Chapter Text
Three more foiled attempts and three more disappeared servants (one more dead, one secreted into the Investigative Bureau to be trained by Division Six to be an assassin, and one transferred out into the outer reaches of the provinces also to serve the Bureau) later, Tong Lei found himself standing once again in front of the Chairman.
He was thirteen now: his head had long crested over the top of the Chairman’s chair, but he still felt like a young boy of ten when standing in front of his master. Except that now it was even more awkward, because even his beta nose could pick out the faint, sweet scent of dandelions that belonged to the Chairman.
Tong Lei breathed through his teeth and tried to focus on the faint hint of musk that, he knew from His Excellency Zhu Ge, belonged to His Majesty the Emperor Himself.
“Four attempts in less than two years from the Crown Prince,” the Chairman murmured, “with no results other than two missing servants, and two dead bodies found.” He punctuated his statement with a toss of the wooden ladle back into the bucket. “Have there been any reaction from the imperial servants?”
“The Crown Prince’s household is gaining a reputation for bad luck,” Tong Lei reported obediently. “He’s currently transitioning from using young boys to proper eunuchs, but the eunuchs of the Empress’s household refuse to go even when threatened with whipping or having their pay cut.” When the Chairman gave him a minute nod, he continued, “The servant girls would throw themselves to the ground and weep for days if they are ordered to go to the Crown Prince.”
“That seems,” the Chairman’s gaze slanted towards him, “an overreaction.”
“I,” Tong Lei said carefully, “have been careless with my tongue.”
“Explain,” the Chairman demanded, wheels whirling as sharply as his tone.
“His Highness the Princess chose me to be the one to serve him whenever he visits the Crown Prince,” Tong Lei said, keeping his eyes to the ground.
“You have told me that,” the Chairman said. “But I can only allow you to keep from explaining how that happened for so long, Tong Lei.”
He shook his head. “Chairman, it was unimportant.”
“It is important now,” the Chairman pointed out.
Tong Lei nodded. “The second time he visited, the housekeeper brought the tray to them. His Highness the Princess was displeased at his presence, and demanded for me.” He let out slow breaths through his nose and tried to tell his heart to beat quieter. “The Crown Prince took that to be His Highness the Princess’s preference, and so assigned me to serve the table whenever he visits.”
“And,” the Chairman said, “the Crown Prince never suspected.”
“No,” Tong Lei said.
“What did you tell the Princess?”
“I would not dare to speak to His Highness the Princess,” Tong Lei answered honestly. “I only lingered for as long as I could. On His Highness the Princess’s third visit, he witnessed me being beaten by the housekeeper for staying—”
“You allowed him to witness it,” the Chairman cut in.
“Yes, Chairman,” Tong Lei nodded.
“Continue.”
“And yet I continued to linger by the table on his fourth visit, and with every visit after that.” He let out another long breath. “His Highness the Princess is very clever.”
“Yes,” the Chairman said, the word barely more than a breath. “He is.” Another one of those quiet, heavy chuckles that Tong Lei knew was and would always be beyond him to decipher, and he continued, “You did not tell the housekeeper.”
“No,” Tong Lei said.
“One of the others?”
“A servant girl known for her loose tongue and her connections with servants beyond the Crown Prince’s household,” Tong Lei said, barely managing to stifle the rising smirk. “I only told her that I thought the Crown Prince’s gaze upon the Princess was a little,” he paused exactly like he had with that beta girl, “strange.”
Chuckling again, the Chairman leaned back against his chair. His eyes were very heavy on Tong Lei as he said, “And, of course, her imagination filled in the blanks.”
“As imagination does,” Tong Lei nodded again.
“How far, do you think,” the Chairman asked, “her tongue has reached?”
“Not to the ears of His Highness the Princess,” Tong Lei replied, because he was a good servant who did not require his master to explicate his question to understand what it was. “Although the length between his visits have been growing, nonetheless.”
“It used to be every three or four days,” the Chairman murmured, because of course he would know such things even when Tong Lei had not told him. “But now, the Crown Prince would be lucky if his beloved older brother visited him once every fortnight.”
The Chairman placed the tiniest emphasis on his inflection of beloved, but it was enough for Tong Lei to be reminded that he was absolutely right about the Chairman’s insinuations about Crown Prince’s intentions for the Princess. He fought down the instinctive shudder.
“Yet,” the Chairman continued, “the Princess continues to come.”
“He has,” Tong Lei tried carefully, “no reason to refuse.”
Suddenly, the air was a lot thicker and heavier. Tong Lei breathed carefully through his teeth and kept his head down.
“You believe,” the Chairman started.
“Forgive me, Chairman,” Tong Lei said, falling to his knees because he could not withstand the weight of the atmosphere anymore. “I have no beliefs. I have no thoughts.”
“That,” the Chairman said, “is the first lie you have ever told me.”
“I would not dare—”
“And that,” the Chairman said with that same deadly tenderness, “is the second lie.”
“Chairman, please—”
“Say it,” the Chairman said, because he was merciless when he had to be, when Tong Lei had forced him to be. “If this is what you want to do, Tong Lei, if this is what you believe in… Have the strength to say it aloud.”
“Please—” Tong Lei squeezed his eyes shut.
“There are,” the Chairman said, “no cowards in the Investigative Bureau.”
Tong Lei dug his nails into his palm. But the pinpricks of pain did not help, and neither did clenching his eyes so tightly shut that stars started to burst into being behind his eyelids. He tried to breathe but the words stuck in his throat blocked his air, and when he opened his mouth—
“Allow me to fail in my duty!” His own voice seemed to come from very far away, and yet piercingly sharp through the fog of horror slowly suffusing his brain. “Please, allow me to fail—”
“Say,” the Chairman’s voice was like a stone dropped into the cavernous room, “it.”
“Let the Crown Prince poison His Highness the Princess,” Tong Lei sobbed out. “Please, let it happen, Chairman. It has to happen, it has to—”
“Why?”
“Because His Highness would not know the danger he is in otherwise,” Tong Lei said, terribly aware of the tears forcing themselves out from his eyes. “And the Crown Prince will keep trying and trying, believing only that the drugs he is using isn’t strong enough, or that the servants he used are not efficient enough, and he would—”
“Say it!”
“I do not want,” Tong Lei shouted, “to have to witness the Crown Prince putting heat-inducing drugs into His Highness’s food and not be able to stop it!” He slammed his hands against the floor, and lowered his head until his forehead touched the stone. “Please, Chairman, do not make me witness such a thing!”
“When I sent you to the Crown Prince’s household,” the Chairman said, sounding contemplative, “I did not expect to share your loyalties with the Princess.”
Tong Lei’s eyes snapped open, and only strenuous effort kept his head down. “I didn’t— I’d never— I would not dare—”
“Do not,” the Chairman sighed, “lie to me again.”
“I’m sorry,” Tong Lei babbled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I did not mean to, I’m sorry—”
“Stop.” He clicked his mouth shut. “Ah, Tong Lei, do you really think I’d be angry?” He couldn’t answer. He wouldn’t dare answer. “I am, after all, a servant of the Imperial Family; to know that your heart has pledged itself to one of its members is something that brings me joy.”
Only because it is His Highness the Princess, Tong Lei’s traitorous mind added. You would not have said anything like that if I decided to be loyal to the Crown Prince.
“Lift your head.” When Tong Lei did, he could see, just barely through the film of tears filling his eyes, the Chairman’s sharp, nearly-kind smile. “Permission granted.”
“What?” he heard himself choke out.
“Fail, Tong Lei,” the Chairman said. “Fail, and teach the Princess what it means to grasp his choices with his own hands.”
There was something in the line of the Chairman’s shoulders, and in the shape of his hands, lying so seemingly innocuously on his lap, that made Tong Lei shudder and remember—
The Emperor’s Omega.
He had never met the Emperor. He didn’t think he ever would in this life. He didn’t want to.
Closing his eyes, Tong Lei bowed again. His forehead touched the floor, and he laid there, trying desperately to gain some strength and clarity from the cold stone, and said:
“Thank you, Chairman.”
“I don’t have a Ze’er anymore,” came a heavy sigh. “And I gained yet another Prince.”
Seated in his wheelchair in his usual spot in the Imperial Study, Chen Pingping made a sound of almost-acquiescence.
“Do you know,” the Emperor heaved another exaggerated sigh, “how annoying Princes are?” He picked up one of his arrowheads and lifted it up to where light streamed through the open doors, eyes narrowing. “I need to think up of plans for them. Ways to raise them properly in case, just in case, they end up inheriting this throne of mine.”
“Is that not,” Chen Pingping remarked mildly, “the duties of a father?”
“Oh?” the Emperor cocked a brow at him over his shoulder. “Do I hear you blaming me for Lao Er’s fate, Chen Pingping?”
For all that he was just complaining about the Princess’s decision to tie up his hair like a beta and take on the role and responsibilities of the Second Prince, the Emperor definitely rolled Lao Er off his tongue rather easily.
“This lowly servant,” Chen Pingping said, lifting his hands up in salute and lowering his head, “would not dare.”
“You would,” the Emperor refuted, punctuating the note of amusement in his voice with the notch of his arrow to the bow. “And perhaps you would even be right.”
“Does Your Majesty blame yourself for the faults of your children, then?” Chen Pingping raised his eyebrow.
“Of course,” the Emperor said. The arrow bounced off the suit of armour he kept at the doorway of his study, and he clicked his tongue. “As much as I take credit for their virtues and meritorious actions.”
Which meant, Chen Pingping thought, trying and failing to hide his smile, not at all. The Emperor had always been rather meritocratic that way.
(A particular value of meritocracy, of course; one that was synonymous with negligent.)
“The more important issue here,” the Emperor continued, picking up the fallen arrow himself instead of calling one of the servants in to do it for him like the Crown Prince or Empress would have, “is that the Crown Prince used the same trick four times.”
“He failed at the same trick four times,” Chen Pingping corrected gently.
“That’s what I said,” the Emperor waved a hand. “Who would do the same thing four time except someone who had failed the first three attempts?”
Someone, Chen Pingping thought to himself, whose job was to repeat the same actions continuously. But he stilled his tongue and kept his head down, waiting for the Emperor to finish.
“Most would learn after a single failure,” the Emperor said. “Yet he did not even after three.”
“Your Majesty isn’t the type to keep harsh words behind his teeth,” Chen Pingping pointed out.
“I am not,” the Emperor said, shaking his head. “I could say that the Crown Prince is a dim, oil-saving lamp, but I will not.” He pulled the arrowhead out from the shaft and tossed it in his hand for a few moments. “Not yet.”
“Is this loyal servant allowed to ask why?” Chen Pingping raised an eyebrow.
“If I do,” the Emperor said, throwing the arrowhead into the pile to be melted and reforged, “I would have to start thinking about preparing Qing for an omega Emperor.”
Chen Pingping went very still.
The Emperor threw him a wide, mirthless smile. “Have you ever wanted to become the Emperor, my omega?”
“This servant has never considered it,” Chen Pingping said, words not only honest but blunt like they usually weren’t. “Even now, the thought of it is…” He shook his head. “Your Majesty has one more son, does he not?”
“You mean Lao Da?” the Emperor raised an eyebrow. “You know even better than I do that Ning Xia raised him to be eminently unsuitable for the throne.”
“No,” Chen Pingping shook his head. “I mean your youngest child, Your Majesty. The Alpha Fourth Prince.”
“He is literally two years old,” the Emperor said, sounding rather amused, “and therefore has no personality aside from being quiet and neat-looking whenever I visit, and throwing tantrums at the servants when neither I nor his mother are present.” He flicked his fingers over the taut string of the bow of his hand. “Do you find him a better candidate than Lao Er, who is fourteen and has shown himself to be rather clever with both books and people?”
“I…” Chen Pingping started, and then shook his head. “Your Majesty, the matter of imperial succession—”
“Is something you already have your sticky fingers all over,” the Emperor cut him off, gaze steady and heavy on his. “And you know that well enough.”
Chen Pingping clicked his teeth together and deliberately leaned back against his chair. He did not even attempt to pull away from the staring contest that the Emperor insisted on pulling him into.
“We’ll see,” the Emperor said finally, turning away in a swirl of filmy silk. The wood of his bow clacked heavily against the rack where he tossed it, and he sighed. “It is certainly too peaceful, and too easy, to have hoped that the Crown Prince would end up as the ideal, isn’t it?”
“The son of the previous Empress,” Chen Pingping said carefully, “did not live up to his title, and yet now we live in peace.”
“True enough,” the Emperor barked a laugh. “And who knows? Perhaps in a few years, a new contender might appear from absolutely nowhere.” The smile he gave Chen Pingping was full of teeth. “The previous generation might repeat itself entirely.”
Lifting his arms, Chen Pingping lowered his eyes. “Perhaps,” he and deliberately not think about just who exactly was being kept elsewhere and had the potential of becoming the Emperor in the future.
Years later, Chen Pingping closed his hand around the Empress’s emblem that Tong Lei had retrieved – well, stolen – on his behalf from the beta woman’s Palace during the Crown Prince’s visit, and remembered this particular conversation.
He thought: I had only been half-right.
Out of all of the minds in the world, the one most familiar to him was his Emperor’s, his husband’s. He had first learned it when miles apart from him, cloistered behind high walls in a backwater province trying to trace the shape of a King’s Heir’s mind based upon rumours and whispers that he had to strain his ears to hear. Then, later when he met him and was granted the privilege of staying by his side, he had mapped every twist and turn of his thoughts until he could trace with his fingers the architecture of his Alpha’s brain.
And he knew: if the Emperor preferred a half-grown omega ex-Princess as candidate for Emperor over an Alpha toddler, he would have never even considered literal unborn infants.
He knew: the true heirs to the Qing imperial throne had never been the children currently rollicking beneath his heart, but Fan Xian, and himself.
Half-right.
`
There was this, too: if Chen Pingping could guess so far into his Emperor’s thought process, then His Majesty had surely done the same to him and realised just how much, and how far, Chen Pingping understood. And since the Emperor had come to a conclusion and set of actions that Chen Pingping disliked and which he could not reject outright, then…
He lifted his head to stare at the back of Tong Lei’s from where the man – definitely a man now, a bare year younger than the Second Prince (and almost Princess) that he was – was waiting for his orders on his knees.
“The Crown Prince will be sent to Beiqi,” Chen Pingping said. “Follow him there. Keep him alive.”
“Yes, Chairman,” Tong Lei said, and managed, in his usual clever fashion, to insert a question within the dull, flat inflections of the words: What for?
Chen Pingping did not bother to hide his smile. “Just in case,” he said.
Tong Lei lifted his head. “Understood,” he said, and from the look of those bright eyes set in that vaguely-handsome face, Chen Pingping knew that he did.
He had expected no less: Tong Lei had always been one of his cleverest boys, after all.
“Dismissed,” Chen Pingping said, and deliberately waited until Tong Lei had crossed the threshold of the room before he called, “We might not see each other again for a long time, Tong Lei, but I look forward to the next time we do.”
As the boy fell so naturally onto his knees to touch his forehead to the ground, Chen Pingping smiled. Truly, Tong Lei was one of his favourite boys.
And he didn’t even have to kill or threaten any members of his family to get him into the Bureau; he had walked right in of his own accord. Truly another point to his favour.
Chen Pingping waited until the boy turned the corner and disappeared from his sight before he turned his contemplation back to the Empress’s emblem resting in his palm.
The greatest pity of this whole affair, he thought, was that the Crown Prince didn’t even understand the game he was playing, and thus couldn’t see the encroaching loss. He would not even be able to lose gracefully.
Better for him this way, really: better a wife of a foreign general, consigned to forever live in unfamiliar lands, than a corpse or, worse still, an Emperor unable to control his country and having to live with knowing he had ruined everything his father had built.
End
EPILOGUE
Dear Chairman,
The Third Prince is newly-wedded to the Grand General of Beiqi, Shangsan Hu, and this lowly servant received the first near-death experience of my life. If the Chairman does not mind, this letter will relate the story concerning both events.
This servant had only been minding his own business, ensuring that the Third Prince does not try to escape his wedding night, when I heard a scream. For the sake of the Bureau’s records, I have recorded the entirety of it for you, Chairman. And, in the interest of expedience, I have done it in the form of a street opera.
SHANGSAN HU: I am not going to have sex with you, Your Highness!
THE THIRD PRINCE: Why?! Am I not attractive enough for you? [pause] I CAN DO MY DUTY! I AM NOT AFRAID TO DIE!
This lowly servant would like to note that he had circled the Third Prince’s last two sentences in red to emphasise his words, because the Third Prince had yelled them to all and sundry to hear. This lowly servant would also like to put on record that the Third Prince undoubtedly believed that he was going to die from the Grand General’s sexual equipment.
Not his prowess. His equipment.
The near-death experience this servant experienced was by the Third Prince’s hand: upon hearing his words, this servant suffered from an attack of laughter so strong that he nearly choked on his own tongue, breath, and likely nose when he had to keep silent so as to not be discovered.
Please have the Eighth Division record all of the above in the archives, Chairman. This servant believes that this information is of vital importance to the whole of the Bureau and also to the future generation.
With my deepest gratitude and in great anticipation of being able to meet again,
Your Loyal Servant,
The Three Rocks of Winter
End (for real)