山窮水盡
Shānqióng-shuǐjìn
Where the mountains and streams end.
At the end of one's rope.
*~*~*~*~*~*
The blackness was not absolute. There were moments when I was awake. I felt pain in my heels and arms, as I was dragged across the floor. There was grunting above me, and I felt the floor turn to cool stone. My legs hurt more as I was dragged down stone steps.
Then the dark room swam out of focus, and when I could next see, I was staring up at the torchlit ceiling of the stone cell.
Where am I-
My efforts to sit up were foiled by a clank of chains. Groggily I looked to my left and right to see my hands manacled to the floor either side of me.
Well, it looks like I found the cells.
I tried to turn my head. I saw Kageyama's sword hanging from a rack beside the door to the cell, among other weapons of lesser quality. The door was thick and wooden, with no window or slit to put food in.
I looked around the cell. A wooden work table stood to one side. From the ground I could not see what was on it, but the metal handle of some tool stuck off the side.
The floor around me was clean, but the grout between the stones was died dark brown, from years of staining.
I knew that color brown... this was not a cell for holding prisoners. This was a cell for interrogating them.
My mind flashed memories. The cave, the bandits tying me, beating me. My ankle breaking. Zhen's sick symmetrical face, smiling as I screamed in pain.
I panicked. I twisted, calling out, to anyone, anyone to hear me, to help me. My legs were not bound, and I kicked my feet into the air, but it did little good. My hands were firmly chained, and my arms spread wide, so I could not lift my upper body from the ground.
Fucking phoenix shit, how could I have let this happen again-
The door creaked open behind me. I caught myself before I could look, and instead pretended I was still unconscious.
"You found the cells, if that was what you were looking for. Unfortunately, they already moved my uncle. It's just you and me down here."
The voice was familiar, and yet I could not place it. Then I remembered the face I had seen before I lost consciousness.
Ermi and Zhangyu's younger half brother. Sanyu. The other bastard prince, always in his books.
Sanyu came into my view. "Hello again," he said, smiling shyly through his too long bangs.
That smile was also familiar, but it did not remind me of Zhangyu or Ermi. I realized. It is like the dog's. Captain Duan.
I sighed. Are all the men I meet mad?
"Why am I here, prince?" I asked, glaring. "Whatever game you are playing I do not have time for it."
"Oh I'm not a prince," the boy corrected. "My uncle was formally adopted, so he has a title. I am just a bastard."
The boy's smile turned sour. He envies Sanli, I realized.
"Your- your sister and I are friends," I said, trying to keep the tremor from my voice. "Your brother as well. They will not approve of you treating me this way."
"Oh, I'm aware of exactly the type of 'friends' you and my brother are," said Sanyu. He brushed his long greasy hair out of his eyes, and I saw how red they were. He has taken some sort of drug. Or he is drunk, and weak to alcohol.
Sanyu stepped closer, till his foot touched my own. I resisted the urge to recoil. "I heard you and Zhangyu that night you know. Gods, you sounded like animals. But I suppose... you are an animal, aren't you, Sixth God?"
I had been struggling against my chains, searching for weaknesses, but at my old title I froze.
Sanyu saw my reaction. "Did you think I didn't know? It was hard not to, what with my uncle and brother's interest in you, and your very obvious rings."
He reached up to trace his finger across my palm, then along my index finger, past my many rings. I curled my hand into a fist, trying to claw at his finger.
Sanyu laughed and withdrew his hand before I could. "We'll have to take those rings off, before we begin."
Ice ran across my skin, then heat, fiery cool. "Why am I here?" I asked. There was no hiding the tremor in my voice now.
"I am going to summon Liu Zhua. And you are going to help me."
There was a pause, as my fear turned to incredulity. I could not help it. The ridiculousness of the situation amused me too much. I burst into laughter.
"You- you want to summon Liu Zhua?!" I said between my breathless laughs.
Sanyu smiled, thinking my laughter was from hysteria. "They say the Golden Emperor sealed Liu Zhua's soul somewhere within the circle. If I use you, his former lover turned betrayer, as sacrifice, he will definitely come."
I finally gained control. You are about to be brutally tortured, this is no time for laughter. "Lover, huh? So you subscribe to that school of the story? That Liu Zhua and I were-were lovers?"
Realizing that I was laughing at him, and not from fear, Sanyu's face turned angry. "Lovers? You seduced Liu Zhua. Just as you seduced the Golden Emperor. And my brother and uncle. You are a whore, the most famous slut in the history of the empire."
The boy turned to the table. I heard the clank of the metal objects on it. "These are all so dull," he complained.
"You-you," I realized."You murdered that man and cut off his fingers. The one they found in the canal."
"Murdered!" Sanyu laughed. "The man was a wandering refugee, slowly starving to death from one town to the next. I freed him from his pain. And I helped him become part of something bigger." Sanyu held up a rusty saw and I winced. "If his life had been enough to summon Liu Zhua, think of what an honor that would have been."
Despite the terrifying fate that awaited me at my captors hands, I found I couldn't stop myself. I started to laugh again.
Sanyu knew I was laughing at him this time. "Shut up!" said Sanyu. "Shut up! Stupid slut."
He struck me across the face, but his blow was weak and I hardly felt it.
"Why are you doing this, little prince?" I said, trying to control my laughter.
"Stop laughing! And I told you, I am not a prince," he said fiercely. So this is it. "Ahhh. I see," I said in my most condescending tone. "You want acceptance. To be a prince, like your uncle. Like your brother."
"I want to see the six clawed dragon rise again, and bring reckoning to this already stinking empire!" Sanyu snapped.
"Oh my how... chaotically noble of you," I said. I knew it was not wise to bait him. I was at his mercy.
Lu had often said, my impulsive nature would get me into trouble. But he had also said it was what made me, me.
"Perhaps you just have good wishes to spread chaos throughout the empire," I continued. "Or perhaps, you long for the attention your mother lavishes on your older brother, and clearly not on you. Sad, dishevelled little thing that you are-"
I did not get to see the metal instrument Sanyu had in his hand. He raised it up and brought it down on my thigh so fast I did not have time.
"AHHH," I gasped, as whatever it was stabbed my leg. I bit my lip, gasping in pain... and then started to laugh again.
"You must have gone mad," the youth said under his breath.
Being called mad by a madman. Perhaps this is not a good sign.
Sanyu returned to picking over the instruments on the table. Get a hold of yourself. You need your wits about you if you are going to escape this.
I pulled against the chains on each arm. They did not give at all. Looking at the manacles, they were rusty, but not enough so to be weakened. Just enough to chafe unpleasantly at my wrists.
My feet were free, but with my hands chained so tightly, there was little I could do to move.
If you cannot free yourself... trap your captor.
I debated how I could do it. Sanyu was barely more than a boy, a skinny youth, not muscled and trained in war as his brother was. If I could get my legs around his neck, I could most likely hold him there, and squeeze the breath from him.
But then he will be dead, and you will still be trapped down here, and Sanli will face trial without you.
There was no key on the door, and looking at my manacles, they were simply sealed with wire, not locks or magic. The wire would be easy enough to cut off, given the right tool.
"This will do," said Sanyu finally, settling on a set of shears, large enough to cut bone. The metal was dull and rusty, except at the blade, which glowed, polished silver, in the light of the lamp.
Yes, those will do nicely.
Now I just had to use my legs to-
"Oh, I forgot to chain your legs as well."
No!
I heard the sound of manacles clank near my feet as Sanyu bent to secure my legs.
All thought of planning forgotten, I drew my legs back and kicked as hard as I could.
Both my feet caught Sanyu square in the side, sending him staggering into the wall of the cell.
My kick dislodged the item Sanyu had stabbed into my leg. It was a small knife, the kind used when flaying animal hides.
It fell, tinkling across the cell floor. I felt it come to rest just beside my right elbow. Perhaps I can use it...
"You BITCH!" Sanyu snarled, rounding on me. "Disgusting slut!"
He came towards me again, drawing something from his robe.
It was a syringe. I remembered the pinch that had pricked my neck before I had collapsed.
A drug.
I thrashed, kicking my legs out to keep him from coming close, and twisting my hand at desperate angles in an attempt to get the knife.
"Hah, not this time!" Sanyu said, catching my ankle. He stabbed the syringe into my leg just above my ankle, then drew it out quickly.
"Not too much. I want you awake for this. Your fear and pain is what will draw Liu Zhua here."
I felt the drug spreading up my leg, sluggish through my veins. My heart beat harder, taking more effort to pump itself.
The strength went out of my arms, and I could barely twitch my fingers as Sanyu pulled the rings from them, one-by-one.
No...no...
He chuckled when he beheld my sixth finger. "'And the Golden Emperor sealed her in a ugly, deformed form, mimicking the monster she had betrayed him to, and cursed her to wander the kingdom for all eternity, reviled and hated wherever she went,'" he said the lines in a low voice. "I knew it."
I wanted to scream, to curse him, but my lips gulped helplessly, and could not form words.
I suddenly thought of the carp Sanli and I had fed that morning.
My chest hurt just trying to breath. My will to fight faded away. How much easier to just accept my fate.
"Quiet at last. Much better," said Sanyu, picking up the shears from where he had dropped them. He came towards me, resting the sole of my boot on my spread palm to keep it still. He twisted his shoe with a nasty grin, grinding my knuckles into the stone beneath them.
Then he positioned the rusty shears over my smallest finger. "Let's start shall we?" he said, smiling at me through his greasy bangs.
No... no! Anything but this, anyone please help-
As if in answer, the door behind me flew open. A whistle, a shhlurp, and Sanyu collapsed forward onto me.
Stunned, I gasped against the boy's chest, pushed against my face. I could not breath, he was crushing me-
Sanyu was lifted off of me, and in my blurred vision I saw another dark shape standing above me. I gasped air, straining to focus so I could get a look at my savior.
"Hello," said Zhen, smiling above me.
Fuck.
*~*~*~*~*~*