The Poison Taster Who Outlived the Princess's Dinners novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Plum Wine
Ruoxi caught a turning cask of plum wine and threw it out with pride, and the princess wiped the corner of her mouth, then made her sit at the table.
The plum wine had gone sour at the bottom of the cup, and Du Ruoxi knew it before she swallowed.
She held it on her tongue for the count of five, the way she had done every evening for six years.
Then she turned her head and spat it into the brass basin.
"Not this one," she said.
Four maids in the dining hall of the Plum Pavilion went very still.
The cup was still warm from the princess's own table.
The cask it came from sat in the corner with a ribbon on it.
"The wine is turning," Ruoxi said. "It's faint, but it's there. Take the whole cask out."
"Out?" asked the youngest maid. "Tonight?"
"Tonight. If it can turn in the cask, it can turn in the cup, and the cup is the princess's."
She rinsed her mouth with tea, tied the white cord on her sleeve tighter, and straightened her slate-blue robe.
She was twenty-two, tall for a girl from the outer city, and she had been the princess's taster since she was sixteen.
In six years she had thrown out spoiled crab, sour milk and one bad oyster.
She had also thrown out a bowl of bean curd that smelled right and tasted wrong.
She was proud of every one.
Her mother coughed through the winters in the outer city, and the taster's silver bought the medicine.
That was reason enough to be careful.
A porcelain bell rang from the inner screen.
"Is the taster finished?" asked a soft voice.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Then bring me the other bottle yourself."
Ruoxi took the second bottle from the tray, checked the seal with her thumbnail, poured a thumb's depth into a clean cup, and drank it.
It was plum wine and nothing else.
Sweet, a little smoky, the green edge of the fruit still in it.
She poured again and carried the cup through the screen.
Princess Yao Mingzhu sat at a low table lit by six lamps.
She was twenty-four, slight, and pale as the cream in her robe.
Her hair fell to her waist, half of it held up by a gold phoenix comb, and a small mole sat at the outer corner of her left eye.
Plum-red silk lay over her shoulders.
She watched Ruoxi come.
"You were gone a long time," Mingzhu said.
"One cask was turning, Your Highness. I had it taken away."
"You always find something."
"That's the post."
"Is it?" Mingzhu said, and smiled at her cup. "Nothing has ever happened in my kitchen, you know. Not once."
Ruoxi put the wine down by her hand.
"That's because I catch it before it does," she said.
"Of course it is."
She said it so kindly that Ruoxi's neck went warm.
Ruoxi was bowing to leave when Mingzhu spoke again.
"Wait. You have a drop of wine."
Mingzhu leaned across the low table.
She did not call a maid or hand over a cloth.
She reached out with her thumb and wiped the corner of Ruoxi's mouth.
It was slow, and her thumb was warm, and it stayed a heartbeat longer than a cloth would have.
Ruoxi did not breathe.
Four maids behind the screen did not breathe either.
"There," said Mingzhu, and licked the wine from her own thumb.
"Your Highness," Ruoxi said, and her voice came out wrong.
"Sit."
"The taster doesn't sit at the table."
"The taster's feet must hurt. Six years on them." Mingzhu looked at the cushion across the table, then at Ruoxi's face. "Sit down and have a plate."
"I eat in the kitchen after you."
"Not tomorrow."
Ruoxi stared at her.
"From tomorrow," Mingzhu said, and picked up her cup, "you eat at my table, beside me."
She drank the wine Ruoxi had tasted, with her eyes on Ruoxi's mouth the whole time.
"The same dishes, Ruoxi," she added. "Every one."
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