SU TANG (素醣)

  Day 6, 5th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  Sunlight.

  Moonlight.

  From where I was wedged, ribs grinding against jagged rock, I couldn’t tell the difference. Just a single shaft of pallid light broke through the cracks in the prison walls, slicing through the gloom and falling on a patch of mouldy straw like a golden spotlight for decay.

  It smelled like piss and regret. The rot of unwashed stone, rusted blood, and iron saturated the air until it pressed like a second skin over mine. My real one was flayed in places, scraped raw or burned shut. Chains bound my wrists, but I wasn’t straining against them anymore. That required hope. Or stupidity. Or both.

  Everything hurt. Breathing. Seeing. Existing.

  Lying down wasn’t better. Sitting was worse. In the end, I settled into a slouch, half-crumpled against the wall, head tilted into a crevice as if the rock might whisper some kind of kindness. My legs sprawled like a broken puppet’s. One shoe was mostly gone, chewed to ribbons, and I was fairly sure my toes had gone blue an hour ago. No matter. They weren’t doing much walking anyway.

  There was dried blood on my skirts. I was probably bleeding somewhere at some point, but I didn’t know where and didn’t care when. Pain was a vague geography now.

  Salt tears leaked down my cheeks, though I hadn’t given them permission. They just came. Like water from a cracked bowl. My lips were chapped. My eyes burned. My magic had stopped trying to heal me three days ago. Which was rather sensible of it.

  Someone was slumped in the opposite cell; hunched like a deflated scarecrow. I knew who it was. Didn’t care. Let them rot. Let them scream. They can die.

  They brought this upon us.

  The silence cracked.

  Crunching echoed throughout the prison halls, the harsh screech of iron on iron. Footsteps followed immediately, deliberate and metallic, each one accompanied by a faint, metallic chime. It reminded me of coins rattling in a pouch. Except there were no coins here, only tools. Tools that glinted like teeth.

  More and more footsteps.

  They were all there.

  Staring at me.

  With beady yellow eyes.

  And they were looking.

  Waiting.

  Their backs were faced away from the real witch. The real lunatic. And their eyes—those eyes—latched onto me, yellow and wet like oil floating atop blood. They spoke in hushed, giddy tones, but their gaze was all hunger. Not scorn. Not justice. Want.

  They wanted something.

  Every word they spoke vanished into the ether, and all I could see were their tongues swiping their teeth.

  Their voices overlapped with one another as they called my name again and again. I wished they'd come to gloat. Gloating would have been human. But this was a circus act.

  For the first time in a long time, I was thankful. Truly, truly thankful for the bars that barricaded me from their leering.

  Rattling broke my resolve, and I reflexively jolted. I didn’t plan to, and I hated the pain that now coursed through my body.

  Someone had found the keys.

  The key shivered and shook the iron gates like thunder. At last, the door flung open, screeching and creaking from years of rust.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  And one person entered the cell like a pillar of fire.

  Their dress was the colour of night and was paired with sleeves dyed blood red. Gold embroidery snaked along her hems in twisting peonies, regal and excessive. Her hair was carved into a sculpture of braids and pins, adorned with red spider lilies. An omen if there ever was one. At her waist, a crimson sash bound her into a silhouette of a voluptuous seductress. A man’s hand rested at her hip.

  The Emperor.

  He was dressed in stark white, brighter than the purest starlight. Layers upon layers of brocade, inked in more gold. And when he spoke, his breath fogged the cold air. “Who are you really?”

  I lolled my head to the side. Before being dragged off the execution pole, I had been questioned for hours, with the exact same question. As if I had chosen to lie. As if I had deceived them by being born.

  Ze Lujin’s daughter? Su Tang the servant? An alchemist from Huadu Sect? Did it really matter?

  Would it change anything if I said I was neither?

  Did it hurt them?

  Did it make them unable to sleep at night?

  They stared as if I owed them an answer.

  The Empress waved a hand, and the Grand Secretary slithered forward. “Your Majesty,” he said, with the unearned gravitas of a man who had never suffered, “the prisoner has refused to answer.”

  Refused. You make it sound like I had a choice. If I gave the answer you wanted this would be over. But I can’t.

  Because I don’t know what answer you want from me.

  The Emperor’s boots crushed straw as he walked to me. His hem brushed my feet.

  “You’re going to die.”

  He gestured toward the opposite cell. The one containing the hunched lunatic. “Your crime should mean the death of seven generations. But I am prepared to make a deal, if only you do the right thing.”

  He crouched. It seemed obscene that his clean clothes would even dare grace the surface of the prison floor, let alone come here.

  “Give me báilián.”

  There it was. The real hunger.

  They always wanted that.

  From the moment it was first revealed, everyone wanted a taste, a chance to see, touch, hear, smell it.

  Hahaha…who would want that?

  They called it beautiful. They didn’t see the way it left me gasping, shaking, burning from the inside out.

  A parasite disguised as power.

  “If I could give it away,” I rasped, voice like broken glass, “I would have done so.”

  The Empress answered instead. “So, you are unwilling.”

  Unwilling. Convenient word. No room for impossibility. No room for pain. I couldn’t be bothered to correct her. Turns out people have habit of believing lies even if they are faced with the truth.

  She didn’t care if she was wrong.

  She just needed a reason to be cruel.

  “Your Majesty,” a deep voice spoke from the shadows, “your servant, Gao Yuchou, wishes to offer a solution.”

  Gao Yuchou…I had heard that name. Too long ago.

  He stepped forward, bowing so low I thought he’d melt into the floor. “I have studied the ancient treatises. báilián cannot be transferred willingly. But—” he produced a scroll, “—if we draw out her primordial spirit, perhaps it will manifest.”

  The Emperor skimmed the contents but his expression didn’t change. Of course it didn’t. He was good at that—looking empty whilst calculating everything. It reminded me of someone else.

  Don’t think about him.

  Don’t think about him.

  The Minister of War added, “She’s going to die regardless. Your Majesty might as well make her death useful. Especially as the prospects of war draws nearer.”

  Useful.

  That’s all I ever was.

  They spoke of my death right in front of me like they were choosing flowers. I was piece on a chessboard. A pawn to be sacrificed for an end goal that I was not clued into.

  I once believed that if I was kind to people, they would return that kindness. I believed that if I helped people, they would help me too. It was the law of reciprocation.

  It was the right thing to do.

  Number two. Words are the most powerful weapon.

  But there were no words I could say.

  There was no script for this kind of betrayal.

  The Empress tightened her grip on the Emperor’s arm. “Your Majesty.” Her eyes gleamed.

  The Emperor’s brushed her hands off, but in a way that could be perceived as gentle, then folded his hands into his sleeves.

  “Do as you see fit.”

  And just like that, they moved. Ministers filed after him like rats fleeing the light. The rest stayed watching. Pressing close to the bars as if they could taste my pain.

  The Empress turned, her command slicing through the air.

  “You there. Take her to the room.”

  Servants surrounded me, tearing off the chains that had become my new skin, and hauling me up by my armpits. I slumped in their arms, my mangled feet and legs completely useless since the lightning punishment. So, they dragged me, shredding my legs against the prickly granite floors.

  They moved at such speed, keen to please their master. Eager for a reward. Just a single word of praise from that woman, and their rank would be infinitely boosted. This was how the palace was. This was how I should’ve played the game.

  But I had been proud.

  And I had been stupid.

  They threw me into another cell.

  Tendrils of magic pulsed from the floor, winding up like vines. They shot out, snapping around my limbs, my throat, my wrists, my ankles. They didn’t just bind. They pulled. Stretched. Splayed me like a beast on a butcher’s hook.

  My wasted muscles screamed, and my vision blurred. But still they yanked. Soon, my whole body was shaking from the exertion, burning from having to hold my body in the same position.

  The Empress stood outside the glass, tapping it with one blood-red nail.

  “This prison wasn’t designed for people,” she said. “It was built for Immortal Beasts.”

  Her smile widened.

  “They say, when an Immortal Beast is in the deepest pain, it reveals its primordial spirit.”

  My chest clenched.

  She placed her palm flat against the glass.

  “What will it be today?”

  And then the screaming began.