"Still talking tough."
Xu Yuzhong sneered. "Foster Father, the evidence in this matter is beyond dispute. Best to seize her now. Your son guarantees he can pry her mouth open."
"How can anyone believe filth spat out like that?"
Grief and indignation filled Li Fei's face. "Not long ago a woman named Xiao'e came to me with the same sort of wicked nonsense. She claimed that you, Lord Xu, had preyed upon women of good family and then murdered them to keep their mouths shut..."
As she spoke she glanced at Lu Qianfan, whose face did not so much as flicker, then lowered her eyes and sighed.
"But it never once occurred to me that it might be true. I did not believe a word of it, because I believe in the purity of our Demon Suppression Bureau's ranks."
"And now a wanted criminal smears my good name out of thin air. If Lord Lu chooses to believe him, this officer has nothing more to say."
"Raving nonsense."
Xu Yuzhong plainly had no idea who Xiao'e was. He tipped his chin up and looked at Li Fei down the side of his nose. "The way I see it, you won't shed a tear until you see the coffin—"
"There is some sense in what Chiliarch Li says."
Lu Qianfan spoke without warning. "Yuzhong. Stand down. I will handle this myself."
"B-but—!"
Xu Yuzhong started to protest, swallowed it, and stood there with astonishment written all over him.
This was not the script they had agreed on.
"Lord Lu's discernment misses nothing."
Li Fei delivered the praise with every sign of heartfelt admiration, then strolled unhurriedly over to Xu Yuzhong, pointed a finger at his nose, and adopted the tone of a teacher despairing of a hopeless pupil. "Xu Yuzhong, you muddled fool! Evidence beyond dispute, indeed. You simply don't understand the basic psychology of criminals. They can't be troubled to work honestly and serve the Great Song; all they do is whine about how unjust the world is and vent the darkness and envy inside them. Open your eyes and look around you. Are there really so few troublemakers howling outside the yamen gates, flinging dirt at officers of the court?"
"You—! Your son takes his leave."
Xu Yuzhong's face went iron-grey, but in the end he did not dare push it, and could only stalk out, seething.
Only when he was gone did Li Fei turn to Lu Qianfan with a smile and cup her hands. "I have long heard that Lord Lu is the Clear Sky of the Great Song, that his fiery golden eyes can tell loyal from treacherous, black from white. Only today do I see the reputation was well earned."
"Chiliarch Li. Though I enjoy His Majesty's high trust, I have never had any part in harboring filth."
Lu Qianfan's voice came quiet and shadowed. "Tell me about this Xiao'e. If Yuzhong has truly done something so grave, I will certainly not shield him."
Li Fei shook the Ghost-Rearing Gourd at once and let Xiao'e out.
Dropped without warning into unfamiliar surroundings, Xiao'e froze for a heartbeat. Then she saw the man in red seated at the head of the hall.
Her eyes flooded a raw scarlet. Her delicate features twisted out of shape, grave-cold resentment poured off her in waves, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees.
"Murdering dog! Give me your life!"
She lunged with a shriek, ready to tear Lu Qianfan apart or die in the trying.
But a hand reached out from behind and settled softly on her shoulder, and she could not move at all.
"Sister Xiao'e. The greater design comes first."
Li Fei's voice was gentle as she soothed her, but her eyes stayed fixed on Lu Qianfan.
"This is the witness you found?"
Lu Qianfan raised an eyebrow.
In the ghost's snarling face he recognized the woman he had strangled with his own hands.
"That's right."
Li Fei's tone was level, and nothing showed on her face at all.
"You have a witness. Why not carry the case straight to the throne, rather than bring her before me? His Majesty has been quite taken with Chiliarch Li of late."
Unmistakable contempt colored Lu Qianfan's eyes. "Or does Chiliarch Li mean to give me a warning rap on the knuckles?"
"My lord misunderstands."
Li Fei shook her head and patted the ghost's shoulder. "Sister Xiao'e, I warned you long ago how dangerous this road would be. Since your heart is set on dying, your elder sister will see you on your way."
A ring of drawn steel.
In the ghost's widening eyes, a flash of saber-light bloomed.
The witness she had been so lucky to find was snuffed out just like that. Melting away with her in that single stroke went a full three points of Morality Value.
"Sister Xiao'e is dead. What face have you left, you creature who repays kindness with spite, to go on breathing? Ah — and don't worry. I'll take very good care of your daughter."
Li Fei lowered her eyes and stamped down. A fine, dense crackle of breaking bone came from under her military boot; Squire Wang's back caved into a footprint-shaped crater, and his heart flattened like a pressed cake.
He forced his head up, coughed out several great mouthfuls of foul blood, then his head dropped and everything went out of him.
"This humble officer has long admired Lord Lu's name and wished to work with you in perfect good faith, for the good of the realm. A pity that petty men were forever getting in the way. At last I have the chance to speak my heart to you."
Li Fei lifted her chin, one corner of her mouth curling. "Beyond our borders, demons throw the age into chaos and enemies ring us on every side. Within them we have an incompetent, muddleheaded ruler, and Nie Yunyi meddling in state affairs with a sword in his hand, whipping up the common people. Would Lord Lu care to join hands with me — put right what has gone wrong, and restore the authority of the court?"
"Chiliarch Li. You have a very great deal of nerve."
The contempt in Lu Qianfan's eyes deepened, and his already soft, womanish voice went cold as a blade. "You silence a witness in front of me, you speak of His Majesty with contempt, and now you try to build a faction for private gain. Do you mean to rebel?"
His manner was hard and cold, and none of it surprised Li Fei.
After all, even if she had hauled the female ghost before the muddleheaded ruler to lay her accusation, the worst it would have cost Lu Qianfan was a little trouble; it could never have shaken his position. Which meant the ghost was far too light a thing to serve as a pledge of allegiance. She was only a stone tossed to test the road, a token of sincerity.
What truly let Li Fei close her fingers on the Nine Thousand Years' vital point was the secret buried inside the intelligence itself.
Li Fei ignored the killing intent cutting at her and sat back down in her chair, sprawling wide and easy as a general at camp. "Honestly — Zhao Bing is the Emperor, whatever else he may be, and the Great Song breeds fine men by the thousand, more handsome faces than anyone could count. I did wonder how Lord Lu had made him so utterly devoted to you."
"Only tonight did I understand. It's because Lord Lu likes women."
Anyone else would not have understood a syllable of it.
But it went into Lu Qianfan like a needle to the chest, and for the first time his face turned complicated past reading.
There was hatred in it, and rage, and desolation, and resolve. The one thing missing was love.
"What do you mean by that?"
Lu Qianfan asked, his eyes lowered.
"I once knew an elder sister. Deep pockets, and the same sort as you. No taste for the opposite sex."
Li Fei propped her chin on one hand and went on, her voice drifting. "She spent freely and never begrudged sharing her connections, so there were always pretty things fluttering around her like orioles and swallows."
"Some played along for a few years, then took the money they'd saved and parted ways with her. Set up businesses of their own, or made themselves over and found some honest girl to settle down with."
"Others had no ambition at all, and were content to be the canary in the gilded cage."
"And some couldn't hold out against solid gold and silver. They had a wife and a daughter at home, and still kept the thread unbroken with her, coming back every few days to collect a little reward money."
"In any case, every time I saw her, there was somebody new at her side."
"And where there are many, of course, there is jealousy. She knew it perfectly well. She told me that was precisely what she enjoyed — the sight of all those women pining over her, flattering her, clawing at each other for her favor."
"Then one day one of the new ones took root beside her. After that, every time I ran into her, the same girl was standing there."
"She wasn't the prettiest. She hadn't the sweetest temper. Even her bearing was nothing out of the ordinary."
"Do you know why she was the one who could tie down my sister's heart?"
Li Fei paused, wearing a look that was not quite a smile.
Lu Qianfan kept his silence, so she carried on by herself. "Because she liked men! Where I come from, we call that a straight girl."
"Money is a catalyst for feeling. The other women lived on the fine clothes and rich food she gave them, hanging off her all day, cooing and simpering. Even if it began as pretense, given long enough, real feeling crept in."
"And once the feelings came, they clung. They threw tantrums. They fretted over every gain and loss, sulked, turned jealous, even quarreled with her..."
"How could a woman like that ever stand against a straight girl who calculated everything, who was never snarled up in feeling, whose whole heart was set on profit?"
At that Li Fei smiled and lit herself a cigarette. "I imagine Lord Lu knows the principle from the inside."
"And then?"
Lu Qianfan's voice came low.
Li Fei sighed. Firelight leapt in her pitch-black eyes.
"And then my sister dropped out of sight for a while. By the time word of her came again, there wasn't enough of the body left to piece back together. As for the straight girl, she took the money, changed her name and her face, and went off somewhere else to live a good life."
What Li Fei said was the truth.
What she left out was that when the news of that death reached her, something inside Li Fei tore open.
At school she was still the bright, guileless campus beauty. But her screen name changed to "My Life's Greatest Joy Is Bending Straight Girls."
She would be rich the way her sister had been rich, extravagant past all restraint, four girlfriends a day. But she would be more careful than her sister. She would never die under a woodcutter's hatchet.
She would be better at flirting than that straight girl, better at scheming, better at making them unable to let go...
Turning that first purpose over in her mind, Li Fei rose to her feet, looked Lu Qianfan straight in the eye, and unrolled the map to the dagger at the end of it. "Lord Lu. Playing the flatterer to that dog emperor day after day. Doesn't it exhaust you? Doesn't it sicken you? Haven't you had enough?"
"Besides. You've sat on this all along, you even wanted to take me as your adopted daughter. Wasn't that all aimed at the day I would repair your body for you?"
"Let's throw open the skylight and talk in the daylight."
"I can give you medicine. I can restore what was cut away."
"The Heaven-Grasping Vase can be yours too. Your years made equal to heaven's, wealth and honor to enjoy for all eternity!"
"You can go on being the Nine Thousand Years here. I'll help you sweep out every rival faction until your hand alone tips the court."
"And if you tire of being a power minister, I can send you up into the immortal realm!"
"By then you'd never lie awake fearing Nie Yunyi coming for the head on your shoulders, never fret about unruly commoners rebelling, or a neighbor state marching, or demons breaking through the capital walls. You could drop this whole rotten mess where it stands, find some blessed place of clear water and green hills, marry eight or ten immortal maidens, feast on mountain delicacies by day and have soft red sleeves tending the incense by night. Isn't that ten thousand times better than a life where getting your hands on one woman means treading on eggshells?"
"Lord Lu, in a few more days I return to the upper realm. This is not a chance that comes twice!"
Li Fei nearly shouted that last line. Then she fell quiet and waited for his answer.
She had found all three routes into the upper reaches to be dead ends, unable to topple the mountain squatting across the last stretch of road. And then, just as the thought of withdrawing had begun to form, she had learned by pure chance the greatest secret of the man blocking her way.
So Li Fei shoved every chip she owned toward the last door, the one that had looked bolted fast against her.
In the dead silence, Lu Qianfan studied her, the light in his eyes flaring and guttering by turns.
It was a long while before he spoke, slowly. "And what do you get out of it?"
Li Fei's mouth curled into a radiant smile. "Merit!"
"What matter brings Your Majesty here so deep in the night?"
Su Wen looked at Zhao Bing, whose pleasure was written all over him, and a faint distance colored her voice.
"Empress. All these years you have kept the Empress's palace alone, and the merit of it is no small thing..."
Zhao Bing heaped on the smiles and set about praising her contributions.
"It is no more than my duty. Hardly worth speaking of."
Su Wen remained as unruffled as ever, though a foreboding stirred in her.
"Ha ha. The Empress is far too modest."
Zhao Bing rambled about this and that a while longer, then turned abruptly. "All these years the imperial house has still named no heir. The fault is chiefly Ours, but it has splashed onto you as well, and no small amount of idle talk has gone around. You have suffered for it."
Su Wen did not answer, but her eyes cooled.
"Immortal Maiden Li did present Us with a plan, but the thing was so far outside orthodoxy that if the ministers learned of it, they would raise the roof."
Zhao Bing rubbed his hands and tested the water. "But just now, Qian— ahem, Lord Lu came to Us himself. He said he had found an ancient text in a demon king's lair that could settle the worry of the dynasty."
"Your Majesty may say it plainly."
Su Wen watched him without blinking.
Under the Empress's stare the sovereign of the realm felt a twinge of guilt. He gave two awkward laughs before explaining, as though it were nothing at all. "Lord Lu has offered a plan of Surrogate Birth. We need only plant the essence-blood of the two of us in your body, and the Empress may conceive a dragon child. Then the gossip and the danger to the dynasty are both solved at a stroke."
Dizziness washed over Su Wen. She gripped the corner of the table hard, refusing to flinch in front of this muddleheaded ruler.
"We know Funing Palace is a cold, empty place. Once the Empress has children at her knee, there should be a little more warmth and life about the palace..."
Zhao Bing, still steeped in his own delight, warmed to the subject the longer he talked.
He had worried that if Lu Qianfan bore the child, every scholar under heaven would come at him with brush and tongue. Now it was perfect. Let the Empress carry the child for them, and the succession would pass legitimate in name and in right, with nothing left for the ministers to pick at. A problem that had gnawed at him for years, gone like smoke...
"We are happy, the ministers are happy, and in time the Empress may sit secure in the seat of Empress Dowager. Perfect in every particular. Perfect in every particular!"
Zhao Bing delivered his conclusion glowing with satisfaction.
"Preposterous!"
Su Wen's palm came down hard on the table. It was the first time she had ever lost her composure before him.
She paused, then rose. "I will never agree to this. Your Majesty may go."
"Empress. Why?"
Zhao Bing looked utterly at a loss.
Su Wen let out a bitter laugh, desolation on her face.
All these years she had been the wife of a man who wanted men, and she had kept scrupulously to her place, governing the inner palace with painstaking care, never once complaining. Lately matters had grown a little unclear between her and the young imperial physician, but in the end she had kept her body chaste, so as not to shame the imperial house.
And now this muddleheaded ruler wanted to borrow her belly to breed offspring for himself and another man.
If she consented, then what was she, mistress of the Empress's palace, model of womanly virtue, but a laying hen, a beast penned up for what it could produce?
And the muddleheaded ruler stood there thoroughly pleased with himself. Wave after wave of loathing and revulsion rose in her.
"Empress, you will have to endure the ten months of carrying, true, but with palace servants to wait on you it won't be hard to get through."
Zhao Bing had not even worked out what she was angry about. He frowned. "And afterward you rise with the child and become Empress Dowager. That is a blessing as wide as heaven!"
"Such a blessing is more than I can bear. Your Majesty had best look elsewhere."
Su Wen refused coldly, without so much as turning her head.
Once, she had thought Zhao Bing was not a good emperor, but was at least a good man.
Last night, when he had looked straight through the blood letters she laid before him, the last shred of her regard had gone.
And now Su Wen wanted to kill him.
"Empress, you have always handled everything with such generosity and propriety. How have you turned so impossible to reason with..."
Zhao Bing was unwilling to let it go, but no matter how he coaxed, Su Wen did not say a word.
And yet the problem that had preyed on him for years stood on the verge of a flawless solution. How could he allow the wife who was his only in name to muddy a beautiful dream lying within arm's reach?
Seeing her refuse him again and again, Zhao Bing set aside every last shred of gentleness and restraint, stopped caring for her face or for what he owed her, and, shamed into fury, snapped: "A state cannot go a single day without an heir! Spreading Our branches and leaves is the proper duty of a woman like you!"
"Tomorrow Minister Li will examine your body thoroughly. After that you need only rest quietly and nurture the child."
With that, Zhao Bing swept his sleeve and left.
Su Wen gazed after that retreating back. Even anger and disappointment had gone out of her eyes now. Only contempt remained, and indifference.
The laughter of the immortal in the mirror wound on and on at her ear.
"You wear yourself down guarding the dignity of the imperial house, and in the end the dog emperor grinds that dignity under his own heel! Why bother? Even I think it's a waste!"
"You kept yourself pure as jade, and now the dog emperor treats that body of yours as a machine for dropping litters! And he means to foul you with another man's blood besides. Disgusting."
"If you ask me, that young imperial physician certainly has feelings for you as well. Why not run away with her to the immortal realm, be a pair of mandarin ducks, live free and easy?"
"The dog emperor has shown you neither love nor loyalty, so what are you hesitating for? Go dye that crown of his green, and get the foul air out of your chest."
This time the demon, identical to Li Fei down to the last line, walked all the way out of the mirror, drifted clear of the sea of consciousness, and became a phantom that only Her Majesty could see.
The demon, or Su Wen's heart-demon, or perhaps the goddess Su Wen visualized in her meditations, draped herself against the Empress's back. Her bare feet, jade-pale on the cold flagstones of Funing Palace, lifted onto their toes so her lips could reach the ear of her slightly taller devotee; two lotus-root arms slid quietly around that lovely porcelain-white throat, and she whispered against it:
"It's time you lived once for yourself."
Su Wen gave no sign of hearing Miss Demon's enticements. Neither joy nor sorrow touched her face; she was as she had always been, upright and cool, aloof and self-possessed.
She walked to the door and gave her order to the palace maids, who had heard the Emperor's anger and stood trembling with it.
"Unless I call for you, you need not come in to attend me. When the imperial physician arrives tomorrow, simply let her come in on her own."
Then she shut the door, went back inside, and washed and dressed with painstaking care, coiling her ink-dark hair up without a strand out of place. A cosmetics box sealed under years of dust was opened; she pressed her delicate lips to a square of vermilion paper, and they turned bright and ravishing.
She even scattered a few flower petals, to drive out the sickening air her husband had left behind when he set foot in the room.
Last of all, Su Wen put on the great red wedding gown she had worn exactly once, on the day she married the Emperor, still as new as the hour it was made. Then she took out two red candles and set them before the bed, lending the cold, quiet palace a little festive cheer.
The night was long yet, but the bride in her full array sat alone by the window, waiting quietly for the dawn.
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