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"My dear," says the Commander of the Black Armor Guards, "you've frightened my new aide."
This is not, Zisheng reflects privately, so very surprising. Feng Liwei owes his appointment rather more to being the nephew of a State Councilor rather than any particular competence, and startles at particularly loud songbirds in the morning-- hardly the stuff of martial glory. The Crown Prince bet fifty coins he would resign by the new year, and Zisheng is inclined to agree.
"Hmm?" replies his wife, frowning over paper and ink.
"He seemed to think our fiery demise was imminent," Zisheng adds, and is gratified to notice her nose wrinkle. "Or at least that you had made a solid attempt to destroy the scaffolding for the new bridge."
Shaoshang tosses her head. "When I mean to destroy a bridge, I manage it."
Zisheng, whose face still aches from forced laughter, is inclined to agree.
"Perhaps," he tries again, "it might help to calm his fears if I knew what, precisely, you were designing."
Truthfully, despite the proximity they shared while on campaign, he has very little idea what she is engineering. He can see a few hasty sketches and make out a few scrawled words -- ignition, piston, and fierce-- but it might as well be a cookstove for what his talents can interpret. Little surprise; Shaoshang has always been the brilliant one between them.
"You mustn't laugh," she says, clasping her hands earnestly to her breast. "I only wanted to see if we could bring about the end of the war sooner, so we might spend more time with our families back home--"
Zisheng, being tolerably well-acquainted with his wife, stares at Shaoshang. Shaoshang stares right back. Finally, she relents.
"Oh, all right," she snaps in quite another tone. "If you must know, the wife of that stupid General Zhou baited me the last time we were in the capital, all what a waste you must spend your time away at war and how much more useful you could be at home, so of course I couldn't let him be the first to take the enemy fort, no matter how much work he's put into that bridge of his, so--" she brandishes her schematics under his nose "--let’s see what he–or she– says once after setting eyes on this!”
That is more like it. Shaoshang is always at her most sincere when she is being petty. Zisheng finds himself grinning.
"Which does not," he points out, "explain what this is, dear one."
"Ah." Shaoshang launches into an enthusiastic explanation, concluding with a, "--and there, you see? The fierce-fire oil cabinet!"
Dimly, Zisheng is aware that Feng Liwei is probably right, and this contraption is very likely to cause a great deal of trouble. He also suspectes the only moral course of action is to make sure such a devastating tool never makes it into the hands of the unworthy. He is, however, even more certain that he cannot wait to try it out himself, chaos notwithstanding, and will do everything in his power to do so before stupid General Zhou.
“My dear,” he says, and not for the first time, “how I love you.”