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Sun Jie didn't stop talking.
I chopped garlic. Head down, knife steady, the rhythm just loud enough to drown her out. She was three stations over, scrubbing a wok, but her voice carried. It always did. She liked an audience.
"—and they say she screamed the whole way to the block. Begged the emperor, begged the guards, even begged the crowd." Sun Jie laughed, high and thin. "Imagine that. A cook thinking anyone would listen."
My knife slipped. The blade nicked my thumb. I didn't flinch. Just pressed the cut against my apron and kept chopping.
"What was her name again?" one of the younger maids asked. New girl. Maybe twelve. She was elbow-deep in a bucket of river snails, picking out the dead ones.
Sun Jie tilted her head, pretending to think. "Liu something? No, wait—Jin. Jin something. Jin... Hua? Hua Niang? Anyway, doesn't matter. Dead traitor. They burned the body."
Jin Hua.
My mother's name.
I kept my head down. My nails bit into my palm, right over the cut. The sting kept me still. Kept my face blank. Mute girls don't react. Mute girls don't cry. Mute girls definitely don't throw knives at loudmouth cooks who don't know when to shut up.
"Nanny Liu says we're not supposed to talk about it," the new girl said, nervous now.
"Nanny Liu's not here." Sun Jie dumped the wok onto the drying rack, loud enough to make the new girl jump. "Besides, it's history. Happened five years ago. The empress died, the cook died, case closed. What's there to talk about?"
Everything.
I wanted to grab her by the collar and shove her face into the cutting board. Ask her if she remembered who *made* the soup. Because my mom didn't. Someone else did. Someone still here. Someone still breathing.
But I didn't move. I just chopped garlic. Piece after piece. My thumb bled into the grain of the board, a thin red line mixing with the oil.
"Hey, mute girl."
I looked up. Sun Jie was staring at me now, arms crossed, that smug little smile pulling at her mouth. She had a soft face, round cheeks, the kind that made people think she was harmless. She wasn't.
"You're wasting garlic," she said. "Look at that. Half of it's paste. Nanny Liu's going to dock your rice."
I glanced down. She was right. I'd been pressing too hard. The garlic was mush.
I bowed my head. Apologetic. Submissive. Everything a mute orphan should be.
Sun Jie snorted and turned away. "Useless."
I waited until she wasn't looking. Then I scraped the garlic into a bowl and started over. My hands didn't shake. I wouldn't let them.
But I memorized the way she said my mother's name. The way she laughed. The way she acted like it was nothing.
I'd remember.
---
Lunch service was chaos. The dowager's birthday banquet was two days out, and Nanny Liu was running the kitchen like a drill sergeant. Thirty dishes on the menu. Half of them required prep that should've started yesterday. Everyone was sweating. Everyone was snapping at everyone else.
I stayed in the corner, washing vegetables. It was grunt work, the kind they gave to the lowest maids, but I didn't mind. It kept me out of sight. Let me listen.
"—need the duck broken down by the hour of the snake—"
"—someone burn the sugar again? I can smell it from here—"
"—where's the osmanthus syrup? Nanny Liu's going to skin us if—"
I scrubbed bok choy and kept my ears open. Palace kitchens were loud, but if you listened past the noise, you could pick up the real conversations. The ones people had in the gaps between orders. The ones they thought no one heard.
Sun Jie was at the spice station now, measuring out Sichuan peppercorns. She was talking to another maid, older, sharper-eyed. I didn't know her name yet, but I'd seen her twice near the dowager's private pantry. That meant she had access. That meant she mattered.
"—still can't believe they let another mute girl in," the older maid was saying. "After what happened last time."
"She's harmless," Sun Jie said. She didn't bother lowering her voice. "Look at her. Skinny little thing. Probably can't even lift a cleaver."
"Still. Bad luck."
"Bad luck was Jin Hua. That woman had a mouth on her. Always correcting people, always acting like she knew better." Sun Jie leaned in, her voice dropping just enough that I had to strain to hear. "You know what I heard? She didn't even make the soup. Someone else did. But she took the fall anyway. Probably got paid off."
My hands froze in the water. The bok choy slipped from my fingers, sank to the bottom of the basin.
*Paid off?*
That was new. That was—
The older maid laughed, low and bitter. "Paid off with a beheading? Sure."
"I'm serious. Why else would she confess? They say she admitted it in front of the emperor himself. Didn't even try to defend herself."
Because they threatened to kill me too.
I pulled the bok choy back up, scrubbed it harder than I needed to. My chest was tight. My pulse was hammering in my ears.
Sun Jie kept talking. "Anyway, doesn't matter now. The case is closed. The dowager made sure of that. No one's allowed to even mention Jin Hua's name anymore. It's bad luck."
"Then why are you mentioning it?"
Sun Jie grinned. "Because I'm not superstitious."
She turned, and for a second—just a second—her eyes landed on me. I kept my face blank. Kept scrubbing.
She looked away.
I exhaled.
---
That night, I couldn't sleep.
The maids' quarters were cramped, twenty girls packed into a room meant for ten. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and cheap soap. Someone was snoring. Someone else was crying, quiet little gasps muffled into a pillow.
I lay on my mat, staring at the ceiling. My thumb still throbbed where I'd cut it. I'd wrapped it in a strip of cloth, but it kept bleeding through.
I kept hearing Sun Jie's voice.
*She didn't even make the soup. Someone else did.*
I knew that. I'd always known that. But hearing someone else say it—hearing it said like it was common knowledge, like it was palace gossip—
That changed things.
If people knew, even just rumors, then there was a crack in the story. A loose thread. I just had to pull it.
I waited until the crying girl fell asleep. Waited until the room was nothing but shallow breaths and the occasional shift of bodies.
Then I got up.
I moved carefully, stepping over arms and legs, avoiding the loose floorboard near the door. No one stirred. I slipped out into the corridor, barefoot, my shadow long and thin against the wall.
The kitchen was on the east side of the compound, past the storage sheds and the coal bunker. At night, it was supposed to be locked. But I'd learned the side door didn't latch properly. You just had to lift and pull.
I did.
The door swung open, silent.
I stepped inside.
The kitchen at night was a different place. No voices. No heat. Just rows of dark counters and the faint smell of oil and ash. Moonlight slanted through the high windows, cutting the room into slices of silver and black.
I knew what I was looking for.
The spice cabinet. The one Sun Jie had been working at earlier.
I crossed the room, my feet soundless on the stone floor. The cabinet was tall, narrow, packed with jars and pouches. I ran my fingers over the labels, reading by touch as much as sight.
Cinnamon. Star anise. Clove. Fennel.
And then—
Black jade powder.
I stopped. Pulled the jar down. It was small, no bigger than my palm, the glass cool and smooth. The powder inside was dark, almost invisible in the dim light.
This was it.
I held it up to the window. The moonlight turned it gray-green, the color of deep water.
Black jade powder. Banned in the palace for twenty years. You couldn't buy it in the markets. You couldn't grow it in the gardens. The only way to get it was through smugglers, or—
Or someone who'd kept a stash from before the ban.
I turned the jar over. There was a mark on the bottom, scratched into the glass. Not a manufacturer's stamp. Something else.
A character. Small. Crude.
*Sun.*
My breath caught.
I almost dropped the jar.
*Sun.*
Sun Jie.
I set the jar back on the shelf, my hands shaking now. My mind was racing. She had access. She had motive—maybe. She had the poison.
But why? Why kill the empress? Why frame my mother?
I backed away from the cabinet, my pulse hammering. I needed to think. I needed to—
Footsteps.
I froze.
Someone was coming. From the corridor. Slow, deliberate footsteps, the kind that didn't care about being quiet.
I looked around. No time to get back to the door. No time to hide.
I dropped into a crouch behind the rice bins, pressing myself into the shadows. My heart was slamming against my ribs. I bit down on my tongue to keep from breathing too loud.
The footsteps stopped just outside the kitchen.
The door creaked open.
I waited.
A figure stepped inside. Tall. Male. He moved like he knew the place, didn't hesitate, didn't fumble in the dark.
He crossed straight to the spice cabinet.
I watched through the gap between the bins. He was dressed in plain clothes, no palace uniform, no insignia. But the way he moved—confident, unhurried—told me he wasn't a servant.
He pulled down the same jar I'd just put back.
Black jade powder.
He turned it over in his hands, checking the mark on the bottom. Then he nodded, once, like he'd confirmed something.
And then he pulled something from his sleeve.
A ring.
Black jade. Carved with a pattern I couldn't make out from this distance.
He held it up to the moonlight, the same way I'd held the jar.
Then he pocketed it and left.
No hesitation. No looking back.
I stayed crouched behind the bins until the footsteps faded completely. Until I was sure he was gone.
Then I stood, my legs stiff, my mind screaming.
Sun Jie.
The poison.
The ring.
And now a man who walked into the imperial kitchen at midnight like he owned it.
I slipped back out the side door, back to the quarters, back to my mat.
I didn't sleep.
I stared at the ceiling and planned.
Because mute girls don't name killers.
But they can sure as hell ruin them.