The Departure
They bring Shen out at dawn.
I watch from the colonnade, one hand on my bump, the other wrapped around tea I haven’t touched.
Morning light catches the jade tiles. Birds are singing somewhere in the western gardens.
Somewhere in the kitchens, someone’s already burning breakfast. The smell of scorched millet drifts across the courtyard like an accusation.
It’s all very civilized, as arrests go.
Shen walks between two guards. No chains—not yet—but the implication hangs in the air like incense smoke.
He’s dressed simply. White robes. Hair unbound, loose around his shoulders in a way I’ve never seen on him.
The traditional presentation of a man facing judgment: stripped of rank, awaiting the mercy of his emperor.
Except he doesn’t look like a man awaiting mercy.
He doesn’t look like a man who orchestrated an assassination, either.
The guards pause at the courtyard’s edge—some formality, some ritual of transfer I don’t know the name for. Shen’s gaze sweeps the assembled witnesses. Ministers I’ve never bothered to learn. Servants who’ve probably never seen a lord arrested. Wei, standing stone-faced near the eastern gate.
He meets my eyes as he passes. His chin lifts—the smallest movement, the kind of dignity you hold onto when everything else has been stripped away.
Then the guards turn him toward the eastern gate, and he’s gone, and I’m standing in the colonnade holding cold tea and pretending I don’t notice Ren watching me watch him.
“Ready?” Ren asks.
I’m not. I am in no way, shape, or form ready for any of this—not the leaving, not the honeymoon, not three weeks of pretending I know what wives do when they’re not stabbing people.
I’m not ready to say goodbye to people I never meant to care about.
I’m not ready to walk away from walls that somehow became home while I wasn’t paying attention.
“Yes,” I say.
The war council convenes in Ren’s study an hour later.
I use the term ‘war council’ loosely. It’s Wei, Mei, Jing, Ren, and me, crowded around a table covered in maps while Dumpling sits on the most strategically important province and refuses to move.
“South,” Wei says. “The river territories. It’s the logical choice—far from the northern Xiang border, easy to disappear among the merchant traffic, and defensible if something goes wrong.”
“South is obvious.” Mei’s voice could frost glass. “If anyone is watching—and someone is always watching—south is the first place they’ll look.”
“Which is why we send a decoy south and route them east through the—”
“The eastern passes are compromised. I have three reports of unusual activity near—”
“Your reports are two weeks old. My scouts—”
“Your scouts couldn’t find a conspiracy if it introduced itself and offered tea.”
Wei’s jaw tightens. “At least my people don’t vanish into walls and speak in riddles.”
“Riddles require intelligence to decode. I apologize for overestimating.”
I look at Ren. He looks back at me. His expression says: This is normal. This is always normal.
“The coast,” Wei tries, switching tactics. “Fishing villages. Anonymous. No one would expect—”
“The coast has pirates.”
“The coast does not have—” Wei stops. “Does the coast have pirates?”
“Three active crews in the southern waters. Two more operating near the—”
“When did we get pirates?”
“We’ve always had pirates. You don’t read my reports.”
“I read your reports. Your reports are eight hundred pages long and use seventeen different ciphers.”
“For security purposes.”
“For torture purposes.”
Jing, who has been quietly studying the map while the two of them argue, raises her hand.
Nobody notices.
“The islands,” Mei suggests. “Remote. Contained. Easily monitored.”
“The islands have a three-week sea voyage. The Empress is pregnant.”
“The Empress has survived worse than seasickness.”
“The Empress,” I cut in, “is right here and has opinions about being discussed like cargo.”
They both turn to look at me.
“I don’t care where we go as long as it has food, a bed, and fewer than three assassination attempts per week. I’m trying to lower my average.”
Jing raises her hand again. Still nothing.
“The western temples,” Wei tries. “Cultural cover. Pilgrimage routes. Natural chokepoints for security.”
“Too close to the border.”
“The southern lakes—”
“Too exposed.”
“The eastern—”
“Compromised.”
“Is anywhere in this empire acceptable to you?”
“Nowhere is acceptable. That’s rather the point of security assessment.”
Jing stands up. Clears her throat. Places one finger on the map—on the northern mountain range, directly toward Xiang territory.
Everyone stares at her.
“The imperial hunting lodge,” she says quietly.
“In the northern peaks. It’s been closed for eleven years—not since the Emperor’s father used it.
No staff. No visitors. Completely off the official registry because the Ministry of Works keeps losing the maintenance paperwork.
” A pause. “I may have been losing the maintenance paperwork.”
“You’ve been—” Wei starts.
“It’s very easy to lose paperwork. The archives are extensive.”
Mei tilts her head. Something like respect flickers across her face. “Go on.”
“The lodge is remote. Self-contained. Three days’ ride from the nearest village. And it’s north.” Jing taps the map. “Toward Xiang. The last direction anyone would expect you to go.”
“Because it’s insane,” Wei says.
“Because it’s counterintuitive,” Mei corrects. “There’s a difference.”
“The outcome is that no one looks for an emperor running toward his enemies.” Jing explains.
Mei studies Jing. “How do you know about this lodge?”
“I read.” Jing’s voice is mild. “Everything. Including the records everyone else considers too boring to examine.”
Silence.
Wei looks at Mei. Mei looks at Wei. Something passes between them—the grudging acknowledgment of two professionals recognizing a third.
“It’s not the worst idea,” Mei admits.
“High praise,” Wei mutters. “From you, that’s practically a declaration of love.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“North, then.” Ren speaks for the first time in several minutes. He’s been watching the whole exchange with the particular stillness he gets when he’s processing. “The hunting lodge. Three weeks in the mountains, away from court, away from politics.” His eyes find mine. “A real honeymoon.”
“A strategic repositioning,” Mei corrects.
“A honeymoon,” Ren repeats, and his tone doesn’t invite argument.
Mei argues anyway. “Your Majesty, the security implications—”
“Are noted. And appreciated. And overruled.” He stands. “We leave at dawn. Jing will provide the route details. Wei will coordinate the decoy. Mei will do whatever it is Mei does when she’s not appearing from walls and terrifying ministers.”
“I have a list,” Mei says.
“I’m sure you do.”
Packing for a honeymoon when you’re an immortal assassin married to the emperor is... different.
“I need the knives.”
“Which knives?” Jing has a manifest. Of course she has a manifest. The manifest has subsections and annotations and something that looks suspiciously like footnotes.
“All of them.”
“That’s twenty-eight knives.”
“Twenty-nine. The one in my boot has a friend now.”
Jing makes a note. Her brush moves in those precise, economical strokes that make me feel like a barbarian every time I watch her write. I can’t tell if she’s horrified or impressed by my arsenal. Possibly both. That’s her usual state around me.
The chambers look like a silk merchant exploded.
Travel clothes in one pile—rough-spun cotton, nothing that screams empress.
Weapons in another pile, sorted by size and lethality and ease of concealment.
Books stacked in what I can only describe as a monument to Jing’s optimism about my reading habits.
“That’s not coming,” I say, pointing at the monument.
“It’s organized by trimester and symptom.”
“It’s a crate, Jing.”
“For easy reference.” She touches the color-coded tabs with something approaching reverence. “The blue sections are medical. The green are historical. The yellow are emergency spiritual interventions.”
“In case of what, exactly?”
“Ghosts.”
I take three books and call it a compromise. Jing looks at me like I’ve just announced I’m going into battle with a wooden spoon and a smile, but she doesn’t argue.
The real problem, of course, is Dumpling.
He’s discovered the travel basket. A beautiful thing—woven bamboo with silk cushions, ventilation holes shaped like chrysanthemums. It is, objectively, the finest cat-transportion vessel ever created.
Dumpling hates it.
“It’s padded,” I tell him.
He goes boneless. Just... liquefies against the floor. I’ve seen corpses with more structural integrity.
“There’s ventilation.”
He oozes away from the basket like water finding a drain, somehow moving without appearing to exert any effort whatsoever.
“There are treats inside.”
He looks at me. Golden eyes. Infinite betrayal. Generations of his feline ancestors rising from their graves to judge my choices.
A servant attempts intervention. Young woman, eager face. She approaches with treats and a soothing voice and the confidence of someone who has never been truly defeated by a cat.
Three red lines bloom across her forearm. She retreats, bleeding, her faith in the universe visibly shattered.
Second servant. Leather gloves this time. She makes it halfway to Dumpling before he unleashes a sound I didn’t know cats could make—something between a yowl and a war cry and the death rattle of a demon.
Third servant approaches with the quiet determination of a soldier charging into hopeless battle. Gray-haired, steady hands, the look of someone who has ‘Seen Things.’ She holds the basket like a shield. Takes one step. Two.
Dumpling is simply not there anymore.
He has relocated to the windowsill without appearing to move through the intervening space. He’s washing his paw.
I’ve seen a lot of magic in eight hundred years. I’ve watched dragons fly. I’ve watched men become fire. I’ve watched the space between life and death bend around my own body six hundred and forty-five times.