NOVEL NEXT Chapter 287: Far From Finished
The letters weren't a surprise to Mingyu, he had already seen a lot of this coming.
North watch: all lanterns according to yesterday's code; no bells rung; river path quiet; one gate captain requests leave for a mother's illness; denied for lack of witness.
The kitchens: honey stores down, candied ginger requisitioned, east corridor brazier oil doubled, a boy in blue dropped a basin and did not spill; the head cook wishes to commend him for running like he meant it.
"The leave request?" Mingyu asked without looking up.
"Captain Hua of the south watch, Majesty," the eunuch said. His mouth did not move much when he spoke; the words seemed to step out without touching his lips. "He sent it before midnight and asked that it be granted without question."
Mingyu's jaw shifted a fraction.
The south watch. The gate that had looked away when a coffin passed?
He didn't have the proof yet. He could feel the shape of it, though, the way a man can feel a river through the soles of his feet even when the bridge is high.
"Send a scribe," he said. "A polite denial. And a request that Captain Hua present himself at third bell for routine inspection. Routine," he repeated, and watched the word sit on the table like a small blade.
"Yes, Majesty."
Mingyu dipped his brush and added a line to the orders. He did not write HUA. He wrote: inspection lists to be prepared for all watch captains; changes to be implemented at third bell; cause to be recorded as winter discipline.
The eunuch lingered just a breath too long. Mingyu looked up. "Yes?"
"The ladies of the inner court wish to know if offerings will be made at dawn for the heir's safe return," he said. "They have already begun arguing about who should stand closest to the altar. I thought it best to ask before anyone's virtues caught fire."
Mingyu closed his eyes briefly. He did not sigh; he simply let the thought pass like smoke. "No altar," he said. "No offerings. Tell them the Emperor prefers results to incense. If someone must stand somewhere, they can stand in their kitchens and boil water."
The eunuch's eyes brightened with the sort of amusement that old servants keep hidden like coins in hems. "Yes, Majesty."
He left as he had come, parting the air as little as possible. The door slid shut. Mingyu stared at the line of dark where wood met wood and thought of all the little lines that hold a thing closed.
He rose.
The floor was cold through the cloth of his socks. He walked to the map cabinet and slid a drawer out with two fingers.
The northern prefectures lay in careful ink. Roads like veins. Bridges like pinholes in skin. He traced them without touching, the way a man doesn't touch a wound until he knows what he will do when his fingers find it.
Baiguang would think silence made them clever.
Silence was also a kind of noise; he had learned that from Xinying.
A quiet field can be the loudest thing on a map, if you know how to listen. He listened now to the spaces between watch posts, to the places where informants had gone still, to the gaps between letters that should have arrived and hadn't.
He could feel the north pulling breath into its chest to see if Daiyu would forget to breathe in return.
He shut the drawer and returned to the table. He wrote again.
— Send two of the temple runners west with decoy letters; let them be taken; let the wrong men think they are right.
— Increase the stipend to the river ferrymen; people who row in winter learn more truths than ministers in summer.
— Quietly purchase all bell rope within the city and replace with new cords cut by our own hands. Bells should ring when we say so, not when someone else's prayer demands it.
He paused, brush hovering.
He was tired. The kind of tired that sat in bone rather than in muscle.
Someone had tried to take his son. Someone had tried to take away a son that his wife cared for… that she loved.
He felt the ash of that thought still on his tongue.
The lamp guttered. He reached and turned the wick up a breath. Oil made its small, grateful whisper. He filled the cup and did not drink. He looked toward the east wing though he could not see it.
He could see instead the outline of Xinying's shoulder as she leaned over the child, the way her hair had slipped its pins because there had been no pins, the way she had told the world what to do without ever raising her voice.
"Guest," he said to the empty room, testing the taste of the word again. It would do for now. Later, they would find a different word. Or nothing at all.
Footsteps paused outside the door. Not the eunuch. Not a minister. Yaozu's steps sounded like a decision made before it reached you. Mingyu set his brush down and let his hand fall flat against the table, smoothing the fibers as if he could smooth the night.
"Enter," he said.
Yaozu slid the door aside and came in sideways, a habit from a life spent making himself narrower than knives. He smelled faintly of frost and storehouse straw. His hair had come half free of its tie.
He closed the door with the same care he had opened it and did not bow so much as he lowered his chin out of respect for the hours they were both keeping.
He did not speak. That was why Mingyu trusted him. Men who like to hear themselves talk love to bring their own echoes with them.
Mingyu met his eyes and felt the night settle into the space between them like a third presence, patient, watchful, waiting to see which direction it would be told to move.
"Tell me," Mingyu said.
Yaozu's mouth tilted—just the smallest degree—as if he had been hoping for a different opening line and had gotten the one he preferred anyway. He stepped forward, hands empty, carrying the weight of names without paper.
The lamp flame leaned in their direction and held.
The night was far from finished.