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Chapter Text

Lin Shu wakes from the nightmare into darkness. Deep dark, disorienting and so velvety black that it could be any hour after midnight. The moon has long set behind the mountains and dawn is not even a gray promise in the east.

With a gasp, his eyes snap open and he sits bolt upright, the coverlet clinging to his legs. Blood – there was so much blood, this time. His mother was screaming at her maids to run; screaming until her throat was raw. Nihuang, he thinks, and then, Jingyan.

There are tear tracks on his cheeks, salt in his mouth. His eyes still staring blindly at the unseen hangings of the bed, Lin Shu’s mind scrabbles for time, place. Is he in Langzhou? Lin Chen’s high-ceilinged room at Langya hall? For a sickening moment, he feels earth beneath him, the brittle cold of snow.

Then there is a hand on his arm, warm, warmer than he ever thought to be again, and another running gentle across his back in the gesture he used to calm a spooked horse, back when he rode horses. Back before he died. For over a decade, that was what he remembered first on waking – that he had died.

“Xiao Shu,” Jingyan’s voice says, rough with sleep. “Xiao Shu. It’s all right – shh, it’s all right.”

Lin Shu shivers, flesh trying to jangle him back into the world. His eyes adjusting to the dark, he turns his head to see an outline in the bed beside him, lit by the faintest candlelight filtering through the curtains. The curve of a shoulder, a cheekbone. A furrowed brow.

“Jingyan,” he says, still shuddering. “Oh, Jingyan. You’re alive. You got out, you weren’t there. I was so afraid –”

He hears the swift intake of Jingyan’s breath, and finally the world comes back to him in a sudden rush. He is in Jingyan’s bed in the Eastern Palace. He, Mei Changsu, has a right to be here – discrete and sticky with rumor, but a right. It is early August: a year since the Emperor’s birthday, barely a week since Lin Shu and Nihuang rode back through the gates of Jinling from Lin Chen’s promised river trip and opened up the doors of Su Manor to the summer air. He played weiqi with Yuzhuang, last night; she is cross and lethargic with late pregnancy but her eyes lit to see him, lit at Jingyan’s delight in his return. There is time, as there always is at summer’s ending; time to read for pleasure, sit with Fei Liu in the gardens, visit with his friends. He has promised to get up with Jingyan in just a few hours and go with him and Nihuang to the practice yards. He is safe, and mostly well, and his task is done, done, done.

Jingyan’s hand on his bare back has gone still.

“I –” Lin Shu tries. “I’m sorry to wake you. Did I call out? Ridiculous, isn’t it, not to know what one does while dreaming? Go back to sleep, Jingyan, I’m all right. It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

Lin Shu realizes he is babbling and snaps his mouth shut, abrupt. Shame chokes him, the old companion. For all that it has been more than a year since Jingyan found out who he was, they have spent a whole night together only a handful of times, and Lin Shu’s nightmares come less often than they used to. Nihuang he warned, stiffly and by necessity, that his sleep is poor, that he often rises early and waits until his mind is quiet again. Nihuang is a soldier and a comrade of soldiers: she had nodded, once, and asked no questions. So in his own bed Lin Shu crashes out of the dreams to hold himself still as ice, feeling her breathe beside him until the warmth leaches back into his bones. Sometimes he gets up to pace, to read. Maybe Nihuang really does sleep through it. Maybe she is pretending for him, as she so often has; his wife, discerning, brave, and true.

But Jingyan he has kept to the daylight, to the waking world. Lin Shu’s heart thuds against his ribcage.

“Xiao Shu,” his friend says. “Will you come here? Let me –”

Lin Shu turns his head. The space of Nihuang’s wordless understanding will not stay open, here. He and Jingyan have never been able to let each other alone. They crash together, in love or war or quarrel, and even two names and all his bitterest half-truths could do no more than delay that impact for a little while. For a moment Lin Shu considers scrambling from the bed in that hurt animal terror of being seen, the instinct which makes a dog seek out a lonely place to die.

You are safe. It has been fifteen years. You are safe. Lin Shu lets the tensed muscles of his shoulders unknot one by one. Lets Jingyan’s hands guide him down, presses himself against the other man’s body in the summer dark and shakes and shakes and shakes.

When Lin Shu’s breath evens out, his face is buried in the crook of Jingyan’s shoulder, fingers digging into his lower back. They are holding each other so tightly that it should be suffocating. Instead, it is the only thing that lets Lin Shu answer when Jingyan asks,

“What do you dream of?”

Jingyan’s voice is a soft vibration against his own narrow chest. Lin Shu’s throat is dry. He has never described the nightmares to anyone – not to Li Gang or Lin Chen or even the old master of Langya Hall. Some part of him was afraid that if he spoke them aloud, they would stop, and he would never see his father’s face again.

“Meiling,” he rasps. “Not – not always as it happened. Sometimes –” he breaks off. “Sometimes Jingyu-gege is there too. Or Nihuang. Or… or you. This time it was you.”

Jingyan’s palm cups the nape of Lin Shu’s neck, reflexive. “How does it – how do I die?”

“Xie Yu kills you in front of me,” Lin Shu says, low, flat. “I watch the spear punch through your chest, and I can’t – I can’t move. Or you’re kneeling on the execution platform, and it’s the Emperor above you when the sword comes down. I try to push through the crowd but the people are packed too tightly, shouting, and your head…” Lin Shu stops, swallows. “Sometimes I see my mother’s death, too. Aunt Yueyao’s. Never the whole scene – it comes in flashes.”

Now that Lin Shu has begun to speak he can’t seem to stop. His ribs are an unclenching fist, lightness opening in the center of his chest. “The end is always the same. We’ve lost. My father is holding me at the edge of the cliff. His hand is so slippery – was. Was so slippery. I remember that. He had fallen onto the spear that ran him through and the blood was everywhere, the dirt, the – you know. It was a battlefield. He couldn’t keep his grip on my arm. He told me to… he told me to live. For the Chiyan army.”

Lin Shu takes a long breath. His throat closes, opens. “Then I fall,” he finishes. “From the cliff. And I wake up.”

Jingyan turns his head, lips pressing against Lin Shu’s brow. It is less a kiss and more an extension of the way his body curls around Lin Shu’s own, so fierce it is a little clumsy.

Nonetheless, shame sings in the back of Lin Shu’s mind. He lifts his face, thinking to say – what? What could anyone say to those cliffs, to these dreams?

Jingyan whispers, “I have nightmares too.”

They are so close Lin Shu can feel the stutter of his heart. Unthinking, he raises his left hand to cup the other man’s cheek. In the dark his thumb finds the soft divot at the side of Jingyan’s mouth.

“Not so often, anymore,” Jingyan says. “And not like yours. I’m never there during the battle. I always come too late.”

There is something strange in his voice beyond the blur of sleep – a hesitation. Lin Shu remembers his own words, spoken through the falling snow to the stubborn, furious line of Jingyan’s back: Thirteen years ago when they needed you the most, you were not by their side . Even now, the frustration and pain haven’t lightened at all.

“I stumble through the aftermath,” Jingyan is saying. “I’m in armor, I have a sword, a bow, everything shining and clean. It doesn’t matter. I have water, and I keep trying to give it to the men, but –”

Lin Shu feels the corner of Jingyan’s mouth tug down. He finishes, voice quiet, “Everyone is already dead.”

Jingyan is holding himself still. “It ends when I find your body,” he says. “When I see you, lying there under the banner, but before I can… before I can reach you. Touch you. There’s always just air in my hands – and I wake up.”

“Jingyan,” Lin Shu says, a plea, a promise, “Jingyan.”

He raises his other hand to Jingyan’s face, finds that his palms are wet with tears. How often has he wanted to comfort Jingyan and found himself, through distance or dissembling or his own despair, unable to do it? Lin Shu pulls the other man’s face to his own, pressing their foreheads together. Jingyan’s arms wrap tight around him in response. They lay like that a long time.

“It’s over,” Lin Shu whispers at last, wanting to be tender, finding that his words come halting and his thumb trembles to wipe Jingyan’s cheek. “We won, in the end. After all. We did the best we could. Jingyan. It’s over.”

Jingyan’s breath is warm on his face. His hands cup Lin Shu’s shoulder blades, span the knobs of his spine. He doesn’t try to speak – instead, he kisses Lin Shu, hard and eloquent enough that Lin Shu wonders dizzily why he has ever bothered with a voice when he has a body, and Jingyan has a body, and for all the pain and fear they are not so different to how they were before. This is a language he can still speak; has never really lost.

Held between them is the lost past, and the long years, and every price they have paid to or for one another. But Jingyan kisses Lin Shu’s chin, his temple, the arc of a brow, the still parted line of his mouth. Lin Shu closes his eyes.

“Have you –” he tries, wanting to ask, not quite knowing why. “I haven’t talked to Nihuang, about the nightmares. I couldn’t think how.”

Jingyan’s hand smooths once more over his back. “Yuzhuang is a heavy sleeper,” he says. “Unlike you. Before that – well. Zhanying let me be.”

“Ah,” Lin Shu says, and then – “Jingyan.” A hundred things rise to his lips – It should never have happened, it will always have happened, I never wanted you to be hurt but I’m glad to know I’m not alone, I’m glad you remember too – but Lin Shu says none of them. He has time. Instead, he pulls Jingyan close again and lets himself breath, deep and steady in the summer dark, until they slip back into sleep.

~*~

It is that clear hour before dawn when the mountains around Jinling arc crisp against the sky, blue on blue. The wind is warm on Lin Shu’s bare arms, ruffling the loose knot of his hair. By noon the heat will be oppressive, muggy and airless, but in this moment the world holds them all gently in its hands.

Lin Shu breathes in, out. He draws the bow back, sights down the arrow, and lets it fly on the crest of his filled lungs. Previous attempts litter the outer rings of the target and, to his adolescent irritation, the bale of straw it is mounted on. The leather guard on his thumb does not entirely offset the ache of the bowstring, and his hands are not as steady as they used to be. But this shot is true. The arrow strikes the red bullseye – just off center, he notes critically – with a soft thud, loud in the early morning silence of the Eastern Palace’s practice grounds.

Lin Shu cannot help himself; his teeth flash in a lopsided smile. Then he turns his head swiftly to his right.

“So much for not watching me,” he says, narrowing his eyes.

Nihuang and Jingyan, who have clearly abandoned their sparring to watch him take the last arrow from his quiver, give him identical repentant looks.

Jingyan is the first to recover. “Good shot,” he says, straightening up and wiping the sweat from his face.

Lin Shu mouth twists. “One out of twelve. And the draw is nothing.”

Jingyan smiles. “Jingyu-gege gave me that bow for my thirteenth birthday, and I’ll have you know I was quite proud of it at the time.”

“Yes, well,” Lin Shu says, setting the offending weapon down, “Praise me when I’ve at least surpassed Tingsheng.” But he lets Jingyan stride over and pat his shoulder; lets Nihuang’s pleased eyes drink him in. He agreed to this, after all, as Jingyan reminded him when they woke once more in the dim gray light and Lin Shu tried to roll over and fall back to sleep. He agreed to it, and there is no trace of pity in either of their faces. With that mercy, he can bear the rest.

“Did you see our last round?” Nihuang asks, grinning. “I had Jingyan in ten moves.”

Lin Shu adjusts his rolled-up sleeves – the gathered cuffs of these robes are only barely suitable for archery, but Jingyan’s clothes hang on him like a scarecrow and he refuses to borrow them – and shoots an amused glance between them.

“No,” he says, “I’m afraid I was too busy trying to see my target. A decade spent reading indoors is catching up to me.”

“For hours without moving,” Nihuang adds, bending down for the canteen beside her discarded armor. “In poor light.”

Lin Shu regards her with a mixture of affection and exasperation. “I should never have taken you traveling with Lin Chen,” he says. “Four months’ exposure to his scolding was too long; now it’s like he’s throwing his voice all the way from Langya Hall.” He snorts. “Not to mention exposure to his flirting.”

His wife takes a long swig of water. “Young Master Lin didn’t flirt with me at all until that night at Grandma Dingzhen’s place,” she protests. “He was a perfect gentleman. Well, except to Fei Liu.”

Indeed, Fei Liu was the only member of their party who was unabashedly glad to leave Lin Chen and Langya Mountain behind; when they reached the road at the valley’s mouth he had actually whooped in delight. Not even the promised monkeys of Fengqi Gorge had reconciled the boy to Lin Chen’s company. Monkeys had bought about a week of grudging tolerance, but then Lin Chen had pinched Fei Liu’s cheek in front of the gruff boatman he’d befriended and all tolerance was off the table. Fei Liu left three live eels in Lin Chen’s hammock that evening, and the resulting commotion had alarmed Nihuang almost as much as it amused Lin Shu, who had long since exchanged all attempts at mediation for the pleasures of spectatorship. Fei Liu is Fei Liu and Lin Chen is Lin Chen – neither of them are likely to change any time soon.

Without the young master, their return journey had been both swifter and much more peaceable. Still. The house in Jinling is missing its most lively occupant. This past week, Lin Shu has found himself turning his head for the toss of unbound hair, the flutter of a fan.

To cover a pang of nostalgia – he will not admit even to himself that he misses Lin Chen, or that he has already spun out far too many pretexts for calling his friend back to the capital to visit – Lin Shu says, “I’ve known Lin Chen long enough to recognize his tactics. He only held off that long to keep me in suspense. Then he started with the smooth little remarks. And the poetry. And I caught him holding your hand one morning on the boat.”

“He wasn’t holding my hand,” Nihuang points out. “He was taking my pulse.”

Lin Shu catches Jingyan’s carefully averted eyes, Nihuang’s gentle ones. He fidgets with his sleeve and smiles a little crookedly. You’ll have Jingyan’s children, he reminds himself for the hundreth time. It’s tempting fate to ask for more. “Well,” he says, “Lin Chen is more than capable of using medicine as an excuse to be forward. Forgive me for minding my wife’s honor.”

Nihuang, whose patience in this matter both soothes and humbles him, passes him the canteen with a tilt of her head. “Your wife feels very thoroughly honored,” she tells him, one cheek dimpling. “I’ll go fetch your arrows. In gratitude.”

They watch Nihuang step lightly down the range, silver pins glinting in her hair. Jingyan’s hand is still warm on Lin Shu’s shoulder.

“You seem better,” his friend says into the quiet. “This week. Since your return. When you caught that bad cough just after New Year I… well. I couldn’t help but worry.”

Lin Shu stiffens, a familiar defensive prickle running up his spine. But if he does not quite meet Jingyan’s sidelong glance, neither does he pull away.

Instead, he takes another drink, gives himself over to cool air and cool water. “It’s just the summer,” he says after a moment, handing Jingyan the canteen and looking past him towards the mountains. “I always get sicker in the spring and then improve. For a while.”

Jingyan’s fingers tighten. But he gives Lin Shu a small nod, asking nothing more. It fills Lin Shu’s heart. Jingyan tries so hard not to trespass, not to burden him with yet more hope and fear atop what he already carries. Impulsive, he adds, “But I haven’t been confined to my bed all this half-year. And if I mind my limits, there’s no pain. That’s…” he swallows. “A comfort.” A gift.

The wind stirs the dust at their feet. Nihuang is striding back across the practice grounds with a full quiver dangling careless from her hand. Lin Shu turns to smile at his friend. “It seems I’ll trouble you for some years to come,” he says, trying for humor. “I hope you’ll still miss me at the end of them.”

Jingyan, eyes suspiciously bright, looks at Lin Shu as if he can’t decide whether to kiss him or cuff him upside the head. He opens his mouth, no doubt to say something so radiantly sincere it will ring in Lin Shu’s ears for weeks and flatten him in shame for being difficult, and melancholic, and inclined to public self-contempt.

Nihuang comes to his rescue, after a fashion. “See?” she says to Jingyan, coming to stand at Lin Shu’s other side having evidently caught the tail end of their conversation. “I told you the trip would do him good.”

Jingyan accepts the bait of this recurring argument with a snort. “I’ll grant you were right,” he says, “But when you left in March you promised you’d be back by midsummer, which this decidedly isn’t. Heaven knows I could have done with the pair of you during that mess in Gun Zhou; with father’s health getting worse –”

Lin Shu winces, but Nihuang sets the quiver down and says implacably, “We also promised Lin Chen we wouldn’t stint him on the time. With everything he’s given us – time most of all – it would have been ungrateful to cut any more of his itinerary.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jingyan grumbles. “You got to cavort through the jianghu with the head of the Jiangzuo Alliance and the young master of Langya hall. I have to spent the rest of my life cooped up in the Palace. That pack of old men in court wouldn’t even let me out when the governor of Yeqin was assassinated.”

This proves too much for even Lin Shu’s sense of sympathy. “They said exactly what I would have if I’d been here,” he says mildly. “In fact I did say it, several times, and apparently you only read my letters for the scenery. You’re not a border commander anymore, Jingyan; Xia Dong and Nie Feng handled matters perfectly well. It would have been absurdly reckless to leave the city while his majesty is still in power.”

“My father has barely left his bed since June,” Jingyan retorts. “He’s not going to seize the Empire out from under me now. Besides – Mother and Yuzhuang would have kept things under control.”

Before Lin Shu can decide whether to be appalled at Jingyan’s bluntness or grudgingly admit that Noble Consort Jing could probably keep a coup at bay for at least a month if she put her mind to it, Nihuang says with a smile, “Maybe you can go on a grand tour of the provinces in a few years. It’s not the same as a campaign, but I’ll lend you Lin Shu to make up for it.”

Jingyan’s eyebrows lift. “The Princess is gracious to her humble rival,” he says, mock-solemn.

“You’re not my rival,” Nihuang corrects him. “You’re my co-wife. It’s my duty to preserve harmony by setting you a generous example.”

Jingyan nearly spits out the mouthful of water he’s just taken. Nihuang laughs. Lin Shu, who spent last night at the Eastern Palace at Nihuang’s urging and is beginning to feel a little like a sack of turnips being haggled over in the market, purses his lips to hide a smile. “Nihuang,” he says. “Don’t tease Jingyan about me.” As she opens her mouth in protest of this favoritism, he adds, “He has enough trouble to be getting on with at home, now. Speaking of wives.”

“And confinement,” Nihuang agrees, warming instantly to this new tack. “How’s Yuzhuang finding her new colleagues? I must say, Jingyan, it was really quite enterprising of you to take two new concubines into your household when your Princess Consort is too pregnant to protest. Strategic, almost.”

Jingyan glares at the two of them with as much dignity as he can muster. “Not this again,” he says. “My father insisted on two more marriages before he fell ill and the whole court backed him up. I could barely think for wheedling speeches about your highness, the succession and your highness, the importance of your Imperial reputation. You know very well it wasn’t my idea.”

Lin Shu manages to keep a straight face. “Not even a little?” He asks. “So you didn’t catch sight of Concubine Shen in the crowd at the Dragon Boat festival and ask Shen Zhui for an introduction that very evening? Because of her trailing sleeves and lips like ripe cherries?”

Jingyan opens his mouth in outrage. Eyes wide with mischief, Nihuang adds, “And I heard that Concubine Liao concealed herself among the dancers at a banquet, and you were so enraptured by her beauty that you gifted her a pair of slippers embroidered with peacock feathers.”

“Where on earth do you get this nonsense?” Jingyan growls, nettled.

“From Gongyu,” Lin Shu admits. “Some fool composed a drinking song she overheard. Don’t worry, it’s not catchy enough to be truly treasonous. Although you should hear the verse about the Princess Consort’s lovelorn self-sacrifice. I’m supposed to be wild with jealousy; apparently I returned to the capital in order to recapture your heart.”

Nihuang puts one hand over her mouth to suppress a fit of giggles, clutching Lin Shu’s arm with the other. Jingyan makes a disgusted face. “Wild with jealousy,” he repeats, “Why is everyone in these scenarios always wild with jealousy? The Liao alliance I could have happily foregone, and I only managed to get Shen Xianzhong over my father’s appalling second choice because she’s the Duchess of Qinghe’s niece. It’s not personal. Yuzhuang recommended her, for heaven’s sake – they studied together as girls.”

“Don’t worry,” Lin Shu assures him, “It’s one song. And I don’t think anyone really believes it.” If they did, he would be taking the matter rather more seriously. Bereft of Mei Changsu all spring, the gossips of Jinling had to make what meal they could out of their resolutely unromantic Crown Prince.

Jingyan folds his arms over his chest. “I’ve never given anyone a slipper in my life,” he says. “At a banquet or otherwise. Besides, Liao Binbin is a terrible dancer.”

“Already tired of her after a few weeks?” Nihuang teases. “Maidenly charms wither before the Crown Prince’s cold regard.”

Jingyan rolls his eyes. “I don’t care about her charms,” he says, reaching over to unstring Lin Shu’s borrowed bow. “I care that she’s a sharp-eyed little spy who’s probably sending her family weekly reports in cipher. I can handle it in private, but she prowls around the Eastern Palace all day like she’s mapping the blueprints. I think my father selected her out of spite.”

“He probably did,” Lin Shu admits. “But the Marquis of Zhongsu is ambitious enough to be worth using. If his daughter wants to sniff out which way the wind blows in court, let her.” Liao Binbin has thus far avoided him – out of professional caution, he suspects – and his first impression of Shen Xianzhong was of a pretty woman with her cousin’s round face and earnest manner who is utterly out of her depth in a royal marriage. Or this royal marriage, anyway. She had walked onto Yuzhuang’s terrace yesterday carrying her embroidery and promptly dropped it on the floor at the sight of Lin Shu and Yuzhuang with a weiqi board between them, Jingyan bent over Lin Shu’s shoulder. Strange men in the Princess Consort’s garden had apparently not figured into her expectations. Once, the incident would have churned his gut with worry. Now Lin Shu has enough confidence in Yuzhuang’s governance of her household to merely find it funny.

“I assume Yuzhuang agrees with you,” Nihuang says. “And isn’t working herself too hard again. We almost turned around when that letter came about her fainting spells.”

Jingyan’s eyes soften. “She can handle Liao Binbin,” he says, short but fond. “To tell you the truth I’m glad to give her more company. The doctors say she has to stay off her feet, but she’s bored all day in her rooms.”

“Trust you to pick concubines based on what will please your wife,” Nihuang says, eyes dancing.

Jingyan shuffles his feet. “Well, she has to spend as much time with them as I do. More, really. She’d like to see you,” he adds to Nihuang. “She said as much to both of us last evening.”

Nihuang inclines her head. “We’re settled back into the house; I’ll pay the Princess Consort a visit this afternoon. Maybe Concubine Liao will even try to weasel information out of me. That would be quite exciting.”

“Nihuang,” Lin Shu says, with only the faintest veneer of reproof, “It’s unsporting to terrorize Jingyan’s concubines on the same day you spar with Jingyan him. You have to space out your victories.”

Nihuang grins. “It’s the cost of my beneficence. He gets you for the night, I thrash him in the morning. Fair play.”

“Thrash, my ass,” Jingyan says, “I want a rematch. Clearly I’m not going to get any respect around here through diplomacy.”

Lin Shu glances up once more at the lightening sky. They get so little time like this, the three of them – are liable to get even less, now that the Imperial seal rests on Jingyan’s desk and the eyes of unfriendly maids glint in his women’s quarters. “We should go inside,” he says reluctantly. “The afternoon patrols will be here to drill at sunrise –”

Jingyan interrupts him by the simple expedient of tossing the canteen at him; Lin Shu’s reflexes are not up to the task of talking and catching an open container of water at the same time. Some of it splashes onto his face. By the time he is done spluttering, Jingyan has taken a grinning Nihuang’s arm.

“Just one more round,” he says over his shoulder. “The sun hasn’t cleared the horizon. We have time yet.”

Lin Shu wipes his face and accepts his lot, ambling over to lean against the post marking the edge of their practice square. Duty and propriety nag at him a little, but it is no hardship to watch Jingyan and Nihuang fight. He would watch them for hours if he could. Jingyan has stripped to the waist, shining with sweat even in the cool dawn air, and Nihuang’s body in combat is a coiled spring, a perfect economy of motion that stirs his blood better than any graceful singer’s curtsy or flash of slender wrist has ever done. Even beyond these baser motives, they are both martial artists of rare caliber. Lin Shu’s love for this kind of skill has lasted through war and death and resurrection, through the management of restive jianghu talent and the ache of his own lost body.

They’re well-matched, too. Nihuang’s speed and the swiftness of her judgment more than make up for Jingyan’s strength. As Lin Shu watches, Nihuang dodges beneath Jingyan’s fist and strikes at his throat; forced to block with both forearms, the blow sends a shudder through the muscles of his back. They leap apart. Jingyan’s brow is furrowed in concentration, Nihuang’s raised in delight.

Unbidden, memory rises in Lin Shu of that first day back in Jinling – watching from the carriage as she rode up to the city gates and brought Yujin and Jingrui to a joyful standstill. His princess. She had grown so strong, so splendid – so far beyond his power to match. Jingyan, too, has walked long roads alone that they had once thought to share. Shifting on his elbow, Lin Shu’s eye is drawn to the scar that runs down Jingyan’s left side nearly to his hipbone, the two shiny welts of arrow-wounds deep in his upper arm. When he was nineteen, he had known every scar on Jingyan’s body. How they got there, how much they hurt. How long they took to heal. He had usually been the one bandaging the wound.

For once, the thought of what they have lost does not freeze Lin Shu in grief or light a fire of fury in his belly. In its place is sorrow, clear as water. He was once the Lin Shu who could have leapt into the ring and fought them both to a standstill, laughing while he did it. He is that Lin Shu no longer; he never will be.

But he gets this moment, still, borrowed from daylight and duty. Lin Shu’s heart rises in his throat as Jingyan whirls behind Nihuang and tries to pin her; he smiles as she narrowly evades the grab. Nihuang twists from her crouch and bursts upward, both hands meeting Jingyan’s chest and sending him flying over her head. He hits the ground with a thud and a grunt, air leaving his lungs.

Nihuang grins. “Thirty moves, this time,” she says, panting to catch her breath. “Not bad.”

“You almost had her at the last,” Lin Shu says, straightening up. “But you’re too heavy on your feet, Jingyan.”

Nihuang and Jingyan turn their heads, flushed with exertion and the straightforward pleasure of a fight. Together they are almost too beautiful to look at. Lin Shu has to cut short his critique before they rib him for stammering like a lovestruck boy.

“I know,” Jingyan complains, propping himself up on his elbows. “I’m used to fighting in full armor, xiao Shu, don’t hold it too much against me.”

Nihuang steps forward to help Jingyan up, her eyes still on Lin Shu’s face. “You were always so fast,” she says to him dreamily. “Even in armor. It was like your feet never touched the ground.”

Then her mouth snaps shut. Jingyan’s eyes flicker from Nihuang to Lin Shu, widening.

Lin Shu looks at his wife and his prince, gilded in the dawn light and stilled by sudden tension. He swallows down the first words that fill his mouth, because they are cruel; then he swallows down the second, because they are self-pitying. At last he says, very lightly, “I was. Fast. Meng Zhi always said my only fault was that I wanted to learn every style all at once, and could never stick to one for long enough to truly master it. Maybe age would have cured me of that, but I doubt it.” His mouth tugs upward at the corner. “I always liked the theory of martial arts more than the practice. And I liked the practice… very much.”

Jingyan swallows. Hesitant, a man stepping onto uncertain ground, he says, “Remember when you followed that Emei Mountain master around for two weeks, begging him to teach you his hand forms? Marshal Lin always said mixing so many styles was going to trip you up in combat.”

“He did hound you on that score,” Nihuang ventures with a half-smile, eyes still intent on her husband’s face. “That time, I – I thought he was going to throttle you when you finally rode home.”

The past is sharp – sharp enough to cut. But Lin Shu smiles too. He says, “I would almost rather he had. He left me in Jinling for the Autumn Hunt instead, don’t you remember? I sulked for weeks.”

“And I had to spend the hunt with Jinghuan,” Jingyan adds, warming to the theme. “Most of your punishments seemed to fall jut as heavily on me.”

“Well,” Nihuang points out, “You were older. Wiser. Allegedly wiser, anyway. Jingyu-gege was always telling you to keep us in line.”

Jingyan punches her on the arm and she squawks in protest. “You’re only hitting me because I’m right, water buffalo,” Nihuang says, dancing nimbly out of the way of a grab.

Lin Shu is still laughing when his eye snags on the distant gateway to the Eastern Palace grounds. The dark-robed figure hurrying through it, and three women close behind him – two in the red of palace maids and the third one robed in blue.

“Jingyan,” he says, urgent. “Gao Zhan is here.” Gao Zhan and, with Zhen’er trailing in her wake –

“Yuzhuang!” Jingyan hisses under his breath, he and Nihuang turning at Lin Shu’s words. “What’s she doing out here? She shouldn’t even be awake, let alone walking all this way just to fetch me. What could…”

He trails off. But Lin Shu already knows. He knows before Gao Zhan reaches them, before Yuzhuang, gown clearly wrapped in uncharacteristic haste over the curve of her belly, manages to throw off Jixiang’s arm and call out, “My lord, there’s news from the palace!”

Lin Shu closes his eyes. His uncle is dying. The Emperor – his last enemy, his father’s dearest friend. Death leaves no one’s artifice intact, but Xiao Xuan in particular will die surrounded by the people who dragged him kicking and screaming to the truth. Who will not credit him for what they build in his ruins; who have weighed him and found him wanting. Lin Shu doesn’t know how he feels about that, in this suspended instant; angry, maybe. Pleased, with the sharp-edged pleasure of retribution, revelation. Grieved down to his bones for what should have been instead.

His eyes open to see that Jingyan is stepping forward, a robe thrown hastily around his bare shoulders. Their eyes meet in one last glance; one moment of perfect accord. Nihuang has already stepped back to stand beside Lin Shu, her gaze darting between the two of them, her mouth grim. Here it is, Lin Shu thinks. The future I won us. I know he is worthy of it. But, please, let it not weigh too heavy – let it leave us a little room, now and then. A little joy at the edges.

Gao Zhan bows, straightens. The lines on his face are deeper than usual, this morning; he has forgotten his characteristic stoop.

“Your highness,” he says, “The Emperor is asking for you.”

Lin Shu does not see Jingyan’s reaction. He is looking at Yuzhuang, pale and tight-lipped, still ignoring her maids’ fluttering attempts to wrap a cloak around her shoulders. She, in turn, has eyes only for Jingyan.

“Noble Consort Jing says this is the end,” she whispers. “My lord. Let me come with you.”

Poker-faced Gao Zhan raises one eyebrow a fraction, glancing over at the Princess Consort as if seeing her for the first time. Jixiang makes a noise of long-suffering anguish – mere weeks until this baby is born, her face says, and still I can’t get a moment’s peace? Nihuang reaches up to put a hand on Lin Shu’s shoulder, steadying.

Jingyan looks at his wife. Then he nods.

“Take the carriage and follow after the guard,” he says quietly. “I would appreciate your presence very much.”

Yuzhuang’s shoulders slump in relief even as Zhen’er finally manages to tie her cloak at her throat. Clearly, she intercepted Gao Zhan and ran out here in blind determination not to be left behind, and is only now thinking through the consequences. Quick as thought, her eyes flick to Lin Shu. There is a question in them, a request – for reassurance? Permission?

Lin Shu holds her gaze, gives the smallest possible nod. Understanding passes between them. She can go where he cannot, in this; follow Jingyan to face his father’s last words and stand beside him in the aftermath. Lin Shu finds to his surprise that he is grateful.

“My lord,” Gao Zhan says. “Hurry, if you would. There may not be much time.”

As Jingyan steps forward, the first sliver of the sun crests the horizon at long last, flooding the sky with gold.

~*~

Empress Liu Yuzhuang mounts the dais of her throne and turns, letting the long train of her gown fan behind her. The long peacock-feather tassels of her crown frame her face unmoving – the layers of silk which armor her do not give, do not crease.

Incense and flowers cannot entirely hide the smells of fresh lacquer and new-carved wood, and her eye snagged on the frieze of phoenixes on the back wall as she approached the throne – the leftmost is missing a fleck of paint on its beak, pale pine showing through gold. The azure dye of the hangings stained her maid’s hands for weeks; the carpet is too thin for winter use for all its splendor. But it doesn’t matter. The newly finished Jiuzheng Palace is a theater Yuzhuang built; she knows how to occupy the stage. She faces the hall and smiles.

The small chorus of bowed heads arrayed below her speak in unison: “Wishing the Empress good morning.”

Yuzhuang lowers herself onto her wide seat – armless and plain, frugal as the rose and cream architecture of her robes is not – and holds her chin steady under the golden fan of her headdress. That too took practice. And padding, deftly concealed beneath the coils of her hair. Now that she knows Zhen’er is a Jiangzuo Alliance agent, the other woman has proven a valuable resource when it comes to appearances and disguises of all kinds.

“Please, rise,” Yuzhuang says. “There’s no need to stand on ceremony.”

Three women lift themselves from deep curtsies in unison. Well, almost in unison; the one on the right

is just a beat behind the other two and the jade flower above her left ear is crooked. Yuzhuang sighs inwardly. Shen Xianzhong is a sweet and companionable woman, but she does leave herself open to criticism.

Right on cue, Liao Binbin takes a sidelong look at her colleague and hides a smirk behind one perfectly manicured hand. “Concubine Cheng,” she stage-whispers. “I hope you didn’t receive his majesty like that last night.”

Xianzhong flushes scarlet and raises an instinctive hand to check her hair. She succeeds only in dislodging the hairpin further; Binbin titters. Between them, Consort Fu, clearly counting the minutes until she can be free of these petty girls and go back to the comforts of her quiet palace, manages to look merely bored.

“Concubine Zhao,” Yuzhuang says in her mildest voice. “Is it your place to reprove our sister for her manner of service?” Xianzhong’s shyness in the matter of their husband is a persistent problem. It had taken several months of effort on Yuzhuang’s part to coax her friend into even making eye contact with Jingyan while she spoke to him, a situation compounded by Jingyan’s understandable if unhelpful reluctance to spend time with a woman who acts like he’s going to eat her. He had in fact visited her the night before only because Yuzhuang ordered him to, and complained about it for five full minutes beforehand.

Liao Binbin is evidently full of vinegar today. She folds her hands and looks up at Yuzhuang through her lashes with every appearance of limpid sincerity. “The Empress is right to correct my clumsy words. I only wished to remind Concubine Cheng that his majesty evidently values competence over beauty. Perhaps a trip to the Imperial archives would do what a new hairpin can’t.”

Yuzhuang suppresses the strong desire to roll her eyes. Liao Binbin’s classical moon-faced loveliness and various artistic accomplishments have thus far failed to overcome Jingyan’s distrust. On the other hand, Yuzhuang should probably pull Xianzhong aside and hint to her that copying his mother’s hair ornaments is not usually the best way to a man’s heart.

“When you are qualified to give advice about what the Emperor prefers,” Yuzhuang informs her, “You may do so. At present, however, I am more concerned with investigating the missing medical supplies reported by the Imperial physicians. Have you all provided Jixiang with your account books?”

This attempt to come to the point is unfortunately stymied by Xianzhong. “You’re just jealous,” she hisses at Binbin, lifting her chin in a gesture of resolute courage that leaves her hairpin clinging the shell of her ear for its survival, “The Empress is first in his majesty’s heart for both her beauty and her virtue. Just because Liu Ruoshen’s dowry is going to the Lord of Yunnan instead of your fool of a brother –”

“Concubine Cheng, I would appreciate it if you refrained from interrupting me,” Yuzhuang cuts in, but it is too late. Liao Binbin has scented impropriety. Her fingers flicking ostentatiously over her carnelian prayer beads, she says, “Whatever do you mean, honored sister? Has Liu Ruoshen’s betrothal been announced?”

“Naturally it has not,” Yuzhuang says smoothly before Xianzhong can dig their hole any deeper. “You must be mistaken, Concubine Cheng. We are in mourning; it would be an insult to his departed majesty for my family to decide on a match at this time.”

Xianzhong closes her mouth abruptly and shoots Yuzhuang a guilty, puppyish look that reminds her vividly of Lanying, except that Lanying would never have made such a misstep in the first place. Please grow a spine in front of Jingyan, not in my defense, Yuzhuang begs her silently. That would be so much more helpful.

“Of course,” Binbin agrees, watching Yuzhuang with sharp-eyed suspicion. “And honoring Lord Mu with such a sought-after wife could be construed as undue favoritism. Given the… circumstances.”

You have the face of a goddess and the soul of a weasel, Yuzhuang thinks. And if I wasn’t determined to keep the high ground, I would tell Jingyan so later and leave you high and dry for weeks. She says, “I can’t imagine what you mean, Concubine Zhao. His majesty’s high regard for Princess Nihuang is known to all. Young Lord Mu’s future marriage will surely honor Yunnan’s accomplishments on the battlefield.”

Binbin tosses her head just enough to make the cascade of coral in her hair tinkle fetchingly. “Well,” she says, doubtless already considering how to scurry off and consult with her brother on the loss of Liu Ruoshen, “His majesty does need to make it up to Mu Nihuang. For that husband of hers.”

They all look sidelong at Yuzhuang, then, as they always do at the mention of Mei Changsu. It had taken Liao Binbin until New Year to work out that needling Yuzhuang about him only amused her, and Xianzhong almost as long to stop offering Yuzhuang soulful sympathy about the horrors of sharing their husband’s affection with the mysterious and aloof qilin talent. They’re still trying to work out the levers behind the impenetrable alliance between the Empress and the strategist. Yuzhuang derives a certain unwholesome pleasure from keeping them in suspense.

“If you have any complaints about Grand Tutor Mei,” she says, with every sign of sincerity, “you would do better to raise them to his majesty directly.”

Alas, Binbin is too clever to implode the last of Jingyan’s goodwill in such a spectacular manner. She sighs and gives Yuzhuang a long-suffering look. “His majesty is a generous lord,” she says. “Too generous to recognize when, perhaps, his favor might be more… fruitfully bestowed elsewhere. Really, my lady, I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that even if the Crown Prince’s good health continues, the Imperial family can hardly afford –”

“Oh, will you stop nipping,” Consort Fu says, breaking her long silence to turning her head and look down scornfully at Binbin. “I’ve lived with the Emperor since you were squalling on your mother’s knee, and no amount of arch insinuations are going to make him climb out of Mei Changsu’s bed and into yours. He’s the most stubborn man who’s ever lived and he hates pretense. There’s some actual advice, much good it will do you. Now will you leave the Empress in peace so we can hand over our ledgers and get back to breakfast?”

Binbin stares at Consort Fu in open-mouthed outrage. Since Consort Fu is almost a head taller than Liao Binbin and refuses to stop wearing a plain mother-of-pearl fish ornament that makes her look even taller – I’m over thirty, my dear, and set in my ways, she had said when Yuzhuang made a tentative inquiry – the effect is of a be-ribboned pekingese squaring up to a hunting hound.

“Consort Fu,” Yuzhuang says, aware that if she laughs this meeting is going to get completely out of hand, “Please don’t speak like that to Concubine Zhao. Especially in public – it’s unseemly.”

She and Consort Fu exchange a long look. They had often kept each other company during the interminable middle months of Yuzhuang’s pregnancy, and Yuzhuang credits herself that she and Fu Xi understand one another.

The older woman sighs. “Apologies, Concubine Zhao,” she says, bending her knees the absolute minimum amount. “I gave free reign to my tongue and embarrassed both you and the Empress. I will accept whatever punishment her ladyship deems suitable.”

Yuzhuang’s lip twitches despite herself. That last sentence was so obviously sarcastic that even Xianzhong has picked up on it; her shoulders tremble in a suppressed giggle.

Binbin manages to close her mouth only to open it again in an expression of woe that barely disguises her fury. “My lady,” she says to Yuzhuang, curtsying rather more elegantly than Consort Fu, “How can you allow such, such coarseness to go unpunished? Do the rules of the Inner Palace mean nothing? Consort Fu is my respected senior, but –”

“That will do, Concubine Zhao,” Yuzhuang interjects. “Consort Fu, you are confined to your palace until you have reflected on your wrongdoing. I expressly forbid you to appear before me for at least a month. Do you accept your punishment?”

Consort Fu, barely managing to conceal her enthusiasm, bows and says, “Of course, my lady. I will not stir from my palace until I have reckoned fully with my many failings. Why don’t I take my leave to begin my sentence at once?”

Binbin, frowning with the suspicion that she is being played, opens her mouth to protest further. To Yuzhuang’s relief, help comes once more from an unexpected quarter. They all turn to look as the announcement rings to the rafters, “The Empress Dowager arrives with the Crown Prince.”

Yuzhuang rises from her throne with care – she has tripped on the hem of these robes before, although thankfully only in front of Nihuang – and steps down from the dais as quickly as she can manage. You left him sleeping in Zhiluo Palace an hour ago, she chides herself, there’s no reason to lose your composure. But she cannot help it. By the time Consort Jing – Yuzhuang still cannot think of her as the honorary Empress Dowager, it’s too strange – has made her stately way to the center of the hall, Yuzhuang is there to greet her with outstretched arms.

Consort Jing hands her the chubby-fingered bundle with a smile. “Good morning, everyone,” she says, and then to Yuzhuang, “He woke and started to cry for you, so I thought, why not take a stroll here through the garden?”

“Oh, his little cheeks,” Xianzhong says, in the tone of voice of someone making an unprecedented discovery. She leans over to get a better look at the sleepily blinking baby in his cocoon of padded silk. “They’re as round as pancakes.”

Yuzhuang trusts that her Imperial dignity can stretch to accommodate one kiss to the aforesaid cheeks. “Shh,” she whispers, rocking him against her chest, “Worrying your grandmother for nothing, silly boy. I wouldn’t have been gone for long.”

Consort Jing looks from the visibly disgruntled Binbin to the satisfied Consort Fu and inquires, “What were you discussing when I came in?”

Yuzhuang glances over the top of the Crown Prince’s downy head at Liao Binbin. Co-operate with me, she wills, watching the other woman’s quick-witted face, the avenues of trouble-making playing out behind her arched brows. We’re here together for life, you and I, and the deck is stacked in my favor. I have the Emperor’s ear, the Empress Dowager’s support, the throne and the allies and best of all, the son. I can wait you out, and every other like you. Let me win. This morning, at least. Before breakfast.

After a beat, Binbin sighs. “The missing medical supplies, Empress Dowager,” she says, with a passable imitation of good grace. “My lady was just advising us on how best to assist with the Household Department’s inquiries.”

Consort Fu snorts. Binbin shoots a glare at her but offers no further comment.

If there is a twinkle in Consort Jing’s eye as she looks back at Yuzhuang, so much the better. “Excellent,” she says. “Well. I’m sure the Empress has everything well in hand.”

Several times throughout that day – amid the usual flurry of administrative drama and domestic tasks, sending someone to replace five vats of spoiled cream and deflecting an over-generous gift from the Minister of Defense – Yuzhuang wonders what made Liao Binbin start their morning with such sharp claws. She gets her answer as she walks up the steps of Yangju Hall in the misty purple twilight, Zhen’er beside her and Jixiang two steps behind with the Crown Prince clutched tightly in her arms. To her mixed vexation and amusement, Yuzhuang cannot carry her baby and climb stairs in this gown at the same time. He is grabby today, and Yuzhuang hears Jixiang click her tongue in dismay as the boy seizes one of her earrings and tries to pull it down into his mouth.

Yuzhuang, having turned to intervene in this small spectacle, has to turn back again immediately as Jingyan’s voice carries through the great double doors of the hall. He has evidently stopped just short of the threshold in the middle of a heated discussion with his Grand Tutor.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he’s saying, “It was a fine suggestion. Zhanying managed something similar in that winter campaign we fought five years ago, and it saved both resources and lives. You’re overcautious.”

“Your majesty,” Lin Shu’s voice replies, in the same tone as he might say you stubborn fool in private, “I can’t believe you’re considering tactical advice from the Marquis of Zhongsu.”

Yuzhuang reaches the top of the steps just in time to see Jingyan wave a hand in dismissal of this jab. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

Before Lin Shu can do more than open his mouth, Gao Zhan steps forward from his customary unobtrusive place at Jingyan’s left to murmur, “Pardon, Grand Tutor Mei. It seems the Empress has arrived.”

Jingyan and Lin Shu both look up, at last catching sight of Yuzhuang and her small retinue, framed in the doorway by the late winter sky. Yuzhuang lifts her skirts to step into the hall and offers a curtsy, resolutely ignoring the twinge in her neck from the weight of her headdress, the trail of decisions that drags behind her each long day. This is the reward at the end of them, and her heart is already lighter.

“Bidding your majesty good evening,” she says, straightening up. Strictly, she ought to keep her eyes lowered until Jingyan speaks to her, but today Yuzhuang can’t quite manage it. He looks so splendid in the black fur collar of his best cloak, her husband; like a king from ancient myth, bringing the spring rain and the full harvest. There is ink smudged on his left wrist, lines of care furrowing his brow. And he is smiling at her, which is best of all. Smiling as if she has brought him an unexpected gift, for all that Yuzhuang comes here with their son at the same time every evening.

Lin Shu is smiling too, ire momentarily abandoned. His white silk robes – a gift from Lin Chen? Or from Nihuang, who knows how to set off those edged good looks, that circlet of jade – make he and Jingyan into a matched set.

“Good evening, Empress,” Lin Shu says with a bow. Already his eyes are leaving Yuzhuang to find the baby held in Jixiang’s arms. “And the Crown Prince,” he says, mouth softening. If Yuzhuang had not already cared for Lin Shu, he would have won her over for life in the weeks following the baby’s birth. Jingyan had been wild with satisfaction and concern, of course, but only Lin Shu had really seemed to match Yuzhuang’s private sense of the miraculous, her hunger for hours of talk over her son’s small trials and discomforts, the precocious focusing of his wide dark eyes.

“Oh, have you been good today?” Jingyan asks rhetorically, taking his son from Jixiang and holding him up to be inspected. “Xiao Zhenrong, did you enjoy your morning with your grandmother?”

The baby gurgles obligingly at his father’s voice, holding out small hands for Jingyan and burying them in soft fur when Jingyan tucks him close against his chest.

Lin Shu regards the pair of them with an expression of almost ravenous affection. “I still can’t believe you chose that name, of all names,” he says, tone belying the words. “It was uncalled for.”^[1]

Jingyan kisses the top of his baby’s head and glances over at Yuzhuang in amusement. “Oh, that’s rich coming from you, Mr. Back from the Dead,” he says mildly. “I’ll name my children however I please.”

At a discreet cough from Gao Zhan, Jingyan apparently recollects that he is still in public, or at least, in the semi-public sight of Yuzhuang’s maids. “Anyway,” he goes on, “Your arrival is well-timed, my lady. Grand Tutor Mei and I carried a disagreement here from court that concerns you.”

Lin Shu scoffs. “Oh, leave it for now. How can I argue with you while you’re holding the Crown Prince?” Yuzhuang sees what he means; Jingyan with a baby is so charismatic that the first time her mother saw him take Rong-er from Yuzhuang and gently poke his nose, she gasped aloud and had to drink half a pot of tea before she could recover her train of thought.

“You hold him, then,” Jingyan replies, offering his son to an immediately distracted Lin Shu. “Maybe he’ll blunt your tongue.”

“Don’t use Rong-er to win a debate,” Yuzhuang says, smiling, but makes no move to intervene. The sight of that small, defenseless body in the hands of almost anyone else – even her cooing sisters or the ever-careful Jixiang – tugs on a small knot of tension at the base of her spine that releases only when his warm weight is tucked close to her once more. The exceptions are Consort Jing, Jingyan himself, and, almost to her own surprise, Lin Shu, whose long, thin fingers rise to deftly cradle the soft dark head even as he purses his lips at Jingyan. “Your Imperial father is a ruthless tactician,” he murmurs, rocking the boy in the crook of his arm and offering his other hand to be gripped in Rong-er’s tiny ones. “And, in this rare instance, a misguided one.”

He looks up to meet Yuzhuang’s raised eyebrows and sighs. “The raiding parties from Northern Yan are getting bolder now the snows are melting,” Lin Shu explains. “The Marquis of Zhongsu, because he’s a penny-pinching opportunist –” Another cough from Gao Zhan makes Lin Shu amend, “An unduly frugal commander, wants us to pay the actual bandits in the area, many of whom are former Hua militia, to fight them on Daliang’s behalf.”

Lin Shu inclines his head at Yuzhuang. “I submitted to the court this morning that this was an unnecessary and risky maneuver, implying that Zhongsu’s motives were less than stainless, and the debate became rather heated.”

“Whereupon Grand Secretary Liu rightly pointed out that something has to be done, and involving our own troops could easily lead to all-out war,” Jingyan says. “A war we can ill-afford at present. The Hua fighters know the country, would likely go to considerable lengths if payment came in the form of land and legitimacy –”

“Legitimacy, indeed,” Lin Shu breaks in, and then lowers his voice with a quick glance down at the baby in his arms, who is trying his best to tug Lin Shu’s thumb into his mouth. “Now, where could Grand Secretary Liu have gotten the idea to hand Hua fighters some military victories? Or to set them against Northern Yan with Daliang’s sponsorship?”

His eyes narrow. They have been knee-deep in this river of argument, with its innumerable branches and tributaries, for more than a year – barring the four months when Lin Shu was traveling, during which they had it via artfully oblique letters – and it shows no signs of abating. Lin Shu is certain he is right and tenacious with it; but then, so is Yuzhuang. Jingyan sometimes takes one side, and sometimes another, but already the former Hua counties pay fewer taxes and get more government grain than they did before the argument began. You’re in this with me for life, too, Yuzhuang thinks fondly, and the board is even. She puts on her best polished Empress face and says, “Grand Tutor Mei, I’m sure I have no idea. As you know, I discuss only family matters with my grandfather and remain entirely ignorant of court business.”

Yuzhuang swears she sees Gao Zhan’s mouth twitch out of the corner of her eye. Jingyan is not even bothering to hide his amusement. “Quite,” Lin Shu says. “Odd, isn’t it, how often the two coincide? “By the way, Empress, I’ve been meaning to thank you for the bolt of brocade you sent my wife last week. Did you embroider the qilin personally?”

“Not all of them,” Yuzhuang says modestly. “I’m glad you like them, Grand Tutor; the gift came to mind when you so kindly lent me your copy of Admonitions of the Court Instructress at New Year. Most edifying.”

“You’re welcome. Now,” Lin Shu muses, “If Qin Banruo was still in Daliang’s custody, it would be easier for me to gauge the effects of Grand Secretary Liu’s proposal.”

His keen eyes test Yuzhuang’s face for cracks, but this too is an old battle. “The annual commuting of prisoner’s sentences can be such an inconvenient custom,” she agrees. “And exiles so difficult to track down.”

“Pardons don’t apply to treason,” Lin Shu points out, eyes narrowing. “Nor does vanishing out of the Imperial prison in April, just after I leave the capital, qualify as a New Year’s leniency –”

He breaks off, looking down at the baby. Rong-er’s placidity has apparently come to its inevitable end; Yuzhuang moves quickly to Lin Shu’s side as her son screws up his round little face and begins to wail.

“He’s hungry,” she surmises, taking him from Lin Shu. “Jixiang, the wetnurse –”

Jingyan mutters, “I should start bringing him to court as a lesson to the long-winded,” and the image pulls a much-needed laugh from Yuzhuang even as she rocks her crying son.

The familiar procession of baby-feeding and baby soothing, followed by putting him to bed, rising to leave, getting interrupted when a maid drops a jar of lamp-oil and wakes him up again, removing the absurd profusion of her headdress while singing a fourth lullaby in the desperate hope that this one will stick, and finally returning through the chill pathways of the palace to her husband’s side, occupies Yuzhuang for long enough that the dinner hour has almost gone when Gao Zhan ushers her into the inner rooms of Yangju Hall.

“The Grand Tutor dined with his majesty this evening,” Gao Zhan says to her as he turns to go, with the demure lack of tone that has preserved him through the minefield of one Emperor into the domestic intricacies of a second. “I took the liberty of not presenting the name tabs. If my lady wishes to return to Jiuzheng Palace tonight, I will be in the left-hand study going over some reports and can summon an escort.”

“Thank you, Gao Gonggong,” Yuzhuang replies, equally demurely. “Grand Tutor Mei and I will sort ourselves out, as usual.”

As a matter of course, Yuzhuang would hurry to Jingyan’s side, wanting the balm of his sympathy and the freedom of being alone in his rooms as she is never alone otherwise, without child or maid or curious visitor within easy earshot. Tonight, however, she finds herself pausing at the hanging that blocks the entrance to his study. Bare-headed save for the single kingfisher-feather pin tucked into her hair and rid of her stiffest and most queenly outer robe, Yuzhuang pushes the curtain aside a little and peers past it, wondering how long it will take Lin Shu and Jingyan to notice she is there.

They are sitting together at a small table laden with half-empty dishes, all edges softened by candle-light. Yuzhuang can tell from the array that the meal was appreciated. She can also tell that Jingyan pushed most of the plates towards Lin Shu at one point or another, faithful to his mother’s old habit of feeding the young marshal and heedless of the strictures that no one should eat with the Emperor like this, side by side and talking all the while. In one way, the subdued atmosphere of mourning has been a balm, leaving Jingyan space for just such small and private heedlessness.

From the way Lin Shu is picking at a final bowl of soup, one noodle slurped halfway into his mouth, Yuzhuang has caught the tail end of some winding anecdote. Jingyan is gesturing with a chicken bone “– xiao Shu, he had to have been lying, no hawk is smart enough to do that…” Lin Shu finishes his noodle and looks over at Jingyan with an expression of such contentment, such overrunning love, that Yuzhuang almost steps away and leaves them to their golden hour. She thinks suddenly of that night last winter when she realized how unguarded Lin Shu’s face could become with Jingyan at his feet. How high that guard was otherwise.

He is not guarded now. He is a man wiping soup from his mouth at a table with his friend, death and thrones and winter all forgotten for a while.

Jingyan turns his head, then, and his face lights with unselfconscious pleasure to find Yuzhuang standing in the doorway.

“Yuzhuang!” he says. “At last. Did he wake up fussing again just as you got him to sleep?”

“Only once,” she tells him, smiling, and comes forward to the empty stool he gestures for her to take. When she glances at Lin Shu, Yuzhuang’s breath catches for a moment; he has looked up to greet her and she finds herself transfixed. She realizes that somewhere along the way, Lin Shu has stopped shuttering his expression when she enters the room – stopped reaching back for the control which makes him so difficult to read, retreating even briefly to that observer’s distance.

Instead, he regards Yuzhuang with his narrow face still gentle, radiant. “I’ve eaten your dinner,” Lin Shu says. “My apologies – I must have worked up an appetite, arguing with your grandfather.”

Yuzhuang reaches for a mostly untouched plate of dumplings and inclines her head in pardon. “There’s plenty left,” she says. “And you’re even with me for Grandfather Liu already; the Marquis of Zhongsu must have told Concubine Zhao he meant to oppose you in court. She was in fine fettle this morning.”

Jingyan makes the faintly bear-like growl he always makes at the mention of Concubine Zhao; Lin Shu’s lip twitches. “Was she,” he says. “Slandering me again, I expect?”

“Only circumstantially,” Yuzhuang says around a mouthful of dumpling. “It’s hardly your fault you can’t bear Jingyan sons. Makes you a waste of time.”

Jingyan snorts with laughter and only the lightning reflexes born of long deception prevent Lin Shu from spitting out soup. “Ah yes,” he says when he’s recovered, “that fault, among my many others. I’ll grant that I could have been less rude to her father, but I trust you defended my name adequately.”

“Consort Fu did, actually,” Yuzhuang informs him. “And then the Empress Dowager came in with Rong-er and mopped up the battlefield.”

“Aunt Jing’s timing is as impeccable as ever,” Lin Shu says. Then he raises an eyebrow in suspicion. “Did Concubine Zhao find out about the betrothal?”

Yuzhuang stops dead with a dumpling halfway to her mouth and sighs. “How did you know?” She demands, waving the dumpling at Lin Shu. “I sometimes wish I had you there during these ordeals, but it’s like you’re there anyway the way you sniff out all of my mistakes. Concubine Cheng’s mistake, in this case, but still.”

“I told you and Nihuang it was too soon to introduce them,” Lin Shu says, with the air of a man whose worst predictions have been confirmed. “I said it would set the whole city talking, and it has. You can’t be seen to arrange your sister’s marriage during national mourning, Yuzhuang, especially not a marriage like this –”

“It wasn’t Yuzhuang’s fault,” Jingyan says, coming to her defense. “And with Liao Tingjie paying such determined court to her, letting Qing-er and Liu Ruoshen come to some understanding was sensible, I thought.”

Lin Shu is undeterred. “You know Concubine Cheng can’t keep her council,” he tells Yuzhuang. “It would have advantaged us a great deal to string Liao Tingjie along for at least another season. Now the Liao will feel outplayed, and Jingyan accused of favoritism all over again.”

Yuzhuang leans her head on her hand, chewing disconsolately. “I know, Lin-ge. I’m sorry, all right, I won’t do it again.”

“Do what, disagree with me?” Lin Shu says, although he looks a little mollified. “Slim chance.”

“Yuzhuang,” Jingyan says, evidently still considering an earlier remark. “You wished you had xiao Shu there?”

Yuzhuang tries not to smile. “Oh,” she says, “It’s just a joke I have with myself. To comfort me in times of stress, or rather, times of Concubine Zhao.”

Jingyan and Lin Shu look at her expectantly. Yuzhuang waves her chopsticks. “Well,” she says, “You can’t deny Lin-ge would be nicely suited to the, um, Noble Consort role. The cutting remarks, the icy beauty – I sometimes handle Inner Palace uproar by invoking his spirit.”

“Icy beauty?” Lin Shu repeats, incredulous, while Jingyan laughs so hard he almost spills the cup of hot water beside his hand as he slaps it on the table. “Want a promotion?” he asks Lin Shu, still grinning. “From Grand Tutor to Noble Consort? I think the salaries are equivalent.”

“A Noble Consort gets slightly less, in point of fact,” Yuzhuang admits. “But if she wins Imperial gifts it evens out.”

Jingyan waggles his eyebrows at Lin Shu, who is managing to convey via body language alone that they have both gone mad and that he will be regretfully obliged to murder them to protect what is left of their reputations. “You’ve surely earned some Imperial gifts,” Jingyan says. “Over the years. That time before you left on the trip with Lin Chen –”

To Yuzhuang’s fascination, Lin Shu actually flushes. “Yuzhuang hardly needs my help managing the Inner Palace,” he says, reaching for dignity and settling on crassness. “Nor do I need any further interference in my efforts to prevent officials from thinking about you fucking me every time they see me.”

Yuzhuang sobers a little, but Jingyan is unperturbed. “It’s not that bad,” he insists. “Especially not after this morning. I thought the Marquis of Zhongsu was going to flee the hall before Grand Secretary Liu stepped in; you’re very frightening, xiao Shu. When you want to be.”

This rather oblique compliment apparently pacifies Lin Shu, who says, “Anyway. Yuzhuang doesn’t need my help to manage the Inner Palace even with Liao Binbin in it.”

“That woman is more trouble to me than half my father’s old generals,” Jingyan mutters. “If he meant his dying wish, he could at least have given me a less ambitious wife.”

A look flashes between Lin Shu and Yuzhuang, solemn and bitter. The last thing Xiao Xuan said to Jingyan – the only thing he said the morning he died – had been D on’t disgrace me. Wordless, Lin Shu nudges a dish of pickles toward Jingyan and nods at him to eat.

Liao Binbin’s comments float back up in Yuzhuang’s mind, and she cannot resist the temptation to lighten the mood by teasing Lin Shu.

“I’ve always been curious,” she says to Jingyan, “If Lin-ge hadn’t… hadn’t stayed in Jinling, would you have found some favorite eventually?”

Jingyan looks up at her in surprise, swallowing his bite of pickled radish. Catching the devilry in Yuzhuang’s expression, he says slowly, “Some likely looking young man, you mean?”

Lin Shu blinks, and then blinks again, a certain dawning horror edging out blank surprise.

“A soldier of noble birth, perhaps,” Yuzhuang muses, sure she is going too far but enjoying herself too much to stop. “Or a scholar as delicate as a peach-blossom… that new secretary of Minister Cai is quite attractive, I hear.”

“Is he,” Jingyan says, frowning. “Ah, yes, the one with the Yunnan accent. His poetry isn’t bad.”

“If you want a half-baked simpering fool who thinks it’s a literary reference to get his sleeves stuck in things and will poison your ears with over-ornamented verses, you can have one, my lord,” Lin Shu says, vengefully shoving a sliver of beef into a small dish of plum sauce. “Who am I to deny my Emperor anything his heart desires.”

“Your Emperor reminds you that there is such a thing as a joke,” Jingyan says, grinning at him. “Oh, xiao Shu, don’t be jealous of a hypothetical.”

Lin Shu’s expression of frosty disdain cannot hold up under such warmth. “I know what a joke is,” he objects. “And I’m not jealous.”

Jingyan shoots Yuzhuang a look which says, best to leave him at least one of his illusions. Yuzhuang chews her dumpling – she has enough siblings to still consider a plate of dumplings no one will try to distribute among themselves a treat worth savoring – and is feeling quite pleased with herself until Lin Shu asks, his eyes across the table keen, “Were you ever jealous? Of me?”

Yuzhuang raises her head. Beside her, Jingyan leans back on his seat, eyebrows raised. “Lin-ge,” she says, “Need you ask?”

He folds his hands in his lap, shrugs. “It’s too late in the evening for subtlety,” he says. “And I’ve always wanted to hear it in your words.”

Yuzhuang’s eyes flicker to Jingyan. But there are no secrets left between them; there has been nothing she will not say to him since that day she returned from the Imperial prison to barrel through nearly every boundary hedging both her courage and her duty and found him still waiting past the edge of them. She watched his father die; she held him through the long nights afterwards when he was tearless and furious with grief. He is king and confidante and lover; the father of her son. The comrade of her service.

She looks back at Lin Shu, her husband’s table and his heart laid out between them, and shakes her head. “No,” she says simply, and when his brows lift in disbelief she adds, “Really, Lin-ge. I was never jealous. But I did fear you.”

Jingyan makes a small sound – surprise? Regret? – Yuzhuang doesn’t know. She is too busy catching the flash of those same emotions on Lin Shu’s face, equal in measure but much harder to reach.

“What did you have to fear from me?” He says after a moment. Like hers, his voice is quiet.

Yuzhuang smiles. “Lin-ge, remember what my mother-in-law told me before I was married? About you, about Jingyan. I feared what might happen because of the Chiyan case. I wanted what you had and feared both the getting and the wanting, all the same. Most of all I – I think I was afraid that I would never have a place. That I would give myself over to my marriage, give everything I had, and that it wouldn’t…” she swallows, shakes memory off. “That it wouldn’t be worth it.”

Jingyan reaches across the table for her hand, and Yuzhuang feels the promise in his fingers.

“But,” Lin Shu says, eyes searching her face, “I was dying. Surely that – surely that prospect simplified things.”

This time the noise Jingyan makes is pained. Yuzhuang, however, merely takes one last bite of dumpling. “Lin-ge,” she tells him, plain, affectionate, “You would be what you are to Jingyan living or dead. Anyone with half a brain could see that; I could see it on my wedding night, and most of my brain was spoken for on that occasion.”

This makes Jingyan grin, and some of his amusement spills onto Lin Shu’s face. But there is doubt there too, faint and lingering. In answer to it, Yuzhuang says briskly, “It’s much easier to share a marriage with a human being than a ghost, Lin-ge. I would make the same trade any day, and gladly.”

They look at one another. After a long moment, Lin Shu nods. His mouth is wry; his eyes as brown and clear as river-water in the candlelight.

“On that note,” he says, “Do you think we ought to…”

“Your dinner is finished,” Yuzhuang points out. “I hope it won’t be an inconvenience...”

“Nihuang knows not to wait up for me. But if you would rather –”

“I would, yes. It’s been a trying day.”

“Then I’ll take my leave,” Lin Shu says, courtly as ever. “My thanks for the hospitality.”

Jingyan has watched this exchange with the look of a man who knows he is being steered and has come to accept that, but would like some insight as to his direction. “Am I invited to these negotiations,” he asks, “Or is the contested territory disqualified?”

Lin Shu shoots him an amused glance. “Oh, you enjoy it,” he says. “With your majesty’s permission, I’m going home to my wife. I’ll see you next week; I promised Yujin and Jingrui a long overdue trip to some hotsprings. It will do the court good to ferment for a few days without my interference.”

“Permission granted,” Jingyan says, looking up at Lin Shu as he passes behind him, right hand trailing over Jingyan’s shoulder in a careless caress. “And don’t call me ‘your majesty’ in private, I’ve told you a thousand times. Shouldn’t my direct orders beat out the taboo?”

“Jingyan,” Lin Shu says over his shoulder, “Get some rest. And don’t fund the Hua militias until I’ve had at least one more argument with the Marquis of Zhongsu.”

He lets the curtain fall shut behind him and is gone.

Jingyan looks across the table at Yuzhuang with a smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. “Aren’t I supposed to make this sort of decision?” He asks her. He has not let go of her hand.

“No,” Yuzhuang tells him, leaning forward onto the table to rest her head against the back of his palm. “You’re supposed to follow the impartial and carefully balanced schedule Gao Zhan and I made as a peace treaty for the Inner Palace. If I hadn’t sent you to Xianzhong yesterday you wouldn’t have gone!”

“That’s because I only like you,” Jingyan says to her bent head, bringing his other hand up to cup her cheek. “And xiao Shu, obviously. Although he is excused from the schedule on account of finding it ridiculous.”

He is teasing, but the words light a curl of joy in Yuzhuang’s belly nonetheless, an animal satisfaction – to be praised, to be chosen. To be sure of the future she has built.

She lifts her head and wrinkles her nose at him. “Liar,” she says. “You like Xianzhong. As well you should, she’s a nice woman who will eventually, I am confident, be able to state an opinion in front of you without losing her appetite. You like Fu Xi too, even though you only visit her to play weiqi. All these years you lived with a master of the game and didn’t know it; what would you have done if she hadn’t beaten me back in the spring?”

Yuzhuang tilts her head, made daring by her husband’s expression. “You’re even starting to like Binbin, just the tiniest bit. She’s charming enough if she wants to be, and you think it’s funny to evade her prying. I know you, Xiao Jingyan! Don’t bother denying it.”

In answer, Jingyan pulls Yuzhuang by the hand until she is half perched on his lap, precarious and laughing. He kisses the side of her head, her temple, the soft skin between her earlobe and the line of her jaw. “Fine,” Jingyan murmurs, “But I like you best.”

Yuzhuang turns, balancing on tiptoe and taking him by the shoulders to bring their faces level. “As you ought,” she says. “I’m your Empress.”

Jingyan leans in to kiss her. “Yes,” he says, reaching up to slide the phoenix pin from her hair, easy and reverent. “Yes you are.”

~*~

The first time Lin Shu knelt here, his knees had ached for hours afterward. He had worn undyed cotton, not his best robes; death had followed close at his heels. The white smoke drifting up from charcoal and dried lemongrass had barely covered up the sharpness of polish, new paint, and beneath it the lingering smell of rot. The house is old, after all, and had been shut a long time.

Now, Lin Shu shifts on the hard wood and finds his bones will humor him a little longer. This is a good day. He has had a surfeit of them, lately. He left the carriage at Su Manor and rode here on his own horse, a gift from Jingyan, high-stepping and the color of ripe wheat. From the distant courtyard he hears the faint sound of Nihuang’s laughter – they have just come from court, trailing friends and well-wishers, and Mu Qing is in his finest form. The smell of spring floods through the open doors.

“It’s strange,” Lin Shu says. His voice is quiet. “Strange to speak to you out loud, still.” He lifts his head. For so long, the dead were in there with him, crowded in among his thoughts, as close as breath. “Strange that I can visit as I please.”

The first time, he had not risen from his third bow at all. He had pressed his forehead against the floor and sobbed until his throat was raw.

“Strangest of all to be here with a request,” he says after a moment, with a certain shamefaced humor. “I thought I was done with asking things of you. That there was nothing left I wanted.”

He looks at the rows of tablets behind their mounded offerings. His eye halts, as it always does, on the tablet set back and a little to the left of his own red-shrouded one. The tablet of deceased Marshal Zhongsuyong of the Lin family; named Xie.

“Father,” Lin Shu says, “Mother. Hear your son’s request. Please protect Mu Nihuang, who I promised to marry at your bidding and kept oath to at long last, through no credit of my own. My wife, your daughter-in-law. She who would have cared for you in your old age and kept your house with high heart. Protect her from sickness, and fear, and everything else against which her sword and her strength are no defense. It’s more than three months, now, and Lin Chen thinks she’ll keep the baby.”

He swallows, then, hands folded careful in his lap. Once more through the doors he catches the lilt of Nihuang’s voice, and Lin Shu wonders how anyone can bear such joy and terror, how any body bends and straightens in the wind of it.

“He thinks I’m a fool,” he says, voice dry. “Lin Chen has no time for… well. For this kind of thing. Households. Families. But he’s never turned me aside when I came to him at need.”

In the silence, Lin Shu can almost hear his father saying, I have a friend, still, in the Old Master of Langya Hall. Hear his mother’s teasing voice, Are you thinking to leave me for the jianghu, Mei Shinan? I’ll never let you go.

“Were you afraid too?” He whispers. “Before I was born? Were you afraid you wouldn’t be able to protect me, did you talk of it together? Mother, father, I – I didn’t know how safe you made the world for me, before now. How you must have hoped the promise would hold true. He has his own dead to pray to, but please protect Jingyan, and his family, and his people. Our people. Let him rule long, and well, and next time let us be born in a place where we never need by parted.”

Lin Shu thinks of Xiao Jingrui, then, pure-hearted. Xie Yu and Xia Jiang and Yan Que, all the men whose children he has used as levers to crack them open, all the children who could not save their parents, or change them, or even understand how they went wrong. He thinks of his uncle, who he turned his back on at the door of Yangju Hall and never saw again, will never now see living. Then Lin Shu tries to tally how many people have loved him through every cruel or selfish choice, how far his grace extends, and finds them far past count.

“I dreamt of a boy, last night,” he says, filling his nose with sweet smoke and clean air, fussing despite himself at the cuff of his sleeve. “With your eyes, mother, and Nihuang’s chin. He ran towards me with his arms outstretched, and when I woke up I wanted – I wanted more than I have ever wanted anything to be sure that we… would have time to know each other. That I could tell him what I’ve done without omission or excuse and hear what he made of it. Of me.”

Lin Shu looks up at the gold letters on black wood, the dead restored to him. If there is bitterness in his smile, then, there is sweetness also. “One more request, father,” he says. “If I may. For my son to have what we could not.”

He takes a breath. “I took vengeance for you because it was what I had in me to do,” Lin Shu whispers. “Vengeance and justice together. I was glad to bear the cost of that; I thought – I thought you would have wanted me to bear it. For the Chiyan army. But at Meiling… you asked me to live on. It was the only thing you asked me.”

Lin Shu leans back on his knees, his spine straight. The spring wind comes in to ruffle his hair, to stir the red silk shroud that Jingyan need not remove for many years, that Nihuang need not weep for yet. All at once his heart is light.

“So I’ll do as you asked,” he says. “Live. As best I can.”