Revenge14 min read
The Jade Apple and the Peace Lock
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I am Victoria Hoffman. I am the woman who wore the phoenix crown and kept a court of knives folded like fans behind her smile.
"It is His Majesty's carriage," Chloe called from the gate. "The procession has returned."
"And we all will bow," I replied, lowering my eyes because that is what an empress does first.
Fabian Graf rode in as a king should—commanding, slow, with a single woman at his side. She stepped down from the horse smaller than the throne she was going to sit upon, hand brushed in his, like a child rescued from a storm. She was Bianca Caruso.
"Stand and greet the emperor," Andreas announced, voice as practiced as the palace bells.
"Welcome back, Your Majesty," we said together, and I led the chorus of kneeling women.
Bianca's boots had a gold dragon embroidered on them. For a moment I watched only the boots, and then the woman herself. She looked up at him and up at me, an odd little smile, the smile of someone who believes she belongs.
"She's a village girl," Julie whispered on my left. Julie Flores had always been quick with her tongue. "Can a village girl even know palace manners?"
"Silence," I said. The word was small but the room obeyed. Julie bit back the rest, but the whisper sat in the air like a lodged thorn.
Fabian did not speak at first. He let the assembly collect itself into silence. "Rise," he said finally.
We rose. He looked at me long enough that I felt the usual chill; then his face warmed at Bianca's presence, and that small warmth slid like oil over the cold tiles and stained the court.
"Come forward," he said to Bianca. "Introduce yourself to Her Majesty."
She stepped forward with the casual confidence of someone who had already been told she was wanted. "I am Bianca Caruso," she said, curtseying with a village girl’s half-learned bow. "I thank Your Majesty, and I—"
"Village girl," Julie hissed again.
Fabian's hand tightened. "Julie Flores, disrespect of the emperor's choice is insolence. Fifty lashes—on the mouth. Out of line."
Julie fell to her knees, eyes wide. "Have mercy, Your Majesty!"
I knelt too, because we are all actors in a court that loves a show. "Your Majesty, your return is a blessing. Perhaps Julie's heat of tongue is for show. Let it be."
Bianca moved close to Fabian then, fingers finding the place on his sleeve where he had pushed his hand between cloak and skin. That small touch softened his expression; it made him forget that he had a wife at the hall or that his wife sat at the center.
"She is gentle," Fabian murmured. "She thinks of the servants—she said she would use some of our house provisions to build shade and give cold mung-bean soups."
"How thoughtful," I said, and the word put out the wedge he had been about to drive. "Let us have it arranged, then. The palace deserves civility."
Bianca colored the day with gifts and small kindnesses. "We will build sunshades," she told the maids with a bright, humble laugh. "We will make cold soups. The staff should be treated like people."
"How touching," Raffaella said under her breath. Raffaella Mori—tall, measured, unused to squeals—kept her eyes on the chessboard and her mouth a near-scissor.
"Do not mistake kindness for weakness," Angel Dudley said to me later that night. Angel is a daughter of a general; she says what she means and her hair has the taste of war.
I laughed and took Angel's hand. "What can I do? I wear the phoenix crown. What would you have me do—fight for a heart already claimed?"
Angel squeezed my hand. "Tell me, sister: if you are empress, what do you gain from all this refusal?"
"What a question," I said, and I led her down to the garden where peonies demurred in moonlight and servants giggled behind potted trees. We spoke low enough that the hedges could not understand.
"Because," I told her, "the throne is not a child's toy. I will keep my place. If she is a problem, I'll make sure she is only a problem for herself."
"Do it, then," Angel said. "Or I will go to my father."
I smiled then, the smile that ruled a room better than any edict. "No need," I said. "We have time."
The palace took Bianca's measures—sunshades, cold soups—and the staff lauded her. Rumors are quick little birds; they passed from kitchen to corridor and were already singing that Bianca was "one of the people," that she fed servants out of a genuine gentleness.
"Are you sure she isn't a clever fox in common clothes?" Angel asked, once, as we watched Bianca hand a silver purse to a small maid.
"Very sure," I said. "A fox leaves traces. A clever fox leaves no footprints."
Then the little footprints showed themselves.
"Your Majesty," Chloe announced one dawn, bowing so low her hairpin nearly hit the floor. "Lady Lisa of the Moon Pavilion suffers great injury. She has been punished and looks to Your Majesty."
I went to Lisa Scholz's little shrine with an appetite for truth. She was small, quiet, and had a footnote name in the court—Moon, because of the hairpin I once gave her. When she knelt, her fingers were red as if paper cuts had been turned into wounds, and the skin across her palms gleamed with fresh blood.
"This is not the work of a careless mistress," Chloe said. "She was ordered to pick five ten-thousand white roses, and the order did not match the fruits."
"Who told you the order?" I asked.
"The order came from Bianca's pavilion," Jessie Spencer said, voice tight with loyalty. Jessie was Lisa's attendant and never much of a liar. "They said Lady Bianca could not be bothered with roses left to spoil. She told the garden staff to punish—"
"To punish?" I repeated.
"To make an example," Jessie whispered. "They made poor Lisa gather beyond reason. Then Lady Bianca refused to pardon her. She—"
"Stop," I said. I closed my hand on the small book of balances I always carried, and I watched the servants' faces. Some were shameful, some were frightened. None lied.
There are moments when the world is clear as ice. The moonlit day Lisa had her bloodied hands—someone had been cruel.
"Bring me the ledger," I told Chloe. "Bring me everything, and bring the palace steward."
The ledger came. I sat with Fabian in the inner library while ink bled into margins and tallies told the story.
Bianca’s ledger had receipts for gifts, small silver purses, jars of pearls. Another ledger—the palace books—had the sums for the cooling project. They did not match.
"It looks like someone moved the numbers," I said, laying the ink-blotted page between us.
Fabian pointed. "That is our fund for the kitchen. That is sixty thousand in total."
"There are stamp marks," I told him. "And ledger notes from the national storehouse, signed by a man named Little Shun, who claims Bianca was permitted to fetch the goods because she had His Majesty's token."
He reached for the token Bianca had been wearing those first days, the half of a jade apple his grandmother had left to the imperial family. He took it between two fingers, and his hand trembled like a child who finds a truth he cannot swallow.
"Do you accuse her?" he asked, voice as small as someone who asks whether it will rain.
"Not yet," I said. "But I will find out."
I told Angel and Raffaella to watch, and they did. For a month we watched Bianca make quiet calls and send a stream of small presents like bread crumbs. She was kind to the servants and certain to be seen. Petty generosity covers many sins—until the day it cannot.
It was the third day after the mid-autumn feast when I called for an audience. The great hall was full. The eunuch Andreas Hu announced the names, and they came: the ministers, the generals, a few older wives, and the servants who had been made witnesses.
"Your Majesty," I said, stepping forward with a stack of papers in my fingers. "You honored Bianca Caruso. You made her an ornament, a jewel of a pulse. She returned that favor by making enemies into graves."
Bianca stood, at first calm and then something like commitment broke into rage. "What is this meaning?" she asked. "Who slanders me before the court?"
"Julie Flores," I said. Julie's face went white, remembering that first whisper. But it was not Julie who held the dagger.
"Read," I told Andreas, and the printed words from Little Shun were arranged like a net.
"On the dates of the green-soup distribution, the palace storekeeper observed that Lady Bianca entered the warehouse at dawn with a token of the emperor. She took out bundles sealed by name and took them to her retinue. Money did not reconcile with the books. When asked, she said the emperor used them."
There was a silence like the first drop of rain.
Bianca's expression changed: first surprise, then disdain, then something like fury. Her voice sharpened. "Lies! How dare you! I am a favored one! The emperor trusts me!"
"Then explain this," I said, and I had the midwife's confession ready—raw as a knife. "Stepmother midwife Liu said she was given powder to ensure 'easy release' for the lady Moon, and that powder included e zhu, an active herb which induces flow. She said she was paid by a woman who gave her a small silver purse and an imperial token."
Bianca's face contorted. "False," she spat. "I never—"
"See that," I said. "See how her mouth works. Midwife Liu swore in the sign of the palace court. Other servants corroborate the night Lisa returned, unwell, having been forced at dawn to gather impossible roses because 'the mistress's anger is to be satisfied.'"
The hall reacted like a body given an unexpected blow. Women gasped. A line of palace secretaries shifted and exchanged looks. Some servants covered their mouths with hands. Raffaella's eyes narrowed like a blade; Angel's jaw thrummed.
"Lady Bianca," I said. "You have been held in favor. You have worn emperor's tokens. You have distributed gifts and taken money. I ask for justice, not rumor."
Bianca laughed then. The sound was a brittle thing. "You fancy yourself a judge now, Empress? You cloak your jealousy with virtue and think you can burn me at the stake by saying I stole apples?"
"Do you deny giving a silver purse to a palace maid whose mother was my hint of a midwife?" I asked, calm as a surgeon. "Do you deny sending the midwife the powder?"
She staggered through the defenses like a ship caught without wind. "I—no person—"
"Silence!" Fabian's voice thundered, more from shock than anger. "If what the Empress accuses is true, the law is clear."
"Do not shout at me," Bianca snapped. "Do not pretend you are blind."
"Then hear the witnesses." The first was the storekeeper, thin and teary. "I saw Lady Bianca twice with the token. The seals were broken in her hands. She signed no receipt." He spoke in panic. The second witness was Little Shun. "I was told by a courier that the treasures were taken at Bianca's bidding, and the courier was sworn to silence." He pointed to a folded sheet. The folded sheet was the ledger chrysalis—inked with names and dates.
"Enough!" someone cried. "Bring the midwife."
They brought her. Liu, the midwife, came in bound hands and a face that had lived ten more years than she deserved. Her shoulders shook. She had a little scar on the chin.
"Speak," I said.
Liu looked like a woman who had been given nothing but work to hold onto. "I—" she began, then choked. "They said it would be safe. They promised me an old house and a sack of silver if I made the birthing short. The lady was angry because a maid bumped her cart. The lady told me to 'fix the matter' lest the palace notice. I put herb into the cloth because I feared for my children. Please—"
She bowed so low her forehead hit marble. "I am a poor woman. I am sorry."
Bianca had been erect, her chin high. Now her face found a new color: blind triumph curdled into disbelief. She stuttered, "You lie. She lies for a promise!"
"Then why did you give the midwife a purse and token?" I asked.
Bianca's composure broke like glass. She swallowed and tried denial, then rage, then a gamble. "I gave silver to many. So what? Because I had favor does not mean I am a murderer."
Her voice hit the rafters and bounced. The hall watched, breath abated. The prefects, the generals, the ministers; eyes turned like birds at a strange sound. Some whispered, "She cannot be so cruel—" Others hissed, "Look how she turns the world."
Fabian's face had gone pale. He reached for his jade apple and seemed to find no comfort.
"By law," the chief minister said finally, "the court demands that those who conspire to kill inside the palace are to be stripped of rank and punished publicly."
There was a hush. Bianca's chest rose and fell too quickly. She moved like a trapped animal, seeking an exit in words.
"This is bias!" she cried suddenly, voice high. "You cannot make me a villain because some jealous woman weeps. I am beloved. Who gains?"
Her reactions ran like a train through stages: confidence, then contempt, then shock as ledger after ledger was presented, then denial when the midwife collapsed under oath, then pleading as the crowd closed.
"Bianca Caruso," I said, and there was no warmth in my voice, "you have hurt an innocent woman and her child. You have used the sovereign's name to carry out theft. You have taken a life through fear and deceit. You are to be punished in a manner that will be remembered by all the women of the palace."
"Not—" she began, voice cracking.
"There will be three public acts of justice," I continued, as if reciting an old recipe. "First: you will be stripped in the outer court of your jewels and your titles. Second: you will be demoted and placed under house arrest, and you will be ordered to public labor—your estate's woodlands will be cleared and replanted as farms for the palace poor, managed by you. Third: the midwife will be publicly flogged and banished to the provinces for collusion."
"You cannot!" Bianca screamed. "My—my status—"
Around the hall, women drew breath. Some clapped—a thin sound of approval; some whispered secrets of joy. The servants exchanged something like nods. The air tasted like iron and release.
Bianca's face went through the prescribed stages—first a gasp of 'I have been betrayed,' then an attempt to raise her voice to scorn, then denial—"No, I never—"—then the flood where her knees gave and the world become a private calamity.
"Do you beg? Do you ask for mercy?" The crowd shifted, lean and hungry for theater. Chrysanthemum-scented ladies closed in; a younger maid took out a small handkerchief and dabbed at her own eyes though there were no tears.
She tried to fold herself out of the punishment. "I am your grace. Remember His favor. I can bring you heirs—"
"You already did," an old courtier muttered. He meant chaos. The crowd heard and laughed hard enough that their masks of sorrow cracked.
"Save your words," Fabian said at last. He had the weariness of a man finding the rip of his robe. "Let the law be the law."
Bianca Lunged up, eyes wild. "The emperor—"
"Silence," I said, and my single command fell like a cold river over her head.
The palace gavels sounded. Her hairpins were removed in the front courtyard; her silk became a scrap. The wardens took the token, broke it in two, and returned one half to Fabian; the other half was tossed aside like an afterthought. Bianca's jewelry—pearls and jade—were taken from her and placed on a tray. A maid who had been given such a present once now stepped forward and broke the necklace in two; the crack sounded like a verdict.
"She will be a field woman," Angel whispered, not unkindly, as a small final measure. "She will soil her hands and not boast."
They led her out through the central gate. The courtyard was full; palace maids, stable hands, and even some townspeople had been allowed to stand at a distance. They had all come to see a favored woman fall.
"Look," someone hissed. "She was crowned by the emperor's own smile. Now see how she walks."
Bianca’s expression turned from horror to pleading. She reached out to Fabian once more; he looked away as if her touch were a kind of smoke.
"Mercy!" she wept. Her voice fell into defeat as the crowd's murmurs grew to a chorus: some slapping their palms to their mouths in shock, some hushed and then loud with approval. A few younger servants even laughed openly.
They took her to the outer fields near the old palace orchards. There, a sign was hung: 'For the Noble's Debts and the Palace's Poor—Bianca Caruso, Steward.' The sign stung because it was both a duty and a humiliation. Her title read 'Lady to Farmer.' She would spend seasons sowing what she once bought.
I watched from the balcony while the sun bent low. The midwife was flogged—twenty stripes—at the public square. She cried and begged, and the sheriff's whip came down. The crowd's voice was loud with a mixture of pity and satisfaction. She was then loaded onto a cart and taken to the provincial road where she would live among fewer comforts and fewer faces that might remind anyone of the palace's bloodied palms.
"Do you see?" Angel breathed next to me. "The palace breathes again."
I felt nothing like triumph. The world had given me back a measure of order, but order had tasted of iron.
The punishment scene lasted long enough that the sun retired. Bianca had gone through the arc of dominance, then denial, then pleadings and finally a breaking silence. The crowd that had once given her gifts now spat small curses and spat out her name.
"Do not let this be the end," I told Angel later. "If the woman winters, she will learn nothing. If she dies on the fields, the story is bitter but finite."
"We will watch," Angel said. "We will make sure the story does not bend back on us."
Months passed and life in the palace folded into its usual quieter rhythms—until another winter came and brought its own thin, private cruelties.
The midwife had left, the stores accounted for, and Bianca's hands had learned blisters. She labored with the men who planted barley where once tall trees had swayed. Her face darkened in winter winds. Her venom did not leave her; it merely hardened to a colder stone.
"She still speaks of the emperor," a stableboy told me once, shaking his head. "She calls him 'my sun' and curses anyone who steps near her son."
"She took his favor," I said. "She cannot take his memory."
Fabian's death was slow and then sudden. When the palace slept beneath a crust of snow and mourning veiled the gates, he died in the chamber where the jade apple lay whole again.
He had loved, in the way of men who would be kings: once and with stubbornness. I had loved, in the way of women who would be queens: with strategy and a sewing needle of patience.
When he died, Bianca wept as women weep at final loss: not only grief, also a kind of raw, needy hunger for what she had thought she owned. The people who had cried for justice now pored over the palace's rituals. The ministers put out calls for order.
I was made Empress Dowager when the boy—Fabian's second son, raised for three years under my watch—took the throne as young Cole Bengtsson. For a time the court remembered Bianca as the woman who had been favored and then exposed. The farmers who had worked under her hands were now petitioners at the palace gates; they spoke in humble phrases, grateful that the reclaimed lands fed more mouths.
As for Bianca, she grew wild and ragged. Ten years after the public unmaking, she came into the orchard unannounced, like a ghost from the first year. She grabbed at the child she believed was hers, shouting that she was the mother, that blood defined rights.
"Let her go," I told the guards.
She laughed, a jagged sound. "You took him! You stole him! This Tomfoolery of law cannot change blood!"
The guards hesitated.
"Do not leave her to harm the child," I said. "Take the boy from her arms. He is my son's son; child of the realm."
She clutched the boy and then, like a wound reopened, pulled in a great breath and fell away.
"She dies," Angel said softly later.
"She dies of her own fury," I answered. "Not all punishments are measured by law. Some rot from within."
In the end, Bianca's last breath was taken in the yard behind her small, cleared fields. No one cheered. No one made a court of it. Her end was a small, hard thing like a seed pressed beneath a boot.
We buried her like any other; there was a small marker, and something like pity slipped through the court like a tired wind. People told the story for years: how a village girl, bought by favor and draped in pearls, rose and then fell; how she made cruelty and then suffered the closure of it.
Years later, when I walked through the palace with a basket of pastries and watched children chase one another in the yard, a small hand tugged on my sleeve. A little girl—bright, round cheeks—held up a tiny lock of jade tied to a thread.
"Grandmother," she said, "look. I found a tiny apple!"
I held it and smiled. It was not the imperial jade, but a small charm: a peace lock. I fastened it around the little prince's neck and felt the weight of the whole world shift into its small, warm roundness.
"Keep this," I told him. "It is a peace lock. It is to remind you that a throne is not just a seat of power. It is a place to keep people safe."
He looked at me with the simple reverence of children and asked, "What was she like?"
I remembered Bianca's boots and the dragon's embroidery, the girl who had smiled at a king, the woman who had wanted to be loved more than to love. I remembered the ledger and the midwife and the day the hall watched a favored woman fall.
"Like many," I said. "Like a woman who loved the wrong thing."
The palace had closed its winter and opened its spring again. I kept the little jade apple in a carved box within the cabinet where I kept my ink and brushes. Sometimes I open it and run my finger along the hollow, and the room seems to catch its breath.
"Do not forget," Angel said once as I closed the lid, "how easily a favor can be mistaken for a right."
"I will not," I told her. "And I will not forget the peace lock."
The End
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