Chapter 14 Three Months With Child
Xiao Yan was not an ordinary madman.
He was the emperor, the madman with the greatest power in the world.
More than that, this mad emperor was my husband.
His fate was tied to mine. If harm came to him, I would suffer with him.
So even if I meant to move against him, I had to plant my own feet first.
At the least, before I bore the child, nothing could happen to him.
The pregnancy went much more smoothly than I had imagined.
Xiao Yan was young and strong, and he often stayed the night in my palace.
The new emperor had been enthroned only three months when I was found to be with child.
In that time, I took mute medicine on purpose so I would make no sound and show no flaw.
Inside Jiaofang Hall, Xiao Yan looked at me. His fingertips rubbed along my neck. He spoke with regret.
"Why can it not be cured?"
In his rage, he meant to cut off the hands of the divine doctor from Jiuzhou Mountain who had treated my throat, and throw him into hard labor.
The divine doctor's hair was white. He knelt on the ground and shook.
I hurried to take brush and ink, and wrote to persuade him.
"This consort is now with child. I ask Your Majesty to let the physician protect this consort's pregnancy. Count it as merit against his crime, and as blessing stored for the child in this consort's belly."
Xiao Yan agreed.
After he left, the divine doctor kowtowed to me with grateful tears, and said he would repay a life-saving grace like a spring pouring out.
I smiled, helped him up, and watched him go.
Those good at medicine were mostly good at poison too. One thought made a spirit pill. One thought made a poisoned pellet.
If he could make a wondrous cure, he could probably make a rare poison known through the world.