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Chapter Text

Despite the lack of any reliable confirmation from the Northern borders, the scholars of Jinling mourned Su Zhe for weeks. Then, the suggestion that rumours of his death might have been greatly exaggerated began to percolate. Purchases of the more expensive varieties of tea soared, and three learned periodicals went so far as to print a joint statement expressing their joy on the occasion of Sir Su's survival, even though their disputes over the reading of certain lines in the Analects went back several centuries.¹

The Jiangzuo Alliance had never expected their chilly and tender leader to return from the cold heights of Meiling. The (reliable, pigeon-borne) news he had done so provoked mass celebrations in those watery provinces. (The resulting fireworks also caused significant revisions to be made to the Langya List of Pyrotechnics Experts, and provoked a good deal of swearing on the part of the Young Master of Langya Hall.²)

The Crown Prince fell to his knees and wept,³ heedless of the fact he was in the presence of the cream of the Jin Guards (most of whom, to be fair, also seemed to be suffering from terrible allergies to plum blossom.)

"But," Yuijin said to Jingrui, as the two of them rode, just demobbed, into Jinling, "that's not enough, is it? I mean, if a man who's previously been reported dead then turns up, you're going to throw one hell of a celebration for him, aren't you?"

Jingrui had learnt caution over the last three years.

"It would very much depend on the man. And in any case, I hate parties."

***

As the only person who had whole-heartedly enjoyed the event at Ning Manor,⁴ it was natural that, within Su Manor, the initial suggestion came from Fei Liu. It was enthusiastically seconded by Mu Qing, who hadn't been there at all, and had never ceased to regret it. His sister might perhaps have countered this view, but she was making her way back to the capital more slowly, encumbered with a heavy wagon train, and it probably wouldn't have made any difference anyway.

In the end, it was Fei Liu's enthusiasm that swung it. The head of the house of Su himself might have put his foot down, had he known about it at an earlier stage, but he spent much of the weeks after his return asleep. By the time he emerged, blinking, from a cocoon of furs, the plum blossoms were over, the cherries were in bloom, and it would have broken Fei Liu's heart to go back on the plans he was doing his best to explain. That heart he had come so close to breaking, irrevocably, before...

"It will have to be a small party, Fei Liu. Your Su-gege's nobody very important, he's living very quietly.⁵ We could invite Nihuang-ji-jie and Meng da-ge, and ask Auntie Ji to make dumplings, would you like that?"

"Except," the lord of Mu Manor added, "we'd better make sure it's a bit livelier than the only other party I've been to here. That was the stiffest affair I've ever had to sit through. All highbrow party games and stilted small talk."

Li Gang and Zhen Ping exchanged nervous glances. Although Prince Mu appeared to have forgotten it, three out of the nine guests at the housewarming party were now no more⁶ and referring to the event seemed to them to be tempting fate.

***

The problem was, as Li Gang shamefacedly confessed to General Meng,⁷ that it had not occurred to anyone to coordinate the guest list - or rather, lists - until a late stage in the proceedings.

Mei Changsu, working on the original plan of a small family dinner, with dumplings, had sent personally calligraphed notes of invitation to Mu Nihuang and her brother, to General Meng, and to Xia Dong and General Nie.

Fei Liu had personally delivered his own invitation to Tingsheng, and finding Tingsheng entranced with his newly acquired pet, an enormous mastiff,⁸ hospitably extended the invitation to the dog as well. And, as an afterthought, while he was already half-way up the Eastern Palace wall: "Water buffalo, too."

The Crown Prince, receiving this oral invitation, naturally assumed that Fei Liu had been entrusted with a formal written message but had either lost it or the dog had eaten it. Accordingly, he hand-calligraphed his own "Thank you, Tingsheng and I will certainly come" and dispatched it to the Su Residence.

Mu Qing, under his self-imposed task of livening up the party, extended an invitation to Jingrui and Yujin, with the expansive instruction to bring along "anyone else you think might be fun. Yujin, you know some musicians, right?" Somewhat to his dismay, Marquis Yan at this juncture declared his own intention to attend. Middle-aged (not to say elderly) scholars were, in Mu Qing's opinion, the very last thing the party needed more of, but he was - just - too well brought up to say so. In a well-meaning, if possibly misguided, attempt to redress the balance, he attempted to engage a man with a trained ferret he saw in the marketplace, but his sister intercepted him.

Unfortunately, Fei Liu overheard this discussion, and no-one intercepted Fei Liu.

The Minister of Defence, getting wind of the party and mistakenly assuming that Prince Mu was organising it on his future brother-in-law's behalf, enquired whether it would be possible to drop by to pay his respects to the man who had masterminded the defence of Da Liang. Court gossip being what it was, it took rather less than a day for similar requests to arrive from the other five Ministries. Various members of the Jiangzuo Alliance - who would not have been members without their own excellent intelligence networks - were somewhat surprised to hear their reclusive Chief was planning a reception,⁹ but quickly indicated their own desire to attend.

Prince Mu, good-naturedly intending to spare Li Gang additional work, wrote back with formal invitations to all of them, the response to go directly to Mu Manor. It was only some days later that it occurred to him to present Li Gang with the fait accompli,¹⁰ at which point Li Gang turned, with restrained urgency which was in no way panic, to the General.

General Meng, knowing that the secret to most battles is good staff work, promptly got his staff involved. And, since he had effectively lent them to Lin Shu for the length of the campaign, it would have been churlish not to invite them to join the celebration they were organising.

It became apparent that they were going to need a bigger dining hall. To say nothing of more food, more wine and more cooks. "But we have cooks," offered General Meng. "Nobody's that fond of rice porridge," said Lie Zhanying, with some feeling. "With the General's permission, I'll ask if I can borrow some of the kitchen staff from the Palace." The staff from the Palace fell, ultimately, under the authority of Gao Zhan, who professed himself delighted to help.¹¹

In the end, it was Princess Nihuang who solved the problem of the dining hall by asking if they could borrow the currently uninhabited Jing Manor for the event. All the preparations could be carried out, and the majority of the guests would arrive, by the front door, where they would be welcomed by Marquis Yan on Prince Jing's behalf. The smaller party, and the guest of honour himself, would come over by the secret tunnel once everything was in place; his still precarious health serving as sufficient explanation for not greeting his well-wishers at the doorstep.

"And let's see him wriggle his way out of that one," said the Marquis, with satisfaction.

***

In the back streets and the less reputable of Jinling's many taverns, the news of Mei Changsu's survival was greeted with resignation, if not a certain degree of disgust.

"Stands to reason Da Yu couldn't kill the bugger. Ancestors know we couldn't do it, and we tried often enough. Not that I ever believed he was dead in the first place, that man's got more lives than a cat."

"You'd have a go, though, if somebody paid you enough," said a newcomer, only recently arrived after a long stint on caravan guard. The others shifted imperceptibly away from him.

"We would not. And I'd recommend that you don't either."

"Though let us know if you do. We'll watch. From a distance."

In the shadows in the furthest corner, someone else was watching.

He was from out of town, that she could tell from the outset. Given the accent, the town out of which he had come wasn't even in Da Liang. Southern Chu, at a guess, or possibly Donghai. And judging by the awed way he was looking around this run-of-the-mill, unfashionable end of Luoshi Road entertainment venue, she thought his town of origin might have stretched to a pair of goats or a donkey, at best. Certainly not a horse.

He was perfect.

***

Prince Jing sent word that Tingsheng should present himself in the front hall of the Eastern Palace some twenty minutes before they were due to depart for the party, to receive final instructions. The boy had already proved quick at grasping the intricacies of Palace etiquette, and the Su Residence was a familiar space for him. Still, it would be only natural for the boy to feel shy at this, his first venture into society, and he would no doubt appreciate a few words of paternal guidance on issues of hierarchy and protocol.¹²

Prince Jing had not expected those words to be, "We do not take dogs to formal banquets."¹³

Tingsheng braced himself in a (largely unsuccessful) effort to retard the progress of the mastiff down the front hall and piped breathlessly, "Replying to Honoured Father, Fei Liu told me Panhu was invited too. Invited specifically."

Prince Jing considered this. Tingsheng's honesty was palpable; he certainly had no intention of deceiving him on this point.

Had the formal written invitation not gone astray, it would have cleared up in an instant the question as to whether including the animal in the Eastern Palace party had been Lin Shu's suggestion, or whether it was a spur of the moment improvisation on Fei Liu's part.

On the one hand, it was entirely possible that his cousin was also aware that it was Tingsheng's first venture into elevated society, and wished to put him at ease by the presence of his beloved pet.¹⁴

On the other hand, inviting a dog without explicit instructions to do so was exactly the sort of thing one might expect of Fei Liu. Which meant that if they showed up at the Su Residence minus the dog, Fei Liu would be disappointed. And while Prince Jing was, in general, a fearless man, weighing the potential for havoc caused by arriving with a gatecrashing mastiff against the havoc a disappointed Fei Liu might wreak tipped the balance decisively in favour of the dog.

And on the third hand (his mind flicked back to a finely balanced game of weiqi which never would be finished now) who was Lin Shu anyway to merit such heart searching? The head of a household was responsible for the conduct of every member of it, and if he couldn't stop his bodyguard from improving on his instructions, then he could take the consequences and deal with them.

"Fine, then," he said. "Get it into the carriage. But I warn you, you're responsible for its behaving itself. Don't let me see you let it put a paw out of place."

"Yes, Honoured Father."

If they had had some trouble coaxing the mastiff into the carriage, there was no such difficulty at the other end. Prince Jing was still straightening his robes when a large, flurry blur went hurtling past and flung itself headlong at the master of Su Manor, who was waiting on the threshold to receive them. Lin Shu was more steady on his feet than he had been, but there was no way he was going to withstand several stone of excited mastiff that was suddenly convinced it was his best friend in all the world.

"It'll be the aniseed in the salve, I expect," said Lin Chen knowledgeably. "I made up a fresh batch this morning." There was a split second of horrified realisation as he glanced at his own hands.

By the time Prince Jing made it up the steps, Lin Shu was still flat on his back, trying vainly to ward off an enthusiastic licking, and Lin Chen was perched in the rafters looking rather like one of his own pigeons.

It did not, for obvious reasons, need anything by way of excuse or explanation to permit Lin Shu to beat a hasty retreat to his private quarters, leaving Princess Nihuang to formally receive the Eastern Palace party on his behalf.¹⁵ Once in his bedroom, he sent at once for Li Gang.

"Can you tell me what on earth is going on?"

"I, er," said Li Gang, who could, but very much didn't want to.

In a rare tactical error, the Qilin Talent followed up his opening question with a second before waiting for the first to be answered, thus letting Li Gang off the hook¹⁶.

"Why is the Crown Prince here?"

Li Gang looked at him in frank amazement.

"Chief, you invited him. And Tingsheng. He sent a formal reply."

"Let's see."

Lin Shu scanned the hand-calligraphed response with considerable relief. The last time he'd been gatecrashed by a Prince had not been a precedent he wanted to follow, especially not with Jingyan.

"No mention of the dog, I notice."

Li Gang nodded. "I expect that will have been one of Fei Liu's."

Since "One of Fei Liu's" provided sufficient explanation for the entire Eastern Palace incursion, and since Prince Jing's response meant that his household would have already handled all necessary questions of protocol, catering and security, Lin Shu relaxed.¹⁷

"Well, I suggest you break the news to Aunt Ji that we've got a surplus hound on our hands, and think of somewhere to put it during the meal where it isn't likely to cause too much trouble."

Unexpectedly, Li Gang brightened. "How about we put it between General Meng and Tingsheng? The General's got the strength and the reaction time to prevent it doing anything untoward if anyone can."

"Next to General Meng? But suppose its fur starts him off sneezing again?"

"It might do that, Chief. But —" He tapped his nose, significantly. "If it does, well, it'll be obvious to everyone whose fur's to blame, won't it?"

It occurred to Lin Shu that he might have made a tactical error in treating his household to a sustained masterclass in high-level deviousness¹⁸ over the last few years.

"Well, there is that. You seem to have everything in hand. Carry on."

***

Quite how much Li Gang had in hand only became apparent an hour or so later, by which time Lin Shu, thoroughly washed and in fresh robes, was presiding over very nearly the quiet family gathering that he had intended. The conversation was lively and informal, the dumplings were excellent, and the mastiff, which answered, more or less, to Panhu, was proving unexpectedly well-behaved, lying quietly at Tingsheng's side. It was unfortunate that poor General Meng was suffering such a bad bout of sneezing, but there was little that could be done about that.

Princess Nihuang waited politely for his spluttering to subside before getting gracefully to her feet. "Lin Shu," she said, raising her cup in a formal toast. "Commander of the Northern Army, we drink to your health and long life." Lin Shu looked at her in sudden suspicion. It wasn't supposed to be that sort of party, but it wasn't a toast he could very well refuse, and by now everyone else was drinking it too. "And," she continued, when she had lowered her cup, "we are far from the only people who wish to congratulate you. Permit us to invite you to join the others at Jing Manor."

Suspicion crystallised to realisation. "You all knew."

"We all knew," said Meng Zhi, jumping in before either Prince Jing or Li Gang could take all the blame on themselves. "You did a damn fine job, Lin Shu, do you really want to sulk in your manor and pretend it was nothing to do with you?" Nie Feng nodded enthusiastically.

"I cannot be associated with this. Prince Jing knows this. I don't know why the rest of you don't."

"I know nothing of the sort," said Prince Jing. Lin Shu stared at him in betrayal.¹⁹

"I have never understood why you feel the need to hide the very great service you have done me, and I will not allow you to hide the even greater service you have done Da Liang."

"It would be ungrateful to refuse your people the opportunity to thank you," said Xia Dong softly. Lin Shu looked wildly around the room, and received only smiles. "How many others?" he asked.

"It's a party, Lin Shu, it won't kill you," said General Meng cheerfully. That might be a way out. Lin Shu looked desperately at the Young Master of Langya Hall.

Lin Chen, appealed to as a voice of reason, proved entirely unhelpful. "You're fine, stop malingering. I've put up with you for thirteen years, Changsu, you can put up with one evening of people being glad to see you." He snapped his fan open. "If nothing else, it will give everybody a chance to appreciate my own brilliance. Do you know how hard that was to pull off?"

Lin Shu snorted. "I knew I should have asked Dr Yan."

"You'd give the poor man a heart attack if you started taking his advice now. Hey, little Fei Liu! Are you going to change into something pretty for your Su-gege's party?"

"I'm not having a…"

Well, it appeared that he was now.

----

1. The letters editor of a fourth took to his bed with ice on his temples, anticipating the resumption of a viciously polite correspondence he had declared closed three times, and thought finally dead and buried.
2. To say nothing of the fire brigades.
3. On opening the report from the capital, Langya Hall's Mistress of the Pigeons rolled her eyes and said "Not again, does that man ever stop?"
4. In Fei Liu's reckoning of high days and holidays, the One Where Su-gege Told Him To Break Into An Armoury And Destroy All The Things ranked even above the One Where He and Tingsheng Got To Ride Ponies And Then There Was a Battle.
5. Li Gang, who had been dealing with the constant stream of welcome back/get well soon gifts, letters of congratulation, invitations to consult on legal cases and review copies sent on spec, had a minor coughing fit and had to be banged on the back by Zhen Ping.
6. Largely as a consequence of highbrow party games, come to think of it.
7. True to his Army background, Li Gang's first instinct on finding a heap of trouble rolling down the pass at him was to kick it up to the brass as fast as possible. Given the nature of this particular trouble, his own Chief was the last person in whose direction he could kick it. General Meng was the most senior brass he could find at short notice who would understand the nature of the problem.
8. One of Lie Zhanying's men had acquired it in the course of the campaign against Northern Yan, and, having rapidly realised that there was no way he was going to be able to feed the thing on the pay of a subaltern, had presented it with his compliments to his commanding officer, as a possession too rare and great for a common soldier. Lie Zhanying, having spent the remainder of the campaign fighting (and mostly losing) a battle with it for even half of the sleeping mat, on his return immediately presented it, with his most elevated compliments, to the Crown Prince, who took one look at it, and hotfooted it to the Inner Palace to wail to the Empress, "What on earth am I supposed to do with it?" And the Empress, having given it all of five heartbeats consideration, said, "Do you remember how Prince Qi adored his mastiff? He had it from a puppy and I don't think it ever worked out it was too big to be carried around tucked under his arm until the end of its days. Tingsheng's lost so much from never having known his father. Give him the dog."
9. Though not half as surprised as their Chief would have been.
10. T/N Literally: "City opening its gates to the enemy before the first siege engines have appeared on the horizon."
11. Especially when he realised that the whole affair was being carried out under the oblivious nose of the person he privately considered the second most devious man in Da Liang. That made it a proper challenge.
12. So, at this precise moment, would Li Gang. He had just received word that General Meng seemed to have developed an unfortunate tendency to break into uncontrollable sneezing when in proximity to General Nie's fur. Since each general would have died rather than embarrass the other, the only thing for it would be to ensure that they were seated as far apart as possible, although protocol demanded, given their respective ranks and closeness to the host, the precise opposite. Li Gang swore, and tore up yet another draft placement.
13. Which just shows how quickly some people forget their own childhood. "That time Lin Shu (i) laid a drag trail through the Empress Dowager's apartments when all the Consorts (and their lapdogs) were due to wait on her" had gone down in Inner Palace legend, the sort of thing veteran palace eunuchs warned rookie palace eunuchs to be aware of, not just as the kind of thing which might happen, but the kind of thing that might happen to them.
    (i) After the Chiyan Army massacre, the perpetrator was usually described vaguely as 'a young prince of the previous dynasty'.
14. Given the depths of duplicity his cousin had revealed in his Mei Changsu persona, it was of course equally if not more likely that the inclusion of a large mastiff in the party was the opening stratagem in a convoluted plan which would eventually end in the annexation of Northern Yan.
15. In practice this consisted of Nihuang (i) attempting to convince Tingsheng that even having managed to make the second most powerful man in Da Liang Very Cross Indeed was not going to result in the summary execution of either him or his dog; (ii) summoning her brother to take dog and child out into the garden to mop up the tears, work off some surplus energy and keep out of everyone's way; and (iii) using the ensuing moment of privacy to threaten to make public That Incident With The Squirrel if Jingyan didn't recover his sense of proportion at once and stop terrifying the poor kid.
16. Scholars have devoted a good deal of ink to the question as to whether, had he not made this elementary error, the subsequent catastrophes would have been averted, or simply happened a lot sooner.
17. Prematurely.
18. Lin Shu had gone by a number of different names over the years, but "Modesty" hadn't formed an element of any of them.
19. Another tactical error. Nobody outstared Prince Jing.

Chapter Text

It was, Lin Shu had to admit, profoundly pleasing to hear his family name spoken again with the respect it deserved. One or two of the bolder guests even compared his accomplishment as a general to that of his father, Lin Xie. Although the guest list was large, there was almost nobody that he was not glad to see, and only one absence that he regretted.

"Jingrui sent his regrets, but he asked me to apologise to you in person, too," said Yujin, bowing deeply. "He's terribly embarrassed," he added, straightening up. "Who would have thought he'd come through five months campaigning without a scratch, and then trip over his own bootlace while training and sprain his ankle?"

Lin Shu, who had spent several months of the previous year unable to move from his bed to his desk without the support of Li Gang's arm, accepted the apology with a polite bow and a pang of familiar guilt.

Most of the guests took their leave after a couple of hours, leaving a smaller party to move into the dining hall.²⁰ By this time, Lin Shu was more than happy to sit down at his place of honour on the dais at the head of the hall and pour tea from the waiting pot. Prince Jing was in the host's seat, at his right, Tingsheng (and Panhu) on the prince's further side, Mu Qing beside them, and Princess Nihuang on his own left. The other guests filled the places along the two long sides of the hall and, with the ineffable tact that arises from impregnable self-esteem, the Young Master of Langya Hall took the position at the hall's foot.

The waiting staff filed in, followed by a man with what appeared to be a living version of one of Lin Shu's own fur collars round his neck. Most of the guests looked at him with bemusement, Fei Liu with proprietary approval, and Mu Qing with open delight. "You came!" he cried, leaping to his feet in welcome. "Did Nihuang ji-jie change her mind? Now we can…"

They never found out what they could have done. The ferret, catching sight - and smell - of Panhu, bolted, vanishing across the floor and out of the door in a streak of pale fur, with the dog in excited pursuit. Princess Nihuang immediately set herself to soothing the ruffled sensibilities²¹ of the ferret owner, while Lin Shu fought back peals of laughter. Tingsheng got to his feet, almost tripping over them in his haste. "Honoured Father. My apologies. I shall go and find Panhu at once."

"No, I'll go," Prince Jing said grimly. Had the mastiff gone missing in the confined quarters of the Su Residence, he would unhesitatingly have held to his resolve to make Tingsheng responsible for the creature's behaviour, but the former Jing Manor was huge, rambling, uninhabited²² (apart from the reception rooms pressed into public service for the party) and it was now fully dark. Tingsheng could not help but get lost, and then they would have to send out a search party for him, too. And since Fei Liu would undoubtedly insist on being one of the searchers, the chances of this all ending in an impromptu game of hide-and-seek were far higher than, as a military strategist, he cared to contemplate.²³

Lin Shu raised an eyebrow. "Quite right. After all, as I recall Prince Qi mentioning, frequently, the head of a household is responsible for the conduct of every member of it.²⁴ I'd start with the kitchens, if I were you."

Repressing the impulse to call his guest something quite unfit for Tingsheng's tender ears, Prince Jing rose to his feet in a swirl of silk brocade and left the room.

"Good staff instincts," General Meng said approvingly to Tingsheng, once the Prince had gone. "Don't waste time bowing and regretting: take responsibility and offer your superior officer a solution to the immediate difficulty, whether or not he opts to take it."

Tingsheng's face was the very picture of "woebegone."

"Replying to the honourable General, you are very courteous. But it is the second time this evening. How can my Honoured Father ever forgive me?"

Lin Shu leaned across the space where Prince Jing and Panhu had been. "Tingsheng, let me tell you something, if I may. My own honoured and most beloved father was twice the martinet Jingyan will ever be, and if he could forgive me for tying Yujin to a tree, I think Jingyan will forgive you for letting a dog be a dog in his presence."

"Twice," Mu Qing muttered, and gasped as a spring onion pancake flicked by his sister hit him in a particularly sensitive region.

***

Because Prince Jing's recurring desire to chuck the Qilin Talent into the nearest fishpond had never²⁵ prevented him from taking his excellent advice, he made a beeline to the kitchens.

By this stage in proceedings, the main kitchen staff were sufficiently engaged in the complicated juggling act of getting the meal out that they didn't even register the Crown Prince passing through, following his nose (as he surmised any sensible dog would do) to the confectionery kitchen, which was filling the air with a warm, spicy sweetness that made him feel comprehensively at home.

As he turned the last corner, he almost tripped over the missing mastiff, who was lying in the submissive pose of a dog which is very well aware that it has let its owner down, it has let its ancestors down, it has let its manor down, but most of all it has let itself down.

He looked across the confectionery kitchen to see who had worked this miracle. She wore the gown of a palace kitchen maid, the lower half of her face covered with one of those cloth masks which the palace physicians recommended as a precaution for Inner Palace staff during the cold and 'flu season.

Briefly, Prince Jing considered offering her the job of head mastiff wrangler on the spot.

The first words out of her mouth dispelled any idea of securing her services for the Eastern Palace and, indeed, the impossibility of its being in his or anyone else's power to offer her any promotion.

"Oh, there you are, dear. I was almost getting round to sending someone to fetch you, but then Tingsheng's dog arrived, so I knew someone would be along to collect him shortly."

"Mother!" Prince Jing gasped. "What on earth are you doing here?"

The Empress clicked her tongue against her teeth.

"Well, what I was supposed to be doing here was comparing notes with that nice young doctor of Lin Shu's about his treatment of the Poison of the Bitter Flame while your father's away visiting Prince Ji's hot springs. It was the young man's suggestion. Gao Zhan thought of smuggling me in with the catering staff.²⁶ And then it seemed a waste, given you have such a wonderful set of ovens here, for me not to actually make some desserts while I was at it. But then the assassin turned up."

"The — assassin?"

The Empress pointed at a bundled heap in the corner of the kitchen. It seemed to have been efficiently trussed up with scarves and bandages from the kitchen first aid cupboard.

Prince Jing gestured, somewhat feebly, towards the bundle. "And how did you --?"

There was a touch of acerbity in his mother's voice. "Dear, how many battlefields have you been on? Surely you've seen a field surgeon do the Amputator's Pinch?²⁷ Really, though, it just shows how incompetent she was. Not only should she never have let me get close enough to try, she tried to use cinnabar. Cinnabar! How could she have thought she could get away with that one? Marquis Yan would recognise it at once; he's an alchemist. So would his son: he's been very sensibly telling his father to stop using it for years. The Young Master of Langya Hall would probably be able to tell you which seam that particular batch was mined from. And to cap it all, it's bright red. Anyone seeing that on their dessert is going to think twice before putting it in their mouth."

The way Prince Jing's mouth was currently hanging open, it would have been possible to put a large rat into it, without difficulty.²⁸

"Anyway, as I said, I was going to send someone to collect her -- I think you should probably use her as taster for the rest of the banquet, in case it's the fake poisoner/real poisoner double-punch strategy Consort Yue once tried on the last Empress.²⁹ And, Jingyan, I forbid you - formally - from telling anybody else I'm here. The people who need to know already do, and the rest would only worry.

"But I'm keeping you from your friends. And it's really a bit too hot in here for poor Panhu. Please tell Tingsheng he needs to be given a large bowl of water, at once. And somewhere cool to lie down. Yes, that's what you need, isn't it? Now, just go with Jingyan, and remember to be a very good boy."

The dog trotted willingly enough at his heels as he returned. Perhaps it just didn't like sitting still for long - he could feel a certain sympathy for that. Maybe it could accompany Tingsheng when they went riding, if they could train the horses to cope… He shook his head to clear it. An assassin. Maybe more than one. Would it be a show of weakness to cancel the whole thing, right now? Mei Changsu - no, Lin Shu - would doubtless have an opinion. Both of them would doubtless have an opinion.

They entered the hall, where servants were just distributing another round of dishes, and the dog lunged forward, growling. Prince Jing grabbed for its collar, missed, and it hurled itself against one of the guards by the wall.

"More aniseed?" asked Lin Shu mildly. Unlike earlier, though, Panhu's tail was not wagging; indeed, it was ominously flat to the ground, and his teeth were bared.

"Tingsheng, I'm not sure your friend is really suited for company yet," said Princess Nihuang. "Maybe you and Mu Qing should take him out into the garden again."

"If you can stop him eating the staff long enough to do so," muttered the General, perhaps not quite as far under his breath as he had intended. As if to prove his point, the dog shifted its weight on the guard's chest and snarled at Xia Dong as she approached, warning her back.

"It's all right, Panhu, come on, she won't hurt you..." Tingsheng jumped up, took a few swift steps forward and ran reassuring hands through Panhu's fur. The growl subsided, although the dog still did not move. Xia Dong's brows pinched together, and she leant over the supine guard.

"General, are you sure this is one of your men? The uniform looks off..."

"You're right!" said Meng, crouching beside her. "And these" - he thrust a hand into the man's tunic and extracted a handful of throwing stars - "are definitely not standard issue."

"You can put him with the other one," said Prince Jing.

"Other one?" Lin Shu asked sharply.

"Two!" said a voice from the rafters, and a black-clad body plummeted from the ceiling, knocking a tray from someone's hands. Fei Liu sprang down lightly beside it, regarding the mess without regret. "Don't like soup."

***

Mei Changsu — no doubt who he was at this moment — rose, and, ignoring the clearing up operation in the middle of the dining hall and the air of tension around Prince Jing's party, made a small but unmistakable gesture with his hand. Wei Zheng, Zhen Ping and a handful of other guests — all those who had ridden in from the jianghu — congregated around him. His voice was pitched too low for any ears but theirs.

"You will, of course, recall the tactics we used when the Eleven Willows Sect³⁰ put themselves in opposition to the Jiangzuo Alliance?"

Comprehension dawned across their faces, albeit across some faces more quickly than others.

"You mean," Wei Zheng said, "someone may be trying the old 'feint for the head, grab them by the goolies' manoeuvre?" ³¹

"Can we afford to believe someone is not? Put the word out. A challenge seems to have been issued. Ensure whoever has done so regrets it. Briefly."

Further down the hall, Prince Jing placed his hands on either side of his son's shoulders.

"Tingsheng; listen. I'm afraid this is the end of the party for you. You and Panhu must go very quickly and quietly down the tunnel with General Lie, and go home. Now. No-one should notice a carriage leaving from the Su Residence, and if they do —"

"Follow." Fei Liu had left the group around Mei Changsu, and materialised at the Prince's elbow. He thumped his fist emphatically into his chest. "Follow. Guard. Fun." He looked down at the dog, ruffled the fur behind its ears, and smiled. "More fun."

Prince Jing repressed the urge to say that the very last thing he wanted to happen to the carriage between the Su Residence and the Eastern Palace was anything Fei Liu might consider "fun". He gave a curt nod.

"I know your primary duty is to your Chief. Feel free to return as soon as Tingsheng is safely inside the Eastern Palace."

General Lie appeared beside them at that moment, wearing full armour.

"Li Gang and Zhen Ping tell me it's all clear at the other end of the tunnel. We'll be going now. Sir."

Despite Tingsheng's fears, the mastiff hopped into the carriage without a second's hesitation. Once inside, though, it made it abundantly clear that where it expected Tingsheng to sit was 'on the carriage floor' and where it expected to sit was 'on top of Tingsheng.' Meekly, he acquiesced.

"Yes. He does that." General Lie's voice sounded muffled, and, oddly, regretful. "But looking on the bright side, provided he doesn't end up smothering you, he's not going to let anything else kill you. Think of him as your personal attack blanket. Driver! The Eastern Palace."

The jolting interlude which followed felt endless, but at length the carriage came to a stop, and Panhu rolled off him.

Tingsheng looked up to see the upside-down face of Fei Liu, grinning through the carriage window.

"Safe. Home." ³²

***

Lin Chen rejected (with a curl of the lip which indicated how insulting he found the very suggestion) all proposals to accompany him to the kitchens. The assassins who had manifested so far in Jing Manor were not of a calibre which would trouble any of the Su household, including Aunt Ji or, had the household possessed such an animal, the cat.³³ Let alone someone who, in his own unprejudiced opinion, would have been near the top of the Langya List of fighters, had he not been the one compiling the list.³⁴

Nevertheless, to avoid inconvenience to any assassin who might be hanging around the darkened corridors, he took the precaution of whistling the tune known, in refined circles, as The Young Master's Come Down From the Mountain and, in those less refined, as Come On and Have a Go If You Think You're Hard Enough³⁵ as he made his way to the kitchen regions.

Here, he discovered the kind of organised chaos with an undercurrent of pure terror that he had only previously experienced in --

Well. That was interesting.

He bowed very low before the master of the kitchens. ³⁶

"Honoured sir. I presume from these exertions that you are aware of the immediate threat to the life and safety of our host and his noble and exalted guests?"

The master of the kitchen jerked his thumb in the direction of one of the pantries. "You'll find everything you're looking for in there. But tell me, if you've been sent down from the Hall, do you think they're ready for the next course yet, or would it be better to send up more wine?"

"Wine," Lin Chen said decisively. "Lots of it. And don't decant it. Original sealed flasks only. They'll keep their own cups."

Once within the pantry he noted immediately no less than three trussed bundles, and a tall woman sitting behind a bench, her head bent over an assortment of flasks, vials, pouches and twists of paper which he presumed had been retrieved from those bundles. Without looking up, she held out to him a scroll bearing what was unquestionably the authentic seal of the Chief Eunuch of the Imperial Bedchamber. It read:

The bearer of this document is entrusted by the Inner Palace with the safety and security of the Crown Prince and his family and in the event of any incident threatening the same you are required to offer her any and all assistance she requires, without cavil, delay or question.

"I don't think that's quite fair," Lin Chen said. "I'm positively bursting with questions. The first of which is, who shells out on Vermilion Butterfly Mine Fourth Level cinnabar, and then entrusts it to an assassin careless enough to be taken out with the Amputator's Pinch by someone who — at a conservative estimate — probably last used it over twenty years ago?"

The woman's head snapped up. "Well, if it comes to that, I've questions of my own. When carrying out the bone marrow replacement, which technique do you use to prevent the patient's qi from dissipating past the point of non-replenishment?"

***

Lin Chen tapped against the side of the porcelain wine cup with one chopstick. It made a surprisingly arresting sound.

"One inept assassin at an evening party might be seen as a diversion, two might look to be enthusiasm yoked to inexperience. But a positive swarm of them? My dear friends, don't you think there's something a little odd going on tonight?"

"Only one swarm? I'd call that downright tranquil," said General Meng. "Did I ever tell you about the last party I went to with Mei Changsu, as he was at the time? l lost count before we even got to the dessert."

Zhen Ping nodded. "We got quite used to it, back at Su Manor. Time was, it didn't really feel like the day had got started if somebody wasn't having a go at Chief."

"Mind you, it was positively restful to get our own space, after Snow Cottage," Li Gang chimed in. "That was a security nightmare and a half. And of course, while one didn't want to cause problems for Master Jingrui with his family, poor lad, it was getting almost more than any of us could do to keep things under control there. Night after night after night! Quality, too. No-one sneezes at Tianquan Manor."

"That reminds me, I always meant to ask," said the General. "What did you do with all the…"

He broke off in concern as Lin Shu doubled over in a coughing fit of the kind they'd all hoped he'd recovered from.

"Sorry. Orange pip," he explained, eyes watering. "You were observing, Chen?"

"To continue," said Lin Chen superbly. "The main thrust of my earlier remark was not 'swarm' but 'inept'. The three poisoners so far intercepted in the kitchens —"

"Three?" Prince Jing gasped.

The Young Master of Langya Hall gestured airily with his fan.

"As you know, the Palace household is under the direct control of Gao Zhan, who was hardly likely to let the Crown Prince and his son attend this event without taking obvious precautions. I have now spoken to the high-ranking covert agent of the Inner Palace embedded among the kitchen staff and am confident her ability to detect subtle poisons falls little short of my own."

The orange pip appeared to be contagious. Both Lin Shu and Princess Nihuang banged enthusiastically on the Crown Prince's back until he cried for mercy.

Lin Chen waited politely until the Crown Prince had stopped spluttering and going purple. "However, given this particular crop of assassins, our talents in that direction were not required. We've retrieved more than a dozen different lethal substances they were carrying about with them, and, to use terms you soldiers might comprehend, those poisons weren't so much blades as bludgeons. Cinnabar, arsenic, muriatic acid, ruby-eyed pit viper venom —"

"That one's actually quite clever," Marquis Yan interjected. "Swift, virtually tasteless, easily confused with other poisons making it hard to find and apply the correct antidote —"

Lin Chen bowed, "The Marquis is entirely correct with respect to its properties. However, it becomes a great deal less clever if the person proposing to deploy it is still carrying it around in the original pit viper."

There was a stunned silence. Lin Chen took full advantage.

"The General here tops the Langya list, of warriors at least, and the Princess is a good way up it in her own right. Prince Jing has considerable ability, and Fei Liu is sui generis.³⁷

"Then there's Xia Dong and General Nie. Even Yujin and Gong Yu would make short work of most assassins. So, you'd have to be an idiot, or exceedingly badly informed, to attack this party. And yet. These ostentatiously, one might even say extravagantly, incompetent assassins have somehow managed to make their way into what should have been the tightest security operation outside the Ministry of Revenue on the eve of the Budget."

That was, of course, the moment when twenty-five³⁸ top-flight martial artists, the cream of the jianghu, precipitated their way in through the skylights.

***
 

20.  To the end of his days, the Minister of Justice never forgave himself for allowing his good friend the Minister of Revenue to tempt him away at this point with promises of sixty-year old wine and elevated conversation.

21.  Financial and otherwise. She had considerable experience bargaining for warhorses and grain in occupied territory, but the rapacity of an aggrieved Jinling ferret proprietor came as a surprise even to her.

22. Prince Jing was not at this point in the evening aware of just how far from uninhabited the darker parts of Jing Manor were, and how even more inhabited they were in the process of becoming.

23.  Given the intelligence of which Prince Jing was currently unaware, an impromptu pitched battle would, in fact, have been a great deal more likely.

24. Including the ones with four legs and a tendency to slobber. Prince Qi's mastiff had not been his only dog. Historians believe that an incident involving Prince Yu's best These Aren't Dragons Honestly, They're Just Very Fierce Serpents brocade robes and one of Prince Qi's dogs looking for a quiet place to birth her latest litter contributed to the coolness which subsisted between the First and Fourth Princes during the last year of the former's life.

25.  Well, hardly ever.

26.  Gao Zhan had, naturally, had to accompany the Emperor, which prevented his being able to supervise the Jing Manor event in person. This inability to be in two places at once had caused him considerable heart-searching, though not nearly as much as events subsequently showed it deserved.

27.  This nerve-pinching technique, which renders a patient immobile for emergency surgery, is apparently unknown outside civilised lands. The barbarians are rumoured simply to hold the patient down by brute force, though Empress-Doctor Jing preferred not to credit that, even of barbarians.

28. Initial difficulty, at any rate. The person making the experiment might well find themselves in considerable hot water immediately after performing it.

29. The only person(s) who had actually succeeded in poisoning the previous Empress were, respectively, her own brother and, ultimately, herself. But Noble Consort Yue had been for many years tipped as "Consort most likely to" by those in the know.

30. The Eleven Willows Sect were a small pugilist sect reputed to have origins far outside the borders of Da Liang, who were famed for staging intricate tactical battles which went on for days, and for characteristic martial arts moves known within the jianghu as 'the late cut' 'the reverse sweep' and 'the wrong'un.' They were also reputed to be very nearly as fond of tea as Mei Changsu and, incredible as it may seem, even more fond of cake than Fei Liu.

31. T/N Literally: "Dazzle the dragon with lanterns, and steal its horde from under its tail" but the gesture with which Wei Zheng accompanied his comment was rather less open to interpretation.

32.  Two separate households next day complained to the capital guards of having found an unexplained, masked, black-clad corpse in their respective gardens. The capital guards duly reported the oddity to their commander, General Lie. General Lie mentioned it to the Crown Prince and, in due course, several lacquered boxes of jewel-bright pastries made their way to the Su Residence, marked for Fei Liu's personal attention.

33. "What do you mean, 'If they had a cat'? What else explains the state my pigeons are sent back in?" Langya Hall's Mistress of the Pigeons expostulated when, some time later, Lin Chen recounted these events to her.

34.  Langya Hall's unofficial motto was, "Conflicts of interest cannot in practice be avoided. But they can be managed. And they must never be seen to exist."

35.  The composer himself had titled it If You Knew How Long It Takes To Get Hair This Fabulous, You Wouldn't Be The One Volunteering To Mess It Up but this title was not commonly known and never used. Aloud.

36.  Lin Chen was renowned throughout Da Liang and its neighbouring countries for the unfailing courtesy with which he treated kitchen and serving staff. Quite apart from any other consideration, where do you suppose Langya Hall got most of its gen?

37.  T/N Literally "A dragon wearing a unicorn's horn and having the crown of a phoenix."

38. The twenty-sixth said "Fucking hell, they didn't tell me Mei Changsu was involved", changed direction in mid-air, and spent the rest of the night composing a letter to his contracting agency in which the phrase 'material non-disclosure' and its cognates featured heavily.

Chapter Text

It was an appallingly hard-fought battle.

Each of the attackers was profoundly skilled, hand-picked, hand-trained and dedicated to a single purpose. They fought for glory, reputation and an absolutely whomping fee (half in advance, half on delivery.)

The defenders fought — for mixed motives.

Generals Meng and Nie fought with economical, professional efficiency.

Xia Dong fought to prove that honour can still emerge from a stinking swamp, and in the teeth of her shifu.

Zhen Ping and Li Gang fought simply: for their Chief, and for the Jiangzuo Alliance.

Prince Jing and Princess Nihuang fought precisely, lethally and for love.

Lin Chen fought for Langya Hall, for whom reputation is everything.

Primarily, Gong Yu fought for Yujin; for hope out of a hopeless world and, more-or-less out of habit, for Mei Changsu.

Yujin and Mu Qing, despite all they had seen and known over the last five months, fought out of sheer joie de vivre, and Fei Liu, arriving via the roof some two minutes after the assassins, for pure delight.

Marquis Yan skulked on the edges of the battle, bringing down weakened enemies with cunning. When asked later, he said he’d fought so he would be able to stand before his ancestors and tell them he had not been a bystander. The spirit of Lin Yueyao knew different.

And Lin Shu fought with a fierce exultant joy, not because he needed to, but because, after thirteen years of letting others fight for him, he could. He might not have the skills he’d once had, to leap and to fly, but he was still perfectly competent with a blade, once he’d taken one from the attacker Fei Liu had conveniently dropped at his feet.

Well, reasonably competent.

He was somewhat ruefully wrapping a napkin round a minor nick on his hand and trying not to let Lin Chen notice when he saw Prince Jing kick the last of the attackers off his blade and glance over to make sure he was unharmed. He tried to hide his hand in his sleeve. Too late.

"Xiao Shu. I have failed you."

Prince Jing’s bow was deeper than would ever have been fitting for a Prince, let alone a Crown Prince, to give a commoner. Lin Shu knew, without looking, his eyes would be swimming in unshed tears. He grasped the prince’s arms and tried rather helplessly to raise him, without hope that it would make a difference. It didn't.

"You are a guest in my house,³⁹ and I have not guaranteed your safety. Without me — without my collusion in this affair, which you never wanted in the first place, you would not even have been here."

"Your Highness," he began.

No. Sir Su would have had no choice but to take at face value this ridiculous, performative, sentimental display.⁴⁰ Lin Shu had other options.

"Jingyan, I know perfectly well it wasn't your fault. And if you don't stop that right this instant, I will tell Fei Liu to throw you in the fishpond."

Prince Jing gaped at him.

"And yes, I know that is lèse majesté⁴¹ and you will have to have me arrested, and Fei Liu as well, and at that point it will be your fault, because it is in your power to stop me from doing it by standing up, right now."

"That is blackmail."

He smiled Mei Changsu's smile. "Yes."

Prince Jing held his position a moment longer, but straightened up hurriedly when he saw Lin Shu open his mouth again.

"That’s better," Lin Shu said. He smiled at Prince Jing, shook his sleeves out and turned away to take stock of the situation.

His triumph was short-lived. Lin Chen and Dr Yan were bearing down on him from opposite directions, Lin Chen's hand already imperiously outstretched for his wrist. He gestured them both away. Dr Yan looked from him to Lin Chen, nodded judiciously, and turned aside to help elsewhere. Lin Shu rolled his eyes.

"Chen, I am absolutely fine. You’re like a mother hen with one chick. Go away and fuss over somebody who’ll appreciate it."

"Nothing would give me more pleasure," said Lin Chen, unwrapping the hand and subjecting it to a close inspection. "But if you think I’m going to see all my hard work go to waste because somebody couldn’t keep out of the way of the sort of bottom-of-the-barrel assassin who thinks it’s clever to use a poisoned blade, you can think again."

"Poison?" Prince Jing felt himself go cold all over. Pit viper venom.

"Well, you never know," said the Young Master of Langya Hall, without quite the seriousness Prince Jing thought the situation deserved. "And it needs attention anyway. When these jianghu types talk about 'cleaning' their blades, what they really mean is rubbing all sorts of unhygienic gunk on them to prevent rust or to smooth the draw."⁴²

He worked the stopper out of the flask he was holding and poured a good dollop of the contents on Lin Shu’s hand. Then he took a closer look at the stamp on the clay. "Seems a pity to waste this vintage on you, though." He took a good swig before pouring the rest on the napkin, ignoring Lin Shu’s squawk of protest.

With the blood wiped away, Prince Jing had to admit it did look like a pretty minor scratch.

"How did you let him get to you anyway? You should have been better than that."

"I was trying to take him alive," said Lin Shu, with some asperity. "As the Young Master pointed out, there is something distinctly odd going on here. As a general, I dislike not knowing what it is; as a strategist, it offends me."

"So it’s not anything to do with you, then?" asked General Meng. Lin Shu gave him a long, hard stare. "What? I just thought, you know, after the last time, and the time before that..."

"No. It’s not anything to do with him. It was never anything to do with him at all," said a voice.

The figure that emerged from the shadows of the entrance was masked and clothed in black, as all the attackers had been; the woman he held pressed against him, a dagger hard against her throat, was in the robes of the kitchen staff. Prince Jing started forward, then pulled up, hard, at a minuscule shake of Lin Shu’s head.

"This knife, by the way, is poisoned. The Princess will drop her sword, and anything else she happens to be carrying, and come over here. The rest of you will remain exactly where you are."

There was a second of tense silence. Princess Nihuang broke it, standing forward from the crowd.

"It will be best for everyone if I do exactly as this man is asking." She bent, laying down her sword, then stood up to take out the knife she had thrust through her sash. She held it demonstratively in the air before laying that, too, next to the sword, and spreading her hands to show she was unarmed. "I will come over to you, now, slowly. You will release the girl when I am within five paces of you. When she has passed me, I will join you. That way, we can be sure that we will both keep our word."

"Yes." The man gave a short, choppy nod. The knife in his hand visibly moved, and the maid flinched away from it. "Everybody else stays. Prince Jing cannot save you this time."

Princess Nihuang moved across the breadth of the hall, deliberately and with purpose, eyes steady on the man with the dagger. His own, as far as she could tell behind the mask, roamed restlessly about the room, trying to keep a watch on everybody at once. No-one moved.

At five paces, the man pushed the girl hard, sending her stumbling away from him. He kept the dagger trained on Princess Nihuang, who kept coming. Three steps. Two. Her foot crunched on a wine cup.

She kicked the shards up into his face, and there was a blur of movement. Two blows, a spinning kick, and he was on his knees before her, one wrist pinioned in her hand, and the knife skittering away across the floor.

"As if I needed Jingyan to rescue me," she said scornfully. "Or anyone else, for that matter. What possessed you to invite me to approach you?"

"It was all I could do not to laugh out loud, once he said that," said Meng Zhi, approaching them. "Princess, shall we see what idiot thinks he is safe within ten paces of the Grand Marshall of the Yunnan Army?"

"You’d best be quick, if you want answers," added Lin Chen, looking at the arch of the man’s back. "I think he scratched himself on his own dagger. Bottom of the barrel, I told you."

The mask fell away from features contorted in agony — he had not, apparently, lied about the poison on his blade — but still perfectly recognisable.

"Sima Lei!" gasped Prince Mu.

The assassin had eyes only for the Princess. His foam-flecked lips worked, his throat contorted.

"If only you had loved me, I could have shone so very bright!"

She leant over him, so he could be sure of hearing her.

"Sima Lei, just to be clear, you were in the bottom five of my list of suitors before ever I entered Zhaoren Palace. Once there, I vowed that — whatever happened — if you and I were ever forced to be in the same room again, you would not leave that place alive." She raised her head to survey the wreckage of the dining hall, with its tossed and broken corpses. "There is not one of those you duped and bribed into becoming part of your idiotic scheme whom I would not find a thousand times more worthy as a consort than you. I offer this as comfort to their ghosts."

He writhed and spluttered, his hands going to his neck as if his breath was being choked out of him by invisible hands.⁴³

Princess Nihuang straightened and stepped back, turning away as she did so. "No, Sima Lei. I will not give you the merciful release of a swift blade to the throat. That I reserve for honourable enemies."

***

General Lie stopped on the threshold halfway through a formal bow, visibly boggling. Li Gang and Zhen Ping were directing the waiting staff in the safe and effective removal of some two dozen black-clad bodies, a disgraced former Court luminary appeared to be choking to death in a disregarded corner, and Xia Dong was kneeling on the floor with her arms around a very upset kitchen maid, from what he could gather assuring her that the first time being taken hostage was always the most upsetting and that she just needed to get her breathing under control.

"Ah, General Lie. Splendid timing, as always," said Prince Jing. The General got a grip on himself.

"Reporting to Your Highness. Having seen Tingsheng and Panhu safely installed back in the Eastern Palace, I ordered the duty officer there to double the night watch and carry out a full patrol of the palace purlieus. I then returned immediately with two companies of the Crown Prince's personal guard, in order to forestall…" He stopped again.

"As the General can see, we have successfully maintained our defence in the meantime," said Lin Shu smoothly, coming to stand beside Prince Jing. "I believe we have dealt with the current threat, but we should first ensure the safety of the staff. By the way, I should let you know, Gao Zhan has at least one of the Inner Palace security team in position down in the kitchens. Please give her any assistance she may require, and keep out of her way. And Li Gang and his men would doubtless appreciate any assistance you can offer."

Lie Zhanying glanced to Prince Jing for confirmation, received a brief nod, and turned aside to give orders. Turning back, he saw Lin Shu had somehow managed to find an intact flask and a pair of cups.

"Your Highness. We should remain where we are until your men have finished sweeping the grounds. In the meantime, Lin Chen has managed to find some surprisingly excellent wine, and it would be a pity to waste it. I know the Crown Prince’s men are entirely competent to their tasks, there is no need for the General to supervise them. Will you join us, General Lie?"

He filled and held out one of the cups, and Lie Zhanying took it gratefully.

***

When, after half an hour or so, further assassins had failed to materialise, the evening began to take on a more familiar shape. Toasts were drunk, compliments were exchanged, and the conversation, if general, was polite. This was exactly what Mu Qing had been afraid of. The party so far had more than lived up to expectation, but if things went on this way, before much longer, people were going to start discussing poetry. He wouldn’t be surprised if some of them even fell asleep - if he didn’t do so himself. Fortunately, he had come prepared. Taking advantage of what sounded like a complicated exchange of wordplay at his sister’s end of the hall (Yup. Poetry. Any minute now, he was sure of it), he shook a small bag from his sleeve into the palm of his hand, and threw a generous handful of the resin it contained onto the nearest brazier.

As the resin began to combust, the noses of both Marquis Yan and Lin Chen went up like those of hunting dogs. Hardly surprising: if Langya Hall had ever published such a thing, in his youth Marquis Yan would have come close to topping the list of recreational alchemists, and if they ever changed their policy in future Lin Chen would be judging the contenders.

Their eyes met.

"Let’s," the Marquis said, "see what happens."

***

In fairness to Mu Qing, he would have been utterly horrified had he known how the apothecary had interpreted his request. While the recent war had given him some taste of command, he had been dealing entirely with staff trained and shaped by his sister, who knew their business and needed very little direction. Accordingly, he had not yet learnt the importance of defining his terms. And when he had asked for "Something to liven up a party when the evening starts getting on a bit. It's mostly old folk, might be a bit slow, know what I mean," the apothecary - who ran a thriving business off the Luoshi Road - had drawn his own conclusions.

Before too long, Li Gang, Zhen Ping, Dr Yan and Sir Shisan⁴⁴ were (with rapidly increasing volume and animation, and occasional suggestions from Lin Chen) engaged in compiling a list of The Fifty Most Annoying Habits of Mei Changsu.⁴⁵

General Meng and Lie Zhanying had their arms round each other's shoulders and were singing (or attempting to sing) that famous Da Liang drinking ballad about whose lyrics there is absolutely no consensus⁴⁶ except that it begins "Yequin girls are pretty/And Yunnan girls are strong".⁴⁷

Prince Mu would have liked to join in, but was undecided about which of the versions of the lyrics he knew were suitable for mixed company. He was just about to open his mouth when Xia Dong chimed in with a verse so spectacularly bawdy⁴⁸ that, as he put it to a drinking crony a few days later, "I'm not surprised her husband's hair's pure white. I'm only surprised mine isn't."

All this was pretty much what Mu Qing had had in mind, and he turned with some satisfaction to see what was going on elsewhere. Yujin and his musician were, frankly, snogging the faces off each other, and Xia Dong and her husband weren’t far off. Lin Chen and Marquis Yan were comparing notes about something which seemed to involve sweeping gestures and a lot of laughter. And at the top of the hall, his sister had been leaning closer and closer to Lin Shu, and was now nestled scandalously under his arm. Mu Qing nodded approvingly.

From his position halfway down the hall, he could not hear the conversation on the dais.

"Jingyan," said Princess Nihuang, "will you please stop looking at us with those huge tragic eyes? If you want to come over and cuddle up to Lin Shu’s other side, I will make no objection."

"The Princess is pleased to joke," said Prince Jing, making a really heroic effort to hold back.

"The Princess is pleased to do nothing of the sort. I’ve known you both since I was five, and I’ve been on campaign since I was seventeen. I know what happens at night well enough. And don’t you start," she added, jabbing Lin Shu scientifically in the side. "As long as I get to marry you, and stay married to you, I can share. It’s not like you’re going to be his concubine or anything."

"He’d be a spectacularly bad concubine anyway," said Lin Chen, who had the trick of following several conversations at once. "He’d never do anything you told him."

"Excuse me, I would be spectacularly good at being an Imperial concubine," said Lin Shu indignantly. "I’d be running the Inner Palace within weeks.⁴⁹ And besides…"

He leant back against Princess Nihuang and shot a languishing glance at Prince Jing from under his lashes, opening the other arm wide. Without being conscious of moving at all, Prince Jing suddenly found himself lying with his head in Lin Shu’s lap, while Lin Shu’s free hand stroked his hair. Lin Shu flinched slightly as Prince Jing’s hair ornament dug into him, and Nihuang reached round to draw out the pin and lay it aside. Prince Jing caught her hand and turned his cheek into her palm.

It was at this point that Mu Qing decided to find out exactly how much wine it would take to blot out every memory of the evening.

At approximately the same time, Yujin disentangled himself from Gong Yu, raised her to her feet and dropped to his knees before her.

"Please, don’t let this wonderful evening end without making me the happiest man in Da Liang. Promise me you will be my wife."

"Yujin!" She was so overwrought, she actually stamped her foot. "Listen to me. You are the son of a Marquis, the nephew of an Empress. Such a one does not marry an entertainer." She dropped her eyes. "I will willingly become your concubine, if you wish. I cannot become your wife."

The Empress slid open the doors and entered with every ounce of Imperial dignity she could muster. Without exchanging a word, Princess Nihuang, Prince Jing and Lin Shu rose, descended from the dais, and dropped into step behind her. A childhood spent in the Imperial family instills some habits which come pretty close to reflex.

She halted in front of Yujin and his beloved.

"Kindly stop this pointless and excessively dramatic self-sacrifice this very instant." ⁵⁰

Gong Yu rocked back on her heels and emitted a sound very close to "Ack?" ⁵¹

"Listen to me. Both my son and myself owe our current positions and, very probably, our lives in no small part to your efforts. My nephew's ancestors (who are also, incidentally, mine) owe you for their restored reputations. My nephew, in addition to all the other considerations which apply as much to him as to the rest of us, owes you an enormous apology.⁵² If you don't want to marry Yujin, then fine. Tell him that. But I'm not letting you stand here and allow some nonsensical notion of presumed unworthiness to stop this generation of the Yan family marrying the love of his life."

"Well said, jie-jie." Marquis Yan nodded. "Miss Gong, consider me to have seconded every word of that."

"I haven't finished. If the only thing stopping you from accepting his proposal is the gap in rank between you, well, the daughter of an Empress outranks the nephew of one."

"But I'm not --"

"You are now. I'm adopting you."

"You're what?" Prince Jing's mind had been wandering but that woke him back up, sharpish.

"You heard, dear. After all, you started this adoption trend, with Tingsheng."

"Technically speaking," Lin Shu said, "My father started it, when he adopted you as his sister."

The Empress ignored her nephew and kept her entire attention on her son.

"And you always used to tell me you wanted a baby sister."

"I was six." Realising that this sounded, possibly, rather ungracious, he inclined his head in Gong Yu's direction. "But if my mother wishes to present me with a sister at this stage in our respective lives, I cannot imagine any sister I would be more delighted to welcome into the family. Or any husband for any sister I might have whom I would prefer to Yujin, come to think of it."

"Well, that's settled, then," the Empress said, with satisfaction. "Ah, Gao Zhan. How very opportune of you to turn up. Kindly proclaim it. You can drop by the Ministry of Rites and sort out the paperwork whenever you've got a minute."

Gao Zhan drew a very deep breath.⁵³

"The Empress is graciously pleased to proclaim that for meritorious service to the Inner Palace, and from the abundant affection and regard in which she holds her, Gong Yu shall henceforward be considered as her own daughter in all conceivable respects. The Empress is further graciously pleased to proclaim that she allows the suit of the Young Master of Yan Manor to her daughter, Gong Yu."

He dropped his voice. "And this unworthy person proclaims on his own account that his Imperial Highness the Son of Heaven is not two li away from the Palace at this very moment, having cut short his visit to his honourable brother's hot springs, and gives as his earnest and most considered advice to her Imperial Highness the Empress that she might consider returning to the Inner Palace with the utmost celerity."

***

They were, just, in time. When the eunuch came with the request that the Empress wait upon the Emperor forthwith, she was concealed beneath the bedcovers, still in her maid's uniform. A surprisingly short time later, she swept into her husband's apartments in her undress Court robes, with the air of a woman who has spent an uneventful day engaged in a little light baking, followed by an evening spent perusing undemanding literature.

It transpired that the reason for the Emperor's sudden return was that he had been afflicted by portentous dreams during his time at the hot springs, which he wished to recount to her at once, in the greatest possible detail. She listened, made sympathetic noises, and poured tea.

"Of course, the first night I assumed the dreams were just the banquet lying a bit heavy," the Emperor said. "That crispy water-snail thing Ji has his cooks serve as a snack with wine always tends to repeat on me."

"I do hope Gao Zhan remembered to pack your digestive powders. Your brother can be almost too hospitable."⁵⁴

He patted the Empress's hand reassuringly. "When have you ever known Gao Zhan forget anything? Do you know, the dear old fellow insisted on going ahead of the party -- on a horse, can you imagine it, at his age? -- when we must have been over twenty li out from Jinling, so that he could personally assure himself that the Palace would have everything prepared to receive me properly?"

"That was indeed very properly done. I shall make a note to remind myself to send a suitable gift to reward his care and forethought in the morning .⁵⁵ But do go on. You dreamed the same dream again the next night?"

"Almost. That is, it started from the same place --

"The three army supply junks running aground on a sandbank? That sounds terribly careless on the part of the helmsmen."

The Emperor snorted. "I daresay that's what they'd have liked everyone to believe. Even in the first dream, I thought the skipper of the first junk had a shifty look. But when I picked up the next night it all became clear. Bribery! Except, he'd bitten off more than he could chew. Plainly whoever he was using as ship's astrologer could no more predict an oncoming storm than that idiotic dog of Tingsheng's."

"My dear, please: Panhu is a noble and devoted beast."

The Emperor delivered himself of a prolonged and sceptical snort.

"Anyway, it rapidly became apparent that rather than having simply beached the fleet somewhere they could be towed off in the morning, Bribery Man had really mucked things up. Because the storm that blew up that night turned the sandbank into a lee shore, and I'm sure you can remember Admiral Nie⁵⁶
on that topic?"

The Empress shuddered. "I'm so glad you took a firm line about that poem, dear. By the fourth time the Court had heard it, 'impervious horrors' was certainly the mot juste. ⁵⁷ But are you telling me the junks sank?"

"Broken to bits. The third night (and this was the one which determined me I had to come home at once to consult the Imperial Astrologer and the Minister of Rites) we were in the same place but the storm had died away and it was broad daylight. I was sitting on a fisherman's boat and there was a young man diving to bring up evidence from the wreckage."

"A young man?"

"Swam like an otter. Bright as a button, too; worked out everything that was going on from a couple of sodden bits of wood. Had the family nose. And what's more, there was a young woman in the boat. A doctor. I thought she was, from her robes at first, and then, when the young man came up after having dived for a very long time, she insisted on taking his pulse, and so then I was certain."

He reached out his hand, and patted his consort's. "You know, one thing I wondered, was if they might be us. You know; in our future lives."

The Empress' jaw did not -- because she was who she was, and ever more would be so -- drop. Nevertheless, she took a deep breath.

"You think so?"

"I shall ask the Minister of Rites that very question in the morning. But I have kept you up too long, my dear. Go to your rest."

It had, indeed, been a very long day. Nevertheless, the Empress spent a long time burning incense before the memorial tablet of Noble Consort Chen, before she sought her bed at last. ⁵⁸

***

1. The leading scholars of jurisprudence in Da Liang might have raised objections to this characterisation of Jing Manor. On entering the Eastern Palace, Prince Jing had, of course, made it clear that all his dealings as Crown Prince would be subject to the utmost standards of probity and moderation. Unfortunately, the official emoluments attending the title were on the ungenerous side to begin with (i) and had also been anticipated to the fullest extent possible by the previous incumbent of the Eastern Palace, while the unofficial revenues, even had Prince Jing borne to touch them (ii) had been mostly liquidated and dispersed (iii) some time before the previous incumbent’s departure to Xian. The Crown Prince had as a result found himself suffering an acute cash-flow crisis, bringing him to the point of selling Jing Manor, when Gao Zhan and his mother presented him with a solution. Jing Manor would be leased to the Crown, for a period of seven years with the possibility of extension, for use as temporary accommodation for high-status, low-flight risk diplomatic delegations. The Crown would assume the burden of upkeep, refurbishment, cleaning, maintenance and, as required, staffing. Even Prince Jing’s scrupulous notions of the differences between the private and public purse could find no ethical flaws in the proposal. Accordingly, Jing Manor was therefore Imperial territory at all material times.
   (i) Successive generations of Emperors having taken the understandable view that if the princes were going to expend their resources on building up private armies and faction fighting, they weren’t going to do so out of treasury funds.
   (ii) Which he absolutely wouldn’t, as he explained at length, with gestures, to anyone who would listen, which rapidly came down to (a) his mother, the Empress; and (b) the Eastern Palace pigeons, who were in coops and so couldn’t get away, except on official business (ii.i)
   (ii.i) The Mistress of the Pigeons subsequently observed that when the time came to return the Eastern Palace pigeons to their origin, the birds went off their feed and, visibly, sulked: she dispatched a ream of notes on 'Care, Feeding, Harmony and Moderation’ with a new batch of eggs, and covertly released the original birds to take their chances in the jianghu.
   (iii) (T/N literally: "gone up in smoke").
2. As a boy, Lin Shu had studied under the greatest of Da Liang’s scholars. Let us charitably assume he'd been absent with gastric flu on the day the concept of the double standard was explained to the class.
3. T/N Literally: "An act of terminal idiocy committed against the Son of Heaven or his immediate family".
4. A pet task set the Langya Hall apprentices was known — to the Young Master, at least — as "Cross-Referencing For Unintended Consequences" in which apprentices who had been immersed for months in one section of study (eg botany) were thrown abruptly and at random into a completely different section (eg naval architecture and tactics) and told to apply their learned pre-conceptions to that. Over the years, this had produced not only such gems as the Lotus Root Theory of Disaster Prevention and the Unexpectedly Aerodynamic Sheep, but a thorough understanding of how to press the contents of the average cleaner’s cupboard into service for everything from defending outposts against surprise attack to what would later become known as molecular gastronomy.
5. "Looks like not all of the venom stayed in the viper," Lin Chen murmured. No-one paid him any attention.
6. Who, as an intelligence chief not a wet-work man, had taken no part in the battle, but whose accurate and detailed observations on the assailants, subsequently filtered out through the Jiangzuo Alliance, caused ructions throughout the jianghu for months to come.
7. A list in which That Thing He Does When Folding His Socks and Late Night Flute Practice That He Thinks None of Us Can Hear Even Though The Walls Are Literally Made Of Paper(i) featured surprisingly far above Looking Heartbreakingly Noble and Pathetic When We All Know The State He’s In Is Completely His Own Fault. Again.(ii)
   (i) And He Keeps Missing That One B Flat. Zhen Ping was surprisingly musical.
   (ii) Li Gang and Sir Shisan later drew upon this discussion to publish, under a pseudonym, the bestseller Difficult Bosses: How To Manage Upwards Without Letting Them Notice, which spawned a weekly advice column, several sequels and a host of (inferior) imitators.
8. Though numerous variants are recorded in the annals at Langya Hall. It is probably just as well that Lin Chen's attention was elsewhere, sparing the company the song about the hedgehog. Lin Chen was uncharacteristically reticent about where or from whom he had learnt this particular ditty, but this had not stopped the whole of Langya Hall repeatedly, jointly and severally wishing he’d left it where he’d found it.
9. Although in this particular case, given the other guests at the party, and especially what had just transpired, General Meng prudently reversed these attributes.
10. Even after its dissolution, the proverb 'Xuanjing Bureau has all the best songs' remained in use in Da Liang.
11. "In your dreams, sunshine," muttered the Empress, who was listening from behind the sliding doors, and being more entertained than she’d been in literally decades.
12. Lin Chen rolled his eyes and murmured, "Why didn't I recruit this woman thirteen years ago?"
13. The last time Gong Yu had seen then Noble Consort Jing, the latter had been wielding a suturing needle and she still hadn't felt this intimidated.
14. "I do?" Lin Shu muttered to Princess Nihuang. "What for?" "She's probably got a list. And if she hasn't, I have."
15. Those members of the party with sufficient forethought made a rapid calculation of the size of the dining hall at Jing Manor compared to the size of Wuying Hall, and took steps to muffle their ears.
16. Or, as the Inner Palace betting board currently had it, "Prince Ji: poisoned by: 500/1; intentionally poisoned by: 50000/1; died of surfeit following invitation to light mid-morning snacks by: 5/3 on."
17. While the jade teacups were exquisite and of almost inestimable rarity, it is possible that Gao Zhan appreciated the pot of buttock salve even more, and not just because it had been blended by the hands of his Empress, in person.
18. The General's younger brother, Nie Duo. Although he and Princess Nihuang had a friendly relationship, the Emperor had forbidden him to participate in the suitors' tournament. Understandably, since if the principal purpose of marrying off a woman is to neutralise the 40,000-strong army she commands, giving her a navy by way of wedding present is likely to prove somewhat counter-productive.
19. T/N Literally: "An inscription engraved by the sublimest master."
20. In consequence of the prophetic dreams of the Emperor, a thorough set of procedures for investigating marine accidents was subsequently put in place and remained until, during the reign of the next but one Emperor, it was subsumed within the wider Ministry of Defence as part of a slate of cost cutting measures.

Chapter Text

With the departure of the Empress and Gao Zhan, any semblance of formality disappeared. The crowd around Gong Yu and Yujin became more raucously celebratory by the minute.

Bored, Fei Liu wandered back up the hall towards the place where he had last seen the ferret. It might, of course, have gone to ground anywhere in Jing Manor, but it had evidently been attracted to the poison on Sima Lei’s blade. Although one of General Lie’s men had carefully removed the discarded weapon, along with Sima Lei’s body, no-one had yet scrubbed the blood from the floor before the dais. It might retain enough of the right scent to tempt the animal back.

Fei Liu’s own nose was exceptionally keen, and he did think there was something acrid — out of place — in the vicinity of the dais. It reminded him of something — something from a long time ago.

It had been cold, yes: Su-gege had shivered badly even though the brazier had been lit, even though he had been wearing his warmest robes.

There had been fruit — oranges? Kumquats? Tangerines?

Yujin had brought the fruit as a present for Su-gege, but it had tasted wrong.

Bitter. Smoky. Salty.

The fruit had tasted like this part of the hall smelt. But the smell was fainter near Sima Lei’s bloodstain, more intense as one approached the dais.

Had the ferret been following the smell of poison? Or another smell?

Very, very stealthily, Fei Liu wriggled his way alongside, and then under, the dais.

***

"I can’t. I mean, I can’t. I can’t have heard that. I want to have heard it. But I can’t. I can’t believe something so lovely would happen to someone so unworthy as me."

Gong Yu was having a moment. It had gone on for some considerable time. Yujin was patting her shoulders ineffectually, Mu Qing was proffering more wine, Lin Chen was looking on with the air of a man who was just waiting for precisely the worst moment to offer terrible advice and Lin Shu appeared — well, "conflicted" would be an understatement.

Marquis Yan flashed a signal of pure desperation to Princess Nihuang. She shouldered her way ruthlessly through the over-excited mob and knelt down on the floor beside Gong Yu, extending her hands.

"Miss Gong — my apologies for the impropriety, I don’t quite know what your future title will be, as an adopted daughter of the Empress. But anyway, my brother and I were just leaving."

"We were?" Mu Qing enquired incautiously. His sister ignored him.

"We would be delighted if you could return with us to Mu Manor. Should Her Imperial Majesty not have other preferences, it would be our greatest pleasure if you could remain as our guest until your wedding, and to host your wedding banquet there."

"Another party!" Mu Qing exclaimed. "Now you’re talking."

His sister continued to ignore him, putting her arm around Gong Yu. "Come on. Come with us. And then Yujin can come round to visit in the morning, to assure himself you haven’t caught cold tonight."

Yujin bowed.

"It would be my absolute pleasure."

"I shall attend on you, Princess, an hour and a half after my son," Marquis Yan said. "Yan Manor has been without a mistress for many years, and I look forward to receiving your guidance as to what is appropriate for the accommodation of our new Young Madam."

The Mu Manor party departed in style.

***

He'd been right. The smell was much thicker under the dais. It seemed to be coming from a number of bales which had been thrust haphazardly against the screen forming the rear wall to the dais. And — he just restrained a hiss of triumph — there was the ferret, pawing at the bales.

Unfortunately, the ferret saw Fei Liu at exactly the same moment he saw it. It bolted; his lunge missed by half an inch, and then it was out from under the dais.

The chase was short. The ferret simply whipped round the back of the screen and dived under the ample skirts of a woman in the blue robes and matching mask of senior Inner Palace household staff who had been crouched down there, holding a candle lantern. She shrieked and dropped the lantern, which landed on a bit of tarred rope which started at her feet and disappeared under the dais through a hole bored in the screen. The rope started to smoulder.

The ferret emerged from the neck of her dress and streaked back down the hall. Fei Liu slung the woman across his back and ran after it.

Half way down the hall, he remembered exactly where he'd smelt that salty, bitter, smoky smell before.

"Su-gege, Su-gege!" The volume would even have impressed Gao Zhao. "Su-gege! Fire! Black fire! Leave. Now!"

He threw his prisoner down, headed straight for Lin Shu, picked him up and ran.

General Nie caught up Fei Liu’s prisoner in white-furred arms like bands of steel, and the whole party stampeded for the doors.

The dais exploded.

***

The remains of the party, complete with their prisoner,⁵⁹ emerged from the end of the tunnel into the Su Residence. Aunt Ji took one look at them and brought out the really good tea.

General Nie dropped the blue-clad woman between the low tables. Her mask, despite everything that had happened, had remained in place. Nonetheless, on seeing what was visible of her face, a high forehead and a pair of restless dark eyes, Marquis Yan visibly stiffened.

Prince Jing had been stepping forward to commence the interrogation. Lin Shu's hand on his arm stopped him.

The Marquis looked down at the woman on the floor.

"How little you have changed, Chen Bo Chu. Were you four years old or five when you broke all your big sister's hair ornaments and threw them into the water fountain because you resented that she was allowed to put her hair up, and you were still too young?"

"You know this woman?" General Meng asked.

Marquis Yan bowed gravely. "Da Liang is broad but Jinling City is narrow. My sister and hers were once the closest of friends, but when they each entered the Inner Palace, my sister as Empress, hers as Noble Consort, they became, in consequence, the bitterest of rivals."

Prince Jing stepped forward and twitched the mask off the prisoner's face, revealing a face artfully made-up and yet subtly wrong, like a well-known masterpiece copied by a lesser artist.

He exhaled, a man for whom a puzzle piece has finally dropped into place.

"So that's why Consort Yue backed Sima Lei's plot. He was her nephew."⁶⁰

Chen Bo Chu curled her lip.

"It was the least she could do for me — for us. I should have been Consort in her place. Had it been my son in the faction fights —"

"Broken hair ornaments, Chen Bo Chu." The Marquis sounded ineffably weary. "From before you learnt to walk you have defined yourself by what your sister had, that you had not. And where has it brought you and your son in the end?"

“My son is filial! He gave his own life - his own life - so that I could escape.”

“Without notable success,” observed the Marquis dryly.

“It should have worked! If that woman hadn’t ruined everything by behaving like some tough out of the jianghu instead of the princess she was supposed to be, we would have had everything. And if I couldn’t have that, I should at least have had my revenge.”

“All your life, you have seen things as you thought they ought to be, and not as they are,” he said. “You cannot remake the world as you would have it.”

She snarled at him. "What about your family? What, for that matter, about the Emperor's family? Have none of you any sense of dignity? It look me half the evening to get myself into position — and then just when I was on the point of lighting the match that idiot son of yours decided to propose to his little Luoshi Road dancing girl and everyone on the dais stampeded off to actually encourage that encroaching little gold-digger —"

"Careful," Prince Jing said. "Don't forget that's my sister you're taking about."

Half a beat later, his brain managed to catch up and he exchanged a We really were that close to dying in each other's arms glance with Lin Shu. The ensuing silence left the field clear for the Marquis.

"Chen Bo Chu, a little over three years ago your uncle was a Minister of the Crown, your sister a Noble Consort, your nephew Crown Prince, your son acknowledged by the Emperor as a candidate for the hand of the Princess. Had any of your family shown the tenth part of the courage and integrity of the woman whom I welcomed this evening to my family, you would not so comprehensively have lost the favour of the heavens."

"Nevertheless. None of the first families of Da Liang will forget that she used to be an entertainer."

The Marquis inclined his head. "Perhaps not. But, with the favour of fortune, her children and Yujin's will burn incense before my memorial tablet. Who will attend to your rites, Chen Bo Chu?"

***

"Now," Lin Shu said rather later, when Li Gang had finally closed the doors against the last of the visitors, "I propose to crawl under that large pile of furs, fall asleep and not emerge until everyone has forgotten all about tonight. No, it’s fine. All fine. I’m not ill. Go to bed, Fei Liu."

Fei Liu watched until he was sure Su-gege was really asleep. Then he put a hand inside his robes and pulled out the small pieces of meat he had concealed there at some point in the evening’s proceedings and laid them on the floor close by his feet. "Food. Good. Eat."

Presently, a sharp nose and some alert whiskers poked out from beneath one of the bookcases. Fei Liu made himself statue-still. Reassured, the ferret removed itself from concealment and hopped up onto the dais next to the bed. It gulped down the furthest morsel of meat and rose up with its forepaws in the air, sniffing the air, wondering if it might dare go for the rest.

Fei Liu remained in his attitude of absolute stillness. He could grab it, of course, but that would upset it and he didn’t want it upset.

Seeing Tingsheng with the mastiff earlier had made him want to have a dog, and probably if he asked Su-ge-ge (especially after tonight) he might get one.

But ferrets were so much cooler.

Fei Liu bet ferrets hated pigeons, too. Or at least, he bet they could be trained to.

***

The story was, inevitably, all over Jinling before the sun was well risen. One of the very first to hear it was Jingrui, on whom Yujin called for breakfast before heading home to bed.

"...And that’s when the roof fell in," he ended triumphantly. He cocked his head on one side. "You don’t look very surprised."

"I’m not." Jingrui smiled and sipped tea. "I told you. I hate parties."

FIN

1. Minus General Lie, who was now directing fire-fighting operations at Jing Manor.
2. Prince Jing attended on his mother a day or so later to give her a full account of the events once she had left the party. When he got to this point the Empress rose and produced from a secret drawer in her bureau a thick memorandum titled "A full and accurate tabulation of the connections of the principal, significant and aspiring families of Da Liang, calculated through the female line" and instructed him to get it by heart by the time he was next called upon to assess the rival candidates for a promotion.

Chapter Text

The Crown Prince appointed Xia Dong to carry out an investigation into Sima Lei’s conspiracy. Lin Chen appointed himself to carry out the same job on behalf of Langya Hall. Because neither of them was too stupid or too proud to cooperate, they met to compare notes and assess their conclusions at Marquis Yan’s house. ⁶¹

Xia Dong arrived a little late to their first meeting, straight from the Imperial Prison, where the body of Chen Bo Chu had been found lifeless in her cell, she having apparently hanged herself with a sheet.

Since she possessed a sceptical mind, an in-depth knowledge of prison suicides (including the two she'd narrowly avoided having someone carry out on her own person) and a settled conviction that, even faced with the threat of lingchi, Chen Bo Chu would not willingly surrender the privilege of the last word, Xia Dong ordered the usual review of visitors to the prison during the relevant window of opportunity, and presented Marquis Yan with the list on her arrival.

He drew down his brows. "Hang herself, Chen Bo Chu? Impossible. No-one outside their intimates was permitted to know it, but she had a goitre as a child. The Chen family was always cash-strapped, and knew their best hopes of future fortune to be the flawless blossoms which were their daughters, and so her parents sought and obtained for her the best treatment. It corrected the problem without even leaving a scar, but it left her with a horror of anything touching her neck; not even fur collars in winter."

Xia Dong bowed, and owned herself greatly obliged to the Marquis. Lin Chen dispatched a pigeon ordering Langya Hall's records checked forthwith, for goitre operations known to have been carried out some fifty or so years ago at the behest of noble families in Jinling, and any subsequent follow-up observations on the patients in question. A second pigeon bore a couple of pertinent questions for Langya Hall's credit control department.

Armed with the resulting intelligence, Xia Dong visited the Minister of Justice. The Minister of Justice subsequently visited the Imperial Prison, looked at the official in charge, and with the kind of ferocious courtesy that does, in truth, often lead to resignations via bedsheet, required him to surrender all records of everyone who had been within a quarter of a li of the Imperial Prison during the relevant time window, and the twenty-four hours on either side of it for good measure, however casual, unofficial or well-connected such visitors might have been. That inquiry led, via a number of ingenious diversions, which, to an investigator of her experience, were still not quite ingenious enough, to the eunuch in charge of palace security. At that point, she petitioned the Empress to be allowed to ask the eunuch in question (second only in seniority to Gao Zhan himself) a number of particularly searching questions. The Empress readily granted her a seal which allowed her access to the Inner Palace. Unfortunately, on her sending a messenger to have Zhao He brought to the chamber set aside for her purposes, he was found unavailable for questioning. Permanently.

“Overwork.” Gao Zhan sighed, and shook his head. “At least, so the Palace physicians say. What a pity. One with such potential. Though that may have proved his downfall in the end. He always did try to take so much upon himself; I suppose his heart... ”

"You give him credit, I suspect, for an organ which in his case I believe entirely lacking," Xie Dong observed.

Gao Zhan bowed: deeply and reproachfully. "One strives to compensate for what one lacks. Though — sometimes, not entirely constructively. I do not like to speak ill of a promising subordinate: more than promising. I had thought of him succeeding to my place, in due course, but then a crack no thicker than a hairsbreadth can shatter the finest jade vessel."

"And in Zhao He's case?"

Gao Zhan bowed. "His effects seem extraordinarily depleted, for one of his standing. I cannot reconcile the Palace ledgers which show gifts of this and that value, going back twenty years, with what we recovered from his chambers. Perhaps he fell victim to external pressures, and liquidated his assets in some futile attempt to appease his predators? How can I attempt to consider motives with one who was once the favoured darling of Xia Jiang?" He took his departure, in a swirl of perfume and dignity.

Xia Dong took possession of the ledgers Gao Zhan had left behind on a nearby table

In this way, the investigation committee finally managed to find out who had paid whom, and for what. Though that in itself had raised very nearly as many questions as it answered.

"Honoured Marquis, has it ever occurred to you how difficult it is to intentionally hire a truly mediocre subordinate?" Lin Chen began.

Marquis Yan’s sculpted brows went up. "But, surely everyone — once or twice at least —"

Xia Dong nodded. "Not only does a person of mediocre talents from time to time slip through even the most rigorous of recruitment procedures, the more deceptive and dissembling those persons are, and the longer they remain in post, the more the person who recruited them in the first place is inclined to off-lay their faults to some other cause - or person." ⁶²

The Marquis refilled her tea-cup.

"So? The first wave of assassins were not, on any assessment, mediocre. They were abominable."

"Quite so." She raised her cup to her lips. "That, it seems, is what you get when you try to hire average people."

He looked at her with full attention. "Explain."

It appeared the root cause of the problem was that Sima Lei was, himself, a very indifferent martial artist, and, like many of below average ability, inclined to rate himself among the elite. His mother, while considerably more talented in general than her son,⁶³ had neither the experience nor the contacts in this domain to compensate for his deficiencies. So, when they devised a plan which ran, roughly, "Hit them with a wave of mediocre assassins to wear them out a bit while lulling them into a false sense of security; then hit them once they’ve been softened up with a second wave of top flight assassins; blow up any survivors" the rock on which it (initially) foundered was "First catch your mediocre assassins."⁶⁴

"It seems very poor planning on the part of Zhao He, though," complained Lin Chen. "Didn't he exercise any sort of quality control? What do we write the Langya List for, after all?"

"No, that was the beauty of it," said the Marquis slowly. "It should have worked either way. Chen Bo Chu and her son were set up to fail. They, of course, thought they were carrying out an internal coup, and setting themselves up to reap the benefit when it succeeded. But if, as was infinitely more likely, their plan failed, the mere existence of the plot should still have caused enough damage to shake the Eastern Palace, and weaken Gao Zhan's position beyond recovery. Zhao He could have identified the conspirators to the Emperor, come out smelling of roses, and be perfectly positioned to make a serious bid for power later. Even assuming the Crown Prince survived that mess in Jing Hall — and from where I was watching, he had a couple of very close calls — the ripples from that incident could certainly have been used to destablise him, and be exploited by Zhao He at some later date to replace him with a candidate more easily - managed. But what he failed to realise is that his own plot was identified in its earliest stages and used to draw him out of cover by a mind far more subtle than his own."

"Gao Zhan, that wily old fox," said Xia Dong, who was still smarting somewhat from his parting shot.

"The Qilin Talent?" asked Lin Chen. "But he didn't even know we were having a party. I don't see how..."

"Not at all." The Marquis raised his cup in salute. "The Mistress of the Inner Palace; the Empress herself."

***

1. Marquis Yan hadn’t been appointed by anybody. He was just nosy. The other two went along with it, because he knew everyone and no investigator can afford to ignore someone like that.
2. Fiddling the tea fund? Mei Changsu never guessed the half of it.
3. It was a family trait.
4. To be fair to the conspirators, both the quality and the quantity of blades for hire in the capital had been declining steadily over the last two or three years. War on the borders had drawn off the more patriotic or opportunistic, the increased vigilance of the capital patrols under their new commanding officer had made life for the professional trouble makers of Jinling a great deal less profitable, and there was, of course, the elephant in the room(i) Mei Changsu and his Jiangzuo Alliance, who had Views on what they were prepared to put up with, and weren’t shy about making them felt.
   (i)T/N Literally: "the yeti in the snow-cave."