Trying to Relax #2
“This is meant to be a honeymoon. You have been married for five days. You are supposed to be gazing adoringly at each other over wine, perhaps feeding each other delicacies, engaging in the sort of romantic behavior that poets write about. Instead you are mapping local corruption networks over pork.”
“The dumplings are good,” I offer.
“I did not survive three thousand years to serve as witness to this particular form of romantic dysfunction.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Here I am. Suffering. As is apparently my eternal destiny.” A pause. “The dumplings are acceptable. I will give you that.”
I eat three more. Might as well.
Across the restaurant, the serving girl has discovered Ailun.
She’s refilling his tea with the focused attention of someone performing surgery.
Her hand rests on the edge of the table, near his but not quite touching.
The teapot seems to require significant adjustment—she’s been adjusting it for two minutes, and the tea was poured ninety seconds ago.
I’ve seen less dedication from trained intelligence operatives.
“He’s going to think she’s just being thorough,” I predict.
“Dedicated to customer service,” Ren agrees. “Admirably attentive to hydration needs.”
“Perhaps concerned about optimal drinking temperature.”
“A true professional.”
We watch as she finally retreats, casting one last look over her shoulder that says many things, none of them subtle. Ailun smiles politely and returns to his breakfast, apparently unaware that a small piece of his soul has been claimed.
Tairui’s face is doing something complicated—the kind of expression that suggests he’s been counting backward from a very large number for approximately seventeen hours straight. His left eye has developed a persistent twitch.
“Every town,” he says, when they drift close enough to hear. “EVERY TOWN.”
“She was checking whether the tea had reached optimal temperature,” Ailun offers. His tone suggests this is the only possible interpretation. “Very conscientious. I should mention her in the inn’s guest registry.”
“You should NOT mention her in the—”
“She complimented my calligraphy. Said I had elegant hands.”
“SHE WHAT.”
“I assumed she appreciated penmanship. It’s a dying art.”
Tairui turns to us, his expression having transcended mere suffering into something that borders on enlightenment. “She TOUCHED YOUR HAND.”
“She was steadying the cup.”
“THE CUP WAS ON THE TABLE.”
“Tables can be unstable.”
“IT WAS A STONE TABLE.”
“Stone can shift.”
“STONE DOES NOT—” Tairui stops. Breathes. Appears to count to something very high. “I am not having this conversation again.”
“What conversation?” Ailun asks, genuinely confused.
“I think he’s approaching some kind of limit,” I tell Ren.
“I think he passed the limit two towns ago. What we’re witnessing now is the aftermath.”
“The beautiful one genuinely does not understand,” Tianlong observes. “I find it almost magnificent. Like watching a sunset, or a natural disaster unfolding in slow motion.”
Tairui’s eye twitches. “I can hear you all, you know.”
“We know.”
We pass the well on the way back, and everything else stops mattering.
It’s nearly dry. The stones around the rim are stained with the memory of higher water—a ring of minerals marking where the level used to be, months ago, before someone upstream decided their needs mattered more than everyone else’s.
A woman is drawing the last of it, bucket scraping against stone, coming up half-full if she’s lucky. The rope is new—she’s had to replace it recently, reaching deeper than before. Her hands are red from the work.
Two children wait beside her. Patient. The kind of patient that comes from knowing there won’t be enough and learning not to expect otherwise. The older one, a girl, maybe seven years old, watches the bucket descend with an expression too old for her face.
I don’t need the waiter’s gossip to read this story.
The Wu family’s irrigation upstream. The dry season that shouldn’t have mattered if the water had been shared fairly.
The brother-in-law’s new farm that somehow has plenty while the rest of the district measures drinking water in cups.
Seen it before. Different dynasty, different province, different faces wearing the same expression—the particular resignation of people who’ve learned that complaining doesn’t help and fighting costs more than they can afford.
Same mathematics. Someone always loses so someone else can win more than they need.
My ribs go tight.
Ren is watching too. His face doesn’t change—it rarely does in public—but his hands tell a different story. Fingers flexing once at his sides, a single unconscious movement.
“It’s not our problem,” I say.
“No.”
The woman at the well finally gets her bucket up. Pours the water into a clay jar with the careful economy of someone who knows exactly how many cups it will fill.
“But it’s someone’s problem.”
“Yes.”
“And we’re here.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve already figured out who’s actually responsible.”
His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, something closer to recognition.
Two people with the same disease, diagnosing symptoms at the same time.
“The magistrate’s brother-in-law is diverting water for his crops.
He’s been bribing the provincial inspector for eight months.
The records would be in the trade council archives—specifically the water allocation ledgers that haven’t been audited since the previous magistrate’s tenure.
The pressure would need to be applied directly, given the family connections. ”
“Of course you have.”
We don’t discuss it further. There’s nothing to discuss.
“And so it begins,” Tianlong says, but there’s no mockery in it this time. “Again.”
It takes four hours.
Ailun finds the financial records—patient work, quiet conversations with clerks who suddenly remember details they’d conveniently forgotten. He’s good at this. The kind of questioning that makes people want to help, want to remember, want to do the right thing. The irony is not lost on me.
Tairui handles the brother-in-law. I don’t ask how. The man emerges from the conversation pale and cooperative, glancing back at Tairui with the expression of someone who has recently discovered the distance between what he thought he could get away with and what he actually can.
“What did you say to him?” Ailun asks.
“Discussed his future.”
“Thoroughly?”
“Comprehensively.”
They’re good together when they’re focused on the same target. The friction disappears into something that almost resembles partnership. Interesting. And useful.
But I’m watching Ren.
He’s speaking with the families—the ones who’ve been rationing water for months, whose crops have failed, who’ve been told through a dozen small cruelties that their needs don’t matter.
He’s not speaking as emperor. They don’t know who he is.
Just a traveler who got involved, who knew how these things work, who cared enough to stay when walking away would have been easier.
His voice is different here. Quieter. Less formal. He listens more than he speaks, and when he does speak, it’s to ask questions—not the leading questions of a ruler confirming what he already knows, but genuine ones. What do you need? What would help? What has been taken that can be returned?
The woman from the well is there. The two children. Ren crouches to speak to them at eye level, fine clothes in the dust, and says something I can’t hear. The younger child laughs—startled, bright, like she’d forgotten that was something she could do.
My hands have found my stomach. I’m watching my daughter’s father fix something he didn’t have to fix, and my chest is doing something inconvenient.
Pregnancy hormones. That’s what I’ll say if anyone asks.
“You are staring,” Tianlong observes.
“Observing.”
“Your breathing changed.”
“Shut up.”
“I am simply—”
“Stop.“
The magistrate will be replaced by provincial order. The Wu family will restore the water flow. The families are talking to each other now—awkward, cautious, but talking. Neighbors who’ve been set against each other by artificial scarcity, discovering they were fighting the wrong enemy all along.