A pariah in my own quarters.

  So clever. So cruel.

  If only I listened Ju Ying. If only I shut up when I should’ve.

  “Your Majesty, Lady Zhao—” I gritted my teeth; my breath caught in my throat. This wasn’t a conversation. It was a test. One that I hadn’t studied for. But I’d read enough dynastic histories to know what the wrong answer looked like. And now, there was only one course of action.

  “Zhao Lili what?” the Empress pressed, her tone dipped in sugar and poison.

  “Your Majesty,” I started again, my voice silked with obedience, “Lady Zhao is as intelligent as she is beautiful. Her lotus-step walk was surely a reflection of her grace. It reminded me of Concubine Pan Yunu from the Southern Qi Dynasty.”

  I paused. No one was dragging me down yet. I continued.

  “She too was elegant—so elegant, in fact, that her emperor built golden lotus platforms for her to walk on. Unfortunately, this only emboldened her scrupulous father. He seized power and the dynasty crumbled. But only because the emperor was weak-willed and easily manipulated by seduction.”

  I bowed lower, fists clenched, my nails biting into my palms.

  “So, I ask, Your Majesty: do you think the Crown Prince so feeble that a woman’s walk would mislead him?”

  Number two. Words are the most powerful weapon.

  There was a stillness. Then a roar.

  “How dare you!?” thundered the Empress.

  “I dare only in loyalty,” I said quietly. “This servant belongs to the Crown Prince’s manor. I dare to defend his honour.”

  It’s not that I really wanted to defend him of all people. I didn’t care about that Crown Prince or his petty honour.

  But in this viper’s nest of gold lacquer and simmering tea, the only shield sharper than wit was that man’s title. As long as I waved that banner, the Empress wouldn’t strike; at least, not without thinking twice about staining her own son’s reputation.

  The Empress laughed, brittle and furious, then repeated my words like a curse. I peeked up.

  Her lip curled. Her golden nail-guard dug into her finger hard enough to draw blood. A single drop, bright and accusing, rolled off and splattered onto the lacquered armrest like punctuation at the end of a threat.

  She was furious. And trapped. She couldn’t punish me without insulting her own son’s judgment. And she couldn’t ignore me without admitting she’d lost.

  I kept my head bowed. But inside, I was counting breaths and measuring silences like they were lines in a poem. Every second she hesitated was a silent victory.

  How does it feel when you can’t move your chess pieces?

  “Are you calling me petty?” she hissed.

  “Never,” I replied, my tone reverent. “Your Majesty is wise beyond compare. I’m just a stupid servant, babbling beyond her station. I trust in Your Majesty’s judgment above all.”

  Checkmate.

  The Empress eyes drilled down. Not at my face, but through me. As if promising something.

  “Lady Zhao will meditate on scripture for one month,” she announced, voice clipped. “She is no longer qualified to enter the harem.”

  Zhao Lili collapsed in loss.

  The Empress turned to me. Her smile returned. A blade’s smile.

  “And you—for your disordered conduct—will receive twenty strokes.”

  The highest punishment she could give without breaking court law. Although, I was surprised that she would even care. It wasn’t as if she were known to follow rules.

  This was not over. This would never be over.

  Lady Zhao and I bowed in tandem.

  “Thank you for Your Majesty’s grace.”

  Still, as I knelt there, the heat from the floor rising into my chest, a bitter taste formed behind my teeth. I had won.

  But it was no victory.

  Zhao Lili’s actions were terrible. Awful. Evil. But it was not unprovoked. On that day when I defended Xue Wan’er, I had known what I was doing. I had chosen to humiliate Lady Zhao.

  But the servants she hurt…they didn’t get a choice.

  I had to be more careful. My mouth wasn’t just getting me into trouble anymore.

  It was hurting people who couldn’t fight back.