Street Food and Poor Decisions
Day four on the road to Jiangzhou, and I’ve made a terrible discovery.
The road to the southern provinces winds through farmland and forest, past villages too small to have names and market towns that spring up where rivers cross roads.
We’ve been traveling as what we’re pretending to be—a merchant and his wife, headed south to investigate tea suppliers.
The cover is thin but functional. Nobody looks twice at a well-dressed couple with a yowling cat in a basket and opinions about trade routes.
Well. Almost nobody.
The cover would work better if the merchant half of our arrangement could manage basic commerce.
Which brings me to my terrible discovery.
The emperor of the realm cannot haggle.
I mean, I suspected. When you’ve spent your entire life having people bow and scrape and provide, you probably don’t develop strong opinions about the fair market price of rice. But I’d hoped. Foolishly. Optimistically. Like an idiot.
The market town of Huang’an spreads around us in cheerful chaos—the kind of place that exists because two roads cross and everyone needs somewhere to stop for the night.
Not important enough for garrison troops.
Not wealthy enough for silk merchants. Just people, living, in the messy way people live when empires aren’t paying attention.
I’d sent him for rice. One task. Purchase rice. Bring back rice. Even children manage this.
“What happened?” I ask, staring at his empty hands.
He’s standing in the middle of the market square looking genuinely bewildered, which is an expression I’ve never seen on an emperor’s face before. It’s doing something strange to my chest. I ignore it.
“I told the merchant I required rice.”
“And?”
“He asked how much I was willing to pay.” Ren pauses. Something flickers across his face—not quite embarrassment, but close. On anyone else it would be mortification. On him it’s this tiny fracture in the imperial composure, barely visible unless you know what to look for.
I know what to look for.
“I said whatever it costs.”
“Oh no.”
“He seemed distressed. He kept bowing. I believe I frightened him.”
“You believe—” I stop. Take a breath. Remember that throttling the man I’m supposed to be protecting would defeat the purpose of this entire journey.
“Of course you frightened him. You walked up to a rice merchant and basically told him you have unlimited money and no opinions. He probably thought you were testing him. Some kind of secret inspector. A noble looking for an excuse to have his family executed.”
Ren considers this with the same gravity he probably brings to border disputes. “That does explain the trembling.”
From somewhere inside Ren’s collar—specifically, from the tiny dragon who has spent this entire journey tucked against his chest and radiating displeasure about everything—a voice like dry leaves scraping stone: “Perhaps you should have specified that you are merely awkward, little flame. It would have been more believable than whatever that was.”
Ren’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “Your observations are not helpful.”
“They are rarely meant to be.”
“Stay here,” I tell him. “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t look at anyone. Just—stand there and look ordinary.”
“I am uncertain how to accomplish that.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
I head back to the merchant’s stall. The poor man is still vibrating with anxiety, convinced he’s somehow offended a traveling noble and his entire family is about to be executed for the crime of asking a reasonable question about rice.
He’s not wrong to worry. The empire runs on hierarchy, and the hierarchy runs on fear.
Three centuries ago—Death #312, a particularly unpleasant situation involving a provincial governor and a misunderstanding about taxation—I watched a merchant’s entire lineage get stripped of their licenses because he’d failed to bow deeply enough.
That was before Ren’s line. Before things got slightly less terrible in the particular way that Ren has made them less terrible.
Not that this merchant knows any of that. He just knows a well-dressed man with the bearing of someone who’s never been told no walked into his stall and acted like money was a theoretical concept.
“My husband,” I say, putting just the right amount of exasperation into it. “He’s just awkward. Country nobility. Too much poetry and practising caligraphy, not enough real life. You know how it is.”
The merchant does not know how it is, but he nods vigorously because agreeing seems safer than not agreeing.
“Three pounds of rice,” I say. “And I’ll give you four copper for it, which is one more than it’s worth, and we’ll call it an apology for the confusion.”
The merchant nearly weeps with relief. I take the rice—good quality, white and dry, the kind that’ll keep for the journey—and head back to where Ren is standing exactly where I left him, looking approximately as ordinary as a dragon in a teahouse.
He’s trying. I’ll give him that. His traveling clothes are plain linen, undyed, the kind any prosperous merchant might wear. His posture is meant to be relaxed. His expression is meant to be unremarkable.
But there’s something in the way he holds himself—the economy of movement, the quiet watchfulness, the spine that has never learned to slouch—that marks him as other. Not merchant other. Emperor other. The kind of other that gets noticed by exactly the wrong people if we’re not careful.
“You can’t tell people you’ll pay whatever things cost,” I say. “That’s not how commerce works.”
“I am aware of that now.”
“Are you? Because your face says you’re still not entirely sure why people don’t just give each other things.”
He considers this. “The palace has a system. Requests are made. Goods are provided. Currency is handled by—”
“By other people. Yes. I understand. That’s the problem.” I shift the rice to my other hip. “Out here, things cost money. Specific amounts of money. And people expect you to negotiate.”
“Negotiation implies both parties have something the other wants.”
“That’s literally what commerce is.”
“Fascinating.” He sounds like he means it. Like the basic mechanisms of buying rice are genuinely interesting to him. Like centuries of human economic interaction have just been revealed as a delightful mystery.
I’m in trouble.
I’ve known this for days now, in the abstract way I know winter is coming or that eventually I’ll die… again. But watching him process the concept of haggling with the same intensity he probably brings to matters of state—
Something cracks in my chest. Just a little. Just enough to let something warm leak through.
Dangerous.
“Come on,” I say, because standing here feeling things is not on today’s schedule. “There’s a food vendor two streets over. You’re about to have your entire world changed.”
The jianbing vendor is an old woman with hands that move like they’ve been making these for fifty years.
Probably because they have. Her griddle is black with use, seasoned by decades of oil and heat until it’s practically part of her arm.
She doesn’t bow when we approach, just looks us up and down with the sharp assessment of someone who’s seen every type of traveler pass through this town and has opinions about all of them.
I like her immediately.
“Two,” I say, holding up fingers.
She grunts and gets to work. Batter on the griddle, spread thin and fast with a wooden tool that looks older than I am—which is saying something.
Egg cracked on top, the yolk breaking golden against the pale batter, swirled with her paddle until it sets into a thin, delicate layer.
Green onions scattered like confetti—fresh, the smell sharp and clean.
Something crunchy added next—fried dough sticks, youtiao, crackling and golden—pressed into the center.
Sweet sauce, some chili paste, a layer of flavor built like architecture.
The whole thing folded and wrapped in paper that’s already going translucent with grease.
The smell hits me like a memory. Every market town I’ve ever passed through. Every morning on the road when I had copper to spare and someone was cooking something hot and I was still young enough to think tomorrow would be different. Eight hundred years of jianbing, and they never get old.
Funny, that. Most things do.
I hand one to Ren.
He takes it with the careful precision he brings to everything. Examines it. Turns it over in his hands like it might be a diplomatic document requiring analysis before signing.
“Just eat it,” I say. “It’s not going to bite you.”
“What is in it?”
“Does it matter?”
He considers this question with more gravity than it deserves. “I suppose not.”
He takes a bite.
He stops walking.
For a long moment, nothing happens. He just stands there, jianbing in hand, people flowing around us like water around a stone. His expression does something I can’t quite read. Processing. Calculating. Then—
His eyes close.
And the look on his face—
It’s not dignified. It’s not imperial. It’s not the careful expression of a man who’s spent two decades learning to give nothing away. It’s just… joy. Pure, uncomplicated, almost reverent. The kind of joy I haven’t seen on anyone’s face in longer than I can remember.
“What is this?” he asks, and his voice is different. Softer. Wondering. Like a child discovering snow.
“Breakfast.”
“I have never—” He takes another bite. Chews. Swallows. Opens his eyes and looks at me like I’ve handed him a religious experience wrapped in paper. “Why was I not informed this existed?”
“You live in a palace.”
“The palace has failed me.”
Something catches in my throat. A laugh, maybe. Or something else. Something that has no business being there. I turn it into a cough because turning it into the truth would be worse.