her life by agreeing to go with him before Shen, yet she still kept her secrets.
‘Please, come sit, Tao.’
She gestured to the place beside her, but he didn’t comply. He moved around to sit down in the chair opposite her, where they could remain eye to eye. After a pause, she withdrew and sat with her hands curled together in her lap, acknowledging the small defeat.
‘Beautiful women are so very expendable to men of power,’ she remarked lifelessly.
The accusation wounded him when he should have been impervious, but he revealed nothing. He merely stared at her, willing her to continue.
‘I could describe schemes against the throne, against other warlords, against you.’ Suyin pierced him with a glance. ‘Sometimes it was as simple as a small remark to the Emperor or finding a bit of information that Gao wanted. I would later discover that someone had been exiled from court, or even executed. Did I cause these things to happen? I don’t know.’
‘Tell me everything.’
She looked up, surprised at how he mirrored her words. ‘I murdered the Empress,’ she said quietly.
‘What?’
‘I killed her. And her child.’ Suyin wrapped her arms tight in front of her to keep from shaking. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Not because she threatened me or because I held any ill will towards her. I did it because I was alone and I was weak.’
Chapter Seventeen
Imperial Palace—AD 743
16 years earlier
It was a misconception that castration rendered the palace eunuchs effeminate and passive. Yao, the Empress’s eunuch, held the knife to Suyin’s throat with more viciousness than any man.
‘Do you understand, whore?’ The high pitch of his speech chilled her spine.
She gave the tiniest of nods, biting her lip to hold back a sob of fear. Two months in Changan and she already knew the palace of dreams for what it was: a gilded nest of snakes. And now she didn’t have Madame Ling to protect her. The den mother’s motives had been callously self-serving, but Madame had needed her and had kept her safe in the pleasure district of Luoyang.
Yao had stolen into her room in the dead of night to threaten her. The eunuchs were given access to the women’s court as if the only danger a man could pose was between his legs.
He hissed his orders in a harsh whisper as she scrambled up from her sleeping pallet. She passed a hand over her throat as she dressed in the dark, the press of the knife looming oppressively over her.
‘Take this.’ At the door he placed a cup into her hands. Then he waved the knife in front of her face and pointed across the quarter.
Yao had made himself clear. She would bring the brew of herbs to the Empress. Suyin could not protest that this was not her duty. She was a chosen concubine by title and not a servant, but once the women had learned a woman of the evening had wiled her way into the Emperor’s court, it became a harem pastime to heap a mountain of trivial abuses on her, the punishment of a thousand cuts.
The lanterns were lit in the Empress’s palace at the south end of the women’s quarters. Suyin hurried through chamber after chamber with the eunuch at her heels.
The Empress lay reclined inside her private apartment, her face nearly as pale as her sheer nightdress. She glanced up and frowned. The palace touted the Empress as a great beauty, but whenever Suyin looked upon her, her face was always twisted into a sneer of displeasure.
‘Empress, to your health.’ She held the cup with outstretched arms and bowed her head low.
The Empress winced in discomfort. Her hand rubbed absently over the rounded swell of her stomach. The unborn child she carried was said to cause her turmoil quite often in the late hours of the night. The fortune tellers crooned that this meant she carried a restless baby boy who would be eager to challenge the world.
The Empress rubbed a hand over her throat and squeezed her eyes shut to fight off a wave of sickness. ‘She doesn’t have the sense of the lowliest of attendants,’ she said in disgust.
‘You must drink before the Empress,’ the eunuch snapped.
A chill raced down her spine. The Empress glared at her impatiently. Yao nudged her in warning. The knife was out of sight, but she knew it was there, waiting for her.
The Empress’s eunuch was highly regarded in the palace. If she tried to expose Yao, she would be the one