Chapter 4

For a full month, I shut my doors to rest through my pregnancy and ignored everything outside. I read and played my zither all day, enjoying a rare spell of peace.

Jiayi brought a letter from home. My father and mother were deeply worried, she said, and had asked the commander to guard my palace.

I had not been outside at all. On a rare clear winter day, I let Jiayi help me into the courtyard to see the plum blossoms.

Only when we approached the palace gate did I notice the figure in silver armor and scarlet robes.

I had not intended to speak, but then I saw that his sword hand was purple with cold.

At last I could not help asking, “Have you stood guard through the whole last month of winter, Commander Xiao, in all this wind and snow?”

Xiao Huaixin came through the snow, sunlight slipping from him as he moved.

He stopped by the gate. He would never overstep the bounds of propriety. “Your Majesty has always been delicate. Pregnant in the depths of winter, you need your servants to be all the more attentive.”

“I only guard a gate. Compared with the soldiers defending our borders, I am taking my ease. I can hardly call it hardship.”

We had known each other since childhood. How could I not know his ambition to take up a sword and ride across the battlefield?

I simply dared not think too closely about it.

There was no comfort in understanding that he had willingly entered this cage of a palace to protect me.

We both came from illustrious noble families. No amount of rank or glory I could promise would mean anything to him.

I could offer him nothing but my sense of indebtedness.

Nothing I could give, and nothing I was allowed to give. I no longer wanted to speak.

I was turning away when Xiao Huaixin warned me, “Your Majesty, for now, eat only what is prepared in your own kitchens. I will stop any food sent by anyone else at the gate.”

For a moment, I stood stunned. Then understanding came, and anger surged through me.

With Jiayi’s support, I turned and took two steps toward him.

“Who was it?” He hesitated. I spoke his name slowly and distinctly. “Xiao Huaixin. Answer me truthfully.”

He said the suspicious medicine had been delivered by a eunuch from the emperor’s own staff, but there must be more to the matter.

“Your Majesty, I reported it to the throne. His Majesty had the servant executed. But the medicine passed through too many hands for the investigation to reach a conclusion.”

When I turned silently toward my chambers, Xiao Huaixin hurried to comfort me. “His Majesty was deeply shocked and distressed when he heard.”

“What he thinks has nothing to do with me.” I rarely spoke with such harshness. It ill suited my reputation for kindness.

But my heart was truly cold now.

If Qi Ke cared for me, he would have come to see me long ago.

To settle the matter so quietly—he was probably shielding someone else.

I looked back at Xiao Huaixin one last time. “Thank you, Commander. Stop all food at the gate. Apart from my father’s household and the four consorts, I will see no one.”

When Xu Susu came, she replaced the guards outside the second palace wall as well. Every new man was a trusted soldier trained by her father, the General Who Guards the State.

I could not help laughing. They were so far away—were they planning to stop and inspect every passing bird?

Xu Susu’s brows drew together. “Someone dares plot against the empress’s unborn child, something unheard of, and it happens on my watch. What is wrong with checking a bird?”

She also blamed the emperor for his favoritism and for hurting the women who had been with him so long. I shook my head, no longer much concerned.

I had cried over it on too many nights. I did not want to waste away any longer.

Eleven years were already gone. Why should I sacrifice the next eleven?

So I changed the subject. “Do you remember those things Noble Consort Zheng used to say when she first arrived? ‘Transmigration,’ ‘characters in a novel,’ ‘palace intrigue’?”

Xu Susu nodded. She said she had never understood any of it.

I thought of a plan. She could pretend to submit to Zheng Xinyu, make common cause with her, and carefully find out what it all meant. Once she had the whole story, she could tell me.

Xu Susu immediately shook her head. Intrigue of that kind was the very thing she did worst, she said. We needed Consort Lin, who never put a foot wrong.

Lin Jingyao was my maternal uncle’s youngest daughter, a woman with a clear understanding of the world.

No sooner had she entered my hall than she smilingly raised a related matter.

Zheng Xinyu had approached her a few days earlier, sending several large chests of gold, silver, and jewels. Her intentions could not have been clearer.

“Even setting aside the fact that Your Majesty and I are close cousins, to think she could buy me with such trifles! She really does underestimate me.”

I asked Jingyao what sort of favor would win her over.

As a child, she had loved to nestle in my arms and wheedle affection from me. Now that I was pregnant, she only hugged my arm lightly. “It would have to be protection like Your Majesty’s—a great tree sheltering me.”

Our families rose and fell together, and we were related by blood. Why court disaster by offending me for a rootless little stray?

Everyone who had come this far was intelligent.

Only Zheng Xinyu somehow imagined that a little money and a few words could drive apart consorts born into families whose roots and branches had intertwined for generations.

She was a frog at the bottom of a well, too foolish to see beyond it.