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“Your Majesty, Wei Zhi is a woman!”
“I’m well aware of that,” said the Emperor testily. “Surely you haven’t come all the way here just to tell me what I already know?”
“But... but your Majesty, deceiving the Emperor is a crime punishable by death!”
“It is? Dear me. And are you the Emperor?”
“What? No, of course, not! Your Majesty, I wouldn’t dare!”
The unfortunate man fell to his knees and threw himself into a bow so low he banged his head on the floor and knocked out his hairpin.
“Since you are not the Emperor and I was not deceived, where is the crime?”
There was a deflated silence before the prone figure tried another tack.
“B-b-but your Majesty,” he said into the polished mahogany floor, “any woman who enters the palace...”
“Belongs to the Emperor. I’m well aware of that, too. Are you trying to teach your Emperor to suck eggs, or what?”
“I w-wouldn’t dare,” floated up semi-audibly from the floorboards.
The Emperor sighed.
“I’m an old man,” he said, in the tones of one expecting a polite denial. He paused until one had been forthcoming from every person present in the room, and then went on, “I have 30,000 concubines. If I slaked the lusts of the body every single night, it would still take me ten years to get through them all. What I want from Wei Zhi is not yet another night of imperial duty. What I get from her is intellectual brilliance and absolute loyalty. Unlike my numerous and unfilial sons, I know she holds me first in her heart. Now if that should ever change...” Here he paused again.
The man on the floor ventured to raise his face a few inches and was met by the Son of Heaven’s most reptilian smile.
“If that should ever change, I should certainly regard myself as having been deceived. Now get out of here.”