The music gardens of the lone manor were almost too quiet.
Soft zithers played from the far pavilion, a slow, mournful tune drifting across the stepping stones like fog. Lanterns hung low between carved beams, their orange light casting halos on the pale gravel paths. The plum trees had already lost their bloom, bare branches curling like ink strokes against the dusk.
Shi Yaozu stood in the shadow of one of the ornamental bridges, motionless.
The woman he was following had not yet seen him.
Lady An Lihua moved with the easy grace of someone used to being watched. Daughter of the late Chancellor An, she had once been a rising star in the Daiyu court—a poet, a widow, a patron of the arts. After her father's quiet fall from power and grace, and after her husband's mysterious death, she had vanished from political life for nearly a decade.
But recently, she'd begun to appear again.
At council dinners.
At court poetry readings.
