12. Thin Walls and Fat Cats #2
I stand against the far wall, arms folded, watching. This is her interrogation—she knows these people, this world, in ways I do not. But I am not here as decoration. I am here because someone tried to kill her in my palace, and I need to understand why.
You’re here because you can’t let her out of your sight, Tianlong corrects. But the strategic justification is charming.
“Who sent you?”
Silence.
“The cult? The Hungering King’s faithful?”
Nothing. The assassin stares ahead, face blank as unmarked stone.
“You were heading for my chambers specifically. Not his.” She stops circling. Tilts her head, a predator catching a scent. “That’s interesting. Three weeks ago, I wasn’t worth killing. What changed?”
My mind catches on this. Three weeks ago, she tried to assassinate me. Now she is the target. The conspiracy is shifting—adapting to her presence, to her survival, to whatever threat she represents that I have not yet identified.
Someone is afraid of her, Tianlong observes. More afraid than they are of you. That should concern you.
It does.
The assassin smiles.
It is not a pleasant expression. There is something final in it, something that settles into the room like the cold before snowfall, and I am stepping forward before I understand why—
“Lián—”
The crunch of a false tooth. The assassin bites down, and foam begins forming at the corners of their mouth. Convulsions. Eyes rolling back. The body jerks against the bindings once, twice, then goes still.
Dead in seconds.
The silence that follows is absolute.
Lián stares at the corpse. Her expression does not change—not shock, not grief, not anything I can name. Just assessment. Evaluation. A merchant examining goods that have failed to meet expectations.
“Inconvenient,” she says.
One word. No sympathy. Eight centuries of death have taught her to evaluate corpses the way others evaluate weather—a condition to be noted, adjusted for, moved past.
I find myself wondering what that costs her. Whether there was ever a time when death meant something to her beyond inconvenience. Whether the woman who talked to her cat about sincerity and the woman standing over this body are the same person, or if one is a mask for the other.
You’re asking the wrong question, little flame, Tianlong says quietly.
The guards enter. Remove the body. The chamber empties in efficient silence—no one questions, no one lingers, no one meets my eyes.
And then it is just us.
Through the high slits, the darkness has begun to thin—not dawn yet, but close. The interrogation chair sits empty, leather straps hanging loose. Somewhere in the palace, servants are beginning to stir, and the empire is waking to a day that does not know what has happened in this room.
Lián still has not looked at me.
The distance between us is ten feet. Stone floor, empty air, the ghost of a confession I was never meant to hear. It feels wider than the empire.
Say something, Tianlong suggests. Preferably something that is not catastrophically stupid.
I open my mouth.
She speaks first.
“So.” Her voice is light. Too light. “Do you make a habit of listening to women sleep, or am I special?”
“You were not sleeping.”
“No.” Her arms cross, armor rebuilding piece by piece. “I wasn’t.”
“I heard a sound. I was concerned.”
“Concerned.” She tastes the word like something she’s considering spitting back at me. “And then you stayed. Listening. To me talking to my cat about—” She stops. Redirects, hard. “About taxation manifests. Very boring. You missed nothing.”
She is lying. We both know she is lying. The air between us hums with everything she actually said.
“How much,” she says, and the lightness is gone now, “did you actually hear?”
I could lie. I could offer her the mercy of pretending I heard nothing of consequence, that her confessions to a cat named Dumpling remain hers alone. I could give us both an exit.
“Enough.”
Something flickers across her face. Vulnerability, maybe. Then it’s gone, shuttered behind an expression I cannot read. She looks away. In the growing light, I can see the tension running through her shoulders, the way her fingers grip her elbows hard enough to bruise.
She is furious. She is mortified. She is something else beneath both that she is fighting very hard not to let me see.
I should apologize. I should explain. I should—
“Would you like to walk with me?”
The words come out before I have decided to say them.
She looks back, surprise cracking through the mask. “Now?”
“The palace will be waking soon.” I keep my voice even.
Practical. As if my pulse is not hammering against my throat.
“I would prefer to avoid explaining to the morning shift why their emperor and his shadow are emerging from an interrogation chamber together at dawn. The rumors would be… creative.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. Not a smile—not yet—but an acknowledgment. A crack in the wall.
“Where?”
“Somewhere I go when I cannot sleep.” The words feel heavier than they should.
She goes still. She understands what I am offering—I can see it in the way her eyes search my face, looking for the trap, the angle, the hidden motive. Her centuries of survival have taught her that gifts come with prices.
Finally. Tianlong’s voice curls through my mind, warm with something that might be approval.
I do not respond. I do not close the connection either. I am too focused on her face, on the war playing out behind her eyes—suspicion against curiosity, self-protection against something softer.
“This is a terrible idea,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You realize I’m going to mock your secret brooding spot.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
Another pause. Her arms are still crossed, but the grip on her elbows has loosened. The wall is still there, but there’s a door in it now. Cracked open. Just barely.
“Fine,” she says. “But if this is some kind of imperial murder dungeon, I’m going to be very annoyed.”
“It is not a murder dungeon.”
“That’s exactly what someone with a murder dungeon would say.”
She falls into step beside me.
We walk.
The tower stairs spiral upward through the heart of the eastern wing, worn smooth by centuries of feet that are not mine. I discovered this place during the war, when sleep was a luxury and solitude was survival. The guards know not to follow me here. No one else knows it exists.
Until now.
We emerge onto a terrace that faces east, toward the mountains that ring the valley like sleeping giants. The city spreads below us, still dark, still dreaming. The sky is turning—grey bleeding into rose, rose deepening toward gold.
Lián moves to the edge, hands finding the stone railing. The wind catches her hair, pulls it across her face, and for a moment she looks like something out of a painting. Something I am not allowed to want.
I note this observation. I do not examine it.
“Your secret brooding spot,” she says.
“It is not—” I stop. “Yes. I suppose it is.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. Not quite a smile, but close. “The emperor has a secret brooding spot. This is valuable intelligence. I could sell this to your enemies.”
“You could.”
“I won’t.” She looks at me, and the humor fades. “You heard me talking about you.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re showing me this place.”
“Yes.”
She waits. She is good at waiting. But so am I. The years of courts and councils have taught me that silence is a weapon, that the one who speaks first often loses.
I speak first anyway.
“You told Dumpling that I carry everything like it is my fault.”
She goes still.
“You are not wrong.” I move to stand beside her at the railing, leaving space between us. Enough space to be proper. Not enough to be safe.
The sun crests the mountains. Light spills across the terrace like liquid gold.
It catches her face. She closes her eyes—just for a moment—and something in her expression eases. Unguarded. I have never seen her unguarded before.
I should not be watching.
I watch anyway.
Then I look away, toward the mountains, and make myself speak.
“I have carried the empire since I was twelve years old. I have told myself it is duty. Honor. The burden I was chosen to bear.”
I do not look at her while I speak. I cannot. The words are hard enough without seeing her reaction.
“It is also penance.”
“I was a child when the dragon fire chose me. The third son. The quiet one.” I pause.
Breathe. “I wrote poetry about the moon and had no interest in thrones. Dragon fire does not consider such things. It does not ask permission. It burns through you, and you either survive the immolation or you do not.”
“You survived.”
“I survived.” The next words are harder. “My brothers could not forgive me for it.”
The city is waking below us. Smoke rising from morning fires. The distant sound of temple bells.