NOVEL NEXT Chapter 322: You Are Not My Enemy
Zhao Meiling went very still.
Not with outrage so much as surprise pinked under her powder.
She had expected a crown or a cage, not a loom. "You place a noble daughter among washerwomen," Zhao Hengyuan objected, his voice fraying.
"I place a woman where she can do something useful," I corrected. "If she cannot manage that, she cannot manage a palace."
"And if she succeeds?" he tried, quick.
"Success would suggest the girl obeys without bringing your voice into my rooms," I said. "If she manages that miracle, I will lend her a different duty nowhere near the beds you hunger for."
He flinched because the words hit home.
Mingyu's attention didn't soften. "You wanted an heir you could own. We have recorded that want," he observed. "If it returns in any other outfit, we will record the outfit and the mouth that chose it."
He didn't have to use the word evidence… Zhao Hengyuan heard it anyway.
Meiling recovered faster than he did. Ambition made quick work of disappointment when it was trained for the long game.
And considering that she had been trained for birth to be Mingyu's primary wife and Empress, she had definitely been trained well.
She lowered her chin. "I will do the work, Elder Sister," she said, her voice still in that Disney princess tenor. I didn't know if it worked on other, but it was like nails on a chalk board for me. "I will bring reports that even your enemies cannot fault."
"We don't keep enemies in the weaving hall," I replied, rolling my eyes. "We keep numbers. Bring those instead."
She nodded once, her head going from lower to lower. The gesture was a seam you could tug later, but if she was hoping to tie that string around Mingyu's heart, she was barking up the wrong tree.
"As for you," I turned to Zhao Hengyuan, "a season of winter discipline. For thirty days you will bring no petitions to this court that touch family, harem, or heir. Your quills will practice silence. In the same thirty days you will present your office ledgers to Revenue and to Censor. We will see where coin has been walking while your mouth has been running."
His eyes flashed. "You imply—"
"I command," I cut, lazy, because lazy sometimes cuts deeper.
Yaozu scratched his ear like a bored cat. I knew what he'd already seen in Minister Zhao's markets—new shoes on old feet, extra meat in the mouths of men who shouldn't afford it. I didn't need to accuse; I needed only to measure.
"If these tasks are beneath your dignity," I added, "you may resign."
He choked that down with effort that showed at the hinge of his jaw. Meiling's hand crept toward his sleeve; she remembered herself and let the fingers curl into her own palm.
"Do you understand your lanes," I finished.
He bowed because anything else would have split his face. "I understand."
"Then walk them," I returned. "Bring proof."
Yaozu unhooked from the wall and gestured toward the outer corridor, courteous as a blade in a silk wrap. Zhao Hengyuan took the hint and Zhao Meiling followed with her eyes where her father's temper might trip.
At the threshold she paused for a moment before turning back to look at me. "Does the Empress truly think me her enemy," she tried, her voice sweet as syrup.
"No," I told her. "If I thought that you were my enemy, I would have killed you long before now. After all, everyone knows that I don't let my enemies live for very long. Instead, I think you're a woman who enjoys mirrors. I'm offering you a window, and potentially the ability to live a bit longer. Learn the difference."
With those parting words, she followed after her father. The room changed shape without their noise in it.
Mingyu leaned two fingers on the table and looked at the petition I hadn't let him read aloud in court. "That's three steps you gave them," he observed.
"It's also three places to fall," I answered.
Deming moved in enough to claim air, not authority. "Do you want men on the weaving hall," he asked.
"Women," I corrected. "Aunt Ping first. If Meiling breathes wrong, Aunt Ping will swat her with a broom before she remembers her name."
"Done," Deming grunted, a pleased sound disguised as disapproval. "But we might have to put someone else on Lady Huai."
Longzi's attention had been on the corridor; he angled back toward us. "The Left Prime Minister will try a different door," he warned. "A cousin's voice. Another minister's pen."
"Then we nail those doors shut," I returned. "Put the word in the Guard posts: any grievance that includes the words harem and Zhao goes to the brazier."
Yizhen clicked his tongue. "He won't shove," he murmured. "He'll smear. Quiet stories about legacy and proper lines. A lantern at the wrong corner. A priest who discovers a doctrine that looks like his wish."
"Then buy the priest a new broom and send him to Aunt Ping," I said.
Yaozu reappeared at the arch as if we'd conjured him. "Walked to the gate," he reported. "Three men joined at the third turn who think they've learned to walk without footprints."
"Names," I requested.
"On your desk before tea," he promised.
A runner arrived on his heels, cheeks raw from cold, hands cupping a wrapped ledger like an egg that bit. "From Revenue," he panted. "Hidden pages found under a false bottom in a clerk's box—left side of Minister Zhao's office."
I didn't look at Mingyu. I didn't need to.
"Bring it," I ordered, and when the cloth came away the ink glinted like something that had always meant to stain.
"Open to the last entry," I continued, and the clerk's fingers shook as the spine cracked, and the numbers unrolled with the lazy confidence of men who believed no one would ever weigh them.
Yaozu's mouth did that half-inch move that counts as a smile in a man who likes his it when everything adds up to blood being spilled, and I lifted a nail and tapped the page once where a name lived that should not have lived there.