Page 26

Wei’s supply manifests are spread across the table. Border campaign expenses. Grain shipments. Weapon orders. The numbers do not add up-I spotted it yesterday, but I need to trace where the discrepancy goes. Who is skimming. Whether it is simple corruption or something worse.

I am three pages into cross-referencing transport costs when I hear her coming.

Footsteps. Light. Hesitant. The particular shuffle of someone who desperately wants to be helpful and desperately fears being unwanted.

“I brought tea!”

I do not turn. “I work better alone.”

“Oh.” The footsteps stop. “I just thought-the old records are so dusty, and I always need tea when I am reading them, and cook had honey cakes left over from the morning, and—”

She is still talking. I am still not turning.

“—nobody really comes down here except me and the head archivist, and she is visiting her sister in the capital—well, I mean, we are in the capital, obviously, but the outer city, the commercial district near the—”

“I said I work better alone.”

Silence.

I feel it hit her. The words landing like a slap. The kindness draining out of the air.

When I finally look, she is frozen mid-step—young, round-faced, arms full of tea tray and hope. Jing. The junior archivist. I remember her from yesterday, hovering nervously while Ren asked after her qualifying exams.

She had practically glowed when he remembered her name.

Now she looks like I have kicked her.

“I am sorry,” she whispers. “I did not mean to-I will just-”

She sets the tea tray on the nearest surface. Retreats. Her footsteps echo differently now-faster, smaller, the sound of someone trying to disappear.

The tea cools on the tray.

I do not look at it.

Kindness creates debt. Debt creates leverage. I have survived centuries by owing no one anything.

The justification tastes like ash.

I do not look at the tea. I do not think about him, either, when he touches servants’ shoulders with that automatic gentleness, when he—

The thought cuts off. I force my attention back to the manifests.

The discrepancy in Wei’s grain shipments leads to a warehouse in the merchant district. A warehouse that does not appear on any official registry.

I note it. Do not share. Not yet. I need more evidence.

The tea grows cold. I do not touch it.

Evening walks are becoming a ritual.

That should worry me. Rituals are how people settle. Settling is how people stay.

I don’t stay.

But here I am, third sunset in a row, walking the palace gardens with an emperor while we pretend to discuss the investigation. The light’s gone honey-thick, gilding everything it touches—the ornamental trees, the stone pathways, the sharp line of his profile.

I’m not looking at his profile.