As they sat down to eat, Sou Hei could see why the Emperor had not wanted to keep her.

It was far from an obvious reason. There was nothing wanting about her manners—they were perfectly refined, as he had assumed they would be—or her appearance. Her dark hair was swept gracefully off her neck, revealing the sharp lines of her collarbone beneath the mandarin collar of her qipao. The red of the garment highlighted the pink in her cheeks and the ruby shade of her lips, making him think thoughts that a widower should not have even entertained.

But here he was, entertaining them as well as her.

What had possessed him to dine with her, he had no idea.

Because now, he knew why the Emperor had wanted to put as much distance between himself and her as possible. There was nothing deficient in her feminine virtues—but she was cunning. She possessed a natural grace and wit that would have threatened any man who wanted a concubine—or any woman, for that matter—to be peaceable, quiet, mousy. There was a keen intelligence shining in her brown eyes when she appraised him, an expression that suggested she was plotting something. That look was one that she did not even have the good sense to try to hide.

Tian, how had this woman survived here for so long? How had she not been eaten alive by the serpents and vultures of the harem and imperial court?

There had to be some other reason the Emperor had kept her in his harem for so long. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the Emperor really was just another spoiled, tyrannical, sadistic dictator who wanted to toy with her and then discard her when it suited him.

"What was your upbringing like?" Sou Hei asked.

A choked cough reached his ears as she looked up from her food. Nai had been sitting with her gaze tilted down toward her bowl of rice and bean sprouts, chewing slowly and taking small bites. Her pretence of demureness and submissiveness did not fool him, however. Somewhere beneath that barest veil, that thinnest mask—there was a dragon in that woman, ready to strike.

"Why are you asking me about my childhood?" retorted Nai, and she caught herself, swallowing before she began her next sentence. That brazen rebellion was almost amusing to witness. "What I meant to say is... Your Excellency, I don't see how my upbringing could be of any interest to you."

"Perhaps it is not, but I will decide that after I have heard about it." Now, he was more intrigued by her sudden refusal to tell him about her past before coming to the Forbidden City. "So please. Tell me about yourself."

"I was raised in Sichuan, the daughter of a fisherman. I learned to spin silk and embroider clothes. When the imperial guard came by looking for women to join the Emperor's harem three years ago, I agreed to go. That is all." Her brown eyes finally met his, and that same glimmer of something more struck him again, like a fish darting in and out of muddy water.

"You had no brothers or sisters?" Sou Hei asked. "No friends, cousins, even acquaintances?"

She pushed her shoulders back, sitting up straighter in the rosewood seat that dwarfed her petite frame. "I have a brother and six older sisters."

"Six?" He arched an eyebrow. "My—"

"Do not tell me what I have heard all my life, that my parents must have desperately wanted a son." That same fire burned in her. It made him bite back a smile. It would not do to have her think he enjoyed her company—worst of all make the spies in the palace think that he enjoyed being here. "Your Excellency, I interrupted you. How rude. Please forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive." It was far too entertaining to watch her lurch forward, toeing that line between ladylike quietude and full-throated disdain for him. "You have a brother, you said?"

"An older brother."

"What does he do?"

"He..." She took a sip of the baijiu on the table, her fingers white around the cup. "He is a farmer."

And Nai was a dreadful liar. "What does he farm?"

"Millet." She spooned some bitter melon with beef onto her bowl. "Last I heard. I have not spoken to him since I came here."

But you did not say that you have not written to him since you came here.

"Millet," he repeated. "I never much cared for that myself."

"Yes, well, we all have different tastes." She took a deep breath, seeming to attempt to regain control of herself. "Might I be so bold as to ask about your family?"

The word family hit him like a blow to the gut. He steadied himself, his fingers tightening around his kneecap under the table, digging to the point of pain to avoid thinking about his wife. The last image he had seen of her was at peace, the slightest hint of a smile on her face as they laid the baby on her chest. Right before he had folded both of them into the burial shroud and lowered them into the ground. The child's eyes had been forever closed, never to see the light of day.

"I grew up an orphan," he said easily, the words a recitation to him by now. "The Buddhist monks took me in. Then, later, I enlisted and rose the ranks of the army. Now, I'm here. I served as an advisor for the former Emperor, and I had hoped to do the same for this one."

Nai laughed, a deep, rich sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. "No advisor has ever succeeded with this Emperor."

"You must know more about the inner workings of his mind than you let on."

"Clearly not that much, given I did not know he would leave me here, at the mercy of a man like you."

"A man like me?" His brows rose at her comment. He spooned a slice of chicken with wood ears and dried lily flowers into his bowl. The candlelight flickered between them, casting dancing shadows on the screened walls. "And what kind of man is that?"

"One who pretends to be something he is not." Her tone sharpened, the pace of her words coming quicker. "You dress in a farmer's clothes, but you have a soldier's build. You eat the food of peasants, but we are sitting at an Emperor's table. Who are you, Your Excellency?"

"Sou Hei," he corrected her. "I would have you call me by my name, Nai."

"Hardly fair, since Nai is not mine."

He set down his chopsticks. Now he was on the back foot. "What is, then?"

"I would rather not have you know, so I will continue to address you by your title. Does my name matter so much to you?"

"There is a great deal of meaning to be found in a name." His, Sou Hei, meant to endure suffering. He wondered if it had been a premonition of his father's or mere fate. But sometimes, suffering felt like all he had ever had, his faithful companion.

"And there is a great deal of meaning to be found in what one chooses to be called. Names are not choices we make, Your Excellency." She finished her last bite of rice. "I would like to be dismissed."

He sensed that he had pried all he could out of her for the evening. He would have to save his more aggressive attempts at secret-stealing later.

"Then let it be made known that I am more benevolent than the Emperor. You are free to leave." Sou Hei stood. "Thank you for joining me."

Her lips parted in surprise before they closed again, thinning into a fine line. "I was honoured to be invited."

He did not believe her false, cloying tone one bit. But he sensed there was more to Nai—or whatever her name was—than met the eye. And he was determined to find out. 

***

Mei Yu,

You are sure to be upset, I am sure. I have not written to you for many months, but I promise—it has all been worth it. I have not been absent without reason, and soon enough, I hope we can be reunited.

Soon enough, I hope I can tell you of all the ongoings that have transpired and all the news that has yet to reach you.

A dragon has emerged from the Yellow River. Not just any dragon, the Huáng Lóng. The oldest and most primordial of all the dragons—the dragon god.

This dragon god has been accompanying us on our journey toward the capital. I hope to see you soon.

Love,

Jin Qian

Sou Hei folded the letter into neat thirds, as it had been before, after rereading the characters in sloppy brushstrokes, running in columns from top to bottom and right to left on the page. The parchment crinkled, and he set it down on the desk, smoothing out the letter. He wondered who it could be addressed to; he had asked around, and Mei Yu was a common enough name for a woman.

It was one of those simple names, one of those composed of light frippery like Mei Hua's, which meant beautiful flower. Mei Yu simply meant beautiful jade. Though who was the recipient of the letter? Which woman would be able to read it? His wife had been unable to manage any more than the rudimentary numbers and how to write her name.

Love. That words leaped off the page back at him, the gentle swoops and lines of the word harbouring a secret, that character in the centre of it for the word heart gazing back up at him. What was really in this woman's heart?

"Bring this to the harem," he instructed a nearby servant. "To the eunuch. I am certain he will know who to address it to."

"Yes, Your Excellency." The young boy—he couldn't have been any more than twelve years old, the age Sou Hei had been when he had been taken in by the Buddhist monks—bowed low and deep, his face pale and sprinkled with a few spots here and there.

The contents of the letter nagged at his mind, gnawing at his concentration while he filed through the other letters entering the palace. There was a love note from a man to his mistress; a letter from a concerned father to his son; one from a child to his father. The usual palace intrigues did not absorb him as much as they once had, when he had been Advisor to the former Emperor.

That Emperor had been a great man, with only one weakness—allowing himself to be henpecked and eventually trod upon by his Empress. That Empress, bloodthirsty, power-hungry, and tyrannical as she was, had murdered her rivals in the harshest of ways and enacted policies across China that had only set the path for her son to blaze on. Now, the country was in tatters—riots everywhere, famine, and threats of a revolution. That mistake was one Sou Hei would never allow himself to make; one sin that he would never allow himself to even come close to committing.

Having finished leafing all through the correspondence that had passed through the palace gates, he decided to take a stroll through the gardens. The courtyard housing the Jade Gardens was decorated with small, arched bridges, ponds dotted with lotus leaves, and plum blossom trees currently covered in a heavy layer of snow. The gardens sat in the junction between the harem and his living quarters, but the cold meant he was taken aback when he stepped outside and saw fresh tracks in the snow.

"Yi Tian," he greeted the man when he neared him. The eunuch was sitting on a bench beneath a weeping willow, nearly blending in with his whitish grey robes. "I did not expect to find you out here on such a chilly morning."

"I often come here for contemplation," Yi Tian said, raising his head to look at Sou Hei. "The pond is useful for that."

The pond in question was currently frozen over without a fish or flower in sight, but Sou Hei gazed into it anyway. He saw nothing.

He tried to resist the urge to scrutinize the eunuch; something about eunuchs in general had always made him uncomfortable. There was, of course, every man's revulsion at the thought of having the same fate happen to him, but there was something else to it. When he had been in his teens, he had seen other young men, desperate and poor and in need of food more than some intangible sense of pride or manhood, give themselves over to be castrated in exchange for a guaranteed position in the imperial harem.

"Well, I won't bother you, then." He stood, brushing off his trousers. He had come here to be alone, and the eunuch's presence unsettled him in a way he couldn't discern. It was more than his usual distaste toward eunuchs in general.

He just couldn't figure out what.