24. Late
Late
Emperor Ren
Five weeks of waiting. Five weeks of watching her body change, of feeling the baby grow stronger under my palm, of preparing everything I could think to prepare.
And now the baby is late.
Five days late.
I have conquered territories in less time. I have negotiated treaties that altered the fate of provinces, suppressed rebellions that threatened to unmake the empire, restructured the imperial tax code in ways that will benefit generations yet unborn. None of those things required me to simply wait.
You have been pacing for three hours. Tianlong’s voice arrives in my mind like smoke through a cracked window. I have counted.
I am not pacing. I am thinking while in motion.
That is the literal definition of what pacing is.
The nursery is prepared. It has been prepared for three weeks.
I have personally verified the structural integrity of the cradle—twice.
I have checked the sight-lines from every entrance, confirmed the placement of guards, ensured that no assassin could reach the room without passing through seven separate checkpoints.
I have read fourteen texts on childbirth.
I have consulted with three physicians and created contingency plans for complications I pray we will never face.
None of this has made the baby arrive faster.
I stop at the window. The gardens stretch below, immaculate and useless. My hands are clasped behind my back. They have been clasped too tightly for hours. I note this. I do not correct it.
The hatchling will come when she chooses. Tianlong shifts on his perch near the fireplace, scales catching light. This is the nature of hatchlings. They do not consult schedules. They do not respect contingency plans. They arrive when they are ready, and not one moment before.
I am aware.
The problem is not that I do not know this. The problem is that knowing changes nothing. I have spent my entire life solving problems through preparation, strategy, the careful application of will. And now I am confronted with a situation that cannot be solved. Only endured.
I resume pacing.
The corridors outside our chambers have become a staging ground for well-meaning disasters.
Wei has reorganized the guard rotation six times in the past two days. He reports each adjustment to me personally, as though the positioning of soldiers outside a birthing room is a matter of imperial security. Perhaps he believes it is. Perhaps he simply needs something to do with his hands.
I understand the impulse.
Jing arrived this morning with four additional texts on late-term pregnancy. Lián looked at her, looked at the books, and said—with a calm that promised violence—“If you bring me one more book, I will eat it. I will eat the entire book, Jing. You will watch.”
The books have been relocated to a safe distance. Jing has taken to hovering in doorways, holding scrolls she is not permitted to share.
Mei is handling the situation by being aggressively composed.
She sits in the corner of the receiving room, embroidering something I suspect is a series of creative threats rendered in silk thread, occasionally making observations that are either helpful or deeply unsettling.
“The physician says the baby is healthy. Merely stubborn.” A pause, needle flashing.
“I cannot imagine where she inherits that.”
Lián threw a cushion at her. Mei caught it without looking up.
“You chose this,” Tianlong observes. “It was evident from the beginning that she came with complications.”
She did. She does. I would not have her any other way.
I watch Wei explain his latest rotation adjustment to a guard who has heard this explanation four times already. I watch Jing reorganize the same stack of papers she has reorganized since dawn. I watch Mei embroider what I am now certain is a detailed illustration of someone’s eventual demise.
I could organize them. I could give them tasks, structure their anxiety into something productive. I am the emperor. Organizing chaos is what I do.
I do not.
They are not here because I commanded it. They are here because they cannot stay away. Because she matters to them, and therefore this child matters to them, and therefore they are willing to be useless in her vicinity rather than useful elsewhere.
I understand this too.
Lián emerges from the inner chamber, one hand pressed to the small of her back, her belly preceding her like a ship’s prow cutting through water. She is, by her own assessment, “fine.”
She has been “fine” for five days. The word has grown teeth.
“Stop hovering,” she announces to the room. “All of you. You are not helping.”
“We could help,” Jing offers, “if you would let us—”
“You could help by spontaneously developing the ability to accelerate time. Can you do that?”
“No.”
“Then you cannot help.”
She lowers herself into a chair with the careful deliberation of someone managing a body that has staged a mutiny. This morning I heard her inform the baby that she was grounded. That she was issuing formal disciplinary action for failure to meet reasonable deadlines.
I did not know grounding was possible before birth. I have learned many things during this pregnancy. Most of them have been about the limits of my own usefulness.
“She is negotiating with her own body,” I observe to no one in particular. “I do not believe her body is winning.”
Lián looks at me. For a moment, I think she might throw something at me too.
Instead, the corner of her mouth twitches. Almost a smile. Almost.
“Yours isn’t winning either,” she says. “You have been pacing for three hours. Do you think I have not noticed?”
She notices everything. This is one of the many things I love about her. This is also one of the many things that makes her impossible to hide from.
“I am not pacing.”
“You are pacing. You never pace. It is very unsettling.”
She is not wrong.
The others leave eventually.
Wei to check the perimeter, as though the perimeter requires checking, as though enemies are likely to materialize in the imperial gardens during a difficult pregnancy.
Jing to reshelve books she is not permitted to bring but cannot stop acquiring.
Mei to do whatever Mei does when she is not watching everyone—I have learned not to ask.
The room goes quiet.
Lián is sitting by the window, one hand resting on her belly.
The light catches her face, and I see the tiredness there.
Not the sharp exhaustion of her performance—the way she wields complaints like weapons, makes a comedy of her discomfort to keep everyone at a distance.
This is something else. Something softer and more honest.
She looks tired the way someone looks tired when they have been carrying something precious for a very long time and cannot set it down.
“You can stop hovering now too,” she says without turning.
“I am not hovering. I am present.”
“You are present very close to me.”
“That is where I prefer to be present.”
She turns then. Looks at me. The defensive sharpness has faded from her eyes, replaced by something I have seen more often in these last months—something tired and warm and unguarded.
“I am fine,” she says.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
I cross the room and sit beside her. Not touching, but close. Close enough that our shoulders nearly brush, that I can feel the warmth of her through my silk robes.
“She is moving,” Lián says after a moment. “Come here.”
I kneel beside her chair. She takes my hand—her fingers callused in unexpected places, smaller than mine, stronger than they look—and presses it to her belly.
The baby kicks.
I have felt this before. Dozens of times. I should be accustomed to it by now. And yet every time it happens, something in my chest tightens. Something that feels like wonder. Something that feels like terror.
“She is strong,” I say.
“Obviously.” Lián’s voice carries a tired pride. “She is mine.”
“She is ours.”
The word is easy now. Ours. A word I never expected to say, attached to a life I never expected to have. I spent twenty-two years believing I did not deserve to want things. That duty was enough. That duty had to be enough.
I was wrong.
The baby kicks again, and I feel my daughter move beneath my palm, and I am more frightened than I have ever been in my life.
“Talk to her,” Lián says.
I look up. “What?”
“Talk to her. She can hear you. Jing researched it.”
I have also read this. The texts confirm that infants in the womb can hear voices, can recognize them, can be soothed by familiar sounds. I filed this information away as medically interesting. I did not consider what it would mean to act on it.
“I do not know what to say.”
“Then say that.”
I look at my hand, still pressed against her belly. The baby is quieter now, small movements instead of kicks. Perhaps she is listening. Perhaps this is coincidence.
“I do not know what to say to you.”
My voice comes out quieter than I intend. I am not certain why.
“I have prepared many things. Rooms. Guards. Contingency plans for situations I hope we will never face. I have read every text Jing and the physicians recommended and several they did not. I have done everything I know how to do.”
The baby moves. A flutter against my palm.
“I have not prepared words.”
I am aware, distantly, that this is absurd. I am the Emperor of the Jade Throne. I have delivered speeches that moved armies, negotiations that ended wars. I have never struggled to find words when words were required.
But this is different. This is not strategy. This is not duty. This is something I have no template for—no precedent, no protocol, no training. My own father was a cautionary tale. Distant, then absent, then dead. I do not know how to be what she will need me to be.
Lián’s hand covers mine. She does not interrupt. She knows me well enough to know when silence is what I need.
“You’re going to be extraordinary.”
Lián’s hand tightens on mine. She does not speak.
Tianlong is silent.
This is unusual. He always has observations—commentary on my feelings, opinions about my choices, three thousand years of wisdom wrapped in irreverence and delivered at the least convenient moment. I have grown accustomed to his voice in my head the way one grows accustomed to weather.
Now there is only quiet.
I glance toward where he rests, coiled near the fireplace. His eyes are open. He is watching. But for once, he does not speak.
The silence stretches. The baby moves beneath my hand. Lián’s breathing is steady beside me. And I stay there, kneeling on the floor of our chambers, speaking to a daughter who has not yet arrived.
The moment holds.
After a long time—I do not know how long—Tianlong speaks.
“She will be magnificent.” His voice is different. Quieter. The humor stripped away, leaving something older underneath. “I have decided this.”
He has never said anything like this before. In twenty-two years of shared silence and shared fire.
“Do not tell anyone I said that. I have a reputation as a heartless ancient being to maintain.”
Lián laughs. The sound is tired and soft and real, and it breaks whatever solemnity had gathered in the room.
“Your reputation is safe,” she tells him.
“It had better be. I have spent centuries cultivating the appropriate mystique.”
We stay like that as the light changes.
Her hand in mine. Mine on her belly. The baby quiet now, perhaps sleeping. Tianlong watching from his place by the fire, pretending not to care while caring more than he will ever admit.
The sun begins to set. Another day ending. Another day of waiting.
“She will come when she is ready,” Lián says finally.
“I know.”
“You cannot schedule her.”
“I am aware.”
“You cannot strategize her into arriving.”
“This has occurred to me.”
She smiles. It is tired and soft and more beautiful than anything I deserve. “We just have to wait.”
“Yes.”
I am not good at waiting. I have never been good at waiting. Every instinct I possess demands action, preparation, control. My entire life has been built on the principle that problems can be solved through sufficient effort and strategy.
This is not a problem. This is a becoming. And becomings happen on their own schedule, in their own time, regardless of imperial preference.
I press my hand more firmly against her bump. Feel the warmth there. The life we made together. The future I cannot prepare for and am only beginning to accept.
“Take your time,” I tell my daughter. “But not too much time. Your mother is running out of patience.”
“I can hear you,” Lián says.
“I know.”
“I am not running out of patience.”
“You threatened to ground her before birth.”
“That was reasonable.”
“It was not reasonable.”
“It was proportionate.”
I do not laugh. But something in my chest loosens. Something that has been wound tight for days, perhaps weeks, perhaps longer than I realized.
I do not know how to be a father. I have no template, no strategy, no contingency plan for the ordinary moments when my daughter will look at me and need something I do not know how to give.
But I know how to be here. I know how to stay. I know how to hold my wife’s hand while we wait for our daughter to decide she is ready to meet us.
Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps it has to be enough.
Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after.
Whenever she is ready.
We wait.