The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

There's a small courtyard just off the west gallery with a crooked gingko tree and a bench that split you cleanly in two if you sat in the wrong spot.

No one used it because the shade moves like it was trying to escape. I liked it, so I sat. I watched a maid carry laundry line and drop her basket when one of the iron hooks gave way.

She froze, staring at the hook like it had betrayed the empire, then started looking around for someone to be angry about it. I don't like wasted time. I stood, crossed to the wall, and rested my fingers on the hook. It was tired. Brittle. Metal whispers when it's about to break; you can hear it if you were built wrong like me.

I pressed and it softened under my skin, then reformed. Better. I hardened the nail behind it for good measure. The maid stared at my hands, then at my face, then remembered her knees wanted to bow.

"Don't do that," I said. "Hang your laundry."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

She blushed the color of preserved plums and fled, grateful and embarrassed at the same time. That's fine. There are worse combinations.

By midday, the sun had found every crack in the tile roofs and rubbed against them like a cat. I cut through a side passage to avoid a delegation of men who think their sleeves prove their usefulness and nearly walked into Mingyu.

He didn't have an entourage. He looked like a man who'd chewed through more paper than any person should be made to ingest before noon and liked the taste anyway.

"Did you eat?" he asked, like I was the only checkmark he cares about.

"Yes. Kitchen congee. With salt," I said.

His mouth tilted. "Of course."

"And you?" I asked.

"Whatever Deming shoved at me between petitions."

Which was probably a handful of nuts and a threat. I hooked my finger into his sleeve and tugged. "Come on," I said.

We stole ten minutes in a storeroom that smelled like star anise and iron. I sat on a crate; he leaned against the wall like it would fall if he didn't. I took his hand and kneaded the base of his thumb where the brush cramps start. He closed his eyes like that was the first honest thing he'd been given all morning.

"You're supposed to be radiant and ceremonial," he murmured.

"I'm radiant when I want to be," I said. "Right now I want to be useful."

He squeezed my fingers. "You're both."

"Don't get poetic," I warned.

He laughed. Quiet. I like when he does that without an audience. He opened his eyes and looked at me like I'm something he's still learning on purpose.

"Yuyan?" I asked, because I like my problems clearly labeled.

"In her compound," he said. "Counting ways out. Finding none."

"Good," I said, and meant it without heat. "If she sends a note, I'll ignore it."

"Already arranged," he said. "All notes go through Deming anyway."

"Of course they do."

We didn't kiss. We didn't need to. When he left, he touched the inside of my wrist, once, and that held longer than mouths would have.

Afternoon is when palaces start throwing gossip like rice. I let it land where it wanted. I went to the guest kitchens—the ones people pretend don't matter because they feed people who aren't on the right lists—and checked their stores. Not enough salt. Of course. I sent a scribe with my stamp and a line that would make the quartermaster deliver without performing a small opera about inventory.

On the way back, I found an old woman sitting on a step by the latchwork gate, a shoe in her lap, and a needle between her lips, stabbing at a strap.

The buckle itself was cracked.

I knelt, slid it free, and reformed the tongue and frame with two presses. She blinked, then grinned like a girl and told me, "Empress or no, a good buckle is respect."

"I agree," I said, and she laughed like we were in on some joke the palace had never been told.

I cut behind the library and watched three boys invent a game with stones and curses. When they saw me, the curses fled. I showed them a better way to keep score that didn't end in a fight, then stole a stone and pocketed it because I liked the weight. They will tell people the Empress cheats at games. Good. It will make me less terrifying.

Back near my rooms, a scribe waited with his brush worried to death between his fingers. "Your Majesty," he started, "the Hall of Rites asks if—"

"No," I replied with a shake of my head, and he gave me a shy smile. He was clearly relieved I'd said what he had been hoping I'd say.

I slept for a little while in the late light, the kind that paints floorboards into long knives. Shadow snored. Yaozu sat cross-legged and sharpened his blade along a strip of leather that used to be part of my boot. It made a sound that usually tightens me, but today it felt like someone combing a snarl out of my skull.

When I woke, I wanted something fried and not discussed by ministers. So I went back to the kitchens and stood beside the cook who liked to break the rules, and we made scallion pancakes.

I chopped scallions. He pretended not to be shocked that I know how to hold a knife. I don't use my metal on food unless I'm forced to. Oil popped; we flipped; he taught me the trick with the steam; I taught him how to fix the skewed hinge on the oven door.

Mingyu found us there, his sleeves pushed to his forearms, and a smudge of ink on his cheek because he's human when paper fights him. He ate a pancake with his fingers. Didn't talk policy. Didn't talk at all, really. He stood close enough to warm my shoulder and let the kitchen noise be the whole conversation.

We walked back slow in the evening, the palace lamps catching fire one by one like someone had lined up stars and told them to behave. A flock of night insects swarmed the lantern by the gate and gave up because the wind had opinions.

I checked on Lin Wei again.

This time, he was awake, sitting exactly where I'd left the top. He hadn't touched it at all. Instead, he looked at me, then at the toy, then back at me.

It was a long look. I could feel something in it that wasn't silence. He put his palm on Shadow's head like he was asking permission to be allowed in his life. Shadow accepted ceremonially by immediately rolling onto his side so he could be rubbed.

"You can keep it," I told him.

He didn't nod. He just pulled the top closer, like if he said yes out loud, it might vanish.

"Tomorrow," I told the physician, "I want the tutor to come. Not with books. With string. Have her teach him knots first."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I went back to our rooms. Mingyu was already washing his hands like he pursued cleanliness with the same dedication he pursued everything else. He didn't ask where I'd been. He doesn't keep a leash. He toweled his hands and reached for me automatically and I stepped in because that's what I wanted.

"You did real things today," he murmured into my hair.

"I fixed a laundry hook and made the kitchen use salt," I chuckled into his chest. "And I didn't even have to kill a single person. A personal best, I think."

"That's what I said."

Yaozu stretched out on the rug, knife put away, eyes soft in a way only I get to see. He didn't look outside like he had to guard us from the world. He looked in, like he was guarding the quiet we'd made.

We ate nothing important. We talked about nothing that needed to be written down. I told Mingyu that Lin Wei liked tops. Mingyu told me that Deming burned three of Yuyan's notes and kept one so I could laugh at it later. Shadow stole a piece of pancake and pretended he hadn't, which fooled no one.

Before we fell asleep, I took the stone from my pocket and set it on the bedside table. It was smooth, and ugly, and perfect for worrying between my fingers when the palace starts narrating itself again.

I didn't care what the world learned.

I didn't care about how they bent their mouths around my name, the sound of it catching in their throat like it was trying to kill them.

I cared that Lin Wei ate without shaking. I cared that my men slept near me and woke when I did. I care that the kitchens salted the congee, because bland food was almost worse than death.

These were all small things that most people overlooked in their day to day lives.

And I couldn't have been more grateful that I was able to deal with them.

Finally.