Chapter 22: In the backrooms
The burning in my stomach eases somewhat after I have vomited multiple times. Whatever medicine the doctor keeps feeding me makes my stomach heave continually until I have no more strength to do anything anymore. A soothing but thick and bitter medicinal syrup is spooned into my mouth. It coats the burning areas in my mouth and throat. It is spread upon my lips. I don't know where I am or where Doctor Guan is. I don't know this doctor but at least his medicines work.
My vision is blurry with exhaustion and I wonder where Siao Ren is. I want her to hold my hand but she is not here. She is not anywhere and I cannot speak. I am put to sleep with an overly sweet syrup and when I wake, I am fed more of it. I don't know why they keep sending me to sleep but perhaps it is to save me from the discomfort of recovering from whatever the poison was. It is a good thing the poison was not a fast acting poison that killed me straight away. Someone had wanted to torture me rather than kill me but why is anyone's guess.
My mind does not permit me to think anything through and when I can think coherently, I discover that I don't know enough of anything to put anything together. I am sorely lacking in information. I barely know any of the nobles and their names or ranks, let alone the other women in the harem that I ought to be aware of. Who is the Empress now? I don't even know that.
Fighting, I wrestle against the sleep syrup in order to try and keep my mind clear. Clear enough to think and plan and learn. Sadly enough, what I can learn is about as much as a frog in a well can. Which is nothing. All I know is that I am left alone most of the time and the only people who come to see me are overly touchy feely eunuchs and the unfamiliar doctor.
I want my Doctor Guan. I want my girls. Alone and afraid in a place I do not know, I can feel the cracks in my mind growing. Longer, deeper, wider. The madness that overwhelms simmers just below the surface and I want to stay in control a little longer. Just a bit longer. I haven't been myself for long enough, yet the circumstances tell me that it is safer for me not to be myself. The beckoning of the simmering madness tries to persuade me to listen and to go into hiding again so that I will not have to face the fearsome world.
I can feel the slow approach of danger. It breathes down my neck during the night. It touches my body when I am not meant to conscious. From what I can tell, my body has largely recovered from the poison. I need to wake. I need to escape. I need to get out of here. Wherever here is.
Naked.
In the shuddering throes of something that has just finished.
Finally, I am awake but I do not want to be awake. This sudden clarity has come at an inconvenient time. I shiver on a bed that is not mine. In a room that is not mine. In a place that is not mine. My body aches all over with a familiar ache that my body remembers and my mind rejects. I know what has just happened but I refuse to admit it. I refuse to accept it. I do not like it. In fact, I hate it. Hate myself. Hate my weakness and inabilities. A horror, like a creeping mould, marches up to cover my entire body. My body is covered with a sheen of sweat, making me feel colder than it probably is. If I saw myself covered with filth, I would not be surprised.
The Emperor is dressing himself and humming. I don't remember ever seeing him so happy before.
He leaves the room, without another glance at me. Next door, I hear his eunuchs finish dressing him properly.
"See to her needs," he tells them. "When she is awake, bathe her and dress her. Put her in the back room and tell everyone she has been sent back to her own rooms, now that she has recovered. She will be our guest for a few more days until I find the traitor that dared try to kill her. Perhaps the traitor will even take the bait. I will come again in the evening."
I feel sore and bruised, wondering why there are no blankets. The air is so cold.
The eunuchs return some time later and carry me, when I find I cannot walk, to a room lit with candles. They lower me into a tub of warm scented water. There they sponge me down all over and when they are done, dry me and rub me all over with scented oils. The oils are massaged into my skin, even in places that only I should touch. My limbs are still too heavy and weak. I dislike this intimate contact where I feel I am being taken advantage of. Being naked before hungry eyes that cannot have what they want. Powerless to reject the exploring fingers. I protest, but they say it is the Emperor's wish. That the Emperor is listening. Watching. Waiting for me to be ready for him to visit again in just a few hours.
Once loosely dressed in a gown so thin and fine that it floats yet clings, they leave me in another room. A room less often used. I can smell stale air and dust, although I cannot see any dust. Perhaps the room was just recently cleaned. Still cold, I wrap the newly appeared blanket on the bed around myself and look around at the sparse decorations in this windowless room. The Emperor must not use this room much. My tummy growls, but there is no food. The teapot has no water. All I find is the chamber pot, which I readily fill and leave to one side.
Some time later, another door I did not notice opens. The scent of pine needles enters the room and I recognise the Emperor's brother. Prince Feng is his name, if I remember correctly from the banquet last night. Huddled on the bed, I try to cover myself. He sits beside me. Smirking.
He doesn't speak, but leans so close that when I attempt to shuffle away, I instead fall back onto the bed. Then he unwraps the blanket from me despite my efforts to keep a hold of it, looking me up and down. There is the glint of a predator in his eyes. He smiles and out of necessity I give wordless shrieks and cries for help that does not come. I don't like the way he looks at me. As if I am a dish of tofu and he would eat me.
Where did the tofu thought come from?
I am confused. There are cracks in my mind, in my jade core centre. The simmering darkness within is starting to bubble up out of the cracks and I can't stop it. I don't really want to stop it. Bitterness fills my mouth.
This is wrong. I know it is wrong. Someone come and save me. Please. I have already suffered under one man today. I do not need another. Please. Not another. Not another. I can't - I can't -
"Afraid? Shocked? Surprised?" Prince Feng strokes my shoulders, my neck and face, while looking at other parts of me. My knees are doubled up, my feet squished and trapped beneath his weight. One foot is tangled in my blanket, preventing me from using it to kick properly. He leans in close to sniff me. One hand is on my hip. The other kneading a place he shouldn't be touching. Although I tremble and shake, he only smiles wider, gazing into my eyes. "Imagine my brother's shock when he finds you gone from this room. Our mingled fluids on the bed. I'll lead him on a merry chase. Leave first your hair pins. Then your clothes and then parts of you. And in every place, evidence that you had been there and utterly ravished. You are pretty, but seriously, I don't need a broken toy like you to make me feel like a man. My brother is a tyrant. A spoiled boy who wants everything even if he doesn't need it. I think it's time the empire saw some change. Unfortunately for you, you may not survive to see the end. Not unless you do something that completely surprises me and makes me change my mind. But I doubt very much that will ever happen."
He begins fiddling with his clothes, but stops to catch my wrists when I strike out at him in an attempt to make him move so that I can escape. Escape where to though, I do not know. There is nowhere to go. My wrists are tied to the bed rail above my head. I scream in his face, but he just stuffs a cloth in so far that I gag. I can barely breathe and cannot even work my tongue around the dry material to spit it out. The cloth tastes dusty and feels bulky though smooth.
A clatter and noise from the main door makes him freeze. In one movement, he has untied my hands and carried me out the hidden door over his shoulder. Being winded, it's all I can do to breathe at first. Belatedly, halfway down the dark corridor of the hidden door, I begin thrashing in his arms. He just throws my over his other shoulder.
His bony shoulder digs into my midriff, painfully knocking breath out of me with his every step. When I continue to struggle, he spanks my rump. Every few steps, he slaps me again. It stings and burns. I am not a wayward child. How can he spank me? I have done nothing wrong.
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