Revenge14 min read
The Emperor's White Moon
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I am Aviana. I have been the emperor's personal maid since I was ten and he was seven. I am the one who knew him when his voice still cracked and his hands were small. I am the one who learned to bend like reed in wind so the crown would not break. I have served Clement Armstrong for fifteen years.
"Your hand is bleeding," I said the night he killed again.
Clement did not answer. He dropped the long blade and walked to the basin I held, and plunged his pale, long fingers into the cold water.
"You saved my life once," he whispered, not looking at me. "You always think you can fix me."
"Your Majesty," I said, lowering my head. "It is not my place to say—"
"Aviana," he cut me off. "Remember your place."
His voice was low as a winter river. He dried his hands with a soft linen, fingers trembling. "Send someone to clean this," he ordered. "Aviana, come with me."
I followed without a word. I had followed him into frost and into fire. I had watched him rise from a small, frightened boy into the man who could make generals kneel. I had thought I knew him. I thought I understood the parts he hid—until tonight, until the blade found its target and the court laughed and cried and called it justice.
"Do you think I did wrong?" I asked once, in the small quiet when our shadows walked the imperial garden.
He didn't answer. He walked farther, shoulders taut as if holding invisible armor, until the tautness eased like a bow unstrung. He let out a breath, and I felt some of the heat leave him. That was the limit of what I could do.
When I was exiled to the House of Menial Labor—when I came to scrub chamber pots for the fifth time—no one was surprised. They thought I had overreached. They assumed my fall would break me.
"Eat," said Hope White, the new favored consort, one morning when she found me carrying a tray to the palace. She laughed like bells. "This was given by His Majesty. Aviana, you are so dirty. Why don't you just eat it like a dog?"
"Thank you, Your Ladyship," I said, kneeling. My fingers brushed that tray. In a heartbeat, the tray slipped and the cakes slid into the basin by my knees.
Hope peered down and mock gasps spilled from her. "Oh, what an accident. Aviana, why don't you fish them out and eat them? No reason to waste such a gift."
"You want me to eat from the basin?" My voice was steady. "Why don't you try it first, Your Ladyship?"
She laughed and lifted the basin to her own head, and the crowd roared. "Eat, then," Clement said from the doorway. His voice was like a blade. "If it is hers, she must be grateful."
I lifted the basin and smashed it over Hope's head. The women screamed as her coiffure plunged into filth. I threw back my head and shouted, "Do it, Clement! Kill me. Kill me and be done with it."
He paused. For a moment his face contracted in a way I had not seen since we were children and he scraped his knees. He told me to follow him back to the palace and then, in the quiet, called me by my given name without the customary stiffness.
"You have not called me that in seven years," I said. "Is that... indulgence?"
"Indulgence," he echoed. "You are stubborn, Aviana. I wrote the decree long ago. I was going to make you empress."
"Take it back," I said. "Take back your decree."
He did not strike me. He did not even shout. He sighed and sent me back to the House of Menial Labor.
I played at dying. I swallowed the false poison and lay among the basins while the snow came and the palace carried on. Clement wept in the courtyard and called me his "sister" as he held a pale body in his arms. He had me buried in honor and proclaimed three days of mourning. The city painted its streets white. Everyone loved the emperor's devotion. They did not know I breathed and planned.
Davis Medina, the captain of the palace guards—the one who owed me for an old favor—pulled me out of the tomb when the drug wore off. He was clumsy and grinning, and he tried to be casual. "Aviana," he said. "You owe me for this."
"You pulled me out of the snow and wrapped me in rotten cabbages," I answered, sitting up in the cart full of vegetables. "You owe me nothing."
"Everything," he insisted. "Sit. Eat. The city misses you; they think you're gone."
We reached the city and the air was full of mourning banners. Clement had ordered the court to grieve. The streets felt like a theatre where the emperor's sorrow was the main play. People bowed to me with wet eyes. They called me Empress in whispers. The performance warmed their hearts; it did not touch mine.
"Do you plan to stay?" Davis asked at the edge of the pavilion.
"I will leave tonight," I said. "I cannot live inside a story written by another man."
"Where will you go?" he asked.
"Anywhere but here," I said. "Anywhere the sky is not a ceiling."
The plan needed someone who could move like a shadow at night. Davis could do that. Or rather, he could pretend. He stood in the courtyard and challenged the palace guard with a grin and a lie. "She is with me," he said to the captain when the search began. "Aviana is my cousin. I will take her home."
They believed him because he was a captain and because Clement's grief made even the overseers indulgent. I left beneath the moon.
I traveled with Davis and with Forbes Cohen, an old general who had once served my father. They took me to the small cart and brought me out of the city. I thought of the times years ago when Clement had pressed his forehead to mine and promised to take me to the highest place of honor.
"Do not trust appearances," Forbes said. "Emperors are full of a certain kind of hunger."
"I know," I said. "I have known too long."
But the emperor's grief grew into action. A letter came from Clement that shook the city: he posthumously honored me as Empress—an imperial title no one expected. The city called me Saint Empress. They draped white and called for wailing. I sat under the mourning cloth and watched the theater. I felt nothing.
"Is this the honor you wanted?" Forbes asked, leaning in.
"No," I said. "But it will help."
Davis blinked. "Help with what?"
"Help me vanish," I said.
I used the ceremony like a cloak. The funeral procession gave me the cover to slip into a caravan leaving the city. I took nothing but a small bundle of food and a single hair ribbon that had belonged to my mother. Our destination was the mountain near the eastern pass—Yángmíng—where Davis had arranged for a boat and men waiting.
"Aviana!" I heard my name shouted across the river as we prepared to leave. My pulse stuttered. There were horses, banners, the white fury of soldiers. Clement had come.
He came to the mountain. He rode his white horse, yellow cloak staining with blood and cold. He looked at me as if I were something stolen and returned. "Do not jump," he said, voice breaking.
"Why did you keep me?" I asked instead. "Why did you keep me in the palace only to punish me?"
"You ask of me what I cannot give," he said.
Clement begged me like a child on his knees. He tried to trade the whole empire for my staying. He promised me anything: the throne, the phoenix jade, power. "Stay," he whispered. "I will change."
"Change," I echoed. "You have said that before."
He trembled. His fingers found my wrist.
"Do you love me?" I asked.
He looked up at the sky. "I loved you," he said. "Once."
"Once is a poor calendar," I said, and I stepped back.
Davis seized me at the back; he had a plan to cut me loose. It was then that he was arrested. The visiting general Octavio Dodson—Clement's enforcer, the man everyone feared—grabbed Davis and laughed like a fisherman.
"You think to play at escape?" Octavio said, smiling cold. "You will die for this."
They dragged Davis away and chained him in the yard. I saw his face and it was broken, as if something inside him had given up. I could not let them kill him for a lie.
"I will go with him," I said aloud. "If you will not let him be, then take me."
Clement's hand closed on my arm like a vice. "No," he said. "I will not let you be harmed."
"Then let me go."
"Treachery," he said. "I will have them bring him to the Command Hall. He will be tried."
We returned to the city in a thunderstorm. The Emperor staged his trial like a play. Corbin Buchanan—the Prince of the West, a restless man who had long nursed hatred—stood watching with a cold face. At his side sat Kataleya Harper, a concubine with eyes like knives and a smile that tasted of rust. She had been a thorn since she was installed. She smiled at me through the curtains.
They meant to trouble Clement. They meant to use me as bait.
At the Command Hall, the marshal Octavio Dodson produced Davids's "confession." It was written in a neat, swift hand. They said Davis had conspired with the West Prince to kidnap the supposed Empress and flee to the river, that he had plotted to start a rebellion. Davis laughed and spat. "I lied for her," he said.
"For you?" I cried. "You lied for me?"
"For you," he said. "I would do it again."
"You are a fool," I said, and the hall chuckled. The sentence was set: exile and public whipping, unless Davis named his co-conspirators.
"I will not betray them," he said.
"Then he will die for his loyalty," said Octavio, leaning in, his breath cold. "The law is the law."
Corbin Buchanan rose. "The law must be clean," he said. His voice was smooth like ice. Kataleya clapped slowly.
For days, the city spoke of treason. For days, Clement held his face like a folded map, and for days the West Prince fomented whispers among the nobles. The net they had spun had more than one loop.
I could not watch Davis perish for my sake.
So I walked into the yard where the marshal Octavio sat with instruments and chains.
"Judge me," I said.
The courtyard fell silent.
"You are the Empress," Octavio said mockingly. "You are dead."
"Not dead," I said. "Alive and ready."
They dragged me to the scaffold and put me upon it. My hair hung like a curtain. Corbin Buchanan stepped forward to speak my sentence to the world. "Let it be known that traitors will not be spared," he said.
"What do you want?" I asked him plainly. "Money? Title? Which blade do you want?"
"Your head," Kataleya hissed.
"You will not soil your hands," I said. "You will only be exposed for what you are."
Corbin raised his chin. "We have the court."
"So bring it," I said. "Bring them all."
They did.
The public punishment came on a morning the sky itself seemed to lean in. The market emptied; every shop shuttered and every merchant held his breath. Courtiers in the highest silks gathered on the stone steps. Soldiers formed a perfect square, shields gleaming. Corbin Buchanan rode forward on a dark horse, his banner snapping. Kataleya stood with him—her robes startling scarlet against the gathered whites and greys. Octavio Dodson paced like a caged wolf, his iron tools arranged like instruments of a surgeon.
I walked to the center and stood beneath the dais where the magistrates sat. Clem ent himself sat silent on a carved throne, the shadow of a man who had burned much to keep it. I had one chance. I had to make it count.
"Let all who are witnesses today remember your faces," I called. "Not my shame, but your deeds."
I spoke the truth. I named names, and I told the court about the letters hidden in velvet, the nights of stolen councils, the bribes delivered in lanterns. I told them of the West Prince's secret meetings with border captains; I told them of Kataleya's offers to the prince in exchange for titles; I told of Octavio's ledger of tortures used to extract confessions.
"Corbin Buchanan," I said into the hush. "You sent your men to buy the loyalty of the third gate. You promised them gold and wives. Where is that gold now?"
"False!" he shouted.
"Bring forth the ledger," I said. "Bring forth the men who were paid."
Two of the marshal's own men stepped forward, faces shredded with fear. They produced papers and a small pouch of coins corroded at the edges. Kataleya paled. Corbin's jaw worked.
"And Kataleya Harper," I continued. "You stitched the poison into the hem of the robe for the favored concubine, you forged the seal, you promised Corbin that the next winter coronation would belong to the prince's son. Why?"
She laughed, a brittle sound. "You are mad, Empress—"
"Do you deny the message you sent to the West?" I asked.
"Yes," she spat. "I did not—"
"Silence!" commanded Clement.
I held up a hand. "I will not let you speak until the people hear the proof."
I pointed to a courtyard servant, a girl who had seen Kataleya's maid slip the letter into the prince's cloak. "She will tell," I said.
The girl trembled forward, voice thin as a reed. "I saw the letter," she whispered. "I took it and hid it. I gave it to Octavio for protection."
Heads turned to Octavio.
He sneered. "Perhaps she stole it."
"Enough." I felt something open inside me, a well of cold that poured out. "Octavio, you keep your ledger in the marshal's chest. Bring it."
He hesitated, then laughed. "You cannot order me. I answer to the law."
"And where is the law when it is bought?" I asked.
Silence. Then Octavio's hands went slow to his chest and he pulled out the ledger. The pages bore names and coins and dates. The marshals had taken bribes to fabricate confessions, they had tortured men who would not confess, they had made the accused sign anything under the weight of iron.
"Octavio Dodson," I said softly. "You have butchered men for coin. Men have bled because of you. Stand."
He stood, scowl fixed.
"For your crimes," I said, and I could hear my own voice turning distinct in the hush, "I sentence you to public infamy. You will not die in private. You will not die in a cell. You will stand before the city and feel the weight of the men you tortured."
"Madness!" Corbin snarled.
"No, justice," I answered.
They bound Octavio to a pole and painted his ledger to the chest of the marshal's table for the citizenry to read. Then, in front of the entire square, I had them bring forth those the marshal had tormented. Men and women with faces cut by rope, backs burned by coals, trembling hands—each one stepped forward and read aloud what was taken from them: names, coerced confessions, forged evidence. The crowd's murmurs swelled to shouts.
Kataleya's face bled color. Corbin's hands were white on his reins. I watched their pride unspool like old ribbon.
"Octavio Dodson," I said, "you will be shaved of rank. You will be stripped of every scrap of office you ever commanded. You will stand here and be spat upon. You will feel the contempt of every man you ever broke. You will eat from the same basin you forced others to eat from."
A hush. Then someone spat. One voice became dozens. The first spit hit decency like an arrow. Soldiers stood rigid but the citizens had begun. Spits landed on Octavio's boots, his chest, his ledger. A woman leaned forward and flung a scrap of bread into his face. Children laughed cruelly. Merchants pointed. The marshal's iron face crumpled.
He tried to strike, but the law would not let him. He tried to hide, but the crowd closed. Corbin Buchanan, who had sat gleaming with imagined power, felt as if the floor under him had turned to ice. He had expected triumph; instead he faced a public unraveling. Kataleya's hair slid loose from its pins, and for the first time I saw the woman beneath the jewel—a small frightened animal.
"Learn this," I said, voice cold as winter. "The court's power is nothing if the people know the truth."
Corbin's voice rose, then staggered. "You will answer for this," he hissed.
"I already have," I said. "You will be stripped of titles, your banners burnt in the square. You will not leave this city for a year. Kataleya Harper, your jewels will be removed in public. You will be paraded so the people see how luxury lounges with treachery."
The magistrates, stunned, moved like a herd following a new wind. Corbin was dragged down to a low stool. They cut his banners; guards tore the prince's seal from his sash. Kataleya's bracelets were removed and hung on the scaffold like little suns dimmed. Guards lifted her hairpins and clipped her pearls, and with each clip the crowd made a small sound—shock, delight, disgust. She fell to her knees and tried to clutch the hem of the throne.
"You—" she began.
"Silence," I said. "You who prided yourself on being untouched, you shall be touched by public shame. You who fed plots with palace whispers, the market will now whisper them to your face."
The scene lasted an hour. People shouted. A few cried. Children imitated the guards and cut ribbons with mock fingers. Voices called for harsher punishment, for exile, for death. I had expected that thirst. Justice, served hot and public, can be an inferno. But the crowd is also a compass. They must see and feel.
In the last act, Corbin Buchanan crawled forward before me with a face that had aged years in an hour.
"Forgive me," he said, and the word was like a broken bell.
I had no mercy left for him. "Beg then," I said. "Beg in the street for the men you ruined."
He knelt and mouthed words into the dust. Soldiers took banners and tore them. Kataleya wept in a voice that once sung to noble courts, now a thin whisper.
I looked at Clement. He was pale and hollow-eyed, and in his eyes there was the small boy he'd once been, pleading. He did not meet my gaze. I had put him in this position. I had asked the people to see him, too.
"Let this be a lesson to the court," I said. "Power without accountability breeds monsters."
The crowd stamped and cheered, not for me but for the spectacle of balance being forced into place. Corbin Buchanan's defeat was complete. He stood broken before the city. Kataleya's jewels lay in the sand. Octavio Dodson's ledger was burned last, its words eaten by fire while the crowd sang. The humiliation was not a private blade—this was a slow, public thread taken out of a woven cloak.
Afterwards, when the banners were taken down and the merchants reopened their shutters, there was a different air in the city. People spoke of courage. They joked in low voices. They remarked that perhaps the court would be more careful.
For me, the punishment tasted like salt. I had not savored revenge; I had performed it to guard an ally. Davis was freed that night. The marshal's men who had refused to carry out tortures were commended. The prince and the concubine were alive but diminished; their fury would simmer into plots. The world rearranged itself in tiny moves.
"Aviana," Clement said quietly. "You showed mercy and cruelty both. Why?"
"Because I wanted the price of my life to be more than your theater," I told him. "Because the people must see how the court breaks men for coin."
He looked at me and for the first time I saw fear on his face. "You have a hard heart," he whispered. "I am proud of you and ashamed."
"Then be both," I said.
The days that followed were quieter. The court shuffled like a deck rearranged. I found my hands empty of the basin's scrubbing and full of other burdens. Davis rode with me still. Forbes stayed near as a loyal shadow. Octavio was led away, humiliated but alive. Corbin watched me from the sidelines like a man whose map had been burned.
There were other reckonings. Kataleya Harper, deprived of her jewels and her allies, wandered the palace halls like a woman who had lost her language. She had aimed to poison a favored rival and engineer a coronation; instead she bathed in the square's scorn. She denied nothing when placed before a tribunal. Her face changed from haughty to frantic. She begged and then pleaded, then screamed, then fell silent. The city outside watched her unravel.
"Do not think this is the end," Corbin told me one night, eyes raw.
"It isn't," I agreed.
But there is a different power in making a thing public. The court's knives cannot cut you if everyone sees where the blade came from. For that hour, the people saw.
I left the square and the emperor behind. I left the titles as a ragged cloak to be worn if the wind required. I had gained something nobody could take: the right to choose. I took Davis and Forbes, and we boarded the river ship that would take us south.
"Where will you go?" Davis asked later, as the city shrank behind us.
"Anywhere," I said. "Anywhere the sky opens and there is no carved throne to trap the sun."
For months, we traveled the long rivers, tasting new breads and hearing new tongues, and yet the past kept slipping into my pockets like a small stone. Clement wrote occasionally, his letters like pebbles thrown at my window. He wrote sorrow and desire, regret and cold calculation. Once he sent me a small token—an imperial phoenix jade—wrapped in a letter that said, simply, "I was a child once with a promise in his mouth."
I kept the jade in a small box and sometimes touched it and felt his old warmth. I did not return. But the city had changed, and in that change I found a possible future.
One last act remained. The rebel prince Corbin Buchanan did not die in the square. He plotted and lost and ultimately watched his own cause choke on the very crowds he'd tried to persuade. He was forced to give up his titles and live in the cold of lesser houses. Octavio Dodson's reputation was shredded; he lived with the knowledge that every time he walked in a market someone could point at his old ledger and say, "There is the man who sold confessions." Kataleya Harper, stripped of jewelry and of her place, had to make do with a low pavilion and the bitter taste of disgrace.
They were punished in front of the people, each in ways appropriate to their crimes: Corbin's banners burned, Octavio's ledger read and spat upon, Kataleya paraded and denuded of her ornaments. They were alive—and that was part of the punishment. They had to live with each glance. The city had become their jury.
I sailed on. The wind took me south, and with each mile I felt less like a museum of memories and more like a woman learning how to carry her own name quietly.
The End
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