NOVEL NEXT Chapter 309: The Dowager Huai
The Dowager Huai was already seated when I entered, a small mountain of brocade with pearls stitched into it as if weight of them could be substituted for authority.
Two ladies hovered behind her, their eyes bright with the particular hunger that lives in courtyards where gossip is food. A clerk waited at a side table, ink stone wet, brush lifted, ready to record exactly how foolish the next moments would be.
She dipped, shallow. "Empress. I bring grievance."
"You bring habit," I returned, lowering myself to the bench opposite. "Grievance requires injury. Habit is when a mother thinks strings tied in a back room outweigh the Emperor's orders."
Her lips went thin. The ladies stiffened. The clerk looked at the floor like a man who suddenly remembered a prayer.
She pushed a lacquered tube across the table with two fingers. "A petition, properly drawn. You will find the terms reasonable."
"I won't find them at all," I replied, not touching it. "I don't read mothers' demands regarding grown men. If your daughter wishes to petition for her own life, she can use her own mouth."
Color climbed under her powder. "My daughter is a maiden, Empress. Proper women do not bark at power."
"Then teach her to choose targets she can chew," I returned. "You came here to demand three things. I will answer them now so you can take your pearls home before they bruise your skin."
She straightened. "Three things?"
"You want Sun Longzi returned to the frontier. You want his appointment rescinded. You want your daughter's noise made into law." I lifted a hand before she could pour syrup over any of it. "Hear this once: he is a grown man. He made a choice. You can dislike the consequence; you do not get to unwind it."
Her jaw flexed. "His choice was made under… influence."
"Light," I offered. "Order. Purpose. Choose whichever influence fits in your mouth without choking. If you mean 'me,' use my title. I don't answer to shadows."
She swallowed that name like a fish bone. "You have reduced a general to a hallway."
"I placed a blade where it cuts best," I corrected. "Daiyu does not run on your family's calendar. It runs on mine. He stands at the Emperor's back because that is where the weakest door was. It won't be weak for long."
She tried a different angle. "His honor—"
"Is not a bowl you sign your name on," I cut. "It's the work he does today. As for your daughter's honor—if she believes clinging to a man who has told her 'no' is virtuous, she needs better guidance. There are many men in this city. If she wants one, point her toward one who wishes to be caught. This palace is not a matchmaking hall. This empire is not your dowry chest."
The pearl mountain trembled. Anger moved under it like heat under a lid. "Our families have held alliance for three generations."
"Then your house knows how to survive a decision," I returned. "Do it again. You want books? Fine. Treasury will calculate the return of gifts and the dissolution fee. Revenue will deliver a receipt to your gate. The record will reflect mutual convenience, not public disgrace. This is me handing you a bridge over a river you chose to step into."
Her eyes shone—not with tears; with calculation. "And if I refuse the bridge?"
"Then you fall into the water," I answered. "And when you stand up soaked and shivering, you will find Censor waiting with a towel that reads 'Interference in Imperial appointments.' Choose your cloth."
One of her ladies flinched. The other looked like she might be sick on the hem of her mistress's robe. The clerk's brush hadn't moved. He was holding his breath.
She tried dignity again, but it wobbled. "You dismiss the labor of mothers as if it were nothing. Do you not know what a woman pays to raise a child to a name? To have him promised, to stitch a future—"
"I know exactly what a woman pays," I replied, even. "I pay it every time I wake and count my son's breaths before I count the ministers on my docket. I know what it costs to keep a child alive when men mistake him for a pawn. Don't come into my halls and pretend your daughter's preference outweighs a city that breathes because I do the math. If she wants a husband, I will find her one who meets her with a 'yes.' But she will not order around the people in the court and expect to have everything go in her favor."
A beat. Then another. She pulled air through her teeth and went for insult because it's easier than courage. "You bewitched him."
"If I needed spells to move men, Daiyu would already be ash," I replied. "I moved him with work. He offered himself to it. That is the beginning and the end of your mystery."
"His father—" she began.
"Is not here," I returned, letting the sentence land like a palm on a table. "Curious, isn't it? For all the noise you make on behalf of a grown man, not even his parents are knocking. Do you know what that tells me? That they understand the difference between household and empire. Learn from your betters."
The pearl mountain cracked. She leaned forward, forgetting to be lovely. "He will regret this."
"Then he will regret it as Captain of the Emperor's Guard," I answered. "A respectable post in any history book. Your daughter won't be mocked for losing a husband. She will be mocked for hanging from a wrist that shook her off. Take her hand back before it's bitten."
The petition tube still sat between us. She tapped it once, the sound small and foolish. "You refuse to read a lawful submission."
"I refuse to pretend this is lawful," I returned. "There is no law that requires a man to marry where his potential mother-in-law makes faces. There is law that punishes interference with imperial assignment. Let's keep our vocabulary clean."
Her mouth trembled again. She tried sympathy. It looked wrong on her face. "She loves him."
"She loves an idea," I answered. "He walked out of it. End the chapter. Start a new one with a different name and fewer tears."
Footsteps reached the threshold; Mingyu entered without ceremony and took the chair a pace behind my right shoulder. He didn't need to be here. He knew it. The gesture was the point. He let the court see where he put his weight.
Dowager Huai pivoted like a woman who'd just spotted a softer wall. "Your Majesty," she ventured, voice gentling itself into something she hoped would remind him of nurses and night lamps. "You are known for lenience. For grace. For the mercy of moderation. You understand propriety—"
"I understand results," he returned, smooth as folded steel. "My wife handles this. If you wish to know where I stand, count the number of steps I took to sit where I am sitting."
She opened and closed her mouth. "The rumor—people will think—"
"They already think," he replied. "They will continue to think. While they busy themselves, gates will be guarded, roads measured, numbers counted, and the heir will learn to sleep without jumping at shadows. That is the work. I prefer it to perfume on paper."
Her spine lost an inch. She glared at me because she did not dare glare at him. "You are making an enemy of my house."
"No," I returned. "I am giving your house a choice. Walk out with dignity and your doors stay open to petition on matters that concern the realm. Stay and scream, and the only door you'll be welcome to is the one that leads to silence. Choose."
She stalked toward defiance, thought better, swung toward pleading, and smacked into pride on the way. The result was a tremor. "If we accept dissolution," she tested, wary now, "you will not shame her name in proclamation?"
"I won't waste ink on it," I answered. "The court has more important words to read. Treasury will handle numbers. Rites will file a line: 'betrothal closed by mutual convenience.' Your daughter will be free to look at the world again instead of staring at a man who has turned his back. If she wants a soldier, I have a list of officers with clean hands and fewer complications. If she wants a poet, I can find two who bathe."
One of the ladies made an involuntary sound that wanted to be a laugh and died under a look from her mistress.
The Dowager's hands clenched on her muff. "And if my daughter refuses?"
"Then you will keep her in your own halls for a season," I returned. "Let grief do its work where it can't annoy the rest of us. Send her to a temple to count bells if you must. But don't send her here to count my patience."