Chapter 4
Xiao Xuechi and I sat facing one another in silence for half the time it took a stick of incense to burn.
We were trying to calm down.
It plainly wasn’t working. The instant he said his first word while wearing my face, I sprang up and seized his shoulders.
“No. We have to change back!”
Before the words were out, I had pulled him toward me and knocked our heads together several times. All it produced was an agonizing pain in my forehead.
Xiao Xuechi shoved me away.
The pain brought tears to his eyes. They trembled on his lashes without falling. For the first time, the sight of my own face stirred a tender pity in me.
“Wang Jingwan, is there something wrong with your brain?”
Pity? Forget it.
I chopped the rail of the bed with my palm—but I had forgotten that Xiao Xuechi knew nothing of martial arts. His body was as fragile as glass. The rail survived. My hand nearly didn’t.
“How can you… say that about me?”
I forced out the words, then angrily flicked my sleeve and turned away, cradling my hand and grimacing in pain.
Xiao Xuechi stared at my back in silence for a while.
“…Actually, that may have been too generous.”
That single blow thoroughly cleared my head.
At last, we could sit down and discuss what to do.
“Since this has happened, we’ll have to make do and play each other.”
Xiao Xuechi yawned, looking bored.
“Play me? Easy. Do whatever you want. Nobody will suspect a thing, no matter what you do.”
Well, being a tyrant certainly was simple.
With my last shred of reason, I kept that thought to myself.
“Nobody in the palace knows me yet. Just restrain yourself a little. The only person you need to worry about is my maid, Yuanyuan. She knows me too well. If there’s no other way—”
Xiao Xuechi interrupted casually.
“The only people I trust to keep quiet are dead people.”
“Don’t you dare!”
Alarmed, I said, “If you so much as touch Yuanyuan, I’ll run naked along the city wall wearing your face!”
He scoffed. “Suit yourself.”
“Then… then I’ll find some male companions…”
I gritted my teeth. “And do whatever they arrange.”
“…Wang Jingwan, don’t you dare!”
We bickered for half the night.
At some point, we fell asleep sprawled haphazardly across the bed.
The next morning, a trembling voice as faint as a mosquito woke me.
“Your Majesty… Your Majesty…”
It took me a moment to react. I pried my eyes open.
“What is it?”
A smooth, pale face leaned closer to mine. Its owner said shakily:
“Your Majesty, court meets today. It’s time to get up.”
By custom, court should have been suspended for three days after the imperial wedding. But considering how little interest Xiao Xuechi had shown by skipping the ceremony, naturally he hadn’t bothered ordering that either.
Wasn’t this a little too diligent for a tyrant?
I struggled upright. Moving Xiao Xuechi’s leg off me woke him, and he flung a pillow over.
“Who’s making all that noise? Drag them out and behead them!”
“The empress is talking in her sleep.”
Without changing expression, I lowered the curtain and followed the eunuch to wash and dress.
I was nervous about presiding over court for the first time.
But I soon discovered there was no need. Just as Xiao Xuechi had said, nobody would suspect me, whatever I did in his body.
Even when I got the name of his most trusted eunuch wrong, the man merely asked miserably:
“Your Majesty, am I now to be called Jiang Wude? Or Jiang Wude today and Jiang Youde again tomorrow?”
“…We’ll stick with Jiang Youde.”
The ministers stood in sparse ranks below the throne.
Here and there, an entire person’s place stood empty.
Imitating Xiao Xuechi, I lifted my chin lazily.
“What’s going on? Where is everyone?”
Jiang Youde bent forward. “Your Majesty, the commander of the palace guards still cannot rise after his court flogging and has taken leave these past few days. The director of the imperial clan has been demoted, and his successor remains undecided. The Chief Justice is in the condemned cells, awaiting execution after autumn. His replacement has not yet been chosen either…”
Well, then.
Flogged, demoted, sentenced to death.
No wonder the court was empty.
My gaze traveled across the hall and stopped at an empty place on the left. I tensed at once.
“Which of those situations applies to Grand Preceptor Xun?”
“You made the grand preceptor ill with anger.”
“…Oh.”
After one court session, I concluded that being emperor wasn’t particularly difficult.
More precisely, being Xiao Xuechi wasn’t particularly difficult.
The officials knew his temper and didn’t dare argue in his presence. They debated most matters before the session and presented only their final conclusions to him.
If he nodded, they carried them out.
If he shook his head, they went off after court and argued some more until they devised a new proposal.
There weren’t many decisions to make today, and all concerned people’s livelihoods. I couldn’t find much wrong with them, so I nodded my approval.
After all, Xiao Xuechi had said I could decide these things. He didn’t care.
After court, I ordered Jiang Youde to select fine medicinal ingredients and send an imperial physician to visit Grand Preceptor Xun. I also told him to compile a list of officials who had been flogged, dismissed, exiled, or imprisoned.
A palace servant threw herself to her knees before me in a panic.
“Your Majesty! Something terrible has happened! Her Highness the empress is going to kill the noble consort!”
…What?