8. The Guest List
The Guest List
Emperor Ren
The guest list has defeated greater strategists than I.
Lián is sprawled across the bed with a scroll that keeps unrolling off the edge.
She has pinned one corner with her elbow and weighted another with a jade paperweight shaped like a tortoise.
The tortoise is losing. Every few moments, the scroll escapes and she drags it back with a sound of profound irritation.
Dumpling is asleep on the seating chart. He has been there for the better part of an hour, positioned with the precision of a creature who knows exactly which document is most important and has decided to claim it.
I am sitting against the headboard with my own stack of papers, watching her argue with stationary. This should not be as compelling as it is.
“Human mating rituals continue to baffle.” Tianlong lifts his head from his customary position curled at my collar. “You are arguing about whether to invite people you both dislike to a celebration of your bond. This is profoundly inefficient.”
“It is called family,” I say.
“It is called unnecessary suffering voluntarily undertaken.”
Lián does not look up from her battle with the scroll. “Welcome to marriage.”
“I have witnessed three thousand years of human courtship.” Tianlong settles his chin back on his coils. “I remain unimpressed.”
“He and I finally agree on something.” She returns to the scroll with renewed violence. “Lord Shen.”
I set down my brush. We have reached this name three times already. Each time, we have moved past it without resolution. “Lord Shen.”
“The one who suggested ‘alternatives’ to our marriage in front of the entire court.”
“He is an important member of the Council and has connections to half the northern provinces.”
“And he spent those connections making very certain everyone knew he objects to me.” She finally succeeds in pinning the scroll flat, though it strains against her grip like a living thing. “Not inviting him would be—”
“A declaration.”
“Satisfying.”
“Also a declaration.”
She is quiet for a moment. I watch her consider and discard several responses, each one visible in the tension of her shoulders.
“Fine,” she says. “But I am not sitting near him.”
“You will not need to. He will seat himself as far from you as protocol allows while remaining close enough to observe.”
“He is going to spend the entire wedding watching for weaknesses.”
“Yes.”
“And you still want him there.”
“I want him where I can see him.” I return to my own papers, though my attention remains fixed on her profile against the candlelight. “The ones who attend, I can manage. The ones who refuse the invitation—those are the ones I cannot predict.”
She makes a sound that might be acknowledgment or disagreement. I have learned not to press for clarification. She will tell me which when she is ready.
“The Governor of Henan.”
I search my memory. “Eyebrows.”
“Impressive ones.”
“Has he done anything useful?”
“He has continued to exist. In Henan. His family has attended every imperial wedding for six generations.”
“What have they contributed in six generations?”
I consider this. “They have continued to expect invitations.”
“Add him.” She makes a note with more force than the paper deserves. “Seat him somewhere forgettable.”
Your future wife has strong opinions about provincial governors, Tianlong observes, privately into my mind.
She has strong opinions about most things.
This is why you chose her.
I do not respond. I do not need to. He already knows the answer.
“Your cousin.” Lián’s voice carries the particular weight of someone approaching a subject they know will be difficult. “Third removed. The one who—”
“The professional mourner.”
“Must we invite her?”
“She is family.” I set down my brush. This conversation requires my full attention. “I have met her four times. All four occasions were funerals. She wept at each one as though she had personally lost a limb.”
“It is a wedding. Perhaps she will be cheerful.”
“She will find something to weep about.” The memory surfaces unbidden. “Last time it was the flower arrangements.”
“What was wrong with the flowers?”
“They were white chrysanthemums. Apparently the wrong white.” I hear my own voice flatten. “A funereal white, she called them. She wept for an hour about the implications.”
Lián stares at me. Then she laughs—a real laugh, startled out of her—and something in my chest rearranges itself at the sound.
“Seat her far from the flowers,” she says.
“And far from me.”
“The room is only so large.”
“Then expand it.”
She is smiling now. I find I could watch her smile for the rest of my life and never tire of documenting the variations.
You are staring, Tianlong notes.
I am aware.
You are also failing to be subtle about it.
I am aware of that as well.
She is going to notice.
Let her.
Dumpling shifts on the seating chart, stretches, and resettles with his spine directly across the section marked ‘Imperial Family.’ His timing, as always, is impeccable.
“The cat has opinions about where your relatives sit,” Lián says.
“He is a better judge of character than most of my advisors.”
“He knocked over a solid gold vase yesterday.”
“As I said.”
She laughs again, softer this time, and reaches across to touch my hand. The contact is brief—her fingers against my knuckles, there and gone—but I feel it echo long after she has returned to her scroll.
This is what I did not know I was missing. Twenty-two years on the throne, and I did not know that ruling an empire could include this: her laughter in our chambers, her hand against mine, the particular chaos of her presence filling spaces I had not realized were empty.
“Xiang.”
The word lands like a stone in still water.
She has stopped wrestling with the scroll. I have stopped pretending to read my papers. Even Dumpling has gone still, though he cannot possibly understand.
“We have to invite them,” she says.
“I know.”
“It is protocol. Refusing would be—”
“A declaration of hostility. I know.”
She looks at me. In the candlelight, her eyes are dark and unreadable, but I have learned to read her in other ways: the set of her shoulders, the careful stillness of her hands.
“You do not want them here.”
My hand moves without my permission, finding the curve of her stomach. Automatic. Protective. She does not move away.
“I do not want them near you,” I say. “Or her.”
Her. Our daughter. The word still feels foreign on my tongue—too fragile for the weight it carries, too small for everything it contains.
“But refusing the invitation gives them cause. And we cannot afford to give them cause.”
“Keep your enemies close?”
“Keep your enemies where we can watch them. Where Mei can watch them. Where Wei’s guards can watch them.”
She makes a sound that might be a laugh, though it carries no humor. “Wei has probably already assigned one hundred soldiers to follow their delegation around.”
“Two hundred. I asked this morning.”
I want to protect her. The thought surfaces before I can govern it. From Xiang. From whoever is feeding them information. From everything that looks at her and sees only what she can be used for.
That impulse is noble. Tianlong’s voice carries no mockery now. It is also the beginning of a cage.
I do not answer. Lián is watching me now, her scroll forgotten.
“What did he say?” she asks.
“He is being unhelpful, as usual.” It isn’t a lie. Not really. But it’s not the truth either. But it comes easily. Too easily.
She will not thank you for building walls around her.
She does not need to know every threat. She is carrying our child. She has enough to worry about.
This will end poorly.
I ignore him. Lián is still watching me, her head tilted slightly, and I wonder if she knows I am not telling her everything.
If she does, she lets it pass.
This time.
Tianlong makes a sound that might be approval. Or possibly indigestion. With dragons, it is difficult to tell.
“Add them to the list,” she says. “Xiang. We will watch them. They will watch us. Everyone will pretend to celebrate while calculating how to destroy each other.”
“A traditional imperial wedding, then.”
“The most traditional.” She returns to her scroll, but she does not release my hand. “Now. Your great-aunt. The one who collects bones.”
“She does not collect bones.”
“The skeleton in her receiving room suggests otherwise.”
“It is educational.”
“It is unsettling.”
“She is ninety-three years old. She can be as unsettling as she pleases.”
The argument continues, but gently—the soft bickering of two people who have learned each other’s rhythms, who know that the disagreement is less important than the conversation itself.
Outside, the palace settles into darkness. Tomorrow there will be audiences and petitions and the thousand small crises that constitute empire. But tonight there is this: her hand in mine, her voice in my ears, the warmth of something I did not know I was allowed to want.
I find I could grow accustomed to this. I find I already have.
Three days later, I wake to the sound of her breathing.
Dawn is just beginning to lighten the silk screens. The room is still, the palace quiet, and she is asleep beside me with her hair across the pillow and her hand curled near her face. I watch the slow rise and fall of her chest.
You are watching her sleep again.
I do not respond.
This is not the first morning you have done this.
I am aware.
I am merely observing that you have developed a pattern. A pause. Shall I describe the pattern?
That will not be necessary.
You wake before dawn. You position yourself to observe her face in the early light. The angle of her jaw. The particular fall of her hair. The small movements she makes in sleep. You do this until she wakes or until duty calls. Then you pretend you were doing something else.
I said that will not be necessary.
I find it charming. In a creepy sort of way.
Your observations are not required.
My observations are always required. You simply do not always appreciate them.
She stirs. Her eyes open, find mine, and narrow with an amusement I have come to recognize.