Revenge14 min read
The Emperor’s Smile, the Embroidered Ball, and the Mango Boy
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"I told Father I would not be a pet to politics," I said once, the words spilling out like soup from a cracked bowl. "I said I would keep my head down."
Ricardo Hoffman folded the silver notes into my palm with hands that still trembled from too many campaigns. He cried like an old tree losing its leaves.
"Julianne," he said, "go to the palace. Do not try to shine. Survive."
"I will survive," I answered, though my voice was smaller than the coin he had pushed into my fingers.
"I swear it?" he asked, eyes bright with fear.
"I swear it," I said.
So I went in as a servant who recorded the emperor's days. I learned how to cinch my breath and how to hold a pen until my fingers ached. I watched Colin Estes from a few paces away with a ledger on my lap, and I wrote nothing more than dates and the emperor's moods, or so I thought.
"Julianne," Cedric Brennan would sometimes say as he smoothed my sleeve, "your handwriting is the only thing sharp enough to keep the court honest."
"It is only a ledger," I said.
"It is your life," he answered.
When Colin first looked at me properly, he smiled without meaning to. The kind of smile that carries warmth and danger like sun through glass.
"Why do you write as though the world will forget the words?" he asked once in the audience hall. His voice was softer than the tapestries.
"My records are for history," I said, "not for the world."
"Humor me," he said, "teach me how you write my name so the ink doesn't trip."
"Your name is only a mark to record, Your Majesty," I said.
He tilted his head, and in the quiet that followed, he said, "Visit my sleeping hall tonight."
"I—" I started, then stopped. I had intended to run that night, leaving the palace like a bad storm. I had a night cloak folded in my chest; I had almost stepped into the moonlight to walk past the guards when two broad men snatched me and handed me to the court.
"Get up," Colin said later, when I knelt before him, eyes watering. "Stop making your face like a storm."
"You could send me home," I whispered.
"Stay," Colin said. "Stay and write. Stay and let me check your ledger."
So I stayed. I lied to Father and to my own small heart. I kept my ledger tidy and small. I watched as he hovered for weeks over Ava Vitale, who wore jade like a second skin and smiled like a kept secret.
"Your Majesty," I murmured once, "why her?"
"Because she knows how to look at me," Colin said. "She knows how to put herself into my palms."
"Is that an instruction?" I said. "To every woman who waits?"
"Some things are softer, some things are useful," he said.
"Useful," I repeated.
The palace gossip began to smell like scorched sugar. People thought I put the emperor on certain paths. Some saw me as a ladder; others wanted to push me down it.
"You're keeping watch," Cedric told me when he brought me messages. "Remember, not everyone who smiles for you is a friend."
"Is His Majesty a friend?" I asked.
"Sometimes kings are warm, sometimes they are cold enough to crack glass with their breath," he said.
When I finally rose to be a consort—"a convenience," as the morning papers in my old town might later call it—it was because Veronica Barry, the empress, and the emperor had an arrangement. The empress had liked some part of my face. The court liked my family's banners.
"Accept this," Veronica told me with hands that smelled faintly of jasmine. "You will sit where you are told. You will be an ornament in a parade that passes between us."
"If this parade brings safety to my family," I said, "I will be a good ornament."
"It will bring danger, too," she said, "but danger with silk on the surface."
Colin treated me kindly in his way—an instruction followed by a show. He touched my hand like testing a blade for balance.
"Do you want this?" he asked one night as he brushed a ribbon from my hair.
"I do," I lied.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered.
"Good," he said. "Afraid is the right color for those who survive."
We had warmth. We had odd tendernesses that felt like lights in a cellar. He sometimes bent down to show me a joke in his ledger, and his laugh would spill out, putting wild birds of hope in my chest.
"A moment of tenderness," Cedric muttered once when the two of us shared a bowl of broth, "is like a borrowed coin. It always comes with a debt."
I was naïve. I believed warmth could repay debts.
Then the soup that knocked me to my knees came.
"Who ate the fish?" I asked the maid who had served in the hall.
"It tasted off," she said. "Too bitter."
"Who had access to the kitchen?" I asked.
"Ava's handmaid is in and out," she said.
I held my stomach as the world thinned to a silver edge. I whispered, "Poison."
"Not a man," Colin shouted once in the inner rooms. "Someone who would burn a braid for a favor."
"Ava?" someone said.
"Check," Cedric cried.
Someone said "The empress's sympathizers," and the name Veronica moved like ice.
"I will not lose her," Colin said to himself, then louder, "Find the one who did this."
They found no dagger. They found whispers, bills, and a slipped jewel—Ava's mark, planted like a used coin in the nest. Ava fainted in the servant's yard, a show of offense and scandal. The empress turned her face as though she had seen a little bedbug crawl over Colin's sleeve.
"Who would want Her Majesty harmed?" Veronica's eyes flashed. "Only the reckless, the loud ones."
"Will you suspect me?" I asked Colin when I could stand.
"No," he said. "I will hold you closer."
He did, in public, in a small, frightening way. He paraded me as a shield; he marched me where the throne's eyes could not ignore me. Soldiers moved like chess pieces around my family. Preston Gonzalez lost command slowly, not with a collapse but like a house sinking into marsh.
"Forgive me," Colin said in private. "I do this to save us."
"Save us by burning us," I whispered.
"Would you have me do nothing and let them think we are weak?" he asked.
"I would have you be honest," I answered.
The ledger I kept had become a trap. It showed dates, places, and who smiled when. He used me to make a case. He used my family to make a point. When Preston marched back to the palace on a summons and found himself stripped of banners, I knew the cost.
"You used me," I told Colin in the hall.
"I used what I had," he said. "And you are lucky I used you."
"Luck," I said, "isn't something that takes my father and brother's heads."
"You should be grateful," Veronica told me once in the shadowed corridor. "You are still alive."
"I am alive," I said. "Barely."
"I cannot be a mother," Veronica whispered that night to no one, her voice sharp and small. "I cannot be the one to bear the line. I will not see someone else ruin the throne."
"You would have killed me?" I asked.
"Not you," she said. "A symbol. Someone to end the rumor. Someone to make the court breathe easier."
"The symbol stank of poison," I said.
"I will do what is necessary," she said.
The waves of betrayal closed over my house. Yet through it all, Colin had a way of touching my hand and saying things that would undo a thousand fears.
"You will be safe with me," he said sometimes, when he was not arranging my world like a map to be shaded. "I will not let harm find you."
"I believe you," I lied as much for comfort as for truth.
In the end, my family's exile to Qiongzhou cut like a wind. We were not destroyed—our property remained, guarded by men Colin ordered to respect old agreements—but our banners left the capital like leaves torn off a tree. We traveled south to an island outcrop where mangoes did not grow, and I learned how to feel winter in my chest.
The sea air tasted different. Atlas De Luca—who had once brought me fruit from the town on a small tray and joked about the sweetness of mango pulp—met me where my new home rose from red earth.
"Do you want sour or sweet tomorrow?" he asked on our second morning together in Qiongzhou, standing by the low wall of my new house.
"Sweet," I told him. "Sweet and small."
"Meet me at the east gate," Atlas said. "We'll go to the noodle place. They say the soup is better than ever."
"All right," I said.
I handed him the embroidered ball I had carried like a secret the whole journey. He accepted it with fingers that smelled of fish and wood.
"For luck?" he asked.
"For leaving," I said.
He laughed like a boy, and the sound drifted out over the cove.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we'll eat, and if the soup is worse, we'll blame the cook and pretend we meant to be brave."
I had come to Qiongzhou thinking I would die quietly, or at least hide. Instead, I found a small square where fishermen mended nets and children shouted about marbles. I discovered that being small in the world's eyes felt lighter.
But I could not leave the betrayal unmarked.
Months after our exile, a name-of-some-importance in the capital fell ill and withered—an opportune time for truth to leak. Cedric, who had served me with loyalty when I was a little clerk at a table, slid a folded note into my hand one dusk.
"Read this," he whispered. "They kept ledgers in the wrong drawer. The truth sits like a coin beneath a pile of curtains."
I would not go to the capital. I did not wish to be seen as one more exile who boasted. But Cedric's note burned with a slow, civil fury. It named names and dates and mixed bowl receipts with requests of strange herbs. It tied Ava's handmaid to a tray and Veronica's cup to a counsel chamber where the emperor had signed away a man's post with a quill and a polite smile.
"Do you want justice?" Cedric asked.
"I want it seen," I said.
"Seen to who?"
"To the people who watched," I answered. "To those who cheered when a house sank."
So we planned a public proof—not violent, not a rally, but a revelation the capital would never swallow quietly.
We waited until the festival when the emperor's hand should be full of gratitude and the streets full of song. We sent letters with facts to those who still owed loyalty to truth: retired officers, scribes, and women who wore the old silk that remembered what was done to their love.
On the morning of the festival, the court unveiled a new pillar in the central square. Colin Estes stood beneath banners that sneered with cheer. Veronica Barry, regal in a black-silk gown that had lost none of its bite, looked on with courtly pride.
"Your Majesty," a herald intoned, "the city would hear a word."
Colin inclined his head. "Speak," he said.
A quiet hush fell, broken by a single voice that was a surprise to the crowd.
"Do you remember how a bowl of fish can be both feast and verdict?" a retired official said. He had once served as a minister. He held a small ledger out like a child's drawing.
"What is this?" Colin asked, eyes tightening.
"Records," the man replied. "Delivery manifests, kitchen rosters, the list of who requested the concubine's personal herbs. They are signed."
A woman stepped forward then—Ava Vitale's handmaid. She wore an old robe and shook like a reed.
"I served the fish," she said. "I placed the night pearl in the tray because they told me to. I was told to make it seem as though the jewel was mine to honor. Those who ordered it were not named on the page at first, because the orders came from a sealed council."
"Show us the seals," Veronica demanded, voice thin as a coin.
"They are on this docket," the old minister said. "And here is a note: 'For the comfort of the throne. Signed, by the household favors as directed.'"
The crowd leaned in. The square smelled like frying oil and the hot breath of thousands.
"Where is the emperor's mark?" a voice cried.
"Here," said Cedric, stepping forward. He laid out the parchment that anyone could read—the ledger Colin used, with the scribbled dates where my name appeared innocently, and places where his handwriting bent like a bow. He smoothed the paper, exposing a line that read: "Seal for removal of rumor. Use house exchange."
Colin's face changed. At first, he wore the calm of the man who kept the laws of court. Then his mouth tightened. Then his eyes tracked and found Veronica, who had turned so pale the jewel in her hair lost its luster.
"You have broken the laws of trust," the old minister said. "This is cunning of a dangerous kind."
"Forgery!" a minor official shouted, but his voice caught in the net of silence.
"No," Cedric said. "He signed this. He used the ledger for command."
Colin stepped back as if someone had shoved a cold hand into his ribs. "This is a lie," he said.
"Check the seals," someone called, and a clerk hurried forward to lay the documents before the magistrates present. They were real. They bore the emperor's quill and the empress's hush.
"Why?" Veronica begged then. "Why would He—"
"You know why," the minister said. "The throne fears a line that is not formed as the throne decrees. You acted to preserve a story of succession. You did this to keep the court tidy."
"That is treason," cried a man from the audience. "You betrayed the people's trust."
Colin's face did a movement that made me lift my hand without thinking—an old reflex to look for the compass of his expression. It was a child learning to be cruel. It was then he moved from disbelief to anger.
"This is slander!" he roared. His voice shook as he tried to bury rage in its bedrock. The square flinched.
"It is not," Cedric said. "It is layered evidence. Witnesses are here." He gestured. Ava's handmaid pointed at Veronica's sleeve, at the faint smear of an herb Colin had once commented to me upon. The crowd gasped.
Colin's face paled a shade more. He touched his chest like a man who had been struck and not yet realized the blow.
"Arrest them," he barked—because he could still bark. "Seize the one who brought these lies!"
Soldiers moved. But their faces had already turned to look at the crowd. The people were not the same as before. The retired officers spoke with weight. The scribes unfolded notes that matched Cedric's. The evidence had become heavy enough to sink royal rhetoric.
"Hold," the minister commanded. "By the council's right, let the council judge."
Colin looked to court allies, and realized many had turned their feet away.
"Is this how you keep the throne?" someone shouted. "By making a weapon of a family?"
"No," Veronica wept suddenly, not the delicate lament of an actress but the raw note of a woman who had cut through something and found fear. "I did what I had to."
"You struck the bowl," the minister said. "You poisoned the trust of a people that paid your way. You will answer."
At first Colin tried the proud refusal, the mask falling and rising like a moth's wing. His voice thinned; he denied with clipped phrases. Then he tried a small, absurd charm, smirking as if it could buy the muddy city its silence.
"It was for the safety of the realm," he said. "I acted to maintain stability."
"On what foundation?" someone shrieked. "On the bones of a family?"
The crowd was no longer murmuring—they were a chorus of names and small cruel truths. They pointed at the empress's hands and at the ledger and at Colin, who had slowly moved from pride to fury to incomprehension.
Then the change I had always feared came like a tide: denial, then disbelief, then collapse.
"It is not true," Colin said, voice smaller. "You lie."
"We speak facts," replied the minister. "The signatures match. The receipts match. The kitchen had orders."
"No!" Veronica screamed, and her voice broke into a thin thing of pleading. "It was what we had to do. He would bring rebellion if a line grew unchecked. We acted to prevent—"
"To murder a family?" someone yelled. "To make them a warning?"
The crowd hissed. A woman behind me spat into the dust.
Colin's legs gave a little. He stared at the parchment as if he could dissociate the ink from his hands. He looked at Veronica and—oh, the shift—his eyes no longer sheltered her like a lover; they cut. He realized that love does not protect when law awakens.
"Do you seek mercy?" a magistrate asked. "From the people you used as shields and swords?"
"Yes," Veronica said, and in that one word there was a crumpled honesty that fractured the square. "Yes, we did what we did for the throne."
"Then the throne will be made to answer," the minister said. "You will be stripped of favor. You will be put under house constraint and your income reassigned. You will stand in the public square and be read your actions."
"Read?" Veronica's voice serpented into fear.
"Yes," the minister said. "Read to the people the facts of what you did. Let the world see how you used a family for statecraft."
They ordered a public reading. They made two proud heads stand and listen to every line of ledger and witness. Veronica's face moved through horror, then anger, then a kind of pleading. Colin went through the arch from which emperors usually commanded others to a small platform where he looked as small as any man who had had his map torn.
They called for the herald to speak the charges. The words were slow and clear. The crowd pressed in; eyes cut like knives.
"By the council decree," the herald intoned, "for the crimes committed in compromising a private house for the stability of rule, using secret alchemy against subjects, and ordering the removal of military command by false counsel—Colin Estes and Veronica Barry are hereby relieved of certain honors. Their household incomes are reduced. Their companions are dismissed. They will be read publicly the ledger of actions that harmed the Darling House. They will face constraints and be forbidden public councils until the council finds them fit."
When the ledger was read aloud, Ava's handmaid wept and the crowd hissed and clapped in ugly measures. Colin's face went through the full anatomy of a man unmasked—first shock, then denial, then a thin, bright anger, then shame, then collapse. Veronica's fingers clenched the edge of her sleeve until the jewel in her hair rattled.
"Please," she begged, voice broken, "I did it for the line. I saved the throne."
"You saved your place," one voice answered. "You saved your title."
The magistrate's voice unyielded. "Let all who hear know."
When the final sentence was read, the crowd did not murmur "deliverance" so much as "witness." Some people spat. Some cried. A few others—those whose sons had died for little reasons—clapped slowly like rain on roofs.
Colin went very still. He looked like someone hearing his own story told from a stranger's mouth. Then he crumpled—at first a formal bow of a man used to theater, then a physical collapse. He could not bear the weight.
"Please," he whispered. "I—"
"No," Veronica pleaded at first like a queen imploring the storm. Then she turned to me. "Julianne," she said, voice hoarse, "I am sorry."
I had no mercy to give. I had a ledger and a long ache.
"You made us weapons," I said, and the square heard me. "You made my father and brother a lesson you could hold up. You called it preservation."
"Not everything is as simple as revenge," Colin stammered.
"Then explain it to those who buried men because you wished to be untouchable," I said.
He put his face in his hands and did not answer. Veronica's shoulders shook; she held herself like someone who had been unstitched.
The crowd turned away from them slowly. Officials moved in to enforce the magistrate's order. The two who had once stood above all now walked between guards like people who had stepped into a play they no longer controlled.
They were not executed. The laws would not permit that. But their fall was measured and public—the shame as relentless as rain, witnessed by the people they had once used.
The public punishment lasted through the noon and into the late sun. I watched them become less magnificent with every reading. The crowd's voices shifted from curiosity to scorn to a cold sense of balance. Children jostled to see them. Old women spat. A scribe made notes with a steady hand. By evening, everyone who had been there could tell you the ledger's lines.
"Do you feel better?" Cedric asked me as we walked away from the square.
"I feel lighter," I said.
"You looked like a goddess today," he said, but he was smiling with tired teeth.
"A goddess who almost drowned," I said, and we met Lake Qiongzhou's salt breeze with a small, wry laugh that tasted of seaweed and new things.
Back in Qiongzhou, I kept the embroidered ball on a low shelf where Atlas could see it when he came visiting with fruit. I kept small pleasures simple: a good bowl of noodles, the taste of sweet mango when it came by summer, and a life that no longer had ledger lines written over it.
Sometimes I thought of Colin's face in the square—how he had moved from a man who could command armies to a man who could not command the truth. I thought of Veronica's confession and how the world had stripped her down and left her standing in a place where the people could look.
"Are you not angry?" Atlas asked once as he handed me a slice of mango. "Does it not feel good to have them shamed?"
"It felt necessary," I said. "But I do not like the smell of burned things."
He smiled in a way that had nothing of courts in it. "Then let us eat mangoes. Let us taste what is sweet."
"Yes," I said, and I rolled the embroidered ball in my hands. It was light now, not a talisman and not a weapon, but a small perfect thing.
"Tomorrow," I told Atlas, "we will go to the noodle place by the east gate. I will teach you to choose a soup that does not pretend to be anything else."
"Deal," he said, and he tucked a mango pit into his pocket as if saving a tiny sun.
I walked away from the capital like a woman who had seen a mirror cracked and then reassembled. The public ruin of the emperor and empress did not make wounds disappear. It only made them visible. The ledger had been read; the city had watched. My family remained alive enough to plant crops, and I had a small man with mango hands to make me laugh.
So I tied the embroidered ball to my belt, and when Atlas smiled across the market stall the next morning, I took his offered hand and did not look back at the capital's dark horizon.
The End
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