Under cover of night, Zhao Bing paced through the imperial garden, his face caught somewhere between delight and dread.
He had just come from seeing Qianfan. His lover, who in all these years had never once refused him anything, had balked at the matter of bearing a child.
Still, Qianfan had not refused outright. He had only asked for a few days to think it over.
Zhao Bing could understand that much. And he believed that in the end Qianfan would yield to him, and put out new branches on the old Zhao family tree.
What truly weighed on the Emperor was the storm of denunciation certain to break from every civil and military officer at court, and the question of how to stop the mouths of all the world besides. He could already picture the censors dashing their brains out against the pillars of the Golden Throne Hall.
"I truly wonder what the heavens look like… my heart yearns toward them."
Zhao Bing tilted his head back. The bright moon lay reflected in his eyes, then spread and softened there, becoming a free and peaceful immortal realm.
In that immortal realm, he and Qianfan would never again have to hide their heads and cover their tracks. He could walk hand in hand with his pregnant lover through a bustling crowd and accept the Blessings of the people.
He stood still a moment longer, then went on toward the inner palace, his footsteps echoing through the hushed garden.
There had been a time when this garden was a lively place.
In those days the Empress Dowager still lived, forever arranging the selection of new consorts. Whenever Zhao Bing set foot in the garden it was all warbling orioles and darting swallows: consorts plucking zithers, consorts chanting poems, each of them racking her wits to display her charms, each hoping to engineer a chance encounter. It gave him nothing but headaches, so he took to avoiding the place, or looking straight through them.
Then, two years ago, the Empress Dowager died. The old faces lost heart, no new ones arrived, and the garden gradually emptied out. With all those flowers no longer competing to bloom, Zhao Bing felt relief — and, beneath it, a thin thread of loss.
Past wall after palace wall, he soon arrived at Funing Palace, where the Empress lived.
The maidservant at the door started, then dropped straight to her knees.
"This servant greets Your Majesty."
"Tell the Empress I've come," Zhao Bing said, waving a hand.
"Yes."
The maid hurried off to inform her mistress, her pulse fluttering with alarm.
His Majesty had sent no word ahead of this visit. And Consort Xiang and Consort Hui were still in Her Ladyship's bedchamber…
Her worry was not misplaced. She had barely stepped into the courtyard when the muffled sound of voices reached her from inside.
"Consort Xiang. Consort Hui. How many times must I summon you two? What the pair of you do behind a closed door is your own affair — I can overlook that much. But you show no restraint at all. You drag the other sisters into it, you gather up a dozen palace maids and hold your little assemblies… Do you hold me in such contempt?"
Her Ladyship's voice was colder than usual, and stern with it.
"Oh, Your Highness. A face and figure like the moon and flowers, and you must keep widow's watch for that useless sovereign of ours. It breaks this little sister's heart to see it… Life is short. Why not be happy together?"
That was Consort Xiang's voice, sweet and syrupy.
With the Emperor waiting just outside the gate, the maid's skin crawled — though threaded through the panic was a shiver of excitement.
If he learned that Consort Xiang had been relentlessly courting the Empress, what then?
Besides, she herself had accepted Consort Xiang's invitations more than once behind Her Ladyship's back… and it had been no ordinary sort of happiness.
The maid caught up her skirts in one hand, quickened her pace, pushed open the door and stepped into the hall — and there was Consort Xiang, that alluring princess from foreign parts, one snow-white shoulder half bared, her eyes soft as silk.
She had seized the Empress's hand, and the several bracelets on her pale arm clinked and chimed against one another.
Su Wen wore a jade-colored sleeping robe, her black hair loose over her shoulders, the line of her white throat lovelier than a swan's. Without her court finery she had less of that stately, imposing dignity, but she had gained instead a quiet, otherworldly serenity.
There was a faint anger between her brows, and she pulled her hand free of Consort Xiang's grasp.
"Consort Xiang, you go too far. I am the Empress of this realm. I will never commit such an offense against propriety with another woman."
The refusal was flat and final. The maid, her improper hopes dashed, felt a pang of disappointment — but she recovered quickly and called out softly.
"Mistress, His Majesty has come to visit. He is outside the door."
"Tch."
Consort Xiang's lip curled with open irritation. "How is he still not dead—"
"Guard your tongue."
Su Wen frowned, gently lifted the white cat sleeping in her lap, and drew a robe over her shoulders. Only once she had recomposed herself — poised, dignified, correct in every line — did she tell the maid to show him in.
"This concubine is unwell. We take our leave."
Zhao Bing had scarcely entered the hall before Consort Xiang and Consort Hui excused themselves.
"No matter. Go."
The words were barely out before Consort Xiang was gone without a backward glance, her arm hooked through Consort Hui's. As she glided away, the bells at her snow-white ankles rang light and coaxing.
"Her sister is, after all, the daughter of the Sacred Tree Tribe's chieftain. She lacks some polish. I hope Your Majesty will not take offense."
Su Wen sighed quietly and put in a word for her.
"The fault isn't theirs. It's mine," Zhao Bing said, shaking his head.
Because of him the entire inner palace had become one great cold, lifeless place. These consorts had been widowed while their husbands lived, and none of them would ever be released from it. That they harbored resentment was only natural.
And of them all, the one who weighed heaviest on his conscience was the Empress — a gay man's wife who had never once complained, and who kept the inner palace in flawless order besides.
Hearing him, Su Wen lowered her lashes and stroked the white cat, something complicated in her gaze.
Zhao Bing was a good man. To this day he remained grateful to Chancellor Liu; he carried guilt toward his consorts; he was unswervingly faithful to the one he loved.
But a man like that could never be a good emperor. The Son of Heaven, the solitary one, might know his errors and might correct them — but the one thing he could never do was admit them.
"Has the Empress heard the rumors about the immortal maiden?" Zhao Bing asked suddenly, seating himself across from her.
"I have heard something of it."
Su Wen nodded. Since Nie Yunyi's return he had called on a good many people, and the Song Emperor had personally discussed the matter with his ministers. To anyone with sharp ears, it was hardly a secret.
"And does the Empress believe it?"
Zhao Bing waited for her answer with obvious interest.
"Most likely she is simply a capable person with a few tricks at her disposal." Su Wen shook her head slightly. "If there truly were immortals above, how could they sit and watch demons overrun the mortal world, and let our rivers and mountains be laid waste?"
"Have they not now sent an immortal envoy down to us?" Zhao Bing said, neither agreeing nor arguing. "I have met this immortal maiden myself. Whether or not she truly comes from the immortal realm, there is genuine wonder in what she does… I intend to ask her to look at your headaches."
"I thank Your Majesty."
Su Wen inclined her head, untouched by any ripple of feeling.
She had seen too many adepts, too many famed physicians, and more than a few frauds bold enough to try their luck on an empress. Her condition had never improved.
After hope had risen and collapsed enough times, she had at last despaired of it, and stopped expecting anything at all.
Pain endured long enough simply becomes habit.
More than that: as she felt the illness worsening, an understanding had settled in her — she knew her death was not far off. And yet she felt no terror at its steady approach. What she felt was closer to anticipation, a hope of release, of escape from the cage.
Were it not for Zhao Bing's evident sincerity, which she had no wish to rebuff, she would not have gone to see this so-called immortal woman at all.
The business concluded in a few short exchanges, and silence settled over the chamber again. They looked at one another with nothing to say.
Through all of it the white cat slept on in her lap, as still as her own heart — an old well no wind could stir.
At last Zhao Bing sighed, rose, and left. Before long he was in the imperial study.
"I told you to find two women afflicted with strange illnesses. Have you found them?" he asked without turning toward the eunuch behind him.
"Reporting to Your Majesty." The eunuch bowed with cupped hands. "A group of women with incurable conditions has already been assembled. Imperial physicians and Perfected Masters of the Daoist Order are being arranged to examine them through the night. Two with the rarest and most intractable conditions can be selected before dawn."
"And the Dragon Blood Rice — has it been planted?"
"All two hundred and seventy-six grains of Dragon Blood Rice have been planted in separate locations, each under dedicated guard."
"Good."
Zhao Bing nodded, then drew out a forged calligraphy scroll and tossed it onto the desk.
"Have the Demon Suppression Bureau look into it. Find out who dares counterfeit my calligraphy."
He paused, and a rare edge of killing intent surfaced in his eyes.
"If there truly is a higher world above us… to have an immortal think that my realm is populated entirely by swindlers and cheats, or that this is the standard of my brushwork — how could that be allowed?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The eunuch accepted the order, took up the scroll, and left, heading straight for the Demon Suppression Bureau.
…
Reading by lamplight, Li Fei remembered something. She gave the ghost gourd a light shake, released the female ghost Huang Zhenzhen, and asked, "Sister Zhenzhen, that errand I arranged for you back in Luyuan County — is it settled?"
"Mm." Huang Zhenzhen nodded without hesitation.
"Good. Rest, then, Sister Zhenzhen."
Reassured, Li Fei drew her back into the gourd.
That scroll of counterfeit Yunshan Jushi calligraphy had been bought off a street peddler in Luyuan County. She had decided long ago to work the upper echelons.
To keep her lie about "paying a fortune for the piece" from being exposed, she had sent the female ghost to dispose of the loose end. Luyuan County had just suffered a demonic uprising, after all, with casualties beyond counting. One person going missing would never be traced.
Li Fei set down her copy of Biographies of Renowned Physicians and picked up a scroll titled Secret Transmissions of the Alchemist-Physician: The Ancient Pulse Method, skimming ten lines at a glance. Dawn arrived without her noticing, and the books she had finished were stacked into a small mountain.
"Just as I thought."
Li Fei stretched luxuriously, her boneless waist bending into an alarming curve, her collar very nearly giving way.
After a full night of targeted cramming, she had a far more complete and concrete picture of the medical arts on the Demon-Sealing Continent.
In the sudden demonic cataclysm, the sacred land had gone under and the living had hung suspended in torment. No one knew how many mortals died violently; blood ran deep enough to float shields. Many sects fractured and collapsed, leaving nothing but blood-colored wasteland.
It took decades of upheaval before humankind regained even a shaky footing, settling into a patchwork of rival warlords, raising cities and kingdoms in scattered regions so that civilization might survive.
But such a catastrophe leaves a break in the historical record. A great deal of Legacy had been buried a thousand years ago, beyond the reach of those who came after.
And in those thousand years, True Qi cultivation had become the dominant theme. A Martial Saint could cleave a river in two or halt a waterfall, could shatter a peak and level a mountain — but had little talent for saving lives, nothing beyond using True Qi to stimulate the body's vitality.
As for the adepts of the Buddhist and Daoist traditions, they could scatter beans and raise soldiers, call up wind and rain, and work a hundred other marvels — yet in the healing arts they could not be spoken of in the same breath as a life-school mage of equivalent standing on the Continent of Enlos.
With demons rampant and every soul in danger, even Daoists who prized stillness and non-action had been dragged into it, bending their minds toward subduing demons and exterminating evil, laboring over the arts of slaughter — palm thunder, the driving of corpses, talismans that become soldiers — all of it leaning toward the Chaos school, the Death school, and Nature-school summoning.
Meanwhile, Daoist arts approaching the Order school, such as mental domination, along with every kind of healing technique, had been left to gather dust.
Within the borders of the Great Song, at least, raising the dead was out of the question — and merely regrowing a severed limb required a miracle drug one could hope to encounter but never seek out. In Loxibrook, plenty of Middle Sequence mages could manage that much.
As for the soul, that was a problem even High Sequence powers found thorny. Small wonder it went untreated here.
Perhaps some other nation possessed a talent brilliant enough to fill the gaps in the system of arts, but that was not Li Fei's concern at present.
With Miss Stepdaughter playing along and the shop panel at her back, Li Fei needed only to be willing to spend wealth points, and she would be the Great Song's foremost divine physician in fact as well as name.
Li Fei slowly lifted one leg, let the little sprite help her into white silk stockings, changed into her Angel in White outfit, and went pattering off in little white shoes to the room next door to plot great matters with Miss Stepdaughter.
"What are you—"
Lilith's Meditation broke off. Morning sunlight through the window came in together with that radiant face, and the blue ocean in her eyes rippled.
Then her gaze swept over what Li Fei was wearing, and the corner of her mouth began to twitch.
Miss Stepmother had on a pure white nurse's uniform, cut so close it traced every line of her tall, willowy figure. At first glance it even looked demure.
But at her chest sat a striking red heart, pushed out into startling relief by the softness straining beneath it, rising and falling faintly with each warm breath — a shocking contrast against the narrow, supple line of her waist, slender as a new-budded willow switch.
The skirt was very short. Her long, firm thighs were sheathed in half-transparent white stockings, and the outline of her ankles was fine and exquisite, like some masterwork of art.
This was not a garment any medical worker would wear. Only the girls who worked at the Golden Tangerine Tavern wore this.
"Do you like it?"
Li Fei wrapped herself around Lilith's arm and swayed side to side, rubbing the heart against her.
"What is it you want."
Lilith turned her face away, but the softness pressing against her arm set her senses swaying, and she nearly made a very strange sound.
"I've got a patient to see shortly."
Li Fei fixed her with wide, glistening eyes and pleaded in a small, melting voice, "Help me out, won't you?"
Li Fei always brought sufficient sincerity when asking a favor, so she pressed forward again, fitting herself tighter against Miss Stepdaughter until that slender arm was all but embedded in her.
No woman alive could refuse Li Fei under such conditions.
"Fine, I understand. Now get away from me, it's stifling."
Lilith's face was red, and she squirmed as if that proved anything — but she couldn't bring herself to pull her soft, strengthless arm free.
…
"Qiaoqiao, is the food to your liking?"
In a secluded side chamber, a beautiful young woman watched a quiet, delicate girl eat, her face full of concern, breaking in now and then to ask after her comfort.
"Mm."
Qiao'er ate in small bites. It was only a meal, yet she went at it with the seriousness of work, finishing her bowl clean before setting down her chopsticks.
"You're at the age when you're still growing. You should eat more," Su Wen said gently.
"Your Highness need not trouble yourself so."
Treated with such tenderness by the most exalted and beautiful woman in the Great Song, Qiao'er declined without either servility or arrogance.
Su Wen pressed no further. Something in her seemed to ease, and relief and quiet gladness surfaced in her eyes.
The Empress had a fine eye for such things, and she could see that Qiao'er was not too overawed to swallow — she was genuinely full. Faced with a table of delicacies, she had eaten with focused enjoyment, but with nothing of the ravenous about her.
Su Wen had dealt with famine refugees, and she had watched palace maids eat. She knew that servants ill-treated by their masters were not the only ones — even ordinary folk who rarely tasted meat would go glassy-eyed at the sight of it, forget everything else, and fall to.
Glimpse one spot and you know the whole leopard. Unless Qiao'er's daily life were quite comfortable, she could never sit so composed before mountain delicacies and treasures of the sea.
"Does your household truly treat you so well?" Su Wen asked.
As Empress she could of course send people to investigate exactly who had bought out Qiao'er's indenture.
But that woman had not only freed the girl from a maidservant's fate, she had treated her generously besides; and every time Qiao'er mentioned her, admiration ran through her words.
It was no exaggeration to say that the woman was Qiao'er's savior and benefactor.
More than that: Su Wen owed her own reunion with Qiao'er to that same woman.
To Su Wen's mind, having received such kindness from another, it would be wrong to send underlings prying into her background. That would be a grave discourtesy, and beneath the magnanimity expected of an empress.
She would rather find an occasion to call on the woman herself, and see with her own eyes what sort of person Qiao'er's benefactor was.
"She treats me very well. She looks after me in every way. She even calls me her sister," Qiao'er answered truthfully.
"…"
Far from pleased at that, the Empress found her hands closing together of their own accord. The feel of Consort Xiang's soft palm around hers yesterday still would not leave her.
The truth was, she had realized long ago that any contact with a woman plucked at something in her, and that with each passing year the itch grew harder to bear.
But as Empress of the realm, she was meant to be the model for every woman under heaven. How could she commit an act that overturned yin and yang, an act a thousand fingers would point at?
To stop the rot before it started, she no longer even let her maids massage her or help her wash when the headaches came. She avoided physical contact wherever possible, lest her head be soothed while her withered inner self was scorched over a slow flame. It was precisely because she knew the agony of restraint that Su Wen forgave and indulged the consorts of the inner palace again and again — even Consort Xiang, who had offended against her over and over, she was willing to shield.
One person carrying the burden forward was enough, and that person could be herself. As mistress of the inner palace, having accepted their soft "elder sister," she ought to be the roof that kept the wind and rain off them, not force them to suffer alongside her.
But human instinct is a spring: the harder you press it down, the more violently it rebounds. Between the restlessness within and the duties of an empress, Su Wen was worn to the bone, and every day felt like a year.
Fortunately, heaven never seals off every road. Su Wen had stumbled quite by accident on a way to ease it.
Every night now she sat before her mirror admiring herself, burning every frown and smile of the woman in the glass deep into her memory.
Then, whenever she faced a maid or a consort with designs on her, Su Wen would call up the image of that woman in the mirror.
Set beside the foremost beauty of the Great Song reflected there, the orioles and swallows fluttering around her paled at once — even the endlessly bewitching Consort Xiang came off second best.
With so flawless an object for her spirit to rest upon, the peerless Empress could keep her breath even and her mind still, and commit no transgression.
Yet this self-hypnotic visualization carried endless trouble in its wake. Forcing beauty to hold instinct down, over time, left Su Wen feeling that her own humanity was being ground away. Joy had become a rare thing for her. Neither the imperial garden in full flower nor the delicacies the imperial kitchens labored over could stir anything but numb indifference.
Only her hunger for women still burned — like a kettle boiled hard over the fire with its spout stoppered by force, hissing and shrieking, ready to burst at any moment.
The mercy in it was that, as her illness worsened, some obscure instinct had already told Su Wen she had only a few years left. However hard the days, release was coming.
But Zhang Qiaoqiao was not like her. This daughter of her benefactor was still so young, and Su Wen did not want her to endure the same torment — and that benefactor of Qiao'er's seemed to treat her rather too well.
Studying that endearing little face, Su Wen felt worry take root. What if the woman led Qiao'er astray?
So she found herself asking about her.
"What… sort of person is she?"
The concern on the young woman's face was unmistakably genuine, and it turned the faint, refreshing scent of plum blossom around her into something heavy.
Qiao'er lowered her lashes. Crimson blood and a searing red robe surfaced once more in her mind, and with them the stone marker over her parents' grave, and the hollow, hopeless look in her mother's eyes at the end…
At last the image froze on Li Fei's face, that face unfurling its charm without the slightest restraint, red lips parting, the damp, bewitching murmur winding round her ear:
"Little sister Qiao'er, do you want revenge?"
"Little sister Qiao'er, I'll take you back to the immortal realm."
"Little sister Qiao'er, I can give you everything you want."
"Little sister Qiao'er… you could even… have me."
In that half-heard whisper, the silt at the bottom of Qiao'er surged up, churned, and boiled over. She raised her head and met the Empress's eyes without flinching.
"She is a kind-hearted person. She's always helping women who have nowhere to go."
"She says the world is a hard place, but harder still for women, and that we ought to hold one another up."
"She has two wishes. The first is to sweep the demons from the world. The second is that no woman under heaven should ever suffer again."
As she spoke, softly, gently, those pitch-black eyes of hers grew more and more like Li Fei's.
"That such an extraordinary woman should exist."
Su Wen sighed in admiration, her thoughts drifting toward her. "Qiaoqiao, when you have the time you must introduce us… Though now that I think of it, she saved you. I should be sending her a substantial gift in any case."
Listening to Qiao'er, the Empress found herself picturing a heroine of towering spirit, a woman who stood between heaven and earth, and her worry gradually dissolved.
A woman with such great love in her heart could hardly be like Consort Xiang, drowning day and night in beautiful flesh — could she?
A knock came at the door.
"Come in."
Su Wen sighed and resumed that composed, self-contained bearing of hers.
"This servant kowtows to Your Highness." The eunuch bowed his head to the floor in the doorway. "His Majesty bids this servant inform you that the immortal maiden truly does possess the touch that brings the dying back to life, and asks that Your Highness—"
"I understand. Withdraw."
There was neither joy nor sorrow in Su Wen's voice, not a trace of anticipation — as unmoved as the white cat asleep in her lap.
Once the eunuch had gone, Su Wen took out a token and pressed it into Qiao'er's palm.
"Qiaoqiao, I have someone to see shortly. If you're free, let us meet again tomorrow. Keep this token. Strike it three times and speak the passphrase, and I will know where you are and send people to find you… Within the city of Lin'an, it will take an incense stick's time at most."
"Thank you, Your Highness."
Qiao'er did not refuse, and put the token safely away as instructed.
"If you don't mind it, you may call me elder sister."
The Empress lowered her head, smiling down at the girl whose chin came up exactly level with the bosom that mothered the realm.
Qiao'er bit her lip, hesitated a moment, then took the offer gracefully.
"Who is elder sister going to see?"
"A physician." The Empress let the smile fade, her voice calm. "Perhaps a physician who steals her reputation by deceiving the world."
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