NOVEL NEXT Chapter 44: Example
She couldn’t be put on her back. It was a mess of skin peeled off her back and flesh ripped into by the whips. The agony she had felt when the whip had first landed… had been the worst pain she had ever had to endure. It had left a trail of what felt like fire across her back. At that moment, she had not thought it possible for her to ever feel more pain than this.
Gods, had she been wrong.
The whips came down again and again and again. They skinned her back and once the skin came off, they sunk into her flesh. The feeling of those braided whips striking her open flesh made her feel as if someone had taken burning coals and pressed them into the meat surrounding her bones. Except there was no true burning. The whips just chipped away at her flesh little by little, exposing them so that even the slightest bit of air felt like hundreds of needles pressing into her.
She begged. Oh, how she begged. She had pulled at her chains, despite the pain in her broken fingers and screamed for mercy as loudly as she could. All thought of superiority gone, she cursed her past, naive self who had so gleefully hurt the Prince, happy to have the power to put someone else in place for once instead of being the one to be put in her place, head bowed and trembling Oh the satisfaction she had felt when the little mongrel had looked up with wide, watery eyes filled with fear, pain and hatred, helpless to do anything against her.
No wonder the concubines and Head Matrons like to punish servants, if this is what it feels like, she had thought.
She’d truly had no fear. After all, she was of the Kang family and had been serving the Imperial Consort since she had stepped foot into the Harem. How could she have known how utterly stubborn and dangerous the commoner concubine was? How could she have known that the woman would refuse to listen and take it upon herself to torture her? How could she have known that the woman would go to this extent to have her punished?
When Lady Kang had come to collect her, she had seen a ray of hope. She had even been smug when the Imperial Consort went to the Empress, thinking that she would now see the haughty Virtuous Lady on her knees, begging for mercy. The Imperial Consort had promised her justice, after all.
The commoner did go down on her knees, but for etiquette, not for mercy. Instead, she had held her head high, even when the Emperor came. Kang Yu didn’t quite understand or remember what happened after that. The concubine somehow proved her guilty and had her dragged away for punishment. And then… before she knew it… agony.
And now she lay in the infirmary, on her chest because the one time they had tried to put her on her back, she had let out a guttural, blood-curling scream as if the demons of hell themselves were tearing into her flesh. And then they had put her on her chest. They put something that felt like it put her entire back on fire and she had tried to struggle, to get away. The physicians had held her down and told her to stay still if she wanted to live. She had been in no mind to listen but the physicians somehow did their work. Put some sort of ointment on her and then bandaged her. And she had been lying like this ever since.
At first, she had cried and sobbed at the unfairness of it all. Why was she punished when she was merely following the orders of the Imperial Consort? But soon she ran out of tears. Calmed down enough to remember that in no world would the Imperial Consort be punished for anything short of treason. She should have known that she would be the one to be thrown into the dragon’s jaws should they get caught.
How naive she had been.
Exhausted down to her very soul, it did not take her very long to doze off to the sound of physicians softly padding across the infirmary tending to patients, the rippling agony on her back now reduced to a dull, throbbing pain, allowing her enough reprieve to drift off into unconsciousness.
She was woken up by soft footsteps approaching her. She realised it was the only sound apart from her own soft breathing. It must be night already. Was it one of the physicians who came to check up on her?
“Hello, Senior Attendant Yu.”
It was not. That high-pitched yet sharp, cold voice did not belong to one of the male physicians in the infirmary. That voice … sounded very much like the woman who had put her through the nightmarish hell for which she was here in the first place. Her breath caught in her chest, refusing to come out as she felt dread curl up in her gut, panic clawing at her throat. Her head was turned to the side and the woman was standing behind her. She struggled weakly to get up and turn.
A soft chuckle echoed off the walls and she felt the chills running down her spine. A hand came down on her shoulder and kept her in place with little effort.
“Oh no, no. You are a patient. You shouldn’t move.” She squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll come to the other side.”
And then she heard the footsteps again, this time going around the bed. She saw the colourful fabric of the woman’s robes first. Her stride was not graceful at all, in fact, it looked menacing. Her absent thought vanished from her mind as the woman stood right in front of her face and bent down, allowing her to look at the concubine’s face.
She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “I told you, you were stupidly loyal. If you had confessed, your punishment would have been lesser. The Imperial Consort was never going to save you.”
She could not help the tears that formed in her eyes, the utter despair that crashed over her at the knowledge that the woman
knew. “Why… why me?” She whispered. “I only did as they asked. Why did you not… go for them?”The woman’s eyes hardened. “Oh, I wanted to.” She squatted down, put her hand on her chin and looked up at the attendant as if she were a particularly fascinating toy. “But you see, even the Emperor’s decree doesn’t give me enough power to touch the Imperial Consort and her cohorts. She left no evidence of herself in the matter. It would have been my word against hers. No one would have taken that seriously. I would not have gotten my revenge if I went for her. You, on the other hand, are as helpless as a newborn foal. And the Imperial Consort didn’t hurt my son herself, you did. You chose to when you could have chosen not to.”
A smirk curled her lips. “So, I made an example of you. Now, anyone in your position will think a hundred times before they choose. After all,” her smirk widened just a bit, “their Mistresses won’t save them. That had become clear to all today.”
“So, I… I was just a message?” She asked, her voice cracking.
“Yes. I wanted it to be loud and clear what happens when you touch my son. But also,” she leaned up, coming close enough that their noses touched, that she could see the bloodlust simmering right beneath the woman’s cold gaze, “I wanted to make you suffer.”
Her trembling intensified. She should never have angered this woman, she realized that now. The woman had never been quiet or timid and many of the noble concubines despised her attitude. But she had also never quite tried to fight back against things that happened to her. Senior Attendant Li had disciplined the woman, Yu could still see the bruises on her arms, but she never said a word. It was only when her son was touched that she roared, like a lioness protecting her cub.
“What will happen to me?” She asked in a small, trembling voice.
The answer was almost instant. “Oh, you’ll be exiled.”
“Wh-what?!” She screeched, raising her voice for the first time. She had entered the Palace when she had been a mere girl of 12. She had served the Palace ever since then. She had even served the Empress Dowager during the reign of the Emperor’s father. The Palace was her home, her life. She did not know a life outside of it! She could not even begin to imagine how she would live without the walls of the Imperial Palace around her.
“What? You didn’t think you would be allowed to stay here after harming an Imperial Prince, did you?”
“This… this is my home. How… how could you…”
“Oh don’t look at me like that.” The woman rolled her eyes. “That was not my work. The Emperor decided that all on his own. Isn’t it better than an execution?”
No, no, it wasn’t.
“You get to get out of this suffocating palace where you have to obey the whims of concubines, lead a life of your own. I am sure you have some savings to yourself. You could get far away from here, and live out the rest of your life quietly. Who knows? You could even find yourself a husband. Build a family.”
That… did sound like a pretty picture. A beautiful dream. Maybe, it wouldn’t be all that bad…
“That is… unless someone comes in the night and slits your throat.”
Her thoughts screeched to a halt. She turned her eyes to the woman, only to find her staring unblinkingly, and began to tremble again.
“You… you wouldn’t,” he whispered.
“Wouldn’t I?”
The woman then got up and brushed off the invisible dust on her robes. “Well then, I’ll leave you to think about what you will do with your life. Sweet dreams.”
“Hey! You can’t-”
She felt a sharp pain on her neck and then her mind sunk into oblivion.
Oh, Samaya was bluffing hard.
She had neither the time nor the resources to hunt a lone woman across the Empire.
But that woman didn’t know that. After all, Samaya had quite some experience in making people believe things that were untrue.
The look of utter terror and despair on the woman’s face, the thought that she was going to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life, slowly giving into paranoia and driving herself into insanity… oh how satisfying it all was!
She hummed happily as she reached her courtyard, where only Ah-Liu was awake, keeping an eye on the sleeping bundle on the bed while she went to plant a psychological trojan horse in the woman’s mind.
Samaya patted his head. “Thank you, Ah-Liu. Go to sleep now. I’m here.”
Once he left, she changed into her night clothes and laid down beside Manu, who stirred immediately and burrowed himself into her chest.
The next week went almost completely uneventfully, except for the awkwardness and somewhat cold behaviour of some of the concubines during the morning tea with the Empress when she had gone to attend again. She resolutely ignored them and spoke to the women whom she was amiable with. She spent the week mostly with her son, making sure he was recovering well, playing with him and the Princesses, and generally just bringing back her bright, happy boy. It was one of the most fulfilling time she had had at the Palace.
Another event was the Emperor going out of the Palace to visit some of the important Ministers, just before the week ended. That was a yearly ritual apparently, to “strengthen the bond between the Emperor and his courtiers.” She’d had to stand at attention with the other concubines for a few hours.
It was on the last day of the week that something happened when Samaya was woken up from her light sleep by footsteps padding across her roof and outside her residence.
