~To Weaken A Nation~
"Mistress, your eyes are red," was the first thing Seline said after they had gotten her back to the room. Her voice barely carried into the vastness of the room but Oris heard her.
As the guards shut the doors behind them, Mayree and Keziah took Seline to the bed and Oris followed along. She took off her veil and pressed her thumbs to the corners of her eyes.
Her hand buzzed with a far away sort of pain that made her pause and reconsider just how much pain the girl had to be in right now after suffering from that many hits of that massive stick.
Yet she's still thinking of me.
She blinked a few times then hugged herself. "If I didn't look wronged, how would the Empress Dowager let me go so easily. Maybe she thought that I would cry my grievances to the Emperor the moment she took her eyes off me."
"The Emperor?" Confusion clouded Seline's eyes.
"Why would the emperor—" she was about to ask but was cut off by the door opening.
Oris turned her back to the entrance and tied the veil back loosely around her face.
"Mistress!" Andrea rushed into the room, slightly frazzled and out of breath as she dropped into a curtsey and took a peek at the bed. "I brought the physician. H-How is Seline doing?"
"She could be better," Mayree answered. "It has been hard on you."
Andrea shook both her head and hands, her breathing heavy. "No. No. It's no problem. We still got here a bit late."
"Andrea, you got here just in time. I know how large the palace is," Oris reassured the girl.
When the physician stepped forward to greet her, she cut him off and got straight to the point. "My maid is badly hurt. Apart from regular treatment, I want something that will numb the pain."
"She is unwed, and I do not wish to tarnish her reputation, so I will apply the medicine to her wounds myself," she continued. "Also, she had to walk all the way here despite being injured, I need a prescription that also replenishes energy. Sorry to trouble you."
"It is only what I should do," the physician rose to his feet, "but if mistress is worried, this lowly one can bring his daughter to treat the maid's wounds."
"No need."
"Mistress," Seline cried out, "you cannot do that. It is improper. You should not waste time on this servant when there are more important things."
More important things? The only thing Seline considers important at this point is the Selection.
Oris took in a deep breath. "Fine, bring your daughter along when you return. But if anything happens to my maid, she will be the one to answer for it."
"Thank you, Mistress." The man bowed.
Andrea escorted him out of the room.
"You don't trust him," she said when she returned.
"I don't trust anyone apart from you four. Who knows what goes around in the mind of others?" Oris took her veil off again and walked to Seline's side. "Why didn't you let me take care of you?"
Before Oris could hide it away, Seline grabbed her hand and saw the strip of reddened skin on her palm. "I'm afraid that the Empress Dowager won't let you go a second time." She rested her head on the back of Oris' hand, her eyes sincere and honest. "You need to get a high rank in this test."
"Hm," Oris used her other hand to pat the girl's head, "I know."
When she saw that all the gazes in the room were still focused on her injured hand, Oris took out the things she had kept in her sleeve. One was Bren's letter, the other was the strip of blue silk that Seline had hidden.
She held it up. "Because of this?"
Seline looked at the shimmering blue cloth and nodded solemnly. "I thought that the Empress Dowager knew about it so I had resigned myself to death, but the fact that we are here now means that Anastasia might have kept it from her."
Oris looked at the little cloth again, the implication in Seline's words clear to her. Since the incident was directly related to Wei Wei, once she found out the truth behind everything, she would come after Oris to destroy the evidence.
"What is it?" she asked, now a little wary. Once she knew, there would be no claiming innocence. There would be no going back.
"Proof that the Empress Dowager has a lover," Seline said, tone grim.
"What? A lover?"
"Yes. A man who disguises as an eunuch and sneaks into her inner chambers. If that is not a lover, who can he be?"
What could he be but a lover? Even if he wasn't, who could confidently say that Wei Wei was guilt free once the evidence was presented?
Oris felt as though the world was spinning around her but eventually managed to grasp the most crucial point. "Wait. How do know this?"
"It was given to me by Anastasia's maids to wash. Before then I had heard them complaining about why they needed to do it. They picked me because I was a fresh face who wouldn't know the earth from the sky. They asked me to do a good job and even promised to reward me when it was done." A coughing fit made her stop to catch her breath but she seemed determined to get all the words out. "I agreed and took the bundle only to realize that it was full of men's clothes. Why would Anastasia's maids have men's clothes? There were even ones that a high ranking eunuch would wear. All the clothes carried the same fragrance, so even if they didn't belong to the same person, they had all been to the same place. I thought it was suspicious so I cut a piece of the inner lining before washing."
Oris brought the cloth to her nose and took a sniff, able to recognize the fragrance instantly. Her eyes burned. "This is. . ."
"A fragrance so precious that it is only allocated to the Empress Dowager. And she shows off her importance by using it to thurify the palace that she hardly visits."
Yes, it was the same scent that had come from the incense burners in the Empress Dowager's palace.
"What would a man be doing in the Empress Dowager's abandoned palace? If he was not in the palace, then he had to be in the Empress Dowager's inner room." Mayree understood immediately.
"Wait," Oris didn't dare jump to conclusions, "there were eunuchs in the Empress Dowager's palace. Their clothes should also be stained with incense."
"What sort of eunuch gets his clothes personal handled by one of the Emperor's future women?" Keziah's expression was dark. "The man is not Anastasia's lover. She can't be that stupid."
The day that the palace gates were locked... Could it also be connected to this man?
Previously, Oris speculated that Wei Wei had used the crime of rebellion to divert the attention of the court. There were no missing crown jewels, no thief, and if it wasn't an assassin like Seline had suggested back then, what if it was a lover? Or someone who had discovered said lover and tried to escape?
Till now, no reason had been given for why the gates had been locked that day.
There was also the fact that she still didn't know exactly why Wei Wei had wanted her dead in the first place. Even if locking her out had been nothing a fluke, after the court discovered it and she ended up not dying things should be have been settled but no, she had been poisoned time and time again and even got an assassin sent after her.
Anastasia was most likely the one behind the poisoned medicine but there was no way Wei Wei could have been unaware of it.
The matter of unsealing the room was likely Anastasia's doing as well, but there were two other women who could have done it and neither of were independent enough to hide from the eyes of the Empress Dowager.
Oris had been imprisoned despite the court having moved on from the incident. Wei Wei being this proactive only served to remind the ministers of what they ought to have forgotten. It was analogous to dropping a stone on her own foot, so why did she do that instead of just letting the matter die?
That only proved that she needed to die, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was the last bride since the selection had already reached a point of no return.
What mattered now was the fact that she was the bride from Inqa, the only fief in the empire where every shop had a smithery attached to it.
Inqa was small but most of the high quality and specialized weapons that headed to the battlefields were supplied by its guild of blacksmiths. If there was no woman from Inqa in the Emperor's harem, the relationship between the capital and Inqa would worsen, limiting the empire's attacking power.
But why would Wei Wei want to weaken her nation? Before Oris could even come close to the answer, someone knocked on the door.
~
Fun Fact: This chapter has been around since last year (back when I last updated) but I hated it for some reason... And I couldn't add anything to it, so I was stuck just staring at it. I'm editing it today while listening to a song (芒种
Grain in Ear) and I'm finally posting it because it's time to move on. Lol.
I have no other idea how to write this chapter so I'm letting it be.
See you in the next chapter, it'll probably be done next Sunday.