Aiai suspected it was enough for Lady Wu to simply wear the scent to call her true love, but she wasn’t certain. Nor did she know what would happen if one’s true love had died or lived far away. It was convenient so many had found their love close by.
There were many unknowns, but there was one known, obvious even to a silly country maid like Aiai: If she failed, Lady Wu’s disappointment would be vicious.
“Well, girl? How close do I need to be?”
The sharpness in Lady Wu’s voice made Aiai recall another rumor she had heard. The previous emperor, Taizong, had once askedhis concubine how she would make a horse obey. According to the rumor, Lady Wu had said she only needed three things: an iron whip, an iron hammer, and a dagger.
Aiai knew it was better to lie than be treated as Lady Wu had said she would treat the recalcitrant horse: body flogged with the iron whip, head smashed with the iron hammer, and throat slit if she still refused to submit. Not that she would ever rebel. Her mother often called her a mouse for the way she ducked her head and tried to scurry along the walls to remain unseen.
“Yes, my lady. Close enough to smell.”
The lie would buy her some time, she thought with relief as the cramp in her belly subsided. After all, Lady Wu was here in the temple, not in the palace, and it might be days or months or even years before she managed to get into the emperor’s presence. Perhaps Aiai would be able to discover whether her lie was true in that time.
“Good.” Lady Wu looked out the window at the distant mountains shrouded in clouds. “You will make him fall in love with me. His desire is not love. It’s not enough to turn him from the empress. He needs to love me to gather the strength to put her aside and make room for me.”
“My lady!” Aiai openly stared in shock at Lady Wu’s casual discussion of betrayal. Before Aiai had left home, her mother, forbidden by the summons to accompany her daughter, had warned her to be careful. Lady Wu was ambitious and cunning, she’d said jealously. Aiai cast her gaze back down to Lady Wu’s silk robes, embroidered with pale ducks so detailed that each seemed to carry its own sly smile. Her mind spun at the danger she was in, now that she knew Lady Wu’s plan and had been made part of it.
She needed to protect herself. She couldn’t compel love or summon love from a specific target and had turned away those who demanded it. Perhaps they believed a purchased one-way love to be enough, and even preferable—for then they never needed to lose themselves.
“What if the emperor isn’t your true love?” She risked asking the question in a voice so low it was a miracle it made it across the room to Lady Wu. She gripped her hands to control their renewed shaking.
There was a long silence, and when Lady Wu laughed, it was a deep sound from her belly that made Aiai drop her head in disgrace until her chin touched her chest. “How ridiculous,” she said. “Of course he is.”
Lady Wu’s tone brooked no disobedience, and Aiai lost whatever courage she had. “Yes, my lady,” she whispered.
“Good. You will tell no one else in Chang’an of your gift, and you will tell your family to put an end to any talk about it.” She tapped her nail against her cheek. “In fact, we will tell them you are dead.”
“My lady!”
“Yes.” Lady Wu nodded decisively. “I will pay them well for you, little witch.”
Her mother would like that, Aiai thought with a bitterness she usually kept caged, like the captive monkey in Lady Xin’s courtyard.
Lady Wu’s smile was playful, her lips gleaming vermilion in the center of her mouth. Her makeup was exquisite, the stylized gold lotus that decorated her forehead accentuating the long sweep of her eyes. “It is for your safety as well as my own.”
“Yes, my lady.” Aiai knew a command when she heard it. Her family had not been so good to her that she felt anything toward them besides duty, and even that had lain lightly on her shoulders. Had she been married, she would have been absorbed into her husband’s family anyway. At least with Lady Wu, she might have a chance at some sort of freedom and to study her power. Those gifts were not to be disregarded.
“Then let’s begin. We have much to do before I become empress.” She smiled. “Along with the emperor, it is all I desire.”
6
Hua Miaoling
Tang dynasty. Studied along with her brothers to learn the Confucian classics as they prepared for the imperial exam, but was dismal at poetry.
Heart note //Stop nervousness
Base note //Sweet basil
When I get back to Toronto after the funeral, the weight of the stale air in my apartment shoves against me the second I open the door. There’s no life in my place. No pets, no plants. Not even the muted voice of my neighbor’s television coming through the wall. It’s so vacant that my usually latent loneliness swells to fill the expanse, pressing against the furniture and windows to seal me in.
I wish I didn’t always have to live in furnished rooms. Despite steam cleaning every inch before I move in, I never feel like the space is mine. I’m only next in a long line of transients, making the best of a bad situation and hoping this is the move that will lead to something better.
Listening to podcasts helps, but it takes only three minutes of a lovingly detailed description of a serial killer murdering a woman in her bed for me to decide that perhaps music is a better choice.From the hall comes the ding of the elevator doors and the shuffle of boots on the thin carpet as someone walks past. A knock sounds somewhere, and voices lift in overlapping greetings before cutting off midword.
Leaving things unpacked makes me feel antsy, so I get to work after lighting a nutmeg-and-cardamom candle. Underwear and socks in laundry. Unworn shirt hung out to air, as it smells too much like my parents’ house. I reach for my toiletry bag, and my fingers brush against something hard at the bottom of my suitcase, under my pajamas.
With no surprise whatsoever, I pull out the family register, which I know for a fact I left in my mother’s lab. She snuck it into my bag, along with the blank one. I was so distracted by another fight we had before I left—about how she’d seen me talking to Rafe and if it meant we were friends again—that I didn’t notice the difference in weight.
