The Jade Serpent Temple
Emperor Ren
Dawn arrives cold and purposeful.
We pack in silence—the efficient kind, not the tense kind.
Lián moves through the motions of breaking camp with eight centuries of practice, her hands quick and certain on bedroll ties and provision straps.
I find myself counting her knives as she checks them.
Four. Two at her hips, one at her back, one in her boot.
I have asked, once, about the placement. “Redundancy,” she had said. “Three is sufficient. Four is survival.”
I had not asked about the times she had needed all four. Some questions answer themselves.
The agents have been arguing for twenty minutes about the optimal route to the Jade Serpent Temple. I know this because Tianlong has been counting.
The beautiful one favors the eastern road, he observes, his voice curling through our bond with undisguised entertainment. The angry one insists upon the western approach. Neither has conceded a single point. This is, objectively, magnificent.
I do not respond. Responding encourages him.
You are pretending to ignore me. I find this adorable.
The agents’ voices have risen enough that even the morning birds have gone quiet in apparent disapproval. Ailun gestures toward the ridge with the controlled patience of a man explaining something obvious. Tairui crosses his arms and radiates skepticism with his entire body.
“The eastern road has better sightlines,” Ailun says.
“The eastern road adds half a day.”
“Time is less important than arriving alive.”
“Time is the only thing that matters when we’re being watched.”
Lián finishes with her knives and straightens, her hand pressing briefly to her lower back before she catches herself. The motion is quick. She would deny it if I mentioned it.
I make a note to call for additional stops. I do not tell her this is why.
“They’re both competent,” she observes, watching the argument with an expression somewhere between amusement and resignation. “They’re also going to be at this for another hour if someone doesn’t intervene.”
“I am aware.” I watch Tairui jab a finger at what I assume is an invisible map. “Their handlers have reported that they work well together in actual crises.”
“Define ‘well.’“
“Effectively. Their reports use the word ‘effective’ seven times.”
“And ‘combative’?”
“Twelve.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. It is not quite a smile, but it is close. I find I am watching for it.
“You are watching her mouth,” Tianlong supplies helpfully.
“I am observing the tactical situation.”
“The tactical situation of her mouth. Yes. Very strategic.”
I ignore this. I am practiced at ignoring this.
“We should split them,” Lián says, turning her attention from the argument to the road. “Ailun draws the watchers east through the villages. We slip west with Tairui scouting ahead. They meet us at the temple.”
It is the correct tactical assessment. It is also what I had concluded ten minutes ago, but I find I do not mind waiting for her to reach it independently.
“The plan works,” I agree. “Assuming Ailun survives the distraction.”
“He’ll survive.” She pauses, something glinting in her eyes that suggests private knowledge. “Though I suspect village girls will try to hide him in barns.”
The eastern road winds through hills terraced with rice paddies, green and orderly in the morning light. Stone bridges. Willow trees. The kind of scenery poets write about and soldiers learn to distrust.
Lián shifts in her saddle. Again.
She has been doing this every few minutes since we departed, adjusting her position against discomfort she refuses to acknowledge. The terrain is rough, and she is, as she has informed me twice already, “enormous and about as nimble as a sack of rice.”
I had not laughed. I had almost laughed. She had looked at me with narrow eyes as if she could sense the almost.
“The child is making her displeasure known,” I observe, keeping my voice neutral.
“The child is fine.” Lián’s voice carries a slight edge. “The child’s mother is simply discovering new and creative ways her spine can hate her.”
“I see.”
“Don’t start.”
“I have not said anything.”
“You’re thinking something. I can tell.”
She knows you too well, Tianlong remarks. This is either touching or concerning. I have not decided.
I call for a rest stop forty minutes later, citing the horses. Lián looks at me with an expression that says she knows exactly why we are stopping and that she finds both my excuse and my restraint equally transparent.
She does not object. Progress.
The stream beside the road runs clear and cold. I watch her dismount carefully, one hand on the saddle, and force myself not offer assistance. She would not appreciate it. She would, in fact, throw something at my head.
“The water here is good,” I say instead, filling the canteens while she stretches her back with small, careful movements.
“I know. I’ve traveled this road before.” She pauses, something flickering across her face. “Three hundred years ago, I think. The villages were different.”
“What do you remember?”
“That the innkeeper’s wife made excellent noodles.” She tilts her head, considering. “And that I was running from something. I don’t remember what.”
“You remember the noodles but not the danger?”
“The noodles were more memorable.” The corner of her mouth curves. “Besides, the danger was probably boring. A jealous warlord. An offended merchant. The usual.”
I find myself almost smiling. I correct this.
You are enjoying this conversation, Tianlong observes. The traveling, the banter, the small moments of shared history. You are becoming dangerously domestic.
We are on an investigation. There is nothing domestic about it.
You are refilling her canteen before she asks. You have already determined where we will stop for lunch. You are thinking about whether the temple will have accommodations that will be comfortable for her condition. A pause. This is extremely domestic. I approve.
I focus on the canteens. I do not respond.
The plan worked.
Ailun drew the watchers east through the villages while we slipped west. Tairui has been scouting ahead since we split, his dust trail a faint smudge against the hills.
“He doesn’t like this,” Lián says.
“He doesn’t like anything that involves trusting someone else’s judgment.”
“And yet he trusts Ailun.”
“Begrudgingly.” I guide my horse around a rut in the road. “He once admitted Ailun’s field skills were adequate. I believe it caused him physical pain.”
“High praise.”
“The highest he is capable of giving.”
We ride in comfortable silence for several minutes.
The road narrows as it climbs, ancient stones fitted together by hands that have been dust for centuries.
The empire is old. I am reminded of this constantly—in roads like these, in temples that predate my dynasty by a thousand years, in the way Lián sometimes looks at a mountain or a river and says that used to be different.
“The Hungering King,” she says eventually, her voice quiet. “Last night.”
I keep my eyes on the road. “Yes.”
“It bothered you more than you showed.”
“He walked through Xiang’s surveillance like it wasn’t there. Appeared in the courtyard, delivered his message, and vanished.” I pause. “And he came to help. That bothers me most of all.
“Helpful is worse than if he’d come to kill us.”
“Considerably.”
She is quiet for a moment. “It unnerved me too. That’s why I woke you.”
I look at her then—quick, a glance—and find her watching the road with an expression I cannot quite read. Thoughtful. Possibly worried. Certainly more honest than either of us usually permits.
“Thank you,” I say. “For waking me.”
“You’re my husband.” The word still sounds strange from her mouth, like she is testing its weight. “Apparently that comes with certain notification requirements when ancient horrors visit in the middle of the night.”
The Jade Serpent Temple is old. The air carries paper dust, incense, and the particular mustiness of documents that have outlived the people who wrote them.
The reading room is vast and dim, shafts of afternoon light cutting through high windows, illuminating dust motes that drift like suspended thoughts.
Scroll cases line the walls from floor to ceiling, each one labeled with characters that span a dozen generations of archivists’ hands.
“Jing would love it here,” Lián says, tilting her head back to study the ceiling. Painted beams, faded gold leaf, some religious scene I don’t recognize. She’s right. Jing would never leave this place.
Dumpling locates the single sunbeam within thirty seconds of our arrival.
He settles directly on a stack of Shu Dynasty land surveys with the precision of a creature who has identified the optimal napping location and claimed it with imperial authority. His orange fur spreads across documents that are, according to the cataloguing system, approximately two centuries old.
A junior monk approaches, clearly intending to relocate either the cat or the documents.
Dumpling opens one eye. Just one. The other remains firmly closed in a display of contemptuous rest.
The monk reconsiders. Redirects. Suddenly finds urgent business in the scripture room.
“Your cat,” the temple archivist says to Lián, not looking up from her cataloguing, “has claimed materials from the Shu restoration.”
“He has strong opinions about sunbeams.” Lián does not look up either. She is already scanning the scroll cases with the focus of someone who has navigated archives for eight centuries. “It’s easier to work around him.”
The archivist—a woman in her forties with the reserved bearing of serious scholarship—makes a sound that might be disapproval or might be grudging respect. It is difficult to tell with archivists.
“We are looking for records of trade payments to domestic contacts,” I say, keeping my voice pitched for discretion. The reading room is not empty; several monks occupy distant tables with their own research. “Specifically, payments from Xiang merchant houses during the past five years.”