Face-Slapping11 min read
I Tear Up the Marriage Contract (And Make Them Pay)
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I wake to the sound of silk tearing and a voice that tastes like ice.
"How dare you eat Yao's medicine fruit?" a man says, cold enough to freeze my bones.
"It's not true—she made me eat it," I gasp, clutching at my belly while the world tilts. Blood tastes metallic in my mouth. My head spins, but a small, whining voice answers for the other side.
"Sister, she stole the fruit," Emery says, soft and trembling, pressed like a frightened bird against Kenneth's chest. He holds her protectively, like a king holding a crown.
"Juliana," Emery looks at me with that same innocent face everyone pretends to believe, "how could you lie about me?"
"Emery," I spit back, "you asked me to stand in. You sent the fruit to me and told me to take it as a wedding gift."
She cries convincingly. Kenneth pushes forward in a red robe, carved with the look of a man carved out of frost. He stares at me like I am a stain on silk.
"Get out," he says to me, contempt hot as sunlight. His boot finds my ribs; my body caves like a building with its supports cut.
I cough blood on the floor.
"Take her away! Bring the physician," he commands.
"She hasn't vomited the fruit," someone says. A thin man arrives with whispering steps—Gordon Morrison. He smells of stale herbs and lies.
"Her belly is full of the fruit," Gordon says. "If the antidote is not taken whole, then—" He looks toward Emery and Kenneth. "There is a way. If she won't spit it up... we can draw blood. Her blood will heal Yao."
"Cut her," Kenneth orders. "Beat until she yields it."
They strip me on the floor, a dozen hands rough as ropes. They lash me with a cane until I bend like a reed. They laugh when my ribs cough up salt-red. I remember the original girl's life—the shame, the ditch at fifteen, the bruise of her own father's eye—and then a second life sparks in me: a humming memory of a white, cold place; a small shop of glass and light; pills and iodine and a red koi pendant warm against my palm.
I open my eyes and with them I carry two sets of knowledge. One set is ancient, full of poisons named in half-whispered syllables. One set is modern and blunt and effective. I have to survive.
"Spare me," I say wildly to Kenneth, clinging to whatever pride is left. "I never did it."
"Shut up," he snaps. "Drink this blood."
Gordon brings a cup; he hands me his scalpel with a smile and says, "You should give your blood. For Yao."
I bite down on the word "no" and make a motion that surprises everyone: I strike his wrist, a precise point, and he stumbles like a stage actor betrayed. I bleed him at once, seize the cup he set down, and with every scrap of courage, I cut my arm and make a bowl of my own blood.
"Drink," I say, pale and defiant, and I bring the cup to Kenneth. His face twists between curiosity and contempt.
"You're mad," he says.
"Drink," I repeat.
He does. He drinks because he is frightened of losing Emery to sickness. He drinks because I have a thing in my arm—poisons mingled and sharp—and because he trusts Gordon. But Gordon's mouth twitches when he tastes my blood. It's not what he expected. He inhales sharp and realizes too late that the very cup he took from me holds the wrong comfort: a trace of something lethal because, like the original, I harbor strange toxins.
He drops the cup as if stung. "You—" he sputters.
"Is it so different from all the other help you've asked for?" I ask, and the words land like stones.
They argue. They plan to cut me again if I don't comply. They plan, too, to get what Emery wanted: Kenneth's name, Kenneth's bed. My whole childhood had been sold on the lie that I would win one man's eye by blade and span of body. I feel the second life press under my skin, a determination tempered by knowledge.
I survive that night. I wake later to a woman's scream: "Someone's child in the pond!"
Dorothy runs full-voiced, a wet, raw sound, and I follow because I cannot bear to leave a child to drowning when my hands can do more than bleed. The crowd parts as I get to the pool—Dorothy's brother is pale and still, a hand clutching a flower embroidered with gold. He holds a handkerchief that I know belongs to Emery Fischer.
I touch the child's pupil. "He's not dead," I say. "There is still light." People scowl. "Who are you?" one whispers.
"Juliana," I answer, because I can be Juliana even if the world calls me traitor. "Move."
"No, you cannot leave your room!" a servant says.
"Let her," Kenneth mutters, torn between his heart and his suspicion.
They cover the boy in dry earth, because that is some old practice I have seen in books. I place my fingers at his sternum and force him to cough. They think I practice sorcery. In the end, he gasps and lives, and the courtyard murmurs like a hive.
"How did you do it?" someone asks.
"You've no right," Emery says to me, nails like hooks. "You brought scandal."
"Saved him," I say. "That's what I did."
Word spreads like a fever. A rumor blossoms that I have been seen with a man, that I ran away in a carriage. I had been drugged on the road—Gordon had served the spice that knocks a person flat without leaving a trace. He had a hand in everything; he is a serpent with the face of a healer. Emery is the tremulous beauty the palace wants to believe, but to me she is a blade wearing silk.
Late, I find the small red koi pendant glowing against my palm. I place my hand on it in a dark room and imagine the pharmacy again. I step through to a tiny, impossible shop that exists inside the stone of my life: shelves of medicines, bandages, white boxes lined like teeth. I take what any modern healer would: amoxicillin, basic antiseptics, syringes—things I remember from another lifetime.
I return with pills and a plan. The brothel—Jessalyn Pettersson's house of songs—has a girl named Eliza who is dying. Jessalyn is nervous and cunning; she wants to sell everything and hide the shame. The courtesan's face is a map of sores, the disease that rots a name because it rots flesh.
"I can help," I say flatly. "But I will not be paid with lies."
"You?" Jessalyn asks. "You, the one they say is a monster at court?"
"I save lives," I reply. "You give me a room and silence, and I'll save her."
They watch me with every kind of suspicion. "You can pay—" Jessalyn starts.
"I'll be paid with truth instead," I say.
I treat Eliza with things that should not be in this time but are. I give her injection after injection, tonic and bitter herbs. The thing that kills her is not only disease; it is poison and neglect. I make a sweet dust from herbs, and I syringe medicine into her arm. In one night, she grows less fever-bright. Jessalyn cries with relief and hands me a pouch of coins.
"Who are you?" she whispers.
"Juliana," I say.
Back in the city square, Emery and Gordon plot. They quarrel quietly: "If the regent or a prince uses their name to defend her, Kenneth will never rest," Gordon hisses.
"Do it," Emery says, tears shining like pearls. "I am worth the world."
"She will drag you both down," I tell the empty air. I have no right to know, but I know; I have the smell of their plotting on my hands. I resolve then to expose them.
The opportunity comes at the worst place—the worst for them and the best for me. They have prepared a grand banquet; the city is invited. It is full of merchants, scribes, city guards, and those hungry for scandal. Emery has arranged the display: the sick and the healed, the weak and the proud. Gordon is drunk on power. Above them is Kenneth, bright-lacquered rage making a statue of him.
I walk in when the lanterns are low and the servants are winded. My clothes are patched, my shoulder still raw, but I walk as if I am already a queen.
"Who invited her?" someone whispers.
"Let her in," Xander Smirnov says, his voice like a river's calm. He had appeared once before like a storm at my back; now he watches with unreadable eyes. He is the regent. He said nothing earlier, but his attention feels like a hand on the scales.
"Is that the one who saved the child's life?" Charlie Jensen asks loudly, and heads turn.
I take the courtyard stage. "You're welcome to lie," I say, voice steady. "But I won't let lies stand if I can help it. I have a question for Gordon Morrison and Emery Fischer."
Gordon smiles; Emery paler than anyone at the table. "What do you mean?" Gordon asks.
"Show the people the doctor's notes," I say. "Show them the fruit. Show them the chest of letters."
Emery stands fast. "You are—"
"Ask the regent to allow a demonstration," I interrupt. "If I'm wrong, bind me and burn my books. If I'm right, they will pay."
Kenneth's jaw tightens. "You will not—"
"Calm down," Xander's voice instructs. "Let her. If she lies, we will know. If she tells the truth, we do justice."
Gordon laughs. "You are mad to use the regent's favor."
"Then let him watch," I say.
They present what they have: a sealed chest of notes, a bowl, a knife. Gordon is confident. Emery stands trembling in silk, the nervous center of a spider's web.
"Open the chest," I say.
A servant does. Inside are letters, ink scrawls from months of treachery, and beneath them a carved wooden box that when opened releases a smell like rot and almonds—bitter, false perfume of poison.
"This was administered to Eliza before her collapse," Gordon says. "It causes eruptions. If mixed with other herbs, it mimics many things. Juliana—"
"Do you see these records?" I ask the crowd.
They murmur. "What is this?"
"These are receipts and messages," I say, holding out a paper that names Emery's maid, Amber Hoffman, and shows payments to Gordon. "Emery Fischer paid this man to administer the fruit disguised as medicine. He told everyone she needed it whole. He meant for Juliana to die slowly so he could carve rationales out of grief."
"It's not true!" Emery screams, but her voice is thin.
"Then explain the receipts," I say. "Explain the notes in your hand. Explain the missing ledger pages."
"The regent should judge—" Gordon begins, but Xander nods.
"Let him speak," Xander says.
"Show them the woman's handkerchief taken from the pond child," I say. The servant produces it—Emery's embroidered handkerchief. People gasp. "How did she get this into that boy's fist? Why did she leave it?"
The crowd turns and Emery's knees go soft. "I didn't—"
"You lied to the house," I say. "You bribed the nurse, you set the fire, you pushed a woman into despair to take a place no one in your rank could earn by merit. You hired Gordon to make your sickness seem tragic. You planned to be queen on the back of another woman's ruin."
Emery's face bends through masks. She tries denial, then tears, then rage. Her posture collapses into pleading.
"Stop it," Kenneth shouts. "She is my—"
"Your lies build on others," I say. "You are not the hurt party."
I turn to Gordon.
"How much?" I ask. "How many lives did you trade for the taste of coin?"
He goes pale. At first he is proud and arrogant. "I am a healer," he says.
"Prove it," I say. "Prove it in front of the people."
They call for a public confession. The square fills. Someone lifts a board and ties a chair. Gordon is brought forward, his wrists bound because he came prepared to be dramatic, not shameful. Emery is made to kneel on cold flagstone with the maid Amber, who cannot look up.
"Confess," I say.
Gordon's voice is at first iron. "You cannot force me—"
"Then you have your reward," I say. "You will have the people's judgment."
I call for the records. They are read aloud. In them are notes—payments, purchases, instructions. Faces in the crowd press elbows and make videos on glass devices I do not have; some clap, some cry, some hold rosaries and pray in surprise.
Gordon moves through the stages: first he is arrogant. He strikes a pose. Then his smile twitches into confusion when the crowd begins to hiss. "You're lying," he says; "no—" He grows thinner. Then he denies. His words become small and fast. He says, "I didn't—it's not what you think." The crowd presses closer, hungry. Someone takes out a recording tablet and points it at him; another man begins to sing the city version of the scandal.
"You thought you were above justice," I say, and the crowd roars.
Gordon staggers and then sits, face damp. His arrogance crumbles into desperation. He scrapes at the dust with his fingernails, eyes like an animal in a trap. "No! No! I didn't—" he begs.
"People," I shout, "remember the child in the pond, remember Eliza who nearly died. When you see someone who calls themselves a healer, ask how often they have loved, and how often they have taken."
Gordon's knees hit the stone. He looks at the faces—the merchants who once humored him, the ladies who once tipped him—and the change is visible. He begins to shout apologies, then pleads, then collapses into tears, not the dramatic ones of a man who has acted out a plan, but the raw shredding of a man caught on the wrong side of his own conscience.
"Record him," someone says. "This should be known."
The crowd presses, and Emery's mask breaks: she goes through shock, denial, betrayal, then a hideous denial again. She begs for mercy, for Kenneth's protection. Her voice cracks: "Kenneth, help me!"
He is silent.
"Where is your mercy now?" I ask him. "You, who ordered me beaten on the floor, who told them to strip me and call it duty?"
He turns red and tries to step forward, but the weight of the evidence anchors him. The people watch.
Gordon tries to climb back the ladder of his lies. He does every stage: swagger—"You cannot prove—"—face falls—"You are lying"—then panic—"No, no,"—denial—"I am a healer"—collapse—"Please!"—and finally, shameless pleas and belly cries. Spectators record, whisper, photograph; a dozen hands point. A child throws a flower.
Emery begins to tremble. Her posture morphs from indignant to pleas of "I loved Kenneth" to frantic "I didn't mean for this."
They are both exposed. The crowd shifts to a guilty roar. Someone starts to sing the names of those who traded others' bodies and names for silver.
"Get them out," a woman shouts. "Tie them and bring them to the magistrate."
Gordon falls to his knees. He crawls before me and opens his hands. "I beg you," he says. "I did not mean—"
"Stand," I say. "Stand and be counted."
He stands. Ember Fischer collapses and then is dragged to her feet by guards. She looks at me with fury and panic; then she sees the people with their phones, with their hands, with their pity for real victims. She knows she has been unmasked.
Gordon's public collapse takes over five hundred words to write out because the moment is not small.
He starts by pleading and trying to paint himself as a scapegoat. "It was only to help her," he says, voice strong. "I meant to heal—"
"Then why the receipts? Why the payments to the brothel? Why the fruit?" someone shouts from the crowd.
He fumbles and then the arrogance returns, but it's brittle. He pulls the sack from his robe and throws down a string of coins like a dog dropping bones. "Fine. Punish me."
"Punishment," I say, "is public so others learn." They take Gordon to the city's pillar of shame—a platform where frauds and thieves are displayed. They bind his hands and make him kneel before those he lied to.
"People of the city," I shout, because the crowd looks to me as if I had called them here, "you saw him. You saw how he bought lies. He told Emery her pain made her worthy. He took coin and called it cure. He tried to make a woman's death into a legend for his instruments."
Gordon's face turns first pale, then red, then purple. He is made to speak, and his voice changes with every stage of humiliation. He starts with pride, "I am a doctor," then confusion, "I didn't—" then denial, "That isn't—" then trembling "No—" and finally the collapse into begging.
A man from the crowd reads the lists of names of victims Gordon has treated then betrayed. Women scowl; men spit. Someone videotapes him until his desperation is a looping image for every merchant's stall.
Emery is next. They strip her of her finery before the crowd so nothing remains to hide her shame. She pleads for mercy, for Kenneth's love, then tries to bargain. "I'll—I'll give all I have," she says, but no one listens.
A petty magistrate brings out a bowl and douses Gordon's head with water. They make him stand and recite his crimes while the crowd records. He falls through all the stages—grin, denial, pleading, pleading turned into choking sobs—until he collapses and has to be carried away.
Emery's fall is worse because her face, built of lies and curated half-smiles, disintegrates in full view. She wakes inside humiliation: "No one will marry me," she thinks. "My mother will not take me back." The crowd, which had once loved the pretty face, now circles and stares. Someone points and clucks. Someone takes a picture of Emery's hands tied and posts it for the city to see.
"Let this be a lesson," I say. "If you trade life for gain, you will find the market has no mercy."
They put Gordon in a cell by the river. Emery is escorted home with the public's scorn following like a hound. The footage and the shouts trail them. Kenneth stands there in the aftermath, his honor burned on the public pyre. He has been shown to have backed a fraud and to have wronged me.
He says nothing for a long time.
Later, they come to me with petitions and apologies. They bow and whisper and try to salvage what dignity they have. I listen to every one of them with a steady face, and in the end, I write my name on a sheet of blackened paper and tear up the marriage contract.
"I am not your wife," I say to Kenneth.
"You cannot leave," he stammers.
"Leave? I leave you. I end this marriage. I spare you the rest of the cruelty by doing the one thing you never would do: I claim my freedom."
He turns white. "You cannot do that."
"I already have," I say, and I walk toward Xander Smirnov and then out into the night.
The End
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