10. The Cost of the Throne #2
I stand alone in the war chamber, surrounded by maps of an empire built on bones.
An hour ago, I stood on a balcony and resented this man for making her laugh. I counted the minutes like they belonged to me. Like I had any claim.
His son was sixteen. His son died holding a corridor so others could live.
And I was jealous of a conversation.
This is what the throne costs, I think. This is what I owe.
Lady Mei’s chambers are full of things you’re not supposed to notice. Silk screens painted with landscapes that hide alcoves. Alcoves that hide things even I am not meant to see. Old scrolls stacked like weapons. The kind of room where every surface is a misdirection.
Mei has served the throne since before my father took it. Her networks extend further than the empire’s borders. Her methods are questionable. Her results are undeniable.
I do not trust her.
I do not distrust her either.
I find her the way I always find her—seated at her desk, reports spread before her like offerings, her face composed in an expression that reveals nothing and suggests everything.
“Your Majesty.” She does not rise. A liberty I have permitted for so long it would be strange to revoke it now. “You received my message.”
“You have names.”
“I have names.” She gestures to the documents.
“The cult’s funding traces through seven shell organizations.
Silk merchants in the western provinces.
A jade trading consortium. A wine import business that has never imported wine.
” Her smile is thin. “Someone has been very careful for a very long time.”
I take the list she offers. Three names: mid-level officials with access to supply chains, none of them significant enough to attract suspicion, all of them significant enough to move money.
“The funding predates General Wei’s current command,” Mei continues. “By approximately fifteen years.”
I look up.
“The General’s infrastructure was used,” she says. “But not by the General. Someone else was in position before Wei took command. Someone who had access to military logistics for reasons that had nothing to do with military logistics.”
This clears Wei. Or should clear Wei. Except that Mei’s smile has not changed, and Lady Mei does not share information without purpose.
“You have more.”
“I have observations.” She folds her hands. “The assassin. She is good.”
“I am aware.”
“I mean for you, Your Majesty.” The smile sharpens. “You have been less careful since she arrived. Less guarded. The court notices. The servants notice. I notice.”
I do not react.
“Is this a warning, Lady Mei?”
“It is an observation.” She tilts her head, studying me the way she studies everyone—cataloging tells, measuring weaknesses, filing information for future use. “I am not your enemy, Your Majesty. I may be the only person in this palace honest enough to tell you what I see.”
“And what do you see?”
She is silent for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice has changed. Softer. Almost human.
“Everyone who serves the throne has lost something to earn their place here.” The mask slips, just slightly. “I lost a daughter. Wei lost a son. Feng lost his pride.”
I did not know about the daughter. Mei’s files are thorough—I thought I knew everything about my advisors. Apparently not.
“When?”
“Fifteen years ago. Plague swept the eastern provinces. She was seven.” This is the first time I have seen genuine emotion from Lady Mei. It humanizes her. It also makes her more dangerous. People with nothing left to lose often are.
“I am sorry for your loss.”
“As I am for yours, Your Majesty.” She inclines her head. “Your brothers. Your father. Your mother. We have all paid the price of service. That price does not stop being paid simply because we have earned our places.”
I turn to leave. At the door, her voice stops me.
“A word of caution.”
I wait.
“The court notices everything. The fact that you carried her through the palace after she died. The fact that she was in your chambers overnight. The fact that you meet her in the Moon Garden.” A pause. “Secure does not mean invisible.”
“The Moon Garden is protected.”
“From dragons, perhaps. Not from servants. Not from soldiers who wonder why their emperor visits an empty garden every night.” Her smile returns, sharp and knowing.
“As I said, Your Majesty. I am not your enemy. But I may be the only one honest enough to tell you: whatever this is, the empire is watching.”
I leave without responding.
There is nothing to say.
She is right.
Evening.
The Moon Garden.
The jasmine is opening—white petals unfurling in the darkness, releasing sweetness into the cold air. I arrived early. I will not examine why. The stone bench is cold beneath me, and I have been sitting here long enough that the cold has become familiar.
She arrives exactly when she said she would. Not early, not late—precise, as if she has been counting the minutes the way I have been counting them, as if the interval between afternoon and now has been something to endure rather than use.
This should not please me as much as it does.
“Your Majesty.” She drops onto the stone bench without ceremony, legs stretched before her, head tilted back to study the jasmine. The moonlight catches her profile—sharp features, sharper eyes, a face that has seen eight centuries and still looks surprised by silence. “Miss me?”
I do not answer. The answer would be too honest.
“I spent three hours in the archives,” she continues, filling the quiet the way she always does, noise as armor, words as walls.
“Your filing system is a crime against reason. Did you know there are seventeen different classifications for ‘suspicious financial activity’? Seventeen. I found supply manifests from Wei’s quartermaster corps buried under tax records from the Year of the Ox. ”
“Did you find anything useful?”
“Define useful.” She pulls a scroll from her sleeve—sleight of hand so casual I almost miss it. “Wei’s manifests have discrepancies. Money flowing somewhere it shouldn’t. But the pattern predates his command.”
I take the scroll. Open it. The numbers confirm what Mei told me, but there is more here—a thread Mei did not find, or chose not to share.
“Someone was using military infrastructure before Wei was appointed,” Lián says. “A third party. Someone who had access for years. Decades, maybe.”
She has been investigating independently. This is precisely what I asked her to do. I should not be surprised.
I am not surprised.
I am pleased.
“Lady Mei reached similar conclusions,” I say. “She has names. Mid-level officials with supply chain access.”
“The cult’s funding?”
“Traced through seven shell organizations.”
She whistles—low, impressed. “Your spymaster is terrifying.”
“Yes.”
“I like her.”
“That concerns me.”
She laughs. Not the laugh she gave Wei—shorter, sharper, aimed at me. I find I prefer it.
We do not mention last night.
We do not mention the garden, the jasmine, the way I said the court they could think what they wished and she said ‘same time’ like it was already decided.
We do not mention that she is sitting slightly closer than she sat last night—close enough that I can smell jasmine and something underneath, something that is simply her.
We do not mention that I am not moving away.
That I have not moved away in days. That the distance between us on this bench has been shrinking by inches, and soon there will be no distance left.
The silence stretches.
It should feel dangerous. Silences in gardens have been weaponized before. Treaties have collapsed in silences like this, marriages dissolved, alliances shattered. I have seen men ruined by what they did not say in spaces like this.
This silence feels like breathing.
“The stars are different here,” she says. Quiet. Not filling silence anymore—just speaking. “The palace lights are too bright. I can only see the brightest ones.”
“There is an observatory in the eastern tower. The astronomers complain about the lanterns constantly.”
“Do you go there? To see the stars?”
“I used to.” The admission comes without planning. “Before the crown. I wanted to map them. Chart their movements. Understand why they seemed to rotate around a single fixed point while everything else changed.”
She is looking at me now. Not at the jasmine, not at the moon. At me.
“What happened?”
“I became the fixed point.” I do not know why I am telling her this. “Everything else rotates now. I stay still.”
She does not respond for a long moment. When she does, her voice is different. Softer.
“That sounds lonely.”
“It is what it is.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No. It is not.”
She leaves before the moon reaches its apex. “Same time?” she asks, not looking at me, and I say “Same time” without considering whether I should.
The space where she sat is still warm when I finally rise to leave.
Later.
You are aware, Tianlong says, that this will end one of two ways.
I do not ask which two.
Either you will have her, or you will lose her. There is no third option where you keep circling each other in moonlight and calling it strategy.
I have no response that would not prove him right.
So I say nothing.
Which, of course, proves him right anyway.