Face-Slapping14 min read
The Hairpin, The Poison, and the Public Reckoning
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I broke my leg collecting herbs.
"I told you not to climb that slope," Layne said when she came for me, breathless from running down the mountain path.
"You left me alone," I answered, tasting the dirt in my mouth. "I can pick herbs just fine."
"Then why are you on your back?" she shot back, softer when she touched my knee. "Berkley, don't be dramatic."
"One fall," I said, trying to smile. "One... big fall."
Her fingers were warm and clumsy. She helped me stand. The pain stung like truth.
At court, news travels like sparrows in a thunderstorm. The Emperor heard I had tended the Crown Prince, that I had pulled him back from a fever he could not fight. For that, I received a bowl of gold and an order: my sister, Layne Marshall, was to be married—given to the Crown Prince's side.
"They think me noble for this," Layne whispered the night the imperial decree came, "they think I deserve it."
"You deserve nothing from them," I said, and the anger warped my words into a laugh. "Layne, you deserve the truth."
"You sound like a rustic," she replied, smoothing the fat cloth at her collar. "Don't sully this gift by being loud about it."
"I didn't ask for your gift," I said.
Julio Fitzpatrick—tall, pale, the kind of prince that seemed carved from marble—saw me once then looked away for the rest of our lives. He called me greedy and spiteful more quickly than he once called for tea.
"You nurse secrets," he told me once at the medicine table. "You scheme. Keep those things hidden."
"Secrets?" I touched the scar at my hip where the rock had gouged me that day. "If only you knew."
He had never loved like people read of love in novels. His favor was given like a ruler's benediction: distant, civil, almost ceremonial. He gave Layne a smile that tasted like olive oil and sugar; he gave me a look that tasted like iron.
"You're weak," he said once, as if it was a judgement of my character that fit on a platter. "Give up your selfishness."
"You're the one who is blind," I told him. Then I left, because even in the court's scented rooms, my bones wanted honest earth.
I began to avoid the prince, but duty called me to his rooms once a month. There, in a room of screens and jade, I tended him. Once, at a feast in the prince's house, Layne laughed with the guest nobles and the Prince drank as if the cup would never empty.
"Lady Layne," a princess said, "with him to protect you, who would dare raise a hand?"
Layne smiled the smile of someone who believed gifts could buy all danger away. She touched my sleeve and gave me the face of a sister who would always be a sister. "My sister is simple," she said. "She speaks plainly."
"You are graceful," the princess teased. "Too gentle."
"Stop defending her," I muttered and pushed the medicine bowl to Julio.
"She shouldn't be drinking," I said, loud enough for the table to pause. "Medicine and wine are different things, Your Highness."
Julio upended the bowl in a quiet, mocking way. "You are theatrical, Berkley. Your dramatics are unnecessary."
"It is his health." I did not raise my voice to the nobles, because they liked to think me small. "If he drinks, the potion's effect could be ruined."
He pushed his cup aside and the prince laughed at me like a man watching a play he couldn't be bothered to applaud.
"Take your tricks elsewhere," he told me. "This house is not your stage."
Then his body went still. He pressed his hand to his chest and slumped onto the table.
"He's fainted!" someone cried.
Layne screamed, "Berkley! Do something!"
I touched the prince's wrist, and the rhythm there told me a secret—an irregularity, a hidden disharmony. I had learned to see the body's lies. I told them the herbs, then bowed my head and tended him, and he recovered in time for the courtiers to pretend nothing had been wrong.
Later, when voices rose and fingers pointed, Layne accused me.
"You gave him bad medicine!" she said, frantic enough to be honest.
"I did not," I told her. "If I had wished him harm, I would have done it in ways that meant he could never speak again."
"You poisoned him!" Layne said.
"Enough!" a man at the head of the room said. It was Layton Ikeda, the imperial physician. He was quiet but his words were heavy. "There is nothing wrong with the formula she used. It is either malpractice elsewhere or wine."
"Then why is His Highness sick?" the princess demanded.
"He drank more than he should," Layton said. "He must rest."
"See?" Layne insisted. "She's the one who micromanages healing to show off. She must be stopped."
I slapped her across the face.
Two palms against soft cheek was the sound I needed. It woke her—and the room—up.
"Don't you dare play the victim," I said. "If you can stand here and accuse me, then stand in court and see if the Emperor agrees with you."
She began to cry in a way meant to rope in pity. Her tears landed like raindrops on a hot stone. They left a mark, and the room was quiet because everyone liked the show of a noblewoman in tears.
"I will not bow because you plead," I told her, and when the anger rose, I surprised myself by slapping her again.
"You go to the Emperor with your petitions," I said. "We will see whose tears buy favor."
The servants took me to the courtyard and fed me because a woman with blood in her mouth looks weak. After that, curiosity did what enemies of a family do: it dug.
Layton found me later and said, "The old lady's condition is still strange. If you will, come and see her."
"Why me?" I asked.
"Because," he shrugged, "you have a way about sickness I do not. Because you ask the right questions. Come."
So I went.
On the way, I met the Duke of all whispers: Maddox Scholz.
"You are stubborn," he said when he found me by the lotus pond in his garden. He had the look of a man who could kill and consider it a small errand. "You should be safer."
"You would be safer if you did not laugh at funerals," I told him.
He laughed and said, "You amuse me."
He watched a servant drown a man in the pond like someone watching a story end. I saw then what he was—danger wrapped in silk.
"You like me?" he asked later that day, when he found me hiding behind a fake rock.
"Not the way you mean," I answered. "If the crown gave you the right to kill and you used it, would you feel justified?"
He moved close so his breath could skim my nose. "What if it was necessary?"
I thought of my parents' fire, of the smoke that had taken them, and I felt my face tilt into the future I would carve.
Later, when a carriage tried to take me from the street—men with knives and a brief shout—I fought. I stabbed one in the neck with the small curing blade I kept under my skirts. I was hard and quick enough to survive.
Maddox came to my rescue. He dragged me into his carriage with an arrogance that smelled like safety.
"Why did you come?" I demanded.
"You left something at the hospital," he said. "I followed a set of tracks."
"Is that noble of you?"
"Maybe." He smiled. "Or maybe I like the company."
I wanted a rock and a place to hide; instead I found a man willing to offer me shelter in exchange for something else: a favor, a bargain. I had a choice. I picked a man who could stand in a storm.
I began to live in the Scholz house under the pretext of tending the elder lady's health. Maddox put little sweets in my hands and watched me with a light that made me feel like a flame he did not mind playing with.
He spoke often of the razed families of court, of men who took loyalty as a payment and returned only death.
"You want me to marry you," I told him once, when the air between us trembled.
"If you are willing to do something for me," he said calmly, "I'll marry you."
"What is it?"
"You help me with a matter. There is a general's daughter. She is to be offered as a match to a noble. I need her gone."
"And if you ask me to reach into a woman's skull for a rival," I said, tasting the poison of my own words, "what will you give me?"
"Meddle in a palace plot and you meet the Emperor directly," he said. "Or you marry me. Either way, you get protection."
It was an ugly bargain. It smelled like blood. But blood was the only thing left that spoke my name.
When Claire Combs, the general's daughter, rode through the field, she spoke to me kindly. She did not know she was a pawn. I kept a silver needle and a medicine bag. I whispered to Maddox that the plan was ready. He told me he would take care of the rest.
I told myself that if I let Claire die, a life of danger and insults to my family would end. I told myself I would only play along; I would be cold, clinical, and leave the slaughtering to men with hands that did not tremble. I told myself I would control the story told after.
At the race, Claire fell from her horse. I found her beside the stream, blood wet and eyes dim. I did not hesitate. A silver needle. A quick stoppage of wound. A lit fire. I whispered herbs into her mouth to calm her, and then I said, "She will live."
Then I lied.
"She is dead," I said later, in court when the scene had been set. "I found her dead."
"Where did you find her?" Julio demanded.
"In the ravine," I answered.
"Who else was present?"
"An ambush," I told them. "They meant for me too."
Everything moved like chess. We arranged a false death to wake Maddox's plan. We needed her to be out of the way—publicly. I had to believe the lie would hold. I had to brave the day I would stand and watch a man accept his orders and die for them.
At the palace trial, the Emperor sat like an ogre. "Who is guilty?" he asked.
Maddox Scholz rose. "I carry the blame," he said in a voice that cracked like ice. "I followed orders. I cannot lie."
"Whose orders?" the Emperor snapped.
"It is not simple," Maddox said. He looked at me, then said, "My servants obeyed. The court must decide."
They dragged him down the hall like a curtain. He shouted the names. He pointed.
Then the truth came out like an unspooled scroll.
I pointed, and the crowd turned.
"Bernardo Komarov has a ledger of payments," I said. "He funded servants to do what he could not with his hands."
Layne shrieked and begged me to stop.
"Your hands were in this," I told her. "You told him how to make me small. You traded father's remedy for favor."
People gasped. The hall filled with muttered curses and drawn spears.
"Stop!" Layne cried. "I loved you. I wanted only protection. He said it would help us."
"Protection?" I asked. "You sold us for a bowl of gold and a title."
Then came the public reckoning—the kind courts remember.
They dragged Bernardo to the high steps under the Emperor's courtyard where sun and wind would watch every part of the confession.
"Bernardo Komarov!" the herald cried. "You stand accused of arson, treachery, poisoning of the heir, and conspiring with a noble to rob the realm of its order."
He denied at first. "I—no—this is false," he said. "They lie!"
"To whom do you speak?" I asked.
"To the gods!" he cried, but his voice trembled.
"Bernardo," I said, "what was the price of my parents' land? Who gave you the fire that took them? Did you sign the order? Who wrote the list of herbs to be fed into His Highness's cup?"
He swayed. "I... I did not—"
"You did," Layton said, stepping forward. He had proof. "This ledger. The seals. The signatures. The poison measured in teaspoons hidden under your sleeve. There is a list of payments and a route of the servants. You bought men. You bought death. You thought grief made you clever."
Bernardo's face grayed. He had run a household for a lifetime yet the public had never seen him so small.
A crowd had gathered—servants, soldiers, ladies, the Emperor's own pages. Some had spears. Some had eyes wide like bowls.
"Traitor," someone shouted.
"Execution!" another cried.
I stood on the dais with my sleeve covering a hand that shook like a birch branch in wind. I had not expected the ease with which justice would stare at a man like Bernardo. Perhaps justice is only a pattern we create when we need an answer. The court debated. The Emperor's eyes traveled between us like famine.
Bernardo changed color. He first spoke proudly, then with a kind of defiance, then a child's panic.
"It was the Emperor's will!" he pleaded at one point—an instinctive reflex, to save himself by claiming the throne's hand.
"That is a lie and a half," I said. "You traded my family for favor. You burned our home to get a favor you thought you deserved. You were willing to see a child die for a salary."
He shrank under the eyes of those who had watched his family prosper at our expense.
A hundred witnesses told their stories—maids who had been paid to keep the fire doors unlocked; a stable boy who'd received coins to be silent about a stopped cart; a cook who remembered mixing the right spice into a medicine bowl.
People stepped forward, each confession another nail.
"There is your money," someone called out, holding up notes tied by a ribbon. "Marked with Bernardo's seal."
"Do you have anything to say?" the Emperor asked finally.
Bernardo crumpled. He found a wretched courage and spat, "I was afraid. I wanted to be safe."
"You wanted safety for yourself at the cost of others," I said. "You chose to trade blood for coin."
Leaned against the courtyard wall, Layne's face had gone pale. I had expected her to strike, to kneel, to beg. Instead she covered her mouth and wept, as if the tears could glue her to the throne she wanted.
The crowd did not listen to the whisper she hoped would soften their anger. They wanted a full accounting, an ending they could see.
"Order," the Emperor said. He listened to each account. "If a man places his hand in the flames of another's death for coin, he shall be stripped of rank and property, may he forfeit his name in all registers."
Bernardo's name would be blackened in the family tree. He would not suffer alone—his estates would be taken, servants reassigned, his family disgraced. He would stand in public shame.
"Public penance," the herald said. "To be read before the city gates: all that this man gained by treachery shall be taken."
They led him down under a shower of mutters. Soldiers tightened around his arms. He shouted something at me—an insult or a plea, I could not tell in the roar.
As he passed, a woman in the crowd spat at him.
They took him to the stocks later that day, and they read aloud his transgressions while children pointed and parents folded hands as if saying grace.
But the punishment did not stop with Bernardo. There are many kinds of ruin.
Layne was brought to the same square.
"Layne Marshall," someone called. "You are accused of betraying your blood for favor."
She sank to her knees. "I did it for life," she said. "I thought—"
"You sold your sister," I said. "You told the man who burned our home where the remedy was. You told him the timing. You told him to spare you a seat at the table."
Tears poured and she began to wail like a woman who had finally been stripped of the last of her audience.
"Let her answer," the Emperor said. "Is there remorse?"
Her confession was a small, thin thing. "Yes," she said. "I regret—but I wanted to live."
The crowd hissed. Women covered their children's eyes. Men muttered. The highborn exchanged glances. Justice, when public, becomes spectacle. People love spectacle.
"Layne Marshall," the Emperor said, "for betrayal and conspiracy against the imperial household and for causing the death of innocents by perverse allegiance, you are to be removed from the lists of the highborn. You will be sent to a convent on the outer hills to spend your days in penance."
"And the marriage?" someone asked.
"Void," the Emperor said. "She shall not be his."
Layne fell harder than she had before, as if the ground was the last honest thing left. She cried, "But I loved him."
"Then love was a poor currency," I answered. "It bought nothing but chains."
The crowd watched as Layne was led away, a woman who had once been kissed in velvet and given titles now walked with her head low.
As for Maddox, his end was more violent. The Emperor could not ignore treason in one of his most trusted instruments. The crowd had leaned in when the scandal with Claire's supposed death unfolded, and Maddox's fate was to answer where he had once struck for the crown.
They tried him in the great hall. "You took a life to consolidate favor," the high judge said. "You have blood on your hands."
Maddox had not been a liar. He had been a man who confessed the truth upon the floor before he was taken. He smiled a wet, foolish smile when they pronounced sentence.
"Because you admitted," the judge said, "we shall not feed you to dogs. We will take what you built and make it a lesson."
Maddox spat at the judge. "I was ordered," he said. "I did what I was told."
"You were given the taste of deciding," the Emperor replied coldly. "You chose your side."
The procession to the punishment square was long. Soldiers carried the banners that evening. The city crowded, hungry for closure. I watched from the edge, my hairpin twisting in my fingers. I thought of my mother's hands and how small they looked in death, how strong they had been alive.
When he was brought, Maddox still wore the air of a man who believed himself eternal. They bound him at the center of the square and named each charge aloud. He listened without breaking, then with a half-laugh:
"You thought you were clever," he said to the crowd. "You thought I would die with a satisfied face. I'm not sorry."
Then he looked at me. "You will wear his hairpin," he said with a crooked smile. "Wear it with honor."
I realized then that he thought of us both as players who had had their moment. He had been wrong. He had been a tool, and tools break.
They took him away. There was no flourish. The Emperor's hand did not grant him mercy. In the end, the man who had done the dark deeds paid with his life—quick, blunt, and merciless in the public square where everyone could see the truth. The crowd turned on his memory as if cleansing itself.
After that day, my name was different in the world. Bernado's house was stripped. Layne was removed from ceremony. Maddox was dead, and the Emperor had rearranged his favors.
Julio Fitzpatrick—my old crown prince—stood with his face in the light. He had been used, he had been poisoned by the politics of salt and sugar. He had been the child of a throne, unsure how to step off the gilded pedestal.
"Why did you do it?" he asked me in private one night after the court washed itself of blood.
"For my parents," I said. "For truth."
"For vengeance," he corrected. "You wore it like a ribbon and tied it, and now the world has unrolled the ribbon."
"I wanted what you had been offered him," I said. "I wanted him to see me the way he saw Layne. I wanted a place without being ashamed."
Julio's eyes softened and then hardened. "I never loved you as you thought. I loved a memory, Berkley—not you."
"Then remember this," I said. "I will care for the boy. I will keep him free of your cold hands."
Later, they gave me a title to keep me away and gave my sister a place that would not trouble the court. The Emperor smiled with a sharp fold in his mouth and declared all debts paid.
But debts are never paid when you have learned to read the ledger of men.
I married once—not for courtly love but for shelter. Maddox was dead, so I married the man who could shield me from the knives of men left alive. He died later, his bones collapsing like paper under a rain of reasons.
My son—named after the river my parents loved—grew into a boy with my eyes. When he was small, the palace took him like a moth to flame. He was clever; he was dangerous. He started to look like the man who had orchestrated my ruin and then my revenge.
"I won't let him learn to be a blade," I told him once. "You will choose, my child."
He loved the Emperor's court and the taste of silk and orders. One day he asked to go to the palace. I forbade it.
"You will go," he said, eyes full of flame. "The Emperor has been kind to us."
He left the house like he always left—stubborn, resolute, and with a hunger I recognized.
When the winter took me, I sat by the window and dug the hairpin from my hair. It was warm from my fingers. The jade glinted like a small sea. It had been my mother's. It had been the center of the oath I made.
When the fever came, Maddox's memory danced and left with me, Layne's wailing faded into a dry sound, and Bernardo's name became a word for the children.
In the last light I whispered, "Forgive me."
A wind answered. In that wind, I felt a hand—steady and wrong and right.
If there is a future, a life where I am not a woman who traded blood for bread, I would meet a younger version of him and tell him not to die for my name.
But for now, I fold the jade into cloth and press it to my chest.
"This hairpin," I told the room where only shadows answered, "it is the ledger of my life." I placed it inside the palm of the hand that had loved too much and hated too well.
The door opened, and there was a sound like a child's footstep.
"Mother?" a voice, familiar and small.
I laughed softly, the sound a cracked bell. "Come hold this," I said. "Hold it like it's a promise."
He did.
And in the courtyard long after, people would still whisper about the day when a hairpin began a war and ended in a market confession. They would tell it with the image of me standing at the square, pale-faced and furious, and of Bernardo's ledger spilling like a cursed flower. They would speak of the sick prince who was given two medicines by two hands, and of the man who loved me and paid with his life.
The hairpin stayed with me. It did not fix what blood had done. But it kept my name and my story in one small, stubborn loop.
I pressed it into the cloth once more and smiled, thinking of fire and the way a single spark can change the shape of a house.
I felt the heat of it as if it were a living thing—an ending and its proof.
The End
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