A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones Read Free Book Online Page A

ritual.
    He’d had his eyes on the statue for hours. It glimmered under the leaping candlelight. The metal eyes were flat and dead, but he knew the god’s spirit shone within. The emperor believed in divine providence. Maybe once he hadn’t, but now he did, for he himself had finally been given a son. Moreover, this son had lived—the first of his sons to live—and was safely growing up.
    He had loved only one woman. She was the wet nurse who’d fed him as a baby. When he came of age he made her his concubine. She liked to dress alternately as a man and a woman. He adored her. She bore him a son but the infant died.
    After that, the sons he had by every woman also died mysteriously. Whenever the empress or another concubine managed to bear the emperor a son, the baby died. Soon everyone, even the emperor, knew it was his concubine who was killing them. And now his line would die with him.
    Until he learned in one breath, in seemingly a single heartbeat, that he had a son after all.
    From outside the door Xuantong heard the murmured breathing, the stone-shuffle of men’s feet. The Officials of the Sacrificial Court had arrived. Finally. It must be near dawn.
    He stretched his aching legs and slipped the ritual satin cap on his head, the satin boots on his feet. These were never worn except on this day, at this moment. Like all the other sacred objects, the plum silk robes, the Tablet of Heaven, the blue jewel called Symbol of Heaven, they were hidden away through the rest of the year. Their power was in their concealment. Like the survival of his boy.
    He paced slowly outside the Palace of Abstinence, down a few marble steps into the walled courtyard. The officials swept low and touched their foreheads to the earth.
    As he stepped past them he heard the first boom from the
Taihezhong,
the Bell of Supreme Harmony. It could be heard miles away. He glanced up at the stone tower. Inside, two men were dragging a suspended log back, pulling it as far as it would go before releasing it again and again. The log crashed into the bell with a bone-ringing reverberation.
    Ahead of him, through the ancient cypress trees, he saw the Temple of Heaven against the lightening sky. The shape so pleased him. The way its circular inner wall exerted itself against an outer square. The way the four
Ling Shing Men,
Starry Wicket Gates, stood in white marble at the cardinal points.
    The day he had learned of his son’s existence also was the day he reached the bottom of his sadness. Childlessness was bad for any man, but he was the emperor, and his shame soared in all four directions.
    His chief eunuch, Geng Tie, noticed. “Is it headache?” he asked kindly.
    â€œIt’s not headache,” Xuantong snapped. “It’s that which Uncle well knows.”
    Geng Tie felt his frail heart tugged as he looked at this unfortunate, weak-spined, art-minded man he had served for many years. He was ineffective as emperor. He had been born to patronize art. And he needed a son. He had to have a son.
    Was this the time to tell him? They had waited five years. The child lived, the child thrived. And no one knew of his existence beyond a sworn secret handful in the palace. “But your majesty,” Geng said.
    â€œWhat?” Xuantong was irritated.
    â€œBut your majesty has a son.”
    Xuantong stared.
“Bie shuo,”
he said, Don’t talk like that.
    Geng Tie stood trembling. “Your majesty has a son,” he said again. “We have kept him hidden in the Court of Quiet Virtue. Forgive us, your loyal slaves. We sought only to preserve him. He is healthy, ready for schooling. His milk name is Huobu.”
    And so Xuantong had flown, his silk-encrusted robes flapping. He leapt over stones and potted plants, the eunuchs fluttering in a line behind him. He raced from his living quarters to the far northwestern corner of the palace, to the remote court shaded with a lace-leafed elm. Over the