The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 332: Mercy... With Teeth

"Aunt Ping," I called.

The old palace woman arrived like fate with a broom.

She had tied her hair up with a rag that used to be a sash and wore the expression that makes lesser men write poems about tigers. She took one look at Meiling’s cheek and snorted like a kettle. "Hnh. Keep it clean or rot," she announced. "If you cry into it, I’ll slap salt into the wound so you’ll learn why tears are expensive."

Meiling stared as if she’d been introduced to a new language.

"Explain her work," I prompted.

"Basins," Aunt Ping replied briskly. "The big ones. Hot lye, cold rinse, twist, slap, beat. No jewelry. No powder. The steam will take them anyway. Starch days you’ll think your bones turned to sticks. Winter mornings you’ll think your fingers fell off. We keep the palace clean; you are the palace now. Welcome."

It would have been funny if it weren’t true.

Meiling’s hand went up, reflex, hunting for the smooth curve of her cheek that wasn’t there anymore. Her fingers hovered and then stopped short of the burn. She looked smaller with her hand hanging in air like that.

"You have two choices," I told her. "Walk or be dragged."

Something flickered—defiance, habit, the last scraps of a story she’d been fed since childhood. It died under Aunt Ping’s unimpressed stare.

Meiling walked.

The guards fell in; Aunt Ping’s broom tapped once against the floor as if blessing the rhythm.

At the threshold Meiling hesitated, not to look back at me, but to glance toward Longzi as if he was going to save her.

Foolish girl.

He didn’t move. He had learned which door was his and which doors were traps.

"Next," I said, because rooms need to remember they’re not built for one scene.

Mingyu lifted two fingers; the Guard Commander shifted. "Zhao Hengyuan," my husband intoned, "take your carriage south at dawn. You’ll be allowed to pack what the inventory men permit you to keep. Choose wisely. The desert doesn’t bargain."

"I am your wife’s father," Zhao Hengyuan managed, clawing for leverage even now. "You owe—"

"I owe Daiyu," Mingyu returned, voice smooth as polished bone. "And she owes no one who tries to count her womb like a purse." He paused for a moment. "Or abandoned her in the mountains as a nine year old child simply because she has blue eyes."

That was right... I had forgotten about that.

He flinched as if the words had spat coals.

"Escort him out," Mingyu concluded.

They took Zhao Hengyuan by the arms.

He tried to turn his head to me one last time, eyes bright with something that wanted to be fury and settled for fear. I let him look.

Then I looked past him to the doorway where Aunt Ping’s broom was already knocking time down the corridor, where the sound of the laundries’ water would fill Meiling’s ears for the rest of her life.

"Revenue," I called, and a functionary jumped. "Seal the Zhao house by sundown. Post lists at the gate. If anyone tries to smuggle out a box, open it in the street and inventory it under the sky."

"War," Deming put in, terse. "Escort on the south road. No honors. No drums. If the crowd gathers, it will be for the caravan’s lesson, not its comfort."

"Censor," Mingyu added, catching the motion midstride, "you will draft three lines for the drum readers: ’House Zhao dispersed. Exile without rope. Penal mark applied. The throne counts its own.’"

The Lord Censor bowed so low his hat nearly slid off. "At once."

Yizhen sidled close enough for his shoulder to nudge mine—a touch that didn’t need language. "Breakfast?" he murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

I glanced at the neglected bowls on the side table. The porridge had skinned over, a pale film that offends any cook with pride. "Burn it," I replied. "Start over. Hot. Plenty of ginger."

He vanished out a side door with that competence that always smelled like mischief only after the work was done.

Longzi approached just far enough to be felt. "Assignments for posts?" he asked, already weighing where gossip would turn to unrest.

"Inner corridors quiet by dusk," I returned. "Laundry hall guards rotated from squads that don’t drink. Two women posted at the door to hand out work and chase away pity. If any man tries to visit the laundries to gawk, he’ll find himself scrubbing with a brush until his knuckles remember shame."

He inclined his head, satisfied.

Yaozu drifted in on my other side like a shadow that had chosen a body for the afternoon. "The minister’s eldest is already at the house, breaking down chests for the road," he reported, low. "One aunt is trying to hide jade in a bolt of linen. Shall I let her discover her own stupidity?"

"Let her discover it," I approved. "People learn better when they trip over their own feet."

"A letter from the north," a runner blurted at the door, breath springing in little clouds. "Envoy says their roads are open for salt if we’re willing to count weight by their measure."

"Later," Mingyu told him without turning. His hand brushed the phoenix arm of my chair. The contact lasted a heartbeat—courtship disguised as balance. "We finish this first."

The hall thinned: scribes carrying ink, guards carrying orders, ministers carrying their fear like a bundle they’d pretend was virtue when they got home. Zhao Hengyuan’s footsteps receded toward a future that would taste of grit and salt. Aunt Ping’s broom kept time.

When the doors closed and only the ones who belonged in my rooms remained, I sat back and finally let air move in my chest the way it was meant to. The brand’s ghost-smell still hung—iron, fat, something ugly turned honest.

"Mercy," Mingyu observed, reading my face the way he reads ledgers. "With teeth."

"Mercy that remembers what it’s for," I answered. "The palace doesn’t keep pretty for free."

Deming’s eye tracked the empty threshold. "She’ll try to play at martyr," he predicted. "Make the laundries her stage."

"Aunt Ping will swat the play out of her," I returned. "If she learns work, she’ll live. If she tries to turn the basins into mirrors, she’ll drown in her own reflection."

Longzi’s attention had already moved to routes. "The crowd on the west road will need eyes. Not to protect Zhao, to protect the lesson. I’ll walk it myself." 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Walk it," I agreed.

Yaozu scratched idly at a scar on his wrist. "The pink-cord packet," he reminded me, amused. "We never opened it."

"Throw it in the brazier," I said. "If a mother wants mercy, she can spend her knees asking for it in the proper hall."

The brazier took the ribbon with a little flare, then quieted around it. Powdered pearls look ugly when they burn; I watched them spit and die.

A pot clinked in the doorway.

Yizhen reappeared with a tray balanced like a trick I wasn’t meant to see through. Steam rolled off porridge that remembered it was meant to be eaten. The ginger punched the air the way a small, clean truth does.

"Eat," he told me, setting the bowl where my hand would land on it without reaching.

I took the spoon.

The first mouthful was too hot; it made my tongue sting in a way that felt like waking up. Lin Wei would need the same heat later, and honey, and a hand that remembered patience. The day had already taken its piece of me. It could have the rest after breakfast.

From the corridor: the quick slap-slap of a broom, the thud of basins set for work, the high, involuntary sound a woman makes when steam finds raw skin for the first time. Aunt Ping’s voice followed, brisk, implacable: "Rinse. Twist. Again. If you faint, we’ll prop you up and keep going."

I lifted the spoon for a second mouthful as Mingyu reached for his bowl across from me, as Deming turned to the door to start moving men, as Longzi’s shadow slipped away to map a road, as Yaozu flicked a glance at the brazier and decided which gossip to strangle before noon, and the day leaned forward like a body about to run.