Face-Slapping14 min read
A Red Veil, a Poisoned Well, and the Hairpin That Would Not Let Go
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I opened my eyes to a world drowned in red.
The shoes were red, the robe was red, the veil was red. The tassels shivered with the movement of the sedan chair. I blinked and the first thing I saw on the floor was a black pool. It smelled wrong, like something beyond blood. I felt my hand go cold.
"What's this?" I said, but it sounded small in my own ears.
The gongs outside stopped. The voices of the crowd cut off like a string. I parted the veil by habit more than courage. People were everywhere—palanquin carriers, musicians, umbrella-bearers, parcel carriers—filling the street from end to end.
"Step down..." The matchmaker's voice rose like a cock's cry. "Please, have the groom kick the sedan..."
Silence followed. The matchmaker rubbed her hands and strained her neck toward the gate. She wanted a sign, an order, anything.
"No one is coming out?" I asked.
"Madam," the matchmaker whispered, fanning herself, "the prince's house... they have not opened the door."
My smile came out soft and wrong. I let her have the veil.
"You keep it," I said, and dropped the heavy cloth into her arms.
She looked at me like I was laughing at a funeral. People did not laugh at that house. I adjusted my step and walked toward the main hall. The courtyard had no red double-happiness sign. No banquet tables. No guests.
Inside the main hall, servants kept their heads down as if the ceiling might fall in at any moment.
A man sat in the chair at the head of the hall. Black boots. A robe edged with cloud embroidery. He sipped tea as if the world outside were a different play.
"The hour is upon us," said the ritual official. His voice was small and brittle.
The man did not look up at first. Then he did. His eyes were deep, dark like old ink, and when they fixed on me something cold slid across my skin.
"If the regent finds this match displeasing, why did he accept?" the official pressed.
He lifted his cup slowly and looked at me as if he were reading a book he had read before. "Because it suits him," he said.
His name was Reed Zhang. At least that is the name I would learn to call him.
He stood. He came to the threshold. His shadow filled the doorway and the air around me felt like a lid closing.
"Stay in this house," he told me, voice low and sure. "Do not attempt anything. Whoever you are, do not cause trouble. If you do, I will kill you without a thought."
He said it as if he were pointing out a stain on a sleeve. I swallowed and thought instead of the century my mind came from, of the university hospital nights and the smell of disinfectant. I thought of sutures and schedules and students who slept through lectures.
"Whoever I am?" I echoed, and he passed me like a wind.
They did not bow. The vows were not said. I stood alone in the hall and did not know if I had a title.
A maid with nervous hands guided me to the marriage chamber and left. No one else greeted me. No banquet. No hourglass of ritual. I saw a plate of cakes and ate because my chest hurt.
At night, when lamps were lit and the house slept, Reed Zhang came back. He stood at the doorway, three steps from me.
"You have behaved improperly," he said. "You will go to the Hall of Rain to reflect."
"What?" The word did not capture it properly. It sounded like a prank.
"You have offended me. You shall be punished."
He walked toward me and I felt trapped. His presence filled the room like thunder.
"I am not who you think I am," I said.
He leaned close. I smelled tea and leather. "Don't play games," he said, and his hand closed on my jaw.
I thought, absurdly, of the way a surgeon's hands fit; I had placed sutures with worse in my life.
"I am not—" I started.
He laughed and the sound ran along his teeth. He accused me of wearing another woman's face to steal a royal seal. He suggested I had been sent as a spy.
"I do not know what a seal is," I said, though I knew he was listening.
He reached for my lips. I slapped him. It surprised us both.
"Foul-man!" I snapped. "Don't you dare—"
He looked at my hand and then he smiled without warmth. The smile stayed on his face and filled the room.
He had soldiers. They dragged me out. "To the Hall of Rain," he ordered.
Hall of Rain. It was an old name for a hell of a room. Damp, sky-torn roof. Spiderwebs. A nest of mice. The mattress held a nest of living rodents which stirred like angry statistics of neglect.
I had, by then, learned two things: this body's past had enemies, and its wounds were many. When I felt at my chest, a black taste of poison rose at the back of my throat. I had been given slow work; a chronic toxin was threading through the veins.
I had trained as a medical student. I knew about poison. I knew about modes and antidotes. With a cool head and a bad hand I could possibly fix myself if I had time, resources, and no one watching. I had none of those.
I slept fitfully, wrapped in the stink of old soda and damp straw. In the morning I found that the well in the yard was full of hair. Human hair. I realized something about the household: it tolerated death.
I told the butler, Findlay Neumann, about the hair. He said it was nothing. A maid named Beatrice Popov had been missing and now she was in that well. People whispered her name like a warning.
"Why would they make me live where someone drowned?" I asked Findlay.
"It is what Master ordered," he said. "You are to remain."
Days passed like stitches. I watched because watching was safer than acting. One servant, Layne Baxter, was the one who brought my meals. I took to her like a doctor taking to a nervous nurse. I found the seam of the marriage crown and pried pearls loose. I gave Layne three pearls and a map of what I needed—her help to get herbs. She looked at them like a woman offered chances.
When she left with the paper, she never returned. Later that night I heard a sound like a body falling and the faint breath of someone who had no future. Layne lay in the courtyard, her throat cut. I moved to help her, but the large artery had been severed.
"I cannot fix this," I said, and I meant it. The best reattachment in this place required instruments and a theater. I had a needle and a hand and not enough faith.
Findlay returned the report. Reed Zhang was told. He touched the pearls in his palm and they were evidence for a rage I did not understand.
He gave orders. Anyone who aided me would be punished.
I learned to be invisible very quickly.
Weeks became a map. I practiced walking, then running, then the forbidden lift to the roof. The House nailed my windows. They thought to keep me. They forgot about holes in the ceiling that the night air loved.
I climbed one night. The roof was a challenge—my shoulder protested from old injuries, the poison humming in the background. I made it and looked down at the garden like a thief at a jewel. A guard saw me only when I was already through the window.
He ran and I jumped down and twisted my ankle. The guard cursed and threatened the lash and I smiled a small smile because escape was not done with me yet.
Reed found me on the lawn, and instead of killing me he dragged me into his arms and whispered ridiculous things like "actress." He had a knife, and when he cut his arm and let blood trickle, someone in the crowd called me an assassin. I had not the words to speak up.
"Take her away," he told his men. "Tie her for the night."
The men obeyed. They buried me in straw like a secret. But I learned about the house. And the secrets were heavy.
A little later, I tried a bolder plan. I stole a knife from a soldier, not to kill but to hold like a talisman. I would use the threat. I would force them to understand I had some power.
"The moment you draw," I told Reed, the knife pressed against his hip, "I will go. No tricks. No one follows."
He looked at me as though reading the last page of a book someone else had written.
"All right," he said. "Come with me into the carriage."
We rode through the night. I forced him to be my hostage. He feigned sleep. He asked me questions about home and war and machines, and I answered and tried to make him believe I was nothing but a strange, clever woman who understood anatomy and engines.
He was a man of contradictions. Stoicism and temper. Quiet and a threat.
A group of black-clad assassins tried to cut our carriage in the night. Reed fought like a veteran, and then he did something I did not expect: he stepped between me and danger. He did not drop the mask of being the jagged man who ordered punishments. He grew softer where people watched his back.
We escaped into the hills, but the cost was heavy. His rival, Antoine Zaytsev, caught us later. Or Antoine's men did. Antoine was a different cold—thin smile, nimble cruelty. He bound me and we were driven toward his hidden camp.
"Who are you?" Antoine asked when he had me under a lantern. He ran a finger along my stitched shoulder subtly. He recognized the body. He knew of the reputations.
"Who I am is not for you to decide," I said. I had little fight left by then; my leg had broken again under a thrown stool. Antoine laughed and the laugh cut through me like ice.
He spoke of orders and of secrets and of the seal they wanted. He called my body a tool. He told stories of his own rise with greedy eyes. He was ruthless, and his hands did not tremble.
They broke my leg and left me to roll out of his wagon and down a slope. I knew sand and river rock better than tyranny, so I crawled into thorns and waited.
Reed found me days later, and he carried me like a ledger he could not explain.
So many things happened on the road. The two of us, the regent and I, thrown together by violence and necessity, became companions of a strange kind. I learned that Reed was far smarter than I gave him credit for. He made plans to handle local hunger, to manipulate sympathy, to win hearts with a rain ceremony that would fix his public image.
I learned that, to Reed, I was a resource. Not a person. "You will not leave," he said once late by the fire. "We need you."
"And I need air," I said. "I need the right to sleep without metal at my sides."
He did not answer, and his eyes were like the moonlight on a blade. He held me in his arms then, and I felt something like warmth but not love.
When we returned to the city, Reed staged a public ritual to call rain. People kneeled. I watched. The sky turned sudden and willing and the rain fell.
"Do you believe in miracles?" I asked.
"No," Reed answered, "but I know how to make a crowd see one."
It was clever. It built him a moment and filled a hungry throat. I told him something rash then: "You want people to love you. You will pay for it in ways you do not know."
He only looked at me and said, plainly, "I do not love. I do not need love."
That answer wrenched at the small hopes in me. I kept moving.
Days later, the city learned of a murder. A hidden maid had been found drowned in the well. A girl who had carried my food was stabbed. People whispered that Reed had ordered the killings. Reed declared them necessary purges against spies.
But there was another plan in motion, one that would lead to a great public reckoning. Some things hide until you press them. Secrets like rot will spread until they are seen.
I found a scrap of paper tied to a stone on the wall of the garden one night. The writing had only two words: "useless." The voice was raw and bitter. Someone wanted me to fail by turning me to charm instead of cunning.
I kept the paper.
Then the public punishment.
Antoine Zaytsev would be the bad man. He had killed for a cause, but his cause was greed. He had murdered Layne Baxter and other small folk to keep their mouths shut. He thought he was safe with favors and fear.
Reed decided, for his own reasons that had nothing to do with mercy, to make an example of Antoine.
They brought Antoine forth in the market on a day when the city was full. People gathered. I went because I wanted to watch consequences catch scent of the wrongs done.
"Antoine Zaytsev," Reed announced from a raised platform, "you stand accused of murder, conspiracy, and the trafficking of bodies. You have carried out murders under my name and without it. You have cut throats and handed the city the fear of a blade."
Antoine laughed. For a moment he seemed young and sure. "You have no proof," he said, loud enough for the first row to hear. "You have a man who hates me. Who else?"
"Bring the evidence!" Reed called, and a servant lifted a wet shawl from a chest. It was bloody. Later, they read messages collected from his confidants. Later, they brought forward the pearls taken from the crown that Layne carried. Later, they had a witness.
"A witness?" Antoine scoffed. "Where is this brave woman?"
"She is dead by your hand," Reed said. "She was killed so you might buy silence. But the city has eyes, and the city will speak."
Antoine's face was a study in motion. It passed from a composed scowl to an angle of irritation and then to a grin. The grin was not brave; it was a mask for calculation.
"You cannot do this in public," Antoine said, his voice thin. "This is a private matter."
The crowd waved their hands. Some shouted. A merchant raised a hand to take a coin and then lowered it. The market smelled of rain and hot bread and fear.
"Do you demand a trial from the court?" Antoine asked. He had allies in dark robes.
"You will have the court," Reed said. "But first, the people have a right to know. No more secrets."
Someone in the crowd began to record the speech on a crude device—men with ink scribbled notes like they were writing a play. The city recorded in any way they could. There were phones in pockets even in this tale's oddness. People began to film.
Antoine's expression changed. The grin crumpled. Denial flickered to anger. He said it was slander. He called us liars. He cursed the witnesses.
Then a woman was dragged forward. Her name was Beatrice Popov—no, the body had been Beatrice. She could not speak from the grave, but we had others. A servant with shaking hands recited Antoine's threats and his orders. Another showed the knife that matched the wound.
"You're lying!" Antoine bellowed, and his voice did not steady the crowd.
He pointed to his men, to merchants, to friends. The crowd's mood shifted like weather. Some swore at him. Some clapped. A man took a stone and threw it. Others chanted his name like a curse.
Antoine's face went from anger to pale. He tried to walk away. The crowd closed in like the slow tightening of a bag.
"Come to me," Reed said quietly, and two soldiers grabbed Antoine's arms. The look of shock on Antoine's face landed on the hard floor like a stone.
"No, no, no, you cannot—" He tried to make the language of disbelief into a shield.
Reed lifted the shawl and wrapped it around Antoine's shoulders, like a mock crown.
"You were proud," Reed said. "You thought no one would see. You thought your violence would be a quiet thing. You thought you could buy loyalty."
"Buy?" Antoine laughed, then his voice cracked. "I was only taking what belonged to me."
"What belonged to you?" Reed asked. "Lives? Trust? The bodies of people you thought were invisible?"
Antoine's face began to tremble. The crowd's murmurs turned to a cacophony. A baker asked a nearby man to fetch a rope. Someone else called the guards.
"You can't do this," Antoine cried. "You can't make me—"
"I can," Reed answered. "And I will."
Antoine's eyes flashed. He tried to twist free. Soldiers held him. He tried to strike out but his hands were bound. He fell to his knees suddenly, the scene changing from spectacle to a private collapse.
"Please," he said. "Please don't—" His voice was small and animal now.
There were shouts of amazement in the crowd. Phones and scribes recorded everything. A woman near me wept openly. The man who used to shout about the morning bread placed his hand over his mouth. Someone started clapping like a curtain drop.
Antoine moved through the stages the law cannot fake. First defiance. Then disbelief. Then denial. Then bargaining. Then pleading. Then silent collapse.
"You're a liar," he told Reed once more, and then he began to choke.
The soldier's grip tightened and Antoine's pleading grew lesser. He reached for Reed with eyes that were not the eyes of a man defiant but of a man who wanted the ground to swallow him.
"Save me," he whispered. He was on the floor now, kneeling, palms up like a supplicant.
The crowd either stepped forward or retreated. Some raised hands and recorded his cries. Others moved to touch the evidence as if touching it would make sense of a world that had been wrong.
"Would you like to confess your victims?" Reed asked.
"In my honor—" Antoine started, then gagged.
He could not speak. The crowd's sound swelled. Some started to chant for justice. Others to shout for mercy. A woman took a photo. A child clapped. People took out coins and held them high.
Antoine bowed his head. Tears ran down his face. He began to beg, and not for himself but for people he could not retrieve, and it became an ugly, public thing. His bravado had been stripped.
"I was wrong," he croaked. "I was—"
"You were cruel," Reed said. "You thought you could hide. The city has seen you."
"Do what you will," Antoine said. He had moved through every shade and now his anger was gone; only fear remained.
Reed gestured to his guards. Antoine was taken away. They led him through a lane of townspeople, heads turned, eyes wide. Children pointed. Someone wrote his name in ink. The public watched him change from a man who thought himself untouchable into a pleading creature.
That day the city filmed him and tweeted him and made him small.
He went from smirks to pleadings to the floor in a little under an hour. He begged for the kind of mercy he had never given. People filmed him. People clapped. People recorded his fall.
I watched and felt a cold swarm of vindication and sorrow. Justice is seldom clean. It is often loud and messy. But it was a moment when power had to look at itself.
After Antoine was hauled away by the court, there were consequences. Reed did not make a show of mercy; he wanted to place a message on the streets. He wanted the city to fear him and trust him at once.
People called him saint and tyrant both.
"You did this to save me?" I asked Reed in private.
He did not answer about mercy. "We needed to prove they would not hide themselves," he said. "You should be careful. This city remembers images forever."
I learned, then, that public punishment does not cleanse the body it leaves broken. It leaves scars on the watchers.
Time passed. I tended to my wounds and to the poison with the slow, steady measures of a doctor. Reed left and returned with a circle of friends and people who owed him favors. One of those friends was a woman with the face of some bright memory—Rosario Caldwell. She had two small children, Amos Coleman and Esau Soto, in tow.
She smiled like an afternoon. She called Reed "brother" in a way that made the air warm. I felt an old, familiar tug of envy. She had the easy grace everyone wanted. Her children eyed me as if I were a new story to be judged.
Amos and Esau were quick as cats to see a rival. They whispered in the corners. They told the other children to be afraid of me. They called me names. Reed watched and sometimes intervened. Sometimes he did not.
I kept thinking of the pearls and Layne. I kept the hairpin Reed had returned to me after patching me up. It was cold and heavy with his blood on its tip once. I kept it in my hair.
The days passed. I learned rules. I learned how to be the wrong bride in the right house. I learned which servants smiled for coin and which smiled because their chest was open.
One night I asked Reed a question. "Do you like anyone?" I said, because I had nothing better to ask.
He did not look at me. "I will not like anyone again," he said. "It is a choice."
"Why?" I asked.
He looked at the fire and answered, "Because liking complicates things."
That should have been the end of it, but the hairpin in my hair would not let me forget the places where people had died. It glinted as if knowing things I did not.
I made plans slowly, but deliberately. I learned to heal. I learned to speak a little in the court tongue. I practiced the polite smiles and the small indignities.
Everyone thought I was a puppet. That is how they mismeasured me.
There came a day when I stood in the hall and refused to be quiet. I had gathered small facts and a list of names, and Reed had gathered bigger facts and a list of debts. Together we had found those who had spoken of a darker trade.
I stepped into the main hall at noon when the guests would be many.
"Listen," I said, surprising myself with the steadiness of my voice. I lifted the hairpin in my hand like a seal.
"People of the court," I said. "You have heard confessions and punishments. You have seen a man unmasked. Today I will tell you what it is to use someone's life as a coin."
They looked at me as if I were a small bird.
"Layne Baxter was murdered for a paper and pearls," I said. "Beatrice Popov was drowned in a well because someone feared her voice." I spoke names plainly. I spoke of how the seal changed hands. I told the truth slowly and plainly.
The hall changed its air. Men shifted in their chairs. Women covered their mouths. Reed watched from the edge and his eyes did not blink.
There was noise then, and questions, and courtly words, and the smell of thought as it moves from confusion to anger.
I had no idea, after all that, what I would do with my life. I only knew I could not be a sealed thing any longer.
In the end, punishment came for some, reputation for others, and for me a strange, hard prize: I was not the same woman who had first walked under that red veil.
At night I would lie awake and touch the hairpin Reed had given back. It sat quiet and bright. I told it the story, like a child confessing to a toy.
"Keep my secret," I would whisper, because even the strongest plan needs a thin place to hide.
The city changed slowly. People who had songs wrote new ones. The girl who had been dragged across roofs and into thorns learned how to stand in light and speak without shame.
When the day came that someone asked me if I would leave Reed Zhang, I held the hairpin, now dull with use, and thought of all I had learned. I did not answer with vows, nor did I promise a future. I put the hairpin into the deepest drawer of the chest in my room, where the old veil had been, and closed it slow.
"I cannot promise you forever," I said to myself that night.
I could promise only a small thing: that the hairpin would remember.
And if anyone asked what I would do with the body I wore, I would only say: I will sew together what I can, stitch what is broken, and keep watch over what breathes.
It was a small promise. It was a human one.
The End
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