NOVEL NEXT Chapter 304: No Proclamations, Only Placements
I waited until she cleared the arch. Only then did I turn to Longzi.
"You let her cling too long," I observed.
"I was taught not to rip apart a woman who was mourning," he returned, meeting my gaze without heat.
"You were taught for scholars' halls, not my garden," I replied. "Next time, cut your shadow yourself. If you can't, you don't get to stand close to Mingyu."
A muscle jumped in his cheek. He dipped his head the width of a blade. Agreement, not apology.
A breath at my shoulder; Mingyu had closed the distance without touching my attention. "Do you ever tire of being correct?" he murmured, low enough for the cypress to keep the secret.
"Every hour," I told him. "But being wrong takes longer."
The ministers began to disperse in that careful way men use when they want to watch from farther away. One peeled off, emboldened by having survived proximity. "Your Majesty," he ventured, faux-mildness pooling around his ankles, "word will spread that you turned a soldier's sister into a laundress."
"Good," I replied. "Maybe the other soldiers who think a sleeve is a place to live will learn that my corridors are for feet, not hands."
He bowed until he found a spine and retreated.
Deming stepped forward at last. He kept his voice for me. "You want a name on her, I'll find it. Parents, village, temple of record. If there's one man whispering in her ear, I'll pull the whisper out by the root."
"Do it," I approved. "Do it quietly. If she has nothing but grief, leave her with her broom."
His eyes softened around the corners, some unreadable emotion solving itself and then hiding. "Understood."
Yizhen unfolded from a bench he had stolen without permission, silk tied with a knot that wasn't his. He let his gaze follow the direction Xiaoyun had gone and then slid it back to me, mouth curved in something that wouldn't admit to being a smile.
"Hospice," he mused. "You always choose the work that teaches hands how small they are."
"It builds better people than jewelry," I returned.
"Jewelry teaches a different lesson," he countered. "It teaches men where to look."
"Men already look where they want," I reminded him. "I prefer they look where I point."
Longzi stood through it, absorbing the currents without trying to swim in them. He had learned something in the last hour that didn't need to be spoken: proximity to me required speed of thought and a willingness to let me swing the blade.
A runner approached, breath controlled, knees clean—one of Deming's. "Report from the temple workshops," he offered. "Bell ropes replaced in the lower wards. Old cords seized. Two monks complained. A laundress hit one with a broom."
"Promote the laundress," I replied. "Tell the monks they can complain to the broom."
Yaozu's mouth almost smiled. "I'll take her tea later," he noted, already slotting the woman into the city's invisible engine.
Mingyu's attention tracked the diminishing cluster of ministers, weighing which ones would try to sell opinions over supper. "There will be questions about reassignment protocols for soldiers' families," he predicted.
"There will be answers," I returned. "They will all be 'work'."
Longzi cleared his throat once—permission to enter a conversation he had been wise enough to let happen over his head. "Hospice will break her or make her useful," he observed. "Either outcome removes the problem from the corridors."
"Correct," I acknowledged. "Also: if you pity every shadow that wants to be your echo, you will drown. Learn the difference between grief and gravity."
"I know it," he responded, too simply to be flattery.
"Then demonstrate it without using my time."
"I intend to," he replied.
Deming and Longzi looked at each other across me—not over, not past, across—two kinds of steel measuring the other's temper. Deming's regard held the discipline of drills; Longzi's held the geometry of gates. Useful metals. I had no interest in watching them clang for entertainment.
"Drills resume at dawn," I told them both. "Hand signs replace call-and-answer in the inner court. I do not want to hear loyalty; I want to see it."
Deming inclined his head, already calculating the bruises. "They'll learn."
"The Emperor's noon circuit," I reminded Longzi, not because he had forgotten but because repetition fastens. "Forward and backward. Corners that hold bodies. Thresholds that hide blades. Two routes I would choose. One I would burn."
"I'll bring them," he confirmed.
"Bring them earlier than you think I want them," I added. "Then we'll both know what you're worth."
The garden exhaled in small motions—servants resuming tasks, a rake scratching across gravel, the tea on the stone bench cooling to a temperature I'd drink anyway. I lifted the cup, sipped, and let the bitter quiet my mouth.
Mingyu touched the bamboo slip I had left there, the gesture domestic enough to make a few watching courtiers blink as if they'd stumbled into a kitchen instead of a court. "We were headed for food," he reminded me, voice easy on purpose. "And then to look in on a boy who finally slept without fighting the bed."
"We still are," I confirmed.
Yaozu peeled away toward the west cloister, already moving three conversations that hadn't started yet to ends I preferred. Deming turned on his heel, barking a name I didn't need to know to set drills in motion. Longzi paused, awaiting dismissal like a man who understood the difference between attention and permission.
I gave him neither. "Walk the outer wall first," I ordered, tilting my chin toward the distant stone. "Feel where it keeps its own secrets."
He pivoted without comment and took the path that would teach him what the palace would and would not hold.
A last junior minister drifted up, courage inflated by the garden's return to chores. "Your Majesty," he ventured, pale concern lacquered into his tone, "this business with that girl—Xiaoyun—will be misunderstood by the public. Perhaps a proclamation, something gentle—"
"No proclamations," I cut him off. "Only placements. If the public wants a story, let it be this: the Empress sends grief to work."
"That may be… difficult to phrase—" he tried.
"You can practice," I returned, handing him the cold cup and standing. "Begin by carrying this to the kitchens and telling them I want honeyed ginger for the hospice by nightfall."
He sputtered, then remembered who he was talking to and managed a bow that didn't fall apart. "At once."
I didn't watch him scuttle. I didn't need to. I had already started toward the arch where the light changed, Mingyu a half-step behind, Yizhen uncoiling from his lazy perch to match me with the sort of ease that fools called arrogance and I called fluency.
Behind us, the garden returned to itself. Before us, the corridor toward the east wing kept the warmth I demanded for a child who needed it.
Between those two points, a palace learned—again—that my mercy wore work clothes and my punishments carried brooms, and somewhere down the hall a bell on a wrong rope tried to ring and found it couldn't because brass hooks held it fast.