Revenge14 min read
I Kept the Crimson Mark and Broke His Moonlight
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01
"I keep the mark," I told myself aloud as I stepped into the palace garden, my palms folded behind me the way a minister's hands are taught to fold—neat, but not soft.
"Who goes there? Who dares disturb Her Majesty's walk?" a woman's voice rang sharp as a bell.
I saw her before she saw me: a living bloom in bright silk, eyes like polished pebbles and cheeks of fresh fruit. People clustered around her as if the sun had a new favorite. They called her names I had heard before—praise and title braided with devotion.
She did not know me. I knew her thoroughly.
"Who is your mistress?" I asked, lifting the small, formal bow I had been trained to give.
She scanned me with open contempt. "There is no decorum in the palace these days. A minister parading through the gardens like a common official—who taught you this, Li's steward?" Her hand flicked toward her attendants to ring the emphasis of insult.
"Lady Avianna?" someone hissed. "Rise for the Noble Consort!"
"Rise?" I let the question hang, and the men at my side revealed the blades at their hips. My voice floated cool and flat. "Then Lady Avianna it is." The word carried no courtesy.
She flamed, outraged. "You—what right—"
"Take her," I said to my captain.
"Yes." The command was small, final. Her attendants faltered; their fear made clamor, but no one stepped to blades.
We walked away under the same sun she had enjoyed five heartbeats before. Farther on, a tall figure, regal even when the light made his face a slice of cold gold, halted our little storm. He hesitated only a breath; I saw his throat tighten.
"Chancellor," he said with forced politeness. "You came without sending word."
I kept my back straight. "I have work before the throne, Your Majesty. The Feng household's letters have been forwarded to the courts. Their ties to outside clans must be examined."
He stared at me as if seeing an issue—affection and desperation braided in that look. "There is a child—my first. She carries my blood." His hand found the sleeve of the woman beside him. "She is expecting."
"Then investigate," I said. "No one is exempt. Not even those wrapped in silk."
He put a hand on my, tentative and almost pleading. "Sister—please. Spare her."
The name scraped in a place I thought long dead. "You used to call me 'little aunt'?" I asked, as if the words were foreign coins.
"Please," he murmured.
02
My childhood was the slow construction of a mask. My father indulged me one way, the court another. I had been swept into the palace before I fully knew which world I belonged to. The late emperor had smiled at me in a way that made my heart like soft clay. He joked over tea and teased at chess. He once promised my father—half in fun—that a certain silk would be mine.
A boy not yet king had cried over such a promise. "If you were my little aunt, you'd protect me," he had said then with a face full of hurt that made me laugh.
"I would rather see you healthy than protect you," I had replied. That was the first time I learned how brittle words could be when stacked with promises.
03
I had more dangerous beds than the ones with cushions. I had beds of strategy, of alliances. One of them kept me alive: the support of a prince who was not the one the old emperor preferred. Ambrose Craft—clever, soft-faced, and cunning—slipped into my plans like a cold hand into mine. We traded favors like coins, and I let him think he bought more with a bribe of my quick smiles.
"Have the letters been handled?" Ambrose asked in the rain one afternoon when he met me along the main road. He liked to appear unshaken, a man who would never be thrown.
"They're in process," I said. "The question is whether we need to burn what we can't prove." My voice was steady.
He leaned closer, amused. "You never liked half measures."
"No," I said. "I like the measure I can hold in my hand."
He smiled then, a small, pleased thing. "You'll be rewarded."
I wondered for a moment what payment he had in mind, but I turned my face to the downpour and kept walking.
04
When Lady Avianna staggered into my private room—thin and flushed and clutching cloth against her belly—her beauty had the soft sadness of someone about to be crushed by a world that worshipped her while feeding her to ambitions.
"You hid me," she said, wounded surprise cracking her voice.
"I kept you from a public scandal," I answered. "You are carrying a child of the throne; scandal would have made you a carving on a pillory rather than an honored memory."
"Why?" Her eyes cut honest lines into her face. "Mu—he will not listen. He loves only one."
My fingers trembled. I had lied to an emperor and to a prince; I had lied to the land by rewriting the edges of truth.
"He loves what he loves," I said. "That doesn't mean justice must stop. Your father is scholarly, not a traitor. We will fix this."
She watched me with equal parts wonder and fear. "You don't like him," she said. "You don't like him either."
"I do not like anything when it risks the country," I said.
05
There are memories that flare like fireworks at a tutor's game of chess. Once, as boys, three princes and a handful of scholars sat in the hall while I watched. I had been borrowed by curiosity and mischief both. Ambrose watched us from the corner, always composed, always patient.
"You'd promised me a prize," the younger prince—now the man who would be emperor—pouted as he prepared to shoot an arrow at a festival.
"You are a prince," I had replied. "You do not get prizes like ordinary people."
He sulked, then did something that made the crowd gasp; he took up the bow and shot true. He began to win, and with every win he turned to me with wild, small joys. He gave me a hairpin; he filled my hands with silly gifts. He called me "little aunt" jokingly, and I let him.
Ambrose watched us. He watched the way the boy's laughter loosened something in me. He watched and kept his own counsel.
06
"You're hiding him here?" Ambrose hissed into the quiet antechamber when he barged into my study months later. "Why keep a thorny thing in your bed when it is the palace that must quiver?"
"You are a blunt instrument," I said. "Sometimes bluntness breaks bones you meant to keep."
He sat across from me, hands loosely clasped. "You aren't the same girl who once threw inkpots at officials. You used to be simpler. Now you barge into bedrooms and seize women under the walls."
"Someone must decide," I said.
"You always liked deciding."
"I am the only one who can."
He laughed then—an airy, cruel thing. "And the ones you cannot convince, you break."
"I use what I must."
"You use people."
"And you don't?"
He flinched as if the accusation burned. We circled each other with words that tasted like steel.
07
I will not pretend I did not care once. The emperor had been my child's playmate; the prince, my companion; Ambrose, my ally and my blade. But power claws at what love thought was sure. The favor the old emperor showered on me had strings. He placed a phoenix-silk on my shoulders once in jest—later, the palace would wear that same pattern as status, and I found myself trimmed into ritual by the very cloth I had rejected.
The day he told me I would be married to Ambrose—appointed as bride to seal a coming alliance—I felt the air cave in.
"No," I said to the old man's smile and the prince's eyes and Ambrose's hand. "I will not be a pawn by any name."
"You will be Crown's consort to Ambrose. It will secure the future," the emperor told me.
"Your Majesty," I whispered, "I will not—"
"You will," he said kindly, the kindness that cuts deepest.
Later, when the death of my house and the passing of my father left my world smaller, I pulled myself into the only place that would listen: counsel. I donned the black cloth of office and took to the stairs of power like climbing a mountain where every step was a bet on survival.
08
Years passed with a patient cruelty. I moved pieces across the board. I prepared charges against men who had names threaded with too much influence. I protected people I was told to ignore. I kept one hand on the throat of rumor and the other on the pulse of the capital.
Then the infection in Ambrose's chest spread.
He had been in my confidence, and yet he had sided with others when it mattered. He had entered lines of plots with the old emperor; he had told half-truths about my motives to men who needed to be pushed.
"Why?" I asked him softly at the bed where he lay pale and thin, hands fluttering like moth wings.
"You planned this," he rasped, eyes fever-bright. "You—poisoned me—"
"You were always impatient." I smiled. "Poison is for cowards. I used something slower. I used what people trust. Medicine that causes long wasting. So you groan in your wine. So people look elsewhere. So you write your letters in haste."
He sputtered. "You—"
"You thought you could keep your alliances and keep me. You took me as a neat thing to tuck into your pocket while you spread your hand over the throne." My voice hardened like hammered iron.
His face opened, the first raw thing I'd seen. "I loved you," he said—an ordinary confession no king enjoys to hear.
"You loved an image," I answered. "You loved a future where you'll be saved from consequence because you had friends to carry your sins."
09
The court is always a theater. I liked to keep my audience close. The day I chose to call Ambrose to account, I did so with a stage set of gold and witnesses.
"Ambrose Craft," I said when I entered the throne hall where the emperor had summoned many. "You are accused."
He rose, thin and sickly, trying the face of wounded pride. "By whom?"
"By the proof in your own hand." I gestured to the clerks. A man stepped forward carrying a bundle of papers tied with a simple ribbon. He untied it, and there they were—letters, lists, receipts, trinkets of correspondence that showed Ambrose had trafficked favor for blood. He had promised positions for signatures he could never deliver. He had written secret notes to enemies that were only friends when it suited him.
"You—betrayed my house," I said. "You betrayed the boy who trusted you. You plotted for the death of a man to seat your patrons in power."
"That's a lie!" Ambrose snapped. His voice broke. The room tilted with surprise; the emperor's face was a mask of carefully held surprise. Courtiers began to whisper, leaning forward.
"You told them the old writ was false." I walked the length of the dais, my robe sweeping the marble. "You assured them the decrees could be forged—that a seal was... malleable. You called for my elimination as a path to 'cleanse' the court. You took payment for false accusations. You told the healers to delay treatment for those you meant to discredit."
"You're mad," he said. His eyes flicked to the consort, Avianna, who stood like a pillar of shell and silk. "You—" he choked. Then he laughed, a sharp sound. "You used me. You used my letters."
"No," I said, and my voice was a blade. "I used you for what you were—ambition. You used others for their love of you when you needed it."
The crowd's breath went shallow. Ambrose's face curled through stages: surprise, denial, fury, then the slow, dawning horror of realization as papers were read aloud—lines of treachery, signatures, petty demands, and a list of names written in his hand that matched arrests we had made.
"Is this true?" an old minister demanded.
"Yes," I said. "He thought to make the court a market of favors. He thought he could buy off consequences. He misread who would pay."
I stepped back and made space for the hall to respond.
10
"Confess," someone called. "Admit it, Ambrose!"
He turned to me with something like a child before a master. "You cannot do this," he begged. "You cannot—this will ruin me."
"It will ruin you if you do not confess." I answered.
"Then I will confess something else." He swallowed, tears in his eyes. "I put the idea in the king's chambers to test him. I told secrets to Ambitions' group, but I did not order the death."
"You were party, then," I said coldly. "You wrote the letters that started the inquiries. You collected names. You sat with those who wanted me gone."
"I—" He stopped, the sound a small animal.
The court buzzed. The emperor's fingers tightened on the armrest.
"Let the witnesses speak," the chancellor suggested.
And they did. A man who had been an ally of Ambrose stepped forward. "I took his coin. He promised me a county if I accused Joel Bauer of treason. He told me the chancellor would be too busy with foreign trouble to stop us."
Another voice: "I was paid to give false testimony. Ambrose paid me in silks."
The hall filled with murmurs that thickened into outrage.
Ambrose's face shifted: at first defiant, then panicked, then pleading. He tried to walk to the emperor, to lay a hand on the monarch's sleeve. The emperor's gaze was a winter gale.
"Ambrose," he said, voice small and deadly. "You promised me loyalty."
"I—" Ambrose's hand shook, and he stumbled. The letters were thrust into the light; the more they read, the more the weave of Ambrose's connivance unwound. And with each line read aloud, I watched the man transform as if a sculptor were chipping plaster from a once-handsome statue.
11
Then the punishment began. The court that day had many witnesses. Candles burned; the high gallery was full of ministers, ladies, foreign envoys, and murmuring clerks. I made sure of two things: that the crowd would see, and that the chorus of indignation would be impossible to silence.
"Ambrose Craft," I said, stepping forward. "For crimes of betrayal, for perverting justice, for trafficking favors and fabrications, the court hereby strips you of rank and places you in public denial."
He laughed weakly, a sound of disbelief. "You cannot! You—"
"Stand," I ordered to a pair of guards. They brought forward a simple wooden block and a low chair. I had them set a bowl before him—no noble's wine, but water over which the city's scribes would pour ink.
"You will sit and read your own deeds aloud," I said. "You will hear them as the people will. And when you are done, you will hand yourself to the city's justice and wait the people's verdict."
Ambrose's mouth opened and closed. He tried a retort and choked. The first witness was called. An artisan came forth with a letter folded in his hand—the same letter Ambrose had used as a promise. He told them how Ambrose had come to him, offered gold, said words to smear a man's name.
"This is a lie!" Ambrose exploded.
"Here," I said, and the clerk handed the paper for everyone to see. The lines were Ambrose's shorthand.
He read it aloud at first, and then someone pulled a bell. The crowd outside the hall gathered like startled birds. A messenger carried phrase and paper; people clustered round doors. They peered through lattices; the scent of scandal travels swifter than any horse.
"Ambrose," I said, quiet now. "When you thought yourself beloved, what did you imagine would happen if your lies came to light?"
"They were small things!" he said. "They were politics—"
"Politics are woven with the blood of the innocent," I cut in. "You took names. Children lose fathers. Scholars were punished. People you thought distant came to ruin."
He had moments left where his expression frayed: proud, defiant, pleading, and finally broken.
12
The punishment was not simple: it needed to satisfy the court's thirst for justice, and also the people's need to see a puppet unmasked. They dragged him down to the square where the city had its market. I had arranged for this—no hidden prisons, no silent fate. Let the sun see him.
The square was packed. Merchants, farmers, servants from the palace kitchens, and women who had heard rumors all pressed together. The city's children craned necks. Some had never seen a public disgrace. Others had been waiting for days for the court to act.
He was brought on a low cart. His clothes were torn, his face pale beneath the powdered makeup of one who had once been courtly. They made him stand on a small platform. A scribe read the charges aloud.
Ambrose's voice, when he finally spoke, was thin. "I did what I could," he said. "I—"
"Confess," called a man from the crowd who had lost his post because of Ambrose.
"I confess," Ambrose cried. "I confess to scheming but not to murder—"
At that word the crowd hissed. People spat. A woman who had lost a brother in an earlier purge spat again and shouted, "Murderer! You did worse!"
He began shaking—not posture, but the bones under the skin. He tried to cry out and became a raw sound. Someone in the crowd—someone whose son had been dismissed—stepped forward and accused him. Another raised a scrap of paper. A small boy in the front row pulled at the hem of the inquisitor's robe with eyes wide.
Ambrose's face contorted through a series of expressions that moved the crowd like tides: first, the burst of clinging pride as he attempted to claim innocence; then rising panic as witnesses detailed the payments and favors he had brokered; then petulant denial; then the slow, violent collapse into shame as those he had considered friends turned and spoke of him honestly; then final, desperate pleading for mercy that scraped at no one’s sympathy.
"Please," he whispered toward the carriage where a ministerly face looked on in stunned silence. "Please—"
But the crowd had already chosen its verdict. They gathered around him, voices raised, some cursing, others recording the moment with ink and word. They hung his letters on a long line so all could read them. Children pointed. Old women shook their fists. A woman spat into a basin and threw the water at his boots—a ritual scorn more than a wound.
When a merchant stepped forward and ripped the last ribbon from the letters, Ambrose's composure snapped. He tried to run, but knights seized him. He fell to his knees in the dirt with the city's dust on his hands.
"Why?" he cried. "Why are you doing this to me? I was loyal to the one who promised me—"
"You promised much and betrayed more," a voice among the crowd answered. "You promised us safe hands and left us hungry."
The man who had once been polished began to sob. He begged for any mercy. "I can give you money. I can—"
"Take him to the stocks," someone in the crowd demanded, and the demand echoed. They wanted spectacle, and spectacle they would have.
He was put into the stocks where his head bobbed and his hands were fastened. People gathered to press accusations. Some struck him with words; some flung mud. He flinched as if expecting a blow and then—hate rose like steam. The humiliation was public, communal. The crowed's anger found forms: taunting, barbs, spitting. Ambrose's face shifted from pride to shame to silent pleading. His cheeks went dry; his eyes filled. His tongue, which had been so skillful at spinning tales, could now only mutter, then whimper.
He tried to call the emperor's name—"Lucas!"—as if a king's name could bind the crowd. The emperor watched from the hall, face turned away. There were those in the crowd who had called his name once with hope and now called for his head. They spat, they laughed bitterly, they recorded the day's verdict in their memory. Every slur that had percolated through years of him taking advantage boiled into a torrent.
When at last the magistrate mounted the dais to speak, Ambrose's shoulders sagged under the weight of humiliation. He had gone from power to puppet in hours. He had been exposed, the betrayer of friends and country.
13
There were finer punishments later—fines, exile of those who had aided him—but the public breaking was what people remember. They needed to see that the law could reach high places. They needed to feel the justice.
Ambrose's body crumpled with the weight of public scorn. He had no more allies to stand with him when the crowd asked for his head, when the children pointed fingers. He met each phase of his downfall with as many emotions as a man could bear: the quick flash of rage, the pleading, the laughter that tries to mask terror, the slow blankness when humiliation burns all the edges off.
As I walked away from the square, the sound of the crowd still rang in my ears. A scribe ran after me and handed a scrap where someone had scribbled: "Power should never be a child's toy." I folded the note in my palm and held it there like a fossil.
14
I did not celebrate. Power takes and power takes again. While Ambrose's disgrace was a vindication of sorts, the practice of retribution leaves its own scars. The Emperor watched me with a new look—less fondness, more fear.
"You killed a man," he accused once in the private hours. "You used him to your ends."
"I stripped a traitor of his cloak," I said. "He left bloody footprints."
He glared. "You used my illness, my trust, and my mercy—to get what you want."
"Would you have preferred the blunt sword?" I asked.
He crumpled to anger. "You are heartless," he spat. "I once loved your laughter."
"You loved what you could not possess," I said.
15
They crowned Avianna as Empress in the end. She looked like a moon pressed into gold; the robe of fire around her made every other color pale. They played music and set off fireworks that turned the night into a dizzying wreath of light. The court sang and danced, and the capital held its breath like a city that had just been told to forget a terror.
I sat on the terrace away from the fever of banquet halls, watching, and I ate tea that had been sweetened. A handmaid brought me a cup, and then she spoke in the soft voice of those who have seen the master die and still live on.
"Will you be leaving, My Lady?" she asked.
"I am done," I said. "I have finished moving the pieces."
"Then come—cheer a little?" she suggested.
I smiled a small, tired smile and looked at the lanterns drifting upward like misplaced stars. "They look like the moon," I told her. "But they are only paper."
She laughed, a sound that cracked at the edges. "You will rest."
"I will," I said, and then I did something simple and childish. I laughed at a small thing—a joke we once made about the sky—and the laugh broke like glass. My head ached. I felt faint.
"Alice!" someone called. One of the elder servants came and steadied me. "She is pale."
"Am I sick?" I asked, more puzzled than afraid.
"You will be," the servant answered with the calm of someone who has read too many prescriptions. "You should take your medicine."
I sipped. Then my sight sharpened in a strange way; the lanterns were blurs of color. The laughter felt far away.
I thought about the chessboard that had taught me to be patient. I thought about the boy who once called me little aunt and the man who had fallen to public scorn. I thought of the silk on my shoulders, of the broken bracelet at my wrist.
I smiled, a small, personal thing. "If there's another life," I whispered, "find me sooner."
And then I closed my eyes, the room full of celebration and the palace full of fireworks, and I let the stillness come.
The End
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