I was not sweating.
My brush hung lifelessly, an inelegant drop of ink marring the end of the last character of my lady's name, and I struggled to breathe evenly and composedly.
But I wasn't sweating.
Neither was my heart racing, nor my sight wavering. Nothing at all happened other than me, Wu Zhinu, the dutiful scribe of my clan's heiress, poring over the characters on the page before me, their implications, and how to best convey to my lady the full ramifications of the missive she had just dictated to me while I strived to remain both succinct and adequately deferential.
So, with a measured tone, with even diction, and with the full extent of the courtly training I had been peripherally involved in since my late childhood, I looked up from the jarring inkstain at the end of the letter and toward green eyes glinting with candlelight to tell her, the woman I had sworn to follow and obey, what I considered my duty to profer:
"Have you finally gone insane?"
"Me? Whatever do you mean, my dearest Wu?"
I mutely looked down at the words I had been ordered to write, then back up at the woman covering the lower half of her face with a fan with enough pierced patterns on its slats to show me hints of the impish, self-satisfied grin she was dedicating solely to my distress.
"Oh, the letter?" she answered my silence with. "I find that its contents are perfectly adequate, given the deplorable state of the capital. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Consider this my declaration of war upon the rotten throne," I said, perhaps somewhat lifelessly.
"Maybe a tad overdramatic? Or understated? I find it hard to strike a balance between those."
"This would be grounds for execution to even discuss."
"Certainly. And it's been written with your own hand, my dearest Wu."
I, again, did not sweat. I most emphatically did not.
My heart may have been racing, though.
"I have, indeed, written it." My head dropped heavily.
"And thus, your fate is bound to mine. No matter what schemes I embark on from this day onward, this letter exists, and you, Wu, have become my accomplice—what are you doing?!"
I looked up at her. But not for long, seeing as the paper burned faster than I expected.
My lady threw herself over the table, trying to reach the remnants of the twice-flaming letter curling over the candle by my side. This, of course, ended up with me firmly holding her forehead back before I dropped the former piece of treason into the inkwell, the red fringe of burning paper sizzling before black ink spread across the last surviving corner of the extinct missive.
"Not fair," she mumbled through my spread fingers, glaring at me with green eyes that contrasted marvelously with her winged, crimson eyeshadow, but didn't manage to soften my heart nor distract me from my state of brimming indignation.
"You just tried to turn me into a traitor to the throne. You know what happens to traitors to the throne. It involves poison, hanging upside down, and liquified entrails. That is, so long as the Empress is feeling merciful."
"Ah, but isn't the duty of a servant to follow their mistress even unto madness itself—hey!"
My finger smarted from flicking her forehead, because, of course, cultivation had granted her enough durability that the corrective that had reliably worked so long ago now hurt me more than her.
Literally.
"I am of the school of thought that the duty of the servant is to remain sane when his mistress falters, so that he can pull her back rather than follow her to destruction."
"Words, words, words," she offensively muttered.
"This rudeness is unbecoming of your station."
"You just called me insane and flicked my forehead!"
"That rudeness becomes a lowborn such as me."
Finally pulling away from my grasping hand rather than keep pushing against me, my lady petulantly crossed her arms, slouched against the back of her chair, carelessly ignored how her posture was wrinkling the expensive crimson and gold brocade she was clad in, and pouted.
This, of course, had nothing to do with my erratic heartbeat. That irregularity was solely due to the vivid rumors about what kinds of poisons the Empress enjoyed most when she was feeling playful.
Obviously.
"You always have an answer for everything…" she said, still pouting, head turned aside, her pale makeup smudged by my hand, showing traces of her true color, lightly tanned skin peeking through gaps in pure white, making me want to wipe it all away so that I could see her and not Lady Zhinu.
Alas, I did not have an answer for everything.
Least of all, for that.
"Your clever ploy would surely have worked on somebody else, my lady," I said with not-quite condescension.
"I don't want somebody else…"
She still hadn't looked at me, now huddled sideways, ensconced between thick armrests, and hugging her knees to her chest over the skirt of her hanfu dress, too caught up in her childish tantrum to notice whether or not her words had brought a wave of tingling heat to my cheeks.
Thankfully.
And… I knew that she was talking about… something other than what she had made me think with the careless remark, but, still, I found it hard to hold onto my anger when…
…
I have always been weak to a lady's petulance. It is something perfectly ordinary. In line with what would be expected of an average scribe.
"What was the actual plan?" I asked, trying to change the subject even as my tone shifted from reproach to resigned… something.
The fact that she immediately peeked over her knees, perking up with a smile that not only reached her eyes but lifted her eyebrows to the point that her updo wobbled, was not, at all, the reaction I had been aiming for.
"For far too long have we tolerated the corruption spreading across our city—" she started, somehow managing to regain perfectly courtly posture without even acknowledging her previous sloppiness.
"If you could abbreviate your no doubt carefully thought-out speech, I would appreciate it. I am loath to avoid my duties for overly long."
"Your duty is to listen to me. And sometimes write what I say. But mostly listen."
"I assure you that the intricate minutiae your personal scribe has to deal with on a daily basis can't be so easily summarized—"
"I just saw you trying to feed that magpie. Instead of hurrying to your lady's call."
"… Alas, don't the ancient texts teach us to respect nature so as to get closer to the true dao—"
"Wu."
"Yes, my lady?"
"Shut up and listen."
"Yes, my lady."
She smiled something fleeting and soft, pleased with herself as her eyes turned briefly to her lap, and that made the whole scene worth it.
I aim to serve, after all, and what better mark of service can there be than my lady being satisfied?
"As I was saying…" She trailed off, her green eyes looking for mine and holding them for entirely too long. "The city is… You made me lose my train of thought."
"I apologize, my lady."
"I had rehearsed. Do you understand, Wu? I had rehearsed this."
"I could always help you prepare an improved presentation for a future occasion? I am sure that we could add visual aids—"
"Your insolence is not as endearing as you seem to think it is."
"My insolence? Perish the thought. I only ever aim to be an exemplary scribe under your employ. Every breath I take is a silent mantra dedicated to my gratitude and devotion to you," I glibly answered, maybe more sincere than I would have wanted to be in content if not form.
The pout on her face, once again, made it all worth it.
"Wu, I want you to write a letter," she finally said, her crossed arms ruffling her long sleeves and making silk whisper over the roughness of woven gold.
"As you command, my lady," I said before looking with distaste at the current state of my inkstone. Soot may be an integral part of ink, but burned letters rarely are.
Though, thinking about some of my beleaguered contemporaries, I may be wrong in that assumption.
"To the esteemed scribe of the Zhinu clan," she began, and I struggled to brush the characters in place without showing an outward reaction. "It has come to my attention that delinquency rates have grown higher as of late. The refugees coming in from the farthest reaches of the empire are not met with open arms and the hospitality they deserve after their plight, but with disgraceful contempt, ill intentions, and, more often than not, a place in one of the many burgeoning criminal enterprises that act with the impunity of those who know themselves to be protected from on high."
She paused as I caught up with her speech, the blackened bristles leaving behind flowing strokes while dangling from my fingers in the seemingly effortless way that had tripped me up so often when I was allowed to learn by her side, leeching from her education like…
She cleared her throat, and I looked up to find green eyes staring at me in search of something. Something that I have never understood, but that she seems to find again and again.
Ever since we were little kids listening to a self-aggrandizing grandparent who liked to revise history to suit his needs.
A lot of things can be said regarding my lady. That she lacks persistence is not one of them.
"Any thoughts so far?" she asked, hands now elegantly crossed over her lap, back straight, and an unyielding expression on her face.
The smudged makeup somewhat took away from the effect, though.
"I strive to become a placid lake upon which your thoughts and words are reflected like a full moon without a single ripple to distort its beauty," I said, giving her my full attention and all the grave seriousness that the matter demanded as I tried to fish out floating ashes out of my inkstone with the tip of my brush.
There was a long, deep breath on the other side of the table.
I clicked my tongue when an errant piece of burned paper once again eluded my attempts to push it out.
"You are… Wu?"
"I, indeed, am Wu, my lady."
"Can you take this seriously, please?"
I sighed.
Carefully, I set my brush aside and readied myself to stare back at the girl I had both grown up with and looked up to since… since as long as my trained memory could reach.
"I always take you seriously," I told her.
She raised a single eyebrow and pointed at the most noticeable smudge on her forehead.
"I seriously held you back, didn't I?" I said, firm in my resolve and immovable as the Buddha himself.
"An answer for everything…" she muttered.
No. Not for everything.
But I pretended to smile a thin, self-satisfied thing that broke my façade whilst pushing another in its place.
"I would be a poor scribe if I hadn't learned to employ words as the tool of my craft," I said, once again more sincere than I would've liked.
"You would be a poor—the crime thing, Wu. It is important."
"I agree. It is also not your responsibility."
"In an ideal world? It wouldn't be. Now take a walk outside the gates of our compound, go beyond the walls of our privileged ring, descend to the lowest terrace of Yaozhu, come back, and dare tell me this is an ideal world."
It wasn't. Isn't.
After all, I was Wu, a loyal servant of the Zhinu clan.
And she was my lady.
"What are you proposing?" I finally conceded, knowing all too well that there was no way for me to keep her from a path she had already set her mind to.
The brightening smile on crimson-painted lips almost made the clenching in my chest worth it.
"I have made some inquiries," she stated with fake modesty as a thin drawer slid open on her side of the table after she pushed something or other under it. Which meant that this was supposed to be a secret plan. Which, in turn, made the clenching in my chest that much worse, seeing as secret plans often entailed things much more exciting than the dictation of letters. "This… this is a list of all the ongoing criminal activities that I'm aware of either in Yaozhu or the outskirts of the city."
A thick stack of not-so-carefully aligned papers slid over the lacquered table, only stopping when it pushed against the upper edge of my felt pad.
I could feel the incoming migraine.
And… I was not disappointed.
Human trafficking. Organ harvesting. Protection rackets. Smuggling. Mysterious disappearances. Forbidden substances. Demonic cultivation.
The list was long, but, as I went through it, two details stuck out to me. The first one was how little of it was properly sourced. Most of the recorded activities seemed to be no more than rumors, likely overheard at the kind of social gatherings that my lady was often forced to attend without a lowly scribe by her side, and those accounts that had more substance and detail, instead, were ones that I was already familiar with, due to having overheard them when visiting my mother in the laundry room, the second most important source of gossip in the clan's compound after the kitchens themselves.
The second detail, though, was somewhat more… concerning.
"My lady?"
"Yes, Wu?" she said, a wide grin struggling to remain hidden behind years of courtly training.
"It occurs to me that the Jinyan clan features prominently in this list."
"Ah, as expected of my sagacious scribe! Truly, Wu, it is a wonder to see the workings of such a precisely tuned mind—"
"Is this whole charade a way for you to break off your engagement?"
My lady had been raising an open fan to hide her satisfied, triumphant grin behind it.
Said fan now clattered to the floor.
"I am offended that you would think me so petty when the cries of the oppressed masses—"
"My lady."
"They are criminals! And I can prove it!"
"Can you?"
There was a pause.
A fragment of blackened paper peacefully drifted over currents of ink. A drop of wax ran down the candle to my right.
A magpie chattered.
"I mean… we can?" she said, her voice small, her face tilted down, and upturned green eyes looking at me through long eyelashes.
Because my lady may like to fashion herself as a paragon of rightfulness, but she had learned from a young age how to be devastatingly unfair to me, her powerless, lowly servant.
So, as a perfectly average scribe is wont to do, I suppressed any and all reactions, nodded with an expressionless mask, and sent my mind to frantically work out how to turn my lady's harebrained scheme into something even slightly feasible while ignoring both the effusive smile blooming on the blonde woman's face and the drumming heartbeat in my ears that it most definitely didn't elicit.
All of this leads to me spreading a thin trail of black powder around a criminal compound while the sounds of grievous violence keep reassuring me that my lady is a trained martial artist who can back up her words with fists and sword.
"Fear the silver fang of the Heavenly Hound!"
… Though, at this very moment, swords are not in her available repertoire.
━❖━⧫━❖━
And so, wheels start turning.
Particularly the one with a frantic hamster trapped inside by brain-cage.
Honestly, this first arc was supposed to be the first chapter of the Heavenly Hound (https://www.patreon.com/collection/2019062?view=expanded), but… let's just say that worldbuilding got out of hand, and I'm quite chuffed about it. Not as chuffed as Xia beating up generic mooks, but close enough.
Anyway, I hope to have you around next week when another piece of the puzzle slots into place. See ya later!
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, Crimson Grave, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!