Shock gives way to disbelief at this list of accusations. I stare at the man who had seemed kind, warning me away from the marquis. He stood beside the princess and assisted me with advancing in the competition.
He sets the scroll down, regarding me with a grave expression. “You appeared to be a simple girl from Sù, who made the honest mistake of reciting a poem written by a revolutionary. You claimed innocence, but we should have sent you to the dungeons for your insolence. I should have listened to the marquis instead of permitting you to continue. Now he rests with his ancestors, and we are bereft of his wisdom. I have failed in my duty to protect the empire.”
So, the marquis is dead. One of my supposed victims.
“You have destroyed the lives of many, Ning of Sù,” he says. “I am loath to imagine the havoc you would have brought upon the empire had you been appointed as the court shénnóng-shī. If all your scheming came to fruition.”
He picks up another scroll and continues my list of crimes: “Fang Mingwen, a senior maidservant. Found with a stolen jeweled hairpin in her possession, assisted you with leaving the competitors’ residence and entering the kitchens. Sentenced to sixty strikes with a cane.”
I choke. Twenty strikes are enough to break a man’s leg. Forty strikes are sufficient to cause internal bleeding. Sixty strikes … sixty strikes would kill her. When I placed that hairpin in her hand, I might as well have sentenced her to death myself. But who was it that instructed her to bring me to the kitchens? Who threatened her with the lives of her family?
“Yang Rouzi, head steward of the Kitchen Department. Found to have concealed her knowledge of your past. Conspired with you to obtain and distribute the poison at the celebratory banquet. Sentenced to death by hanging. Her family members will be stripped of their roles and banished to spend the rest of their lives in service to Dàxī in the stone quarries.”
My heart drops, words utterly failing me. Chunhua, Qing’er …
I struggle to my feet. A heavy hand falls on my shoulder to push me back down, but the chancellor shakes his head, gesturing for him to step back. The guard obeys.
I spit the blood from my mouth onto the platform, leaving red splatters on the wood, and look up at him. Seated so high above me, to remind me of my commoner status. How easily they can fabricate their lies.
“I want to speak with the princess,” I call out, glad my voice holds steady.
The two officials behind him glance at each other and whisper, but Chancellor Zhou’s face remains impassive. “What could you possibly have to say to her?”
“I have information for her ears only.”
He dismisses me with a wave. “She has given me the authority to lead this proceeding, to judge you as we see fit. She is not interested in what you have to say.”
My ears thunder with rage, as if the spirit of the Black Tiger is roaring inside me. I thought she could be trusted. I held her lover’s beating heart in my hands and extracted her promise. A single favor. I believed myself a keen negotiator, but all I learned was my capability for cruelty.
Liars, thieves, traitors all. Everyone in this place. Including me.
“I am not the only one who touched the food in the kitchens,” I argue, even though I am aware it would mean little to those who have already determined my guilt. “You should be searching for the real murderer.”
Chancellor Zhou’s lips draw into a thin, mirthless line. “Do you think I would be so foolish as to bring you to trial without evidence?”
A servant approaches and empties the contents of the sack he is carrying on the floor. But instead of the clothes I had stuffed it with when I attempted to leave the palace, out slides an assortment of jewelry and coins. Books on poison follow, from the restricted section of the library, the ones I had left behind in my room. And then … the broken pieces of my mother’s shénnóng-shī box. All the powders and herbs and dried flowers she so painstakingly collected … ruined.
I let out a strangled cry and attempt to step forward, to salvage what I am able to, but the guard yanks me back.
“Keep her away from those ingredients,” the chancellor warns as the strong arms of the guard restrains me. “Who knows what she could bring forth with her magic.”
Returning to my trial, he continues with each piece of evidence, walling me in brick by brick. “Smuggling stolen treasures out of the palace. Books on poison. Have you no shame?”
I remember how Wenyi kept talking, even though no one listened as he was dragged away from the Hall of Eternal Light. He wanted to save Dàxī, to save Jia. I remember what Lian said about how the capital burned. The darkness within me rages—Let them burn.