Face-Slapping11 min read
My Gloved Hands, His Cold Smile
ButterPicks13 views
I smell blood before I see anything else.
"Do you hear that?" I whisper into the night air, though there is no one but me in the bamboo grove.
A moon-silvered blade slips from a sleeve like water. "Lord Li, so it is you…" a voice says, silk humming with menace.
"Your Highness—" the fat official stammers. "Your Highness would jest. I would never—"
"Stop."
He doesn't finish. The next sound is a wet, sharp thing tearing cloth. The moon catches a shoe, an embroidered boot pressing down.
"How dirty," a rough voice says. "Think I didn't know?"
I am poised to leap, perfect in my head. I have practiced the fall a thousand times, each landing staged so he will be saved, so he will look at me and remember me.
"I will swoop in," I tell myself. "I will save him. I will make him cry—"
My foot jams in a branch.
"What?" I hiss. "No."
"I can't—"
"Now?"
The branch holds. I stare at it like a traitor. The world tilts. The fat man wails. The blade glints at his throat.
"You're not getting away with this, Li!" the dark man says.
Li cries, "Prince! Mercy—" and a small, terrible sound leaves him. A thing drops by his ear.
I kick the tree anyway.
"Backflip!" I tell my limbs. "Graceful. Heroic!"
The tree breaks.
I fall.
I land on someone.
"Get up," a voice says, flat as iron.
"Sorry, I meant to—" I scramble up, fall again, and finally my palms find a chest that is hard like stone. I press my face against a sleeve and smell wood smoke and something else—an old, cold perfume.
He is taller than I expected, even when I'm standing on his ribs. He looks like the portrait in the gossip books: pale, dangerous, almost unfair to look at.
"Get up," he repeats.
"I—" I choke, and then I babble. "You—your Highness, you are in danger! He has a hidden blade!"
"I saw," he says, and emptiness sits in his eyes like a lake.
I try and fail at my rehearsed rescue lines. "I borrowed—er—your body, Your Highness. Borrowed. To carry you. Because I care."
He does not laugh. He does not blush. He tilts his head as if I am a curious insect.
"You should not have come out tonight," he says.
"Neither should he," I snap. "He was up to no good."
His black lashes lower. "Who are you?"
"Lin—" I begin, then correct myself because old habits die hard.
"Crystal," I finish. "Crystal Zhu."
"Crystal," he repeats. The sound slips out of his mouth and lands somewhere in my chest, like a coin in a well.
People come to the sound. Ladies titter. "Is that Third Prince?" one asks.
"Third Prince shouldn't be out," another says.
"He's been out before," someone snickers. "He went to bathe and someone said—"
"Enough," I snap. "He is hurt. Help him."
They help. They crowd. The prince leans away from all of them as if they were steam.
"You're bold," he tells me later in the hall, his voice hollow with the cold smile I am trying to melt.
"I am brave," I correct.
"You are loud," he says.
"Both," I agree.
"Do you want tea?" he asks then, and for all his manner, it is offered like a truce.
"Tea," I say, and hand him a cup like we are old friends.
The court is loud. Women whisper about the hand that bent a steel spoon in the dining room and about the girl who wrote calligraphy with a man's head tied low between her legs. "Who is she?" they ask.
"Crystal Zhu, daughter of a magistrate," someone says.
"They say she has always liked that charming student," someone else says.
"She's ridiculous," a lady sniffs. "She chases that scholar like a moth."
"She's brave," I say aloud in the room. "And he is a prince."
I say too much and then I say more. "Your Highness, you should not go out alone. The town is cruel at night."
He looks away. "I do not make my own choices," he says. "But I will remember you."
"Oh," I tell myself. "Mission accomplished."
I leave the hall with sugar and praise in my pocket and a small, silly hope.
"Crystal!" a party girl tugs my sleeve. "That was brilliant! Your writing! The crowd—"
"Shhhh," I say. "Save it. I am exhausted."
I go home and write a note to the sky: "Make him love me."
Someone laughs in my head. Someone ancient and stern—my fate patron. "You are a stone girl," the voice says, like a scolding parent. "You have brute strength and not compromise. Use it. Do not hurt the plan."
"I am fine," I tell the silent whisper. "I will fix everything."
Days pass. The city breathes with rumors: a shop of medicine burned overnight, a house of many lives extinguished. The palace moves with the weight of a mother who needs a cure; the emperor orders searches. Someone suggests the Third Prince take part in the investigation. That is how I find myself at the ruined apothecary, lifting a beam, feeling like a small woman in a large job.
"Stay back," the prince says. "You are too frivolous for this."
"I can smell medicine," I say, because I can. "And I can lift beams."
"Don't lift beams," he says.
"Why not?" I grin.
"Because—" He almost laughs. "Because you will break things."
"Good things," I say, and I pick up a log like it is a feather. "You could sit on this," I joke.
He never smiles. He watches the bones and the broken jars with the face of someone who has seen too much. Then his fingers move like light across charred books; his face hardens.
"These are not ordinary burns," he says. "Someone intended the fire to take everything."
"Like arson," I say.
"Not just arson," he answers, and his voice is low. "Murder."
We work together in the ash. I find a gold charm half-melted. He finds a note burned at the edge. We bring it back to the palace. We talk in hushed lines.
"Who would burn their own medicine?" I ask.
"Someone who wants to hide the truth," Sebastien Bridges says. "Someone with a lot to lose."
"Can we find them?" I ask. "I can punch people if needed."
"No. You can be clever," he says.
"I will be both," I promise.
We discover something else at the apothecary: bones buried in ash. Small bones. Children's toys. A tiny gold bell burned like it was meant to be a charm. I press my hand over my mouth.
"They moved bodies," I say. "They staged them here."
"They weren't new," he says. "They'd been dead for a while."
"Who would—"
"People who trade in power," he replies. "People with money in high places."
We look at each other and something heavy drops—responsibility.
"Will you help me?" he asks.
"I will," I promise.
We begin to meet more. At the teahouse, at the markets, at the lacquered apothecary rebuilt, my life becomes a string of stolen moments between brimmed hats and guards. I learn his name in full: Sebastien Bridges—Third Prince, always called "Your Highness" until he is not.
"You have a star," he notes once, watching a tiny glowing bead on my hand. I had made a small necklace the night before.
"It's a trinket," I say.
"It glows," he answers. "At night."
"It has little lights," I grin. "Like the sky."
"And you keep pointing at the sky," he says, with the echo of old laughter in his voice.
Our days stitch together: I learn to sew small weaknesses into big plans; he teaches me a little control so I don't ruin half of his estate trying to practice sword arcs. He teaches me to keep the sword soft at first.
"Just two parts," he says, when he shows me how to place my feet. "Do not—"
I swing. The courtyard tile cracks.
"Do not break the ground either," he says, dry as stone. Then he smiles at me like a dangerous thing he might pull toward himself.
When the palace invites performers for a foreign princess, chaos and elegance pour into the court. A northern princess arrives—Min Min, head of a tribe, with a voice that snaps like a whip. She is loud, quick, jealous. She notices me.
"Who is that child?" she asks, and I feel her eyes thin to slashes.
"That is Crystal Zhu," a lady answers. "She sings and does... odd things."
"Odd things," Min Min repeats. "She is a toy. Take her."
I stay quiet. I host no parades for her. I only bow and smile, because the world is heavy and I have to be light.
She mocks me. "Your sword is small," she says once in front of the court. "Your tricks are not fit."
"I didn't enter to fight," I say.
"Then leave," she snaps. "Go back to your father's teacups."
When she tries to bully me again at the capital's performance hall, I decide to answer with a dance. But not like hers. I pull out the soft sword a monk once gave me, and I begin to dance.
"The sword is soft," someone gasps. "It flows and then it sharpens."
The music swells and I move my weight like a bird. The court goes silent. Even Min Min's companions stop sneering.
"Who gave you that sword?" one minister asks.
"A monk," I answer.
At the end, there is a hush like before rain. Then applause breaks out like a sudden wind. It is not because I wanted it. It is because the room measures the courage of a person.
That night Min Min finds me again. "You dare steal attention," she hisses. "In my eyes you are nothing."
"Good," I say. "You think you are everything."
"Then let's see about that." She smiles with mean teeth. "Three days. Archery at the royal range. My bow. Your choice."
"You bet," I say.
Three days later the courtyard fills. Min Min's arrows hit four out of five. My turn. She gives me an iron-lashed arrow, a heavy thing that ought to look impossible to lift.
I break it with my fingers.
"Bad arrow," I grin. "Try another."
I pick up a crude, wooden thing I made with oil and a small mechanism—my mimic of a war bow—and take aim. The arrow shoots, lights the center hole and dings metal. Five for five.
The crowd goes wild. Min Min's face crumples like tissue.
"You cheated!" she shrieks.
"Fair," I say.
"That is treachery," she cries.
"Or craft," I answer.
She seethes. I am a girl from a quiet family of small honors, and she is a princess with soldiers behind her; yet here, on the open ground, stars decide little. The people decide more.
A week later the palace is shocked by a candor we did not plan. The apothecary's burning is linked to a network of bribes and murder. Evidence—scorched letters, a ledger, witnesses—appears. Someone bribes. Someone burns. We find names: careful, old names with nice houses in good streets. The court is a nest of vipers.
I watch from the galleries while my prince stands like a cliff. He puts letters on the great table, and he does something I did not expect: he speaks plainly.
"You," he says to a stern-faced man who has been above the law for years. "Did you burn the shop?"
"No," the man says quickly. "Ridiculous accusation. Who would suggest—"
"You bought secrecy with coin," my prince says. "You ordered the purge."
There is a murmur. People pull out fans and phones and small mirrors. Someone takes a picture. Someone records. The world outside the room will hold the sound of his humiliation like a bell.
I clear my throat. "If we are to measure justice," I say, stepping forward, "then let it be in light."
The man laughs, the kind of laugh that lives on an old man's arrogance. "My lord, you have no authority—"
"I have the emperor's word," Sebastien says. "I have witnesses."
"Enough words!" someone cries.
They bring a screen. They display the charred ledger, the accounts, the names, the handwriting. The man across the hall goes from red to grey.
He tries to smile. "This is preposterous," he says, and his voice trembles like a reed.
"Do you deny you paid men to light the fire?" Sebastien asks.
"I—" he stammers. For a moment he stares like a man who thought he had bought immunity.
"Is it true you told your men to silence anyone who knew about your bribes?" I ask.
People lean forward. The hall air feels thin, heavy with expectation.
"Whoever wrote those ledger entries?" a clerk asks.
"They are his hand," says one of the surviving apothecary men. "He signed them, with the same seal he used for city payments."
The man draws himself up. "You slander me."
"A man who slanders others is often only protecting himself," I answer. "Tell us, sir, were bodies moved to the ruin? Did you move them?"
He laughs at first. He is bold. Then the laughter breaks into something else when proof—charred rings, a child's toy recovered under his threshold—are shown.
"It is a deception," he says. "I—"
At first he is proud and venomous. Then his face flickers. People who had laughed before now whisper into their screens. "He looks like an animal," one lady murmurs.
Another man in the council stands. "We have witnesses who will swear he hired men." He points to documents.
"Enough!" she shouts suddenly. The princess Min Min stands, voice like steel. "Let him answer."
"He would not have dared unless he had power," I tell her. "He had power to hide the burn, to buy silence, to leave a trail of dead men."
"He will pay," Sebastien says quietly.
Then the punishment begins.
They tie him to a dais in the great court. The emperor himself sits and watches as the world looks. The signs of privilege are ripped down from him—the sash, the wide ring, his embroidered boots—and the crowd records everything.
"Is this necessary?" he tries to say.
"Do you remember," Sebastien asks slowly, "the bell at the apothecary?"
"I—"
"Do you remember the child's charm?"
"That was an accident—"
"Tell the court then," Sebastien says. "Tell these people how you thought to buy silence. Tell them why you moved the bodies."
The man's face flushes from wine to fear. His mouth opens, then shuts. He sees the camera phones pointing; he sees the palace windows full of curious eyes.
People lean in. "Speak," someone behind me hisses.
He laughs again, but the laugh is wrong. "You cannot do this—"
"Do what?" Sebastien asks. "Call a court to see justice? We will. We will also let the people watch."
"You're mad," the man cries. "This is—"
"Shut up," his sister whispers. "We will contact our friends."
It is a show. For a second he thinks he can buy time. He offers a bribe, a promise. "I will pay you," he pleads, and the sound of his begging cracks like dry wood.
He goes from colors—proud red—to pale, then to ashen. "No," he whispers.
The crowd's reaction shifts: surprise, then anger, then frenzy. Someone from the boxes takes out a small bronze bell and rings it. The sound is like the apothecary bell, and the memory of burned wood and a child's scream presses in on everyone.
He starts to cry, small, animal sobs. "Please," he says. "I did not—
"Do you deny it?" I ask again.
"No!" he screams. "I did it to protect my investments. I am sorry!"
At this point Sebastien steps closer. "Stand," he tells the man.
The man cannot. He stumbles, collapses, and then, with a hand that shakes, he kneels—a proud man kneeling in front of all those he thought were small.
"Please," he says, voice breaking. "I beg—"
People start to shout. Someone makes a video. Another person begins to clap thinly. Then others join. The clapping grows louder until the room rings. Some people cry. Some spit. A group of youths take pictures. Several ladies remove their gloves and clap.
He looks up at last, and his face cracks into a thousand lines. He tries to deny it again. "This is a set up," he whispers.
"No," I tell him. "You moved corpses. You bought a lie. You burned a place where people trusted someone to heal." My voice is steady.
"Ridicule!" he gasps. He begins to shout names—names of men who smoothed his path—then he turns and slaps at the air like a trapped bird. "It wasn't supposed to go like this!"
He begins to beg, properly now: "Please—merciful—"
People whisper. "We want his assets," someone says. "We want him stripped of privilege."
"Where are your guards?" Sebastien asks coldly.
"They take them," someone answers. "We will let the law—"
"Then let the law," Sebastien says.
He is dragged away. His last expression is a mask between pleading and fury, the face of a man who had thought himself invulnerable thrown into the gutter for all to see.
The crowd records his fall. It becomes a feast for the city's tongues. People clap and some near the king's dais laugh. Others weep.
When at last the man is led from the hall, he is still in shock. He looks at his hands and says, "This cannot be—"
"No," someone says near the steps. "It can. And now it will."
He kneels and begs once more, and this time everybody hears it—the layers peeled away until only the pleading remains. He is a man undone. He goes pale, and then he weeps.
"Don't make me—" he says.
"No one will help you now," Sebastien answers. "We have seen your face."
The man collapses weeping on the steps. People walk away shaking their heads or reporting the scene to their phones. The prince stands silent. He looks at me, and something that is not entirely softness flickers.
"You did well," he says only to me.
"I did what?" I ask.
"You used the noise of the crowd," he says. "You made them watch."
"It was time," I say.
After that, the city moves. People chant justice in its many small forms. A few men try to deflect blame and then find themselves with fewer allies. The scorched ledger burns in the flames of the state papers. The apothecary's truth becomes a story that will travel.
I do not feel proud for long. Men die; people suffer. But I feel something like relief.
Later, with the case moving and the court busy, I walk with Sebastien through a garden he has just had filled with sunflowers—my idea, of course.
"You asked for white jade buns," he says suddenly. "White glutinous rice. Bring them to me next time."
"I will," I promise.
He smiles, and in that smile is a warming like a stone left in the sun. "Keep looking at the stars, Crystal," he says. "They might show more than you think."
I reach up and touch my small star bracelet. It glows faintly, like a secret. I tuck a white bun into my pocket.
"Always?" I ask, because a girl with a star and a sword can ask such a foolish question.
"Maybe," he answers, and for once his voice does not sound like a knife. It sounds like weather, and I like it.
The End
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