Dao of Language

In one of the lesser rooms of the Fei Zhi’s apartments, the table has been set since first thing in the morning.

It is a table for two people, with the cold dishes already arranged, the bowls placed at the exact distance protocol dictates, the teapot waiting on its warmer and the refreshments ordered on lacquered trays with a symmetry that has cost the handmaidens the greater part of the morning to achieve. It is an impeccable table, of those that declare that whoever ordered it prepared knows the rules and fulfills them down to the last detail.

And nevertheless, the woman who gave the order to prepare it is not seated at it.

The Fei Zhi is standing beside the far wall, next to an incense burner that clashes with the sobriety of everything else. It is a piece of gilded bronze, tall as a man’s forearm, with the lid fretted in the shape of a cloud and the feet finished in beast heads, the kind of object that is not bought in the capital and that anyone with an eye for these things would identify immediately as imported and extremely expensive.

In that room, it turns out almost ostentatious.

The Fei Zhi looks at it without touching it, with her hands gathered inside her sleeves and an expression no one has seen on her in the last ten years.

It is melancholy.

Melancholy for the pavilion she occupied once, when she was still the Emperor’s favorite and the court feared her. For the ten winters of Jìnyáng, with their silent rooms and the rejection of its notables. For a seven-year-old boy who cultivated too soon and for another who grew up in banishment paying a debt that was not his. For all the things she once thought she would recover upon returning and that, with time, she has come to understand no longer existed.

Then, at her back, the door opens and the melancholy disappears from the Fei Zhi’s face like the mist from a mirror, replaced by something much cleaner and colder.

Determination.

She takes a hand out of her sleeve, lifts the lid of the burner and lights the incense with a tranquil, almost domestic gesture, while at her back is heard the rustle of silk against the floor and a voice that has never bothered to wait to be announced.

“I don’t know what can have crossed your mind to leave me last of your whole round of visits”, says the Fei Lan.

The Fei Zhi places the lid in its spot, lets the first thread of smoke rise straight toward the ceiling and only then turns around.

The Emperor’s first consort is standing in the center of the room, dressed in white and purple, with her chin at the exact angle she has been using since she can remember and two handmaidens a step behind. In ten years she has hardly changed, save for something around the mouth that strikes the Fei Zhi as new, a tension that was not there before and that she attributes, without need of asking, to a dead son and to another who probably has problems in his race toward the throne.

“By order of entry into the imperial harem”, replies the Fei Zhi with perfect calm. “I began with the most recent and have been going up. You being the first consort, there was no way you could fall anywhere but last.”

She makes a brief pause and adds the only thing the explanation lacks to be irreproachable.

“The only exception was Guifei Xiang”, she says. “Even though she is the most recent of all, her rank did not permit me to invite her to my house, so I had to go to hers. I am sure you understand it was not a decision that was in my hands.”

The Fei Lan snorts.

“At least exile hasn’t ruined your manners”, she says.

“I have always carried your teachings in my heart”, answers the Fei Zhi.

The two handmaidens then step forward, accompany the Fei Lan to her place, arrange her sleeves and the folds of her dress with the efficiency of those who have spent years doing exactly the same thing and, the moment they finish, bow and leave the room while the door closes behind them with a small and definitive click.

The Fei Zhi steps away from the incense burner, approaches the table and, instead of sitting, takes the teapot and begins to serve.

The Fei Lan observes her do it with her eyebrows slightly raised.

“And why do you do the handmaidens’ work?” she asks.

“Because I know you don’t like being surrounded by people during your meetings”, replies the Fei Zhi without lifting her gaze from the thread of tea that falls into the cup. “I thought that being alone would turn out more comfortable for us both and that this way we could speak freely. I have even told my own Fei Yi not to interrupt us under any concept until I call her.”

She finishes serving, leaves the teapot in its place and finally lifts her eyes.

And the gesture of satisfaction that has installed itself on the first consort’s face does not escape her, that small softening of one who has just confirmed that someone has done their homework, that they remember her preferences and that they have organized the entire morning around them.

It is the same face she used to make ten years ago when a consort of inferior rank got the correct details right.

The Fei Zhi goes around the table, sits across from her and begins to serve herself.

And from there they converse.

They converse for a long while, with the fluency of two women who have known each other for decades and who have perfect mastery of the art of saying things to one another without saying them. The Fei Zhi asks, which is exactly what is expected of someone who returns from ten years of banishment and needs to catch up, and she asks well, with the right order and humility, about the changes at court, about the promotions and the falls, about which families have grown and which have sunk, about the new Taijian, about the rumors of the delay imposed by the Sect on the election.

And the Fei Lan answers.

She answers with generosity, even, because there is nothing she likes more than explaining the world to someone who asks her for it with humility, and because each of her answers ends up, sooner or later, flowing into the same destination. Into Guifei Xiang and her daughter. Into how that woman who only knows how to paint has been accumulating favors she does not deserve. Into how that invalid girl whom no one should take seriously has become the topic of conversation of half the palace. Into how convenient a certain disappearance inside the Celestial Fragment of the Sands turned out to be and into how well an imperial decree forbidding her to speak of it suited a certain handmaiden.

And between one answer and another, with the patience of one who is placing stones along a path, the Fei Lan goes slipping in reminders. That the Fei Zhi was in her day the favored consort. That she stopped being so when another newer one arrived. That the hand that pushed her to the bottom of the harem was not the Emperor’s, but that of an upstart sponsored by the Zhang. That there are grudges one has a right to preserve.

The Fei Zhi listens, nods at the appropriate moments and goes refilling the cups.

Thus a good while passes, between the tea and the refreshments while the smoke rises straight from the incense burner, until at a certain moment the Fei Lan extends her hand toward her cup to bring it to her lips.

And the arm does not move.

There is an instant of bewilderment, one of those instants in which the body still has not understood what is happening and the mind tries again, with more force, convinced that it has been an error of its own, but the arm still does not move.

The Fei Lan then tries to move the other, and is not capable of that either. Next she tries to get up, and discovers that her legs no longer belong to her.

“What have you done to me?” she asks, and her voice comes out hoarse from pure rage.

The Fei Zhi does not move a muscle.

“It should be fairly clear”, she replies. “I have poisoned you.”

“Impossible”, answers the Fei Lan with fury.

The word shoots out, almost before the Fei Zhi finishes speaking.

“I carry protections against all types of poisons”, she keeps saying, and now there is indeed something beneath the fury that begins to resemble fear. “Nothing you have put on this table could do me the least harm.”

“I know”, says the Fei Zhi. “I know perfectly, and precisely because of that I have spent a quantity of money you cannot even imagine on bringing from outside the Empire a poison against which it is impossible for you to have protection, since it is not in the food or in the drink.”

She lets the sentence settle before continuing.

“That poison is breathed”, she finishes.

And she sees, with the tranquil satisfaction of one who contemplates the last piece of a puzzle being placed, how the first consort’s eyes detach from her and travel slowly to the far wall, to the gilded bronze burner that she herself lit at the exact instant in which the door opened, and how she understands.

The Fei Lan does not lose a single second, takes all the air her lungs permit her and screams.

She screams calling for help, calling her handmaidens by name, demanding that someone open that door, with a power that on any other day of the year would have put half the Imperial Palace on its feet.

And the Fei Zhi waits politely for her to finish.

“There is no need for you to scream since no one is going to hear you”, she tells her when the echo dies down. “The moment you entered and the doors closed, my Fei Yi surrounded this room with privacy talismans. Enough that, even if the ceiling caved in, absolutely no one would find out what is happening in here.”

The Fei Lan clenches her teeth.

And then, because she is many things but she is not stupid, she realizes what has been happening before her eyes from the beginning. That the woman seated on the other side of the table has not moved a muscle since she realized something was wrong.

“You too”, she says.

“Me too”, confirms the Fei Zhi.

“Why?” And the question comes out with her teeth still clenched. “What reason can you have for being disposed to die with me?”

The Fei Zhi takes a moment to answer, and when she does, she does it slowly, like one who has all the time in the world ahead of her and knows exactly how much that is.

“It is very easy”, she says. “My first two years in Jìnyáng were fairly tranquil. Boring, even. Afterward, some acquaintances I still had left in the Xie family began to write to me, and through them I found out that the current head of the family was profoundly displeased with me, since he considered that with my exile I had stained the name of the Xie.”

She makes a pause.

“And he had decided that, when Sun Hao abdicated and I was returned to my family, instead of receiving me with the honors that correspond to a former consort of the Outgoing Emperor, an exemplary punishment would be imposed on me before all the members of the family”, she continues. “I am not going to describe to you what it would consist of, I will only tell you that, the moment I knew the exact nature of that punishment, I decided that I did not intend to go through it.”

“So I have had my plans made for years now”, she says. “Put my son somewhere safe, wait for the abdication and take my own life before they came to fetch me. Without noise and without further humiliations.”

The Fei Lan looks at her without saying anything.

“And those were my plans until a few years ago”, the Fei Zhi goes on. “But some messages began to reach me in which their sender told me who was really behind the death of my son Xiang, accompanied by proofs, quite a few proofs. She only asked me in exchange for the help of the Xie family to suppress the faction of the First Prince.”

“And you believed it?” The Fei Lan’s voice rises all at once. “How can you be so stupid? Someone writes to you from the shadows telling you that I had something to do with the death of that child, and you swallow it just like that?”

The Fei Zhi smiles.

“It is an excellent poison”, she comments, and she says it with authentic professional appreciation. “I have just lost the mobility of my neck.”

Afterward she returns to what she was saying.

“To me the proofs turned out fairly convincing”, she says. “And no, I do not intend to show them to you nor to discuss them with you. The problem was that, after ten years of banishment, I could no longer give that person what she asked of me, because the Xie family would not have moved a single finger for a woman fallen into disgrace whom they were eager to punish.”

“So something else occurred to me”, she continues. “It occurred to me that, since I was going to take my own life anyway, perhaps I could give my suicide a better use. Something sweeter. Something more personal.”

“I contacted that person and told her what I wanted to do. She tried to dissuade me, and she insisted quite a bit, truthfully, for a good while. But I insisted more, and in the end she ended up agreeing and managed to get to me a sum of money that neither of us has seen together in our lives for what I wanted. An infallible poison, from outside the Empire, impossible to detect and even more impossible to cure.”

She tilts her gaze barely toward the table because her eyes are the only thing she can move.

“I could have chosen a fast one. There were some, and cheaper”, she says. “But this one caught my attention precisely because of this. Because it permitted me to have this little chat with you.”

The Fei Lan growls.

It is a sound that has nothing of the Emperor’s first consort and quite a lot of a cornered animal, and while she emits it she notices how the immobility that has risen up her neck begins to spread across her face, numbing her jaw, her lips, her tongue.

“And your son?” she manages to say. “Your son will bear this, all of this. The Ma family is not going to let him breathe. Doesn’t it matter to you?”

The Fei Zhi laughs.

It is a brief, sincere laugh, and the first spontaneous thing she has done all morning.

“I remind you that my son has not returned with me”, she says. “Haven’t you noticed? I spent a part of the money they sent me for the poison on buying him a post in a sect outside the Empire, despite his protests and all his attempts to convince me not to do it. And now Sun Yi is very far away, with a new name, beyond the reach of your family, of mine and of this court.”

“Who?” The Fei Lan’s voice begins to drag. “Who has paid you for this? What poison is it?”

And the Fei Zhi, with her voice already slightly broken because the paralysis has reached her mouth and each word costs her more than the previous one, answers the last thing she is going to answer in her life.

“I am not so foolish”, she says. “Neither the name of the one who paid me for it, nor the name of the poison. Someone could still come in at the last second and it would be enough for them to know what is in that burner for them, perhaps, to be able to save you.”

Afterward she falls silent and does not speak again, she simply stays looking fixedly at the Fei Lan while the latter, with the little voice she has left, tries one last time and calls for help with a voice that no longer even reaches the door, until the poison paralyzes her face and leaves her mute.

From there on, in the room there remain only two women seated across from one another at an impeccable table, in the exact postures in which the paralysis surprised them, with the tea cooling in the cups and the leftover refreshments on their lacquered trays. One of them with an expression of serene satisfaction. The other with one of pure rage, so alive that it is even obscene that it cannot leave that motionless face.

And the poison continues.

It continues toward the interior after having finished with the muscles, seeking out the organs without haste, extinguishing them one after another with the same meticulous efficiency with which it has done everything else, until it reaches the lungs and the heart.

And when the incense finishes consuming itself, in the room there remain only two corpses.

Guifei Xiang is seated behind her table with a pile of reports in front of her, the same minor reports of every day, accounts of the Pavilion of the Aroma of the Clouds, inventories, requests from the kitchens, the kind of paperwork she would prefer not to have to look at and that, nevertheless, she reviews one by one because years ago she learned what it costs to let a detail escape you.

But she has spent the whole morning reading without taking in a single line, so it costs her nothing to interrupt her work when the door opens and Lingxi enters.

She does not ask permission, because she never asks it, but this time, the moment she crosses the threshold, she turns, closes the door and throws the bolt. Afterward she takes a talisman from among the folds of her attire, sticks it on the wood and activates it with a quick gesture.

The paper emits a faint glow that goes out almost immediately, and both the noise of the courtyard and that of the handmaidens disappear all at once.

Only then does she turn toward her lady.

“It is done now”, she says. “They just found the two of them, along with Fei Zhi's Fei Yi, who committed suicide.”

Guifei Xiang leaves the report she had in her hands on the table, very slowly, and lets the air out through her nose.

“Until this very morning I was still hoping that Zhi would reconsider”, she says after a moment. “That she would think better of it, that she would decide to live, that she would send me a message saying she had changed her mind. I asked her many times, Lingxi. Many more times than I ever asked anything of anyone.”

She lowers her gaze toward her hands, which rest still on the wood.

“But she has decided to go ahead”, she concludes. “And since she has done it, I am not going to be the one to complain about the result.”

Lingxi observes her without saying anything for a few seconds, and when she speaks, she does it in a lower tone, the one she reserves for the things that keep her from sleeping.

“I only hope no one is capable of following the trail of the money to us”, she says. “Because it was a lot of money, and money, when it is a lot, always leaves marks.”

Guifei Xiang lifts her gaze.

“Have you gotten rid of the intermediaries, just as I ordered you?” she asks.

And on Lingxi’s face there appears something that in another woman would be professional offense.

“Evidently”, she replies. “No one is going to find them.”

Guifei Xiang nods, and a part of the tension she has been carrying since dawn loosens in her shoulders.

“Then there is nothing to worry about”, she says. “Without intermediaries there is no chain, and without a chain there is no one who can relate that money to us. And as for the rest, Zhi confirmed to me that she had burned each and every one of the letters I sent her. She insisted on it precisely because she knew how this was going to end and did not want to leave me exposed.”

She makes a pause.

“It was one of the few courtesies I had left to receive from her”, she adds in a lower voice.

Lingxi sighs, and the sigh comes out of her from much deeper than she intended.

“The only thing I hope is that little Wen never comes to find out that the money from her inventions has served to buy a poison that has killed two people”, she says.

And faced with those words, Guifei Xiang smiles.

It is a sad smile, and Lingxi has seen it very few times in all the years she has spent at her side.

“It is not probable that she will come to find out”, she says. “And if she did find out, it is not probable that it would matter to her either.”

“How can you say that?” Lingxi furrows her brow immediately. “I remind you that she was disposed to cut off the sale of her talismans rather than put her intermediaries in danger.”

“I know perfectly”, replies Guifei Xiang calmly. “And precisely because of that I do not say it lightly.”

She pushes the reports aside to one side of the table, as if she needed the space cleared for what she is going to say next, and interlaces her fingers on top of the wood.

“I have spent months speaking with the Emperor about Wen’s future”, she says. “Many conversations, some of them fairly disagreeable, and the two of us know that at this point there are not too many open doors for her. We have gone over all the options that exist, one by one. And of all of them, there are only two that are realistic.”

She raises a finger.

“The first is that she enter the race for the succession and end up seated on the throne”, she says. “And if that came to happen, it is possible that one day she will find out what has happened today in Zhi’s apartments. What is more, I would say it is almost certain, because an Empress ends up finding out sooner or later about everything that was done to clear her path.”

She lowers the finger.

“But to get there, Lingxi, my daughter will have to have done things that neither of us wants to imagine. She will have to have fought against her brothers, against their families, against the entire court and against everything they throw at her for not being able to walk”, Guifei Xiang continues. “And a person does not come out of that being the same one who went in.”

Her voice remains serene, but there is something underneath that is not.

“When she finds out, if she finds out, she will no longer be the girl she is today”, she says. “She will be someone capable of understanding why it was done. And that day, what she will feel will not be horror. At most, it will be weariness.”

Guifei Xiang stays quiet a moment, and Lingxi has the decency not to interrupt the silence.

“And the second option is the one you already know”, she continues at last.

“And if she chooses that one, then it is simply impossible for her ever to find out”, she says. “Because in the place she would go to no one cares in the least which of the Emperor Sun Hao’s consorts died, nor why, nor who paid for it.”

She picks up again the report she had left on the table, looks at it without seeing it and leaves it once more.

“And sincerely, Lingxi, that is the option I ask the Heavens every night that Wen will choose”, she finishes in a very low voice.

Lingxi does not respond.

After a while she approaches the table, gathers up the reports her lady has been pushing aside and begins to put them in order without anyone having asked her to, because it is the only useful thing that occurs to her to do at this moment.

But outside the effect of the talisman, the functionaries of the court begin to grow alarmed while the Imperial Palace fills with guards, and at the other end of the Palace, in an office much larger than Guifei Xiang’s, a man orders that an urgent messenger set out toward the mountain of the Sect of the Celestial Sun.

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