NOVEL WEB Chapter 266: Other Work To Do
I woke to quiet.
Not the kind where everyone was holding their breath to see if I'd bite the hand that they thought fed me… but real quiet.
The sort that has a pulse—steam hissing somewhere, a ladle knocking a pot, Shadow's slow dog-sigh against the floor.
Good. I needed that kind.
The bed smelled faintly of sandalwood and the kind of soap Mingyu likes even though I told him I prefer things that don't smell like a shrine. I stretched and felt every place he'd been last night, all the places he'd taken his time like he had all of it. My body ached in the way I liked. Not war-ache. A lived-in ache.
I got up, tied a robe, and padded barefoot past the screen. Yaozu was where Yaozu always was—leaning on the doorframe, his hands loose, and his attention tight. He glanced over, checked my face like he could read weather off it, and didn't ask anything out loud.
"Food?" he offered.
"Yes," I replied with a slight smile on my face, and Shadow's tail thumped once like he'd orchestrated the whole idea.
We didn't ring a bell and wait to be served like statues. I liked kitchens. Kitchens were where palaces remember they feed people, and where in a normal house, was the very heart of the home.
After all, without food, there was no life.
We cut through the back hall and down the narrow stairs the maids use. Two of them caught sight of us and froze like they'd been caught stealing air. It took them a moment before they remembered to bow, but I simply shook my head and kept going.
The Emperor's kitchens were too clean to be interesting, but the steam was honest and the smells were right—broth, scallion, a whisper of fried dough from some corner where a cook was ignoring instructions to not make street food.
I found a spot against a post and watched.
Cooks watched me back like I might start reciting rules, or more like I was an interloper in a place that they considered to be theirs. I tipped my chin toward the big cauldron of morning congee.
"Salt," I said, my face blank.
The head cook blinked. "Your Majesty?"
"You have it?"
"Of course."
"Use it." I didn't raise my voice. I didn't need to. "More refugees entered the city last night. If you give them water with a memory of rice, they'll think we only want their gratitude. Give them broth that tastes like something. Give them salt so their hands stop shaking."
He did not argue. Smart man. He shouted something; a boy ran; a scoop of salt hissed into the pot; the kitchen exhaled.
Yaozu slid a bowl into my hands without me seeing where he took it from. I burned my tongue, but I didn't care. Shadow leaned into my hip like he thought he might convince me to share by osmosis.
"Not for you," I told him. He turned his head away dramatically, then looked back immediately in case I changed my mind.
We ate standing there. Simple. Hot. Enough. I could have stayed like that all morning, letting the noise of spoons and knives sand down the edge in my head. But there was a boy I needed to see.
"Physician's rooms," I said, and Yaozu nodded because he'd been heading there anyway.
The palace physician I trust the most was a woman, and that was not a popular position to take. She was in her forties with hands like a warrior who had seen more battles than they would ever admit to. Her calloses told a story that her lips would never reveal.
But she was real in her treatments, which was more than I could say for the majority of male physicians who worked in the palace.
She had taken the boy a few days ago and didn't try to impress me with posture or stories. That, more than anything else was why I liked her.
She didn't bow when we walked in. She wiped her hands and stepped aside so I could see. Lin Wei slept on a pallet near the brazier, small as a bundled hawk, and his cheek pressed to his arm.
There was color in him now. Not much, but enough.
"What are we calling him today?" the physician asked, quiet.
"Lin Wei," I said.
"You still don't know?"
"He won't tell me," I replied with a shrug. "And I won't force him."
She nodded like that was the only answer a person should give. "He eats, but he still refuses to speak. He startles at fast movements. No fever, and no nightmares last night."
He had them the two nights before—those breathless, animal sounds that tore something in you on their way out. I crouched beside him, careful. Shadow lowered himself to the floor so painfully slow you'd think he was the old one, then inched until his back warmed the boy's feet.
Lin Wei didn't wake. He curled his toes into Shadow's fur like it was always supposed to be there.
I took a hairpin from my bun, a cheap iron one I kept for this, and rolled it between my fingers. Metal is also a kind of quiet if you listen properly. I warmed it with breath, then coaxed it down and out until it became a small disk. Two flicks, a press with my thumb—now it was a top.
I sang more metal into its center until it balanced the way I like.
It was a simple toy, but sturdy.
I set it where he'd see it when he woke and stood up.
"He'll need a tutor who doesn't care about rank," I told the physician. "Someone who can teach a boy who forgot what safe feels like."
"I know a widow who teaches the laundry girls to read patterns and lists," she said. "She doesn't waste words."
"Good," I said. "Pay her double."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Yaozu didn't say anything through all of this, but when we left, his hand brushed mine in that way that says what he won't make public. I let my fingers slide against his once, then put both hands in my sleeves because we were in a corridor again and there are only so many things you give a hallway.
The rest of the morning I refused to let anyone march me to a ceremony. When a junior official tried to herd me to the Hall of Rites "just to greet the ladies of the court," I smiled in a way that made him forget which hall was which and kept walking. If they want to see me, they knew where I was.
But I had other work to do.