The Empress's Tomb
Read The Empress's Tomb Online
Authors: Kirsten Miller
THE EMPRESS'S TOMB
Kirsten Miller
For SD, whose secrets are my inspiration
The Traitor Empress
The whispers began the day she arrived on horseback at the gates of the Emperor's palace. They knew her long journey had begun beyond the great wall being built to the west. A princess of the Xiongnu, the barbarian tribes who waged endless war with China, she had come to marry the Emperor's son. When they saw her, most members of the court agreed. Peace had been bought at too high a price.
No one dared question the princess's beauty, so they sneered at her round cheeks blasted pink by the winds of her native land. They couldn't deny her nobility, but they scorned a woman who could shoot an arrow farther and straighter than any man. Even the palace servants found something to mock in the fact that her loyal attendant, a lowborn barbarian horsewoman, could always be seen at her side.
The Emperor's son thought nothing of the gossip. He adored his wild bride-to-be and lavished her with silk, jade, and gold. She was draped in heavy robes that made it
impossible to ride and paraded before the court like an exotic creature from the Emperor's zoo. Over time, she began to look the part of a Chinese empress. But the women tasked with teaching her the feminine virtues of humility, subservience, and obedience knew that the girl could never be tamed. It would be easier to teach a tiger to tiptoe.
At night the Princess dreamed only of homeâof the deserts, grasslands, and mountains that lay outside the empire she was one day to rule. Finally, in desperation, she traded her robes for the frock of a peasant and fled the palace walls. She and her servant were free for three glorious days before they were captured by soldiers as they crossed the Yellow River.
The old Emperor was a wise man, and he had long known that the girl could never be Empress. Servants were dispatched to deliver a meal spiced with poison, so her body would remain unmarked and her murder kept secret from his son. But the Princess refused to die. Instead, she drifted into a sleep so deep that her heartbeat was little more than a faint tapping.
The Emperor's son was told that the Princess had expired from fever. A royal funeral was planned, even as court gossip branded the girl the
Traitor Empress.
It was whispered she'd been unmasked as a spy and buried alive as punishment for treachery. The Princess's faithful servant was powerless to prove the girl's innocence. All she could do was bribe a guard to smuggle two items into the Princess's tomb. One was a small statue of herself on horseback, so she could serve her mistress in the after-world. The other was the truth.
She knew that in time all secrets are discovered.
You've Been Warned
Before we begin, take a quick peek out your window. It makes no difference if you look down on a crowded street in Calcutta or a strip mall in Texarkana. Wherever you might be, all the people you see share one thing in common. They've all got a secret they'd like to keep hidden. The dapper gentleman with the briefcase robs parking meters in his spare time. The kid on the bike enjoys eating ants. And the little old lady on the park bench was once known as the Terror of Cleveland. I'm kidding, of course. I don't know their secrets any more than you do. That's the point. You never know.
There are many lessons in life that can be unpleasant to learn. Don't dry a hamster in the microwave. Flip-flops aren't appropriate cocktail party attire. And mayonnaise shouldn't come with a crust. But for a girl detective, there's one lesson that's hardest to learn. No matter how hard you try, you can never know everything about the people you care for the most. Even if you've shared countless
adventures and faced death side by side, there may still be secrets between you.
When this story began, I had five best friends. I knew all about their unusual hobbies, life-threatening allergies, arrest records, and shampoo preferences. What I didn't know was that two of my friends still had secrets they were hidingâand that one of those secrets was powerful enough to destroy us all.
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It all started at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning. I was sitting at my kitchen table, reading a book and enjoying a well-balanced breakfast of butterscotch pudding, when I looked up to find my mother standing in the doorway, clutching a newspaper. I don't recall feeling particularly guilty that day, but I let loose a shriek at the sight of her. Her short black curls had broken free from their hairpins and surrounded her face like a cloud of toxic smoke. There were bags under her eyes and mismatched sneakers on her feet.
“What are you reading?” she inquired in an oddly formal voice.
“Phantoms, Fiends, and Things That Go Bump in the Night,”
I informed her. “I found it under the bed in the guest room. What are you doing up?” In my fourteen years, I'd never seen my mother standing upright before noon on a weekend.
“There was a story on the news last night. I thought you might find it interesting, so I got up early to buy the newspaper.” On her way to the table, she stepped over a pile of books that had spilled across the kitchen floor. A
week earlier, what most people assumed was a minor earthquake (I knew better) had toppled the tall towers of books that had lined the walls of our apartment. But the task of putting my parents' large and bizarre library back in order was too tedious to consider, and most of the books were still lying where they fell. My mother lowered herself into a chair across from me, keeping her eyes trained on my face.
“What was the story?” I asked, trying to remember if I'd done anything that might have made the papers. On Wednesday I'd helped nab a flasher in Grand Central Station, but that didn't seem terribly newsworthy. And as far as I knew, the source of that earthquake was never determined. I was trying to keep a low profile.
“See for yourself.” My mother slapped the newspaper down in front of me. The front page of the
New York Post
featured a picture of a young orangutan wearing a pair of purple boxer shorts and brandishing a set of salad tongs. I started to laugh until I read the headline:
Is This the Work of Kiki Strike?
the paper asked. The smile slid off my face as I glanced up at my mother.
“Go ahead. Read it,” she insisted. “The story's on page three.”
As my mother watched, I skimmed the article. Apparently, at eight o'clock the previous evening, a woman by the name of Marilyn Finchbeck had woken to find a three-foot iguana crawling into bed beside her. Her next-door neighbor, hearing Marilyn's terrified screams, was dialing 911 when he stepped into the nursery to discover his one-year-old son playing peek-a-boo with a family of hairy-eared lemurs. Not long after, a man on the third
floor of the same building leaped from his bedroom window when confronted by the orangutan pictured on the newspaper's cover. At the time, none of the residents of 983 Broadway had noticed that the animals that had invaded their apartments were all wearing handwritten notes tied around their necks.
When police had responded to calls from Marilyn Finchbeck's building, they quickly discovered the source of the mayhem. Someone had picked the locks to a pet store on the ground floor and liberated the animals inside. Rotweiller puppies were found gorging themselves on bags of premium dog food. Half a dozen cockatoos and one foul-mouthed parrot screeched from the rafters. But rather than search for the animals' mysterious benefactor, the police instead arrested the pet store's owner. In the back of his shop, behind a hidden door, they had found a series of secret cages. Most were empty. Only two drugged koalas remained inside, both too woozy to join the party. The zookeepers who were called in to capture the lemurs and orangutan (along with a young snow leopard that had chased a deliveryman for thirteen blocks) knew a crime when they saw one. The animals that had been locked away in the secret cages were all members of endangered species. They had no business being in New York. Around each of their necks was a note that read
I want to go home.
The
New York Post
believed Kiki Strike was responsible. A man in the neighborhood was reported to have witnessed a pasty-looking elf in dark clothing casing the pet store the week before. (Not the most flattering description of Kiki, but not entirely inaccurate, either.)
” So. Where were you last night, Ananka?” my mother asked.
“Here,”
I insisted, relieved to be able to tell her the truth. “I don't know anything about this.”
“You know Kiki Strike. She was here on Thursday watching kung fu movies in our living room.”
“Yeah, but the girl I know is fourteen years old and couldn't care less about the animal kingdom. The
Post
is just trying to sell papers, Mom. Everybody wants to believe there's a teenage vigilante running amok in New York.”
My mother snorted like an angry bull preparing to charge. “Let me get this straight. You
still
expect me to believe that your friend had nothing to do with foiling that kidnapping plot a couple of months ago?”
“Do we have to go over this again? You saw the news,” I told her, sidestepping the truth. “The Kiki Strike story in June was a hoax. That girl who claimed Kiki rescued her from kidnappers was lying. She made up the story because she wanted to be on TV. Who knows where she got Kiki's name? She could have picked it out of the phone book.”
My mother leaned back in her chair and glared at me through narrowed eyes. She had something else on her mind, and I knew it couldn't be good. I saw a mouse take a cautious step out of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. He took one look at my mother and scurried back to safety.
“Principal Wickham called yesterday afternoon,” my mother finally announced. “Your history teacher says you haven't been paying attention in class. He claims you
slept through a lecture on the founding of New York. Apparently you didn't even bother to clean up your drool when you left.” At last I had identified the species of bee in her bonnet. My extracurricular activities weren't the issue. I could dress up like Wonder Woman and fight the forces of evil as long as I got good grades.
“I don't
drool.
Mr. Dedly doesn't like me because I know more about New York history than he does.” It may sound conceited, but I wasn't exaggerating. I'd spent two years picking through my parents' massive library and gobbling up every book I could find on the subject. I knew how many unfortunate workmen were entombed in the Brooklyn Bridge, which burial grounds had once supplied the city's medical students with fresh corpses to dissect, and the location of the secret underground railroad built for the Vanderbilt family's personal use. I could have taught the class myselfâand with much more flair than Mr. Dedly, I might add.
“That may be true, Ananka. But Mr. Dedly isn't the only teacher who's caught you taking cat naps.”
“Who else complained?” I snapped, not entirely surprised to find that the snooty Atalanta School for Girls was filled with spies and traitors.
“It doesn't matter,” said my mother. “What matters is that classes started three weeks ago and you're already in trouble. I don't want more report cards like last year's. Any more C's or D's and I'll send you to boarding school. I'm not joking, Ananka. I'll find one so far away from civilization that you'll have nothing to do
but
your homework.”