The inner palace did not welcome quietly; it tested, the way water tests a drowning man. The first day brought a parade of small requests—an additional tea blend "by His Majesty's usual preference," a replacement sleeve for a robe he hadn't worn in months, a list of ceremonial bow lengths that contradicted itself twice.
The senior eunuchs delivered each task with expressions that revealed nothing, and I completed them without asking questions, because a question in the palace is a gift you hand your enemy.
By the second evening, the sun slipped low over the western wall, turning the white stone corridors gold, and with the light came the first strike. Consort Ning's attendant, a pale-faced concubine named Yuyin, arrived breathless before a chamberlain to announce that she had seen me "wandering the north gate" without escort, speaking to a guard. She told the story like someone reading a confession already written.
The chamberlain's brow tightened. It was a serious claim—being alone with a guard was enough to blacken a name forever.
I didn't protest. I asked if the chamberlain might verify with the day's schedule ledger, which recorded every servant and concubine's movement. He agreed reluctantly. The head clerk returned within minutes, announcing that at the time Yuyin claimed I was in the north gate, I had been in the library with two senior eunuchs and a scribe—names written plainly in the ledger.
Yuyin's face drained of color. I bowed to the chamberlain, murmuring that misunderstandings happen, though I had noticed that in some halls, misunderstandings grow only in the shadow of certain people.
That night, as lanterns were lit and the corridors cooled, a quiet summons came: His Majesty requested my presence for tea.
He did not speak at first, only poured and watched the steam rise between us. Then, without preface, he asked, "Do you think the truth survives long here?"
I let the steam touch my face, warm but not scalding. "Truth survives," I said, "but not always in the mouths of those who speak it. Sometimes it waits in ink, or stone, or the memory of the wrong person at the right moment."
His eyes held mine for a long breath. There was a flicker in them—not the sharp light of curiosity, but the slower burn of recognition, as if my words had brushed a wound he did not remember receiving.
Later, he dreamed again.
The hall was ruined as before, the gold gone dull, the air thick with ash. The woman in red stood closer this time, her face half-lit. Her eyes were not fire—they were the deep water beneath it, and they held him there without touching.
"Ill remember everything," she said, and the weight of it was not accusation but grief.
He stepped forward. The grief in her eyes deepened to something warmer, sharper, but before he could name it, she was gone, and he woke with the taste of her words lingering like wine left too long in the mouth—sweet, bitter, and impossible to swallow.