Face-Slapping14 min read
A Thousand Incenses and One Small Betrayal
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I remember deciding, very carefully, to look fragile.
"I will call your mother," Leonor Webb said as she sat at my bedside, sounding as if she measured her words before sending them out like coins.
"Do," I murmured. I let my hair fall loose, black and heavy, and let my voice be thin. It was not an act of weakness; it was a strategy. I had watched enough old tragedies to know how to play the pale invalid.
"Are you thirsty?" Mary Renard asked, offering a cup of warm water. Her fingers brushed mine with the ease of someone who had served me since I was small. I lifted the cup, and for a moment I tasted something like belonging.
I smiled. "Thank you."
The smile did more than mend my face; it fixed my place in the room. Leonor's expression folded into relief and something like pride. "Kamilah, tell the truth about the lake," she insisted. Her voice trembled.
Kailey Dell hesitated in the doorway, face small and keen under the candlelight. "Mother—"
"Kailey, speak now. Do not hide." My eyes found her. I used that contained softness I had practiced. "Speak plainly, as if giving an account to a magistrate," I told her with a hollow patience that cut. "What happened at the pond?"
"I was wrong, sister," she sobbed. "I—"
There are things you do because they are cruelly necessary. I let Kailey beg. I let Leonor clutch me like I was made of glass. I let Mary hover like a warm shadow. My hands were bandaged a little later, and the bandage hid a scar that meant nothing to them and everything to me.
"You will be sent to the country," Leonor decided with the quickness of someone who believed punishment cleansed shame. "You will learn humility in the fields."
"Yes, mother," Kailey wailed. She tugged my sleeve as if some small regret could anchor her.
I watched her go. I kept my face like a lacquered mirror. "Drink slowly," I told Mary when she handed me another cup of water. "The first sip is the worst."
"Yes, miss," she whispered. Her loyalty was steady. Mary had chosen me long ago. I liked that this life came with people who chose to stay.
They spoke of books and banquets, of a plot I had read before. It was comforting to know the shape of things—who would be kind, and who would wear cruelty like fine silk.
When I first walked the street toward the incense stall, I found a boy there, thin as a reed, his clothes patched and his hands quick.
"How much for one?" I asked, picking up a single golden stick.
"Ten copper," he said, and bowed.
He looked like someone I had seen in a dream: eyes too old for his face, but a small, guarded hope sitting on his shoulders like a bird. His name was Byron Maldonado. He smiled once at me and then lowered his head.
"Take two silver," I said on impulse, and he froze.
"You shouldn't be here," Mary said in my ear.
"Perhaps," I told Byron, "but buy something for your brother. Take the small boy a bun."
He looked up sharply at that. Finn Meyer, who came forward and tugged at Byron's sleeve, flashed two large dark eyes and assumed an expression like a carved toy being wound to life.
"Thank you," Byron said. "Thank you, Miss."
"I am Kamilah," I told him. "And you should tell your brother to study hard. Hunger makes a clever person small."
"Yes, Miss," Byron whispered.
I gave him a visiting token—an old scrap of a card with the season's blessing, the sort of thing you slide into a pocket for a child—and watched him curl it like a talisman. Some people become emperors by white robes; some become emperors by the smell of incense and the gravity of a debt owed.
Later, at the Yellow Dream inn, a man named Cesar Compton—call him by title, the Fifth Prince—sat with the easy arrogance of a man who expected the world to bend. He smiled as if the world had already given him his answer.
"This is my room," he said to me, having overheard a storyteller, and I answered with a small curtsey. "You spoke well about the house, Prince," I offered.
"You flatter me," he returned. He had a soft way of praising, like a hand giving medicine. The court called him the gentle prince, but gentle men often wore the sharpest knives beneath their sleeves.
A thin man, Jayden Ball, the bookish son of the long-favored family, clapped at a storyteller's parting and stared at me with the open, nervous light of a man unarmed in a world of soldiers. He kept a small clutch of pocketed poems and set them on my table like offerings.
"Your name," he blurted, "what is it?"
"Kamilah," I said. I could have told him to be careful. Instead I smiled. Men like Jayden needed kindness and no more.
"Here," Jayden said later, handing me an inked sugar pastry as if it weighed his heart. "Take this. It's bad form to refuse a gift."
"You are very earnest," I told him, because earnest boys become brave men if kept close.
The spring feast—spring’s bright hubbub—came like a tide. Candlelight, garlands, gilded perfumed dishes. I walked in red cloth and a composed face.
"Present the poem," someone called. I took up the brush and set ink like a blade.
"Fading smiles mourned by the crowd;
For whom do petals fall and call?
Who learns to hush the laughing mouth,
To keep the secret, tend the hearth."
They muttered. Some admired. Some thought it coy. Among them, Dane Palmer—another gilded youth—launched a birdcage toward me with a parrot that knew the cruel habits of the court.
"Keep it," Dane said. "Let the creature remind you of me."
"Thank you," I said by reflex, and put neither parrot nor birdcage in my sleeves.
Then they brought him—Bennett Hansen—the crown prince who wore politeness like a helmet. Bennett's hands were light on his cup, his smile a practiced tilt. He had an appetite for command. He would be the Emperor, and the Emperor was a man who learned to swallow others' freedoms. I made a note of his hands.
At the feast the drama came like a struck bell. Jayden, who loved me with the raw, simple hunger of a boy who had learned to give because giving kept him alive, stood when asked to drink the cup William the steward placed on the dais.
"Two cups," Bennett announced. "One is a praise wine, one is the punished draught. Kamilah may choose."
My mouth went dry. The court had teeth like a serried forest.
"Do you—" I started, but Jayden's hand moved before I could finish.
"I will take it," he said.
"No!" I cried.
He smiled that small, brave smile of his. "You cannot be the one to die for being yourself," he said. "Not if I can stop it."
Someone pushed the cup at him and he lifted it with the quickness of a child diving for another child in trouble. The cup was colder than hope.
Jayden drank, and color drained out of his face like water off a stone. There was a silence like a held breath. He staggered, and the roasted lotus nuts collided, and over it all I heard a soft, choking sound as his mouth filled with blood.
"Jayden!" I reached, and his hand found mine like a lifeline.
"Pull—" he coughed. "You have to—keep them—"
My voice was a scream. "Call a doctor! Somebody—!"
Bennett's eyes were bright and angry because he had been refused. "You will be punished for defiance," he said, and dressed his cruelty in imperial calm.
My knees gave. I felt as if the room had turned to a cliff. Jayden, with a mouth stained copper, smiled at me as if offering the world a final, small truce.
"I wanted…you to live," he breathed. "Do not hate them for me. Live."
He was dead within moments. It felt like the world had lost one color.
I do not have the poet's shame of being blunt: I drew a blade.
It shimmered like a bad apology in my palm.
"Stop!" someone screamed as the room turned. "What are you doing?"
"Stand aside," I said coldly. I turned the blade toward the one who had given the poisoned order. "Bennett Hansen," I said, naming him as if the syllables could strip nobility. "You have blood on your serving hands. You ordered him to drink. You planned this to be a lesson."
He blanched. The room leaned in.
In the aftermath, I did something no one expected: I did not flee. I stood on the dais and accused Bennett, and then I named another man—Erick Burns—the quiet counselor behind the curtains, the one who had been helpful and had looked at me with a practiced sympathy in the weeks before.
"Erick Burns," I said, "you arranged the signs, you whispered words. Reveal your hand."
Erick had been smiling earlier; now his smile was slow to come. "Madam," he said, "this is preposterous."
Jayden's death had been a blade through the court's illusions. Faces shifted. A crowd gathers like storm clouds.
"Show your papers," I demanded. "Show the lists of gifts, the letters, the inked orders interlaced with your counsel. Show them the incense records. People, speak. Who saw Erick in the servants' wings whispering with the steward?"
A young torch-bearer stepped forward. "I heard him," the boy called. "He told the steward where to place the cups."
"My steward follows orders," Erick said, still falsely serene. "And what of the Emperor's justice? The court must obey."
"Is that justice or a game?" I asked. I had Jayden's blood on my hands in my memory and a litany in my throat. The room smelled suddenly of iron and roses.
Erick's face hardened, his composure like dried paint. "You accuse a royal counselor? You sully the palace."
The boy pushed a rolled scroll onto the marble with a trembling hand. "He told me to put it by the wine shelf last night."
The scroll unrolled. There were inked exchanges between Erick and a steward—direction, precise. The inked order read like a trap: "Two cups. One for praise, one for lesson. The lesson must be exemplary."
That was the proof. The court whispered as if a draft were passing. Men murmured and some laughed like they were arguing a phantom question.
Erick's demeanor cracked. "Those are drafts. They were for rehearsal, for theatrical instruction. You cannot—"
"Denial," I said into the din. "You are still in the cycle of denial. First craft, then dull the conscience, then make a sermon of public law."
"How dare you!" Erick snapped. "How dare you twist my words!"
He was red with the gusts of getting caught. "I—" He glanced at the Emperor as if pleading for shelter. Bennett's jaw was tight. For a while they were both predators and frightened men. They had been smug. Now the first stage was gone.
"Take him," I told the steward in a voice that surprised even me. "Place him on the hall steps. Let all present judge."
A circle formed. In the ancient world—crowds came like waves. The steward called the palace scribes. Soldiers stood, unsure whose command to follow. The crowd around the steps separated like a sea parting, and there Erick Burns was made to kneel on the cold stone.
For five hundred words I will keep them there, for the rules of the world and the rules I promised myself both demand it.
He knelt, hands splayed against the carved floor. The palace hall hummed. Fifty noble eyes were focused; five hundred whispers fluttered like bird wings in the rafters. Some held pearl fans and did a slow clap of disapproval. Some small women in the gallery leaned out to hiss.
"Erick Burns," I said, stepping forward so my shadow fell over him. "You were clever. You designed a lesson. You practiced denial until it shone. You believed loyalty meant manipulating fate instead of asking for mercy."
He lifted his head then. For the first beat his face was smug—the smile of a man sure the court would save him. "I served the Emperor," he said with a brittle tone. "I advised for peace. This—this is a tragedy, but—"
"Smug," I repeated, cold as the knife at my hip. "Smug to think you would pass the burden of murder to a cup and a page. Smug to think you'd be safe while someone else fell."
He blinked. The first fissure of pride slit his face. The crowd shifted: some men leaned in, smelling the change.
"You speak as if you are above law," someone in the gallery cried. "Show us your hand, Erick. Let us see if your counsel was noble or venal."
Erick's eyes darted. He swallowed. The second stage came: shock. He had been interrupted mid-strut, and the momentum left him like a lost train. "This is a plot," he wheezed. "You twist it. They will see—"
"Denial," I echoed. "You will say it was a mistake. You will bargain with reason. You will call it practice."
"Practice for what?" he snapped, and the instability of his voice was like ice breaking. "For governance! For the safety of the realm! Jayden died because of unrest, not because of my counsel alone!"
A murmur rose. The crowd had been ready to be instructed. Now they wanted a show. A scribe read out the steward's notes louder; the ink dried into evidence under the light. The written words did not bruise or beg; they cut.
"Then beg," I told him. The third stage must be heard. "Beg. Confess plainly."
"Confess?" He laughed at first, small and high. The laughter grew thin, and he stopped. The gallery leaned over in a hush.
"No," he said. "I will not beg to a woman. I will not—"
Then he saw the faces. The nobleman who had earlier smiled indulgently now scraped his chair away. A footman pointed at Erick's hands where ink had left thin stains. Someone near the back began to sing a mocking rhyme about cups and lessons. The sound bit the air like wind through reeds.
He crumpled. The fourth stage was a collapse of the outer man. Erick's shoulders sagged. For a second he seemed small enough to be held in a single palm. His eyes ran with sweat. "Please," he whispered. "Please—no—"
"Beg," I said.
He bowed his head and that pathetic sound came—no longer the sharp voice of a counselor but the low, ragged plea of a panicked creature. "Help me," he said. "Help me—do not let them—"
There were no cameras here, only a hundred hands, a hundred witnesses. Some had phones, odd anachronisms of the future slipped into pockets; some had paper and ink. Someone in the crowd made a quick rubbing of his name on a blotter, another drew a face, an old woman began to clap slowly.
I watched how the room changed. Where there had been murmurs of gossip, there was now a chorus of voices like the sea.
"Shame," a matron hissed. "Shame him."
They started to circle, not like lions but like critics. Fingers pointed. A clerk recorded each word Erick had once used to justify the cups. "He wrote it!" a boy cried, waving the scroll.
Erick's face moved through the final stage: supplication. He lifted his eyes to the Emperor as if the imperial bench would catch him. Bennett's face was a mask, blood on his lip where rage had bitten itself.
"Spare me," Erick sobbed. "I was only—only—"
"Only what?" a voice demanded.
"Only human," he choked. "Only human—"
The crowd's tone changed. Embarrassment split into a sharp glee like someone dipping bread into a shared bowl. Some in the back began to clap. "Kamilah is right!" someone shouted. "Hang him!"
That was the cruelty we all feared. Power twists panic into punishment. The guards looked at the Emperor and then at Erick and then at the crowd. The Emperor, used to being obeyed, saw what the crowd wanted. He gave a small nod like a seal.
"Take him," Bennett said.
The guards moved like sleepwalkers. Erick, who had once walked the halls with that soft, confident step, was dragged up the marble steps with his head bowed.
They made him kneel in the public square outside the palace. The Emperor's court surrounded him, and hundreds watched. People recorded, whispered, tore off pieces of his old reputation with fingers as if unwrapping a rotten fruit.
"Erick Burns!" I said again, loud enough to turn heads at windows. "You believed you could teach by making an example. Look at what you have turned into."
He did all the stages: smug, shocked, denying, collapsing, begging. He had small men pleading at his boots, an old woman calling him names, a child holding up a scrap with his own hand as proof. A scribe read his words aloud to the street. Men spat. Some clapped. Someone even—a fool, perhaps—took a sketch with charcoal and, with a wicked glee, sold copies to the crowd.
"No one will forget this," the crowd chanted.
I remember his last look to me then—utterly bereft. The man who had believed that cruelty dressed as lesson would never meet eyes again. He begged. He pleaded. He tried to explain that it had been for stability. He promised he would serve any sentence. He promised to write a confession. The crowd would have none of it.
"Mercy is not yours to bargain with," I told him. "You had the luxury of rehearsing murders and calling them policy. Now learn what it is to be watched."
They led him away into chains and into the scrivener's office. He bowed again and again, and the crowd could not decide whether to jeer or weep. The surrounding men took out ink and jotted what they heard. Children mimicked the posture of the kneeling man. An old soldier spat on the ground and called him traitor.
"Let this be a lesson," I said, and the city agreed.
It was a public punishment in the fullest sense: watched, recorded, dissected, shouted about. Erick went from control to ruin in the span of a word. I watched the arc of his expression—smug, then the thin frost of shock, the attempts at denial, the slow collapse, the final broken begging—and I kept count in my head of the names who had been complicit.
What I did not expect was the ripple beyond the stone and pages. The net of accusation spread and clung to others. Bennett trembled like a man who had been told he is no longer safe in his own castle. The soldiers who once obeyed without irony began to weigh obedience like a coin. The palace had been shaken to its mortar.
Afterward, Jayden was given a small burial in the courtyard with a single candle and a fan of white paper. People wept and some pretended not to. I stayed until the night painted everything the color of old paper.
"I should leave," Mary whispered. "You will be wanted."
"I will go," I said, but I did not move that night. There are debts that are not settled by escape.
When the dust settled, when they had stripped Erick of his honors and the Emperor's rage found other aims, I did what one does when they have learned to live twice: I remembered.
I remembered the little incense stick Byron had held, the bun Finn had almost choked on with glee, Jayden's crooked smile, and the cat—my cat—purring in the corner of the maiden's room.
"I will not be a martyr," I told the empty room. "I will be alive. I will make choices."
"Do you want me to stay?" Mary asked, hand on the door.
"Stay," I told her. "Hold the line for me."
Weeks passed like a slow page turning. The court cleaned itself in the way ponds clean after a storm: some things sank and moldered, other things floated and were skimmed away. Names that had sung rose and fell in the palisade.
Byron came to visit with Finn. They stood in the lane as if two small birds peered into a broiler, eyes hungry and precise.
"You kept your promise," Byron said, voice rough. "You said you'd help if we were in need."
"You gave me a coin and a promise," I said. "Promises are what build empires and quiet homes."
He bowed like a small candle. "We owe you," he said.
"Then pay your debt," I told him. "Attend the market by day. Learn a craft. Keep Finn safe."
He nodded. "I will."
"Do not become what Erick taught," I said.
"What is that?"
"To believe you are a lesson made by someone else's script. Be more than that."
He looked at the ground. Finn snuck forward with two sugared buns and offered one to me.
"Thank you, Miss," he said.
I took it. "Keep your teeth clean," I told him. "And read everything you can."
We moved forward like that: small truce, small kindness. The palace stomached its wounds. I decided not to be offered as a trophy by any prince. Bennett's dreams had been burned away by the very spectacle he had arranged. He was left, more dangerous because he had learned to hide his hunger. He was still an enemy.
"I will never be anyone's acquisition," I told Jayden's memory. "Not my family’s, not the palace's, not a crown's."
I pledged then, alone at a window, with the striped cat JiaoJiao tucked under a shawl and Byron's incense in the distant stalls: I would make a life that could be owned only by me. That is the ending the story owed me.
Months later, long after the scrolls had dried and the court had made another round of feasts, the story of the incense boy and the brave bookish young man and the fall of a counselor entered the city’s spoken tales.
"Do not mistake kindness," Mary said one evening as we sat by the small lamp and mended a teacup. "They will tell the story different places."
"They will tell the story and forget whose hands bled," I said.
"Then remind them."
"I will." I touched JiaoJiao's head. The cat purred like a small bell. Outside, a faint scent of cinnamon and incense drifted on a warm wind—Byron's last gift to the street.
I had come into a borrowed life to save someone who was not even mine. I left a trail of small revolutions: Jayden's poems tucked inside a pillow, Byron learning a trade, Finn smiling without being hungry, and Erick Burns exposed in a way that taught a palace not to play with cups and fates.
"I won't be the woman who dies in a lake," I told the night. "Not if I can help it."
"Will you ever forgive yourself?" Mary asked softly.
"For what?" I asked. I thought of the ledger of choices in my chest where debts could be paid with living.
"For leaving some things unsaid."
"I have said enough," I replied. "I have acted enough. Now I must live enough."
The last image I keep is small and stubborn: a single incense stick, its ash forming a thin line on an old saucer, and the cat JiaoJiao, licking a paw as if to say that all things burn and are remade.
"Light it," Byron asked once, handing me a slender stick. He had done wrong and he had repaired some of it. "For Jayden."
"I will," I said. I set the stick on the saucer and watched the smoke make a pale heart in the air. People will retell the day differently—some will call me villain, some will call me saint—but the smoke kept the memory no matter who spoke.
"Live for those who cannot," Jayden's voice—my memory, stubborn as forever—said inside my head.
"I will," I answered out loud, and in that small oath the court and the world both changed a little.
The End
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