NOVEL NEXT Chapter 321: Thread And Trap
Zhao Hengyuan was waiting in the yellow antechamber when I turned the corner.
Zhao Meiling was two steps behind him with her lashes lowered like a veil she hoped would pass for virtue.
He didn't bother with courtiers; he'd come quick, thinking speed could disguise greed. I set my hand to the hinge post and did not invite them to sit.
If a man has come to ambush you with his daughter, let him hold the weight of his own posture.
"Empress," he began, his forehead nearly touching the floor. It was a new look for him. Surprisingly, it was a good look for him. "A private word, for family harmony."
"Family harmony doesn't come as a petition," I returned. "But you may speak before witnesses."
Yaozu slid off the pillar and into the room as if the wall had grown him.
A clerk brought ink and did not lift his eyes.
I kept the doors open. Secrets grow teeth in closed rooms. Zhao Hengyuan stayed bent long enough to count out his piety. Meiling folded where he folded, graceful, careful, every angle practiced.
She had been trained for this since we were children, and for a moment I saw her as she wished to be seen—gentle, obedient, a second phoenix offering feathers to soften a throne.
Then she lifted her face and let ambition look through her pupils.
That was the truer mirror. "Your younger sister knows her place," Zhao Hengyuan ventured, still kneeling. "She offers it. The empire requires sons of certain blood. The Left Prime Minister offers what is already yours."
"What is mine," I corrected, "does not arrive wearing your seal."
Meiling lowered her head with a tremor placed where a poem would put it.
"Elder Sister," she pitched softly, dragging the words across years or relationship that neither one of us remembered. "I can ease your burdens. The court will settle if the line is secured. Let me serve where you cannot be at all hours. Let me give Daiyu a prince to guard the work you've built."
"You mean to guard your father's reach," I murmured. "Stand."
They rose because they had to. Meiling kept her eyes docile, but her mouth couldn't help wanting a stage.
"I don't seek glory," she insisted. "I seek continuity. If the Emperor's line is sealed by—"
"—your womb," I finished. "A familiar argument. Tell me something unfamiliar."
Zhao Hengyuan's jaw flexed. He knew better than to argue with tone; he tried argument by ritual.
"The annals list consorts who saved dynasties by providing sons when Heaven withheld favor from the primary wife."
"Heaven has not withheld anything," I answered. "It delivered a child into my arms and into these halls. You may prefer a different story, but you do not get to choose mine."
Meiling's lashes dropped, then fluttered. "I don't challenge the boy's place," she hurried. "I only ask to strengthen yours. Men will always question what they do not sire."
"Men may," I allowed. "The law will not. Mingyu will not."
I inclined my head toward the clerk's brush. "Record that line, then copy it to Censor before dusk."
Zhao Hengyu shot the smallest look at the door, calculating who else might be listening.
Yaozu let the look die against his sleeve.
"Empress," Zhao Hengyuan pushed, "I am not your enemy."
"You want to place your favored daughter inside my bed and a hand on the cradle," I replied. "That places you everywhere I cannot allow you to be. I won't fight a war in my own rooms."
Meiling tried a different gate. "Then test me. Give me a duty that proves I can obey."
"Good," I breathed. "A more honest sentence."
I stepped past them and laid two fingers on the map cabinet, not opening it, only reminding us all that rooms like this carry weight because I carried it myself. "Here is the test. Three vows. Now. First—name the highest law in these halls."
Her throat worked once. "The safety of the Emperor."
"Correct. Second—name the second."
"The safety of the heir," she whispered, pausing a heartbeat too long on the title.
"Correct," I repeated, letting the pause register. "Third—name the only person you obey inside these rooms."
Her eyes flicked without permission toward Zhao Hengyuan.
It was a small thing.
A fatal thing.
"You," she forced, but it was too late.
The clerk's brush made a small scratch when it landed on paper. Yaozu didn't smile; he was kinder than his reputation.
I let the air hold. "Service begins where reflex ends," I told her. "I asked for your muscle memory; it answered me with your father's name. That is the entire problem, measured in one glance."
Zhao Hengyuan's voice sharpened. "She is young. Habit can be trained."
"So can treason," I returned. "And habit is how treason eats."
Footsteps approached; Mingyu took the left arch without ceremony and came to rest within arm's reach. He did not interrupt. He didn't have to.
The room steadied around his presence the way a tent steadies when you drop a center pole.
Zhao Hengyuan recalibrated in the time it took to inhale. "Majesty, the petition was clumsy," he offered, reaching for humility like a man groping for a wall in smoke. "I meant only to offer what our house can provide."
"Your house can provide obedience," Mingyu replied, voice even as stone. "Demonstrate it." He didn't move closer; that was the only softness he afforded.
Deming's shadow cut the threshold a beat later, then Longzi's.
They held outside the line, where guards hold.
Yizhen's lazy attention arrived last, folding itself into the lattice as if the wood had always meant to be leaned on.
I kept my gaze on the two who mattered. "Here is the bridge you wanted, Minister Zhao," I went on. "Walk it carefully. Meiling will not enter the harem. She will not enter the inner court. She will not breathe within three doorways of either bed. If you send her there, even in imagination, you will pay in coin first and blood after."
The clerk's wrist trembled and then found its rhythm again. "Where she breathes starts in the outer weaving hall," I continued. "Three months. She will oversee winter cloth for the ward households—measure, distribute, report. No favors. No reforms. The work itself will teach her whether she prefers thread to fantasy."