The woman stroked her head. “My name is Ko. Yours is Lilette?”
Her bowels cramped and she curled into a ball. “Yes.” She moaned in pain. “Han is your son?”
Grief crossed Ko’s face. “Yes.”
“Chen too?” Lilette gasped.
Ko shook her head. “No. His mother died a year ago.” That made Chen and Han half-brothers.
The eunuch arrived. He was younger than the first Lilette had met, his face practically boyish. “Alert Chief Wang that Madame Lilette has been poisoned. Quickly.”
The boy ran.
More eunuchs came. Ko ordered them to bring in more braziers, water, and stones to make steam. “We’ll sweat the poison from her. Seal up the windows.”
One of the eunuchs pressed his hands together and bowed to Ko. “Honored madame, you should go. We will care for the girl.”
Lilette squeezed the woman’s hand, silently begging her to stay. She wasn’t sure when she’d started holding it.
Ko squeezed back. “I will stay with her.” It wasn’t long before the stuffy heat of the hot season had grown unbearable. Sweat coursed down Lilette’s skin while the eunuchs fanned her. She silently willed her heart to keep beating.
Ko kept pouring water into Lilette’s mouth. Sometimes she threw it up, sometimes she kept it down. Chen arrived with Wang and the court physician, another eunuch with straggly gray hair circling his mostly bald head, his long mustache resting on his protruding belly.
The whole room of eunuchs rolled smoothly into their kowtows. Ko bent low but didn’t move from her position as a cushion for Lilette’s head.
Chen took one look at Lilette and kicked over a brazier. “Who did this?”
Eunuchs scrambled on all fours to scrape the coals and ash back into the brazier before it burned the house down.
When no one answered him, Chen knelt beside Lilette. His hands hovered above her body before coming to rest gently on her shoulders. “Who did this to you?”
She blinked blearily at him, the halos around everyone making her squint. “A woman.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
He rested a hand on her clammy forehead. “What did she look like?”
Lilette shut her eyes. “Her face was longer.” She had to rest. “Her eyes close set.” Another break until the dizziness passed. “She wore a five-clawed dragon ring with . . . with emeralds for eyes.” She lay back, exhausted from the effort of speaking.
Chen reeled back on his heels, his face flashing with disbelief that quickly melted to fury. He glared at the physician, who was already mixing powders into boiling water. “She dies, you die. Understand?”
The man bowed, clearly terrified.
Chen shot a final look at Lilette before storming out. Eunuchs followed him, closing the screen and sealing it to keep the steam from escaping.
Ko watched the physician dump in more powders, her brow creased. “What is that?” Han’s mother asked.
The physician stirred the concoction briskly. “Honored madame, it is poison to counter poison. Ashes from poisonous frogs, centipedes, and snakes. I also mix it with ground shells to trap her soul inside her body.”
Ko stared at him. “You’re giving her more poison?”
He tipped Lilette’s face up and helped her drink it. She choked and gagged. “This is just the first of her treatments. We must cleanse her body of toxin. Strip off her raiment.”
Eunuchs slipped her out of her tunic and proceeded to treat Lilette in ways she hoped to never experience again. When it was all finished, she was too exhausted to keep her eyes open and in too much pain to sleep. She listened to Ko humming as eunuchs fanned her.
Eventually, there was a flurry of dry air. A cool silk sheet was pulled over Lilette’s body.
“How is she?” It was Chen’s voice.
The physician answered. “I have done all I can for her.”
“And?” Chen’s voice held an undeniable warning.
The physician didn’t answer. Lilette knew what his silence meant, but she was too weak to fear death.
“Lilette.” She stirred a little. Her limbs were so heavy. “Lilette. Open your eyes.”
She blinked them open to find it was morning again. Chen stood above her. His hand was locked around the back of a woman’s neck. “Is this who poisoned you?”
It was his wife, Sima—or whatever her real name was. Only now her robes were the finest Lilette had ever seen. Her hair was pulled back in elaborate twists, with jeweled combs and orchids sparkling across the top.
Lilette nodded once. Chen’s eyes flashed.
His wife couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “I didn’t even know she existed!”
“With the amount of spies you have all over the palace, Laosh, I think not.” He threw her to the ground. As if from far away, Lilette watched as the woman scrambled to her feet. Chen advanced on her while the eunuchs remained prostrate.