The Lord Protector's gaze cut the room into meat and bone. "This is not a theatre," he said, echoing an argument we had not yet finished. "This is a state. We will try Wu Kang. We will hunt the Emperor. We will answer the South without kneeling and greet Zhou without flattering."
A minister with wine lips and soft hands—Households—found courage in the herd. "Your Excellency, with reverence: the Prince's methods make wives into widows faster than the granaries can find rice. Huailing has sent us a thousand empty bowls. Fear can be counted only until hunger does the counting."
"And loyalty?" I asked. "How do you count that? In ribbons? In funeral paper?" I stepped forward until the lamps along the left wall leaned the width of a flame. "I did not cut to decorate the square. I cut to close a door. If you want open doors, say so. I will leave them swinging and we can count visitors."
Silk scraped. Some looked at the floor; some looked at Father; none looked at the empty dragon dais at the far end of the world—the throne that listened like a sealed jar listens to thirst.
The emptiness above it drew my eye the way a wound draws flies. The silence under my ribs shifted in its sleep. The lamps trembled without smoke. The nearest eunuch blinked, then remembered wood.
The Minister of Punishments, who liked speaking when knives were near to give him courage, found his voice. "There is the matter of the Prince's… arrests," he said, picking the word like a splinter. "Lists were submitted this morning. Names from three houses. Seven from the Board of Works. Two from the Registry."
"Two?" Wu Jin murmured, pleasantly surprised. "Only two? Our Registry grows honest in its old age."
I watched him watch me. "The lists stand," I said. "Those men fed Wu Kang more than rumor. They will answer for the bowls they filled."
The Lord Protector's stare hardened. "You will not purge the court while the Emperor is missing," he said. "We do not bleed ourselves thin when wolves circle."
"They are not wolves," I said. "They are dogs who learned to sit in different halls. We beat them in the wrong room; they return to the right one."
"Enough," he said, and the word had weight. "You will submit your lists to me. I will strike what endangers the balance and keep what teaches prudence."
"Balance," I repeated, and the silence inside me rolled once, tasting the word the way a tide tastes a shore. "Very well. I will submit."
The ministers breathed, believing in paper. The cranes on the screens seemed to enlarge, as if a painter had decided their wings should cover something we did not want to see.
A eunuch slid in at ankle height and bowed to the floor. "Envoys," he whispered. "From the South at the Red Gate. From Zhou at the North. Both request audience. Both carry sealed cases."
Wu Jin's smile did not change. "Cases are for gifts and heads," he said. "We should see which lesson they prefer."
Father took the message without looking at me. "We will receive neither until tomorrow," he said. "Tell them Liang prays."
The eunuch bowed backward like water.
"Prays?" I said.
"Let them wonder what our gods sound like," Father answered.
The Minister of Rites brightened, having heard his single useful word. "Indeed," he said, nodding so his hat quivered. "We should… pray."
"No," I said, and the word came out colder than I intended. "We should search." I turned to General Sun. "The cisterns below the Inner Altar. The old tunnels under the Hall of Golden Grain. The bell chambers. Post teams in pairs; no one enters alone. If the monk left us a riddle, he meant us to lose men solving it."
Sun inclined his head, approving orders that admitted danger without poetry. "Tonight," he said.
"Tonight," I confirmed.
The Lord Protector watched me with a stillness that was not agreement and not refusal. He would let the search happen because not hunting would be worse than the wrong door.
The council loosened into noise the way a wound loosens into blood. Petitions stacked, excuses multiplied, precedent crawled out of graves wearing powdered faces. I spoke when I had to and wished speech could be executed. The silence under my ribs pressed against the bones, curious, awake now, almost companionable.