Ling An – Morning After the Feast
The city did not rise cleanly.
The streets smelled faintly of smoke and iron. A tower bell rang off-beat, and the fishmongers at the south gate refused to sell river eels — not out of protest, but because every one they cut open that morning had a spiral carved into the stomach.
No blood.
Just clean cuts, as if made from within.
Even silence had begun to rot.
I woke before first bell.
No dreams.
Only the scent of red silk burning.
Shen Yue was already at the window, watching the sky.
"The monks at Wanshi sealed the garden well," she said. "The signal was seen."
"Good."
"They'll know it was you."
"That's the point."
I dressed in black silk — not mourning this time, but strategy.
Today, I'd walk into a different war.
Minister Wu Jin did not speak as he entered.
He never did — not when he was about to move the heavens.
Instead, he opened three ledgers, passed them to three different clerks, and adjusted a ceremonial incense stick on the offering table by a mere two degrees.
The gesture meant nothing to the uninitiated.
But those who understood the rites knew: a shift of alignment like that could suspend a military dispatch, or reclassify a noble's legitimacy.
By the end of the hour, two of Wu Kang's inner court loyalists had their bloodline certifications "under review."
They could no longer vote in court until the matter was settled.
Which meant I could.
Wu Kang read the letter in silence.
He didn't rage. He didn't even sneer.
He folded it slowly, then dropped it into the koi pond beside him.
The fish did not surface.
"He's moving through ritual," he muttered.
"Then burn the temples," Taian said, leaning against the cherrywood railing.
Wu Kang's eyes narrowed. "Do you think I'm blind?"
"No," Taian replied, sipping wine. "But I think you're bleeding from the inside and pretending it's wine."
A pause.
"You let him make the first real strike."
"And?"
"Now you're reacting."
Taian stood, brushing dust from his robe.
"Brother, you'll lose this if you don't start playing dirty. The kind of dirty that doesn't fit into the emperor's ears."
Inner Palace Corridor
The Lord Protector had not spoken since the feast.
But I saw the look he gave me as I passed him in the corridor — not anger, not disappointment.
Measurement.
Like a father who finally sees the shadow in his son and wonders when it first took root.
He said only this:
"I hope you know the price of winning."
And I replied:
"I do. That's why I waited so long."
The Emperor signed a decree with half-lidded eyes.
He did not write it.
Wu Jin did.
And behind the ceremonial screen, I stood still, unseen, waiting as the ink dried.
The decree read:
"Lord Wu An, for services rendered and stabilizing Dongxia, is granted interim authority over the Western Merchant Quarter and ritual access to all southern shrine records."
It was nothing.
On paper.
But in practice?
It gave me surveillance, communication control, and legal religious access to the underground shrines in Ling An.
Wu Kang would not dare challenge it — not publicly.
He would lose face.
He would lose time.
That night, Shen Yue entered with blood on her sleeve.
"It's done," she said.
"How many?"
"Four loyalists. Two brothers."
"And the girl?"
A pause.
"She cried. She thought you were different."
I didn't answer.
There was no answer worth giving.
Only the silence that comes after the blade.
Whispers rippled from the merchant guilds to the temple courtyards.
"Wu An rose from the Feast untouched."
"He has Wu Jin's favor now."
"He speaks in ink and silence, not steel."
"He doesn't want the throne. He wants the city itself."
And in a cracked courtyard beneath the Empress's tower, an old monk traced a spiral into snow.
"It has begun," he said to no one.
"The game beneath the empire."
At midnight, I sealed the second scroll.
Shorter this time. No blood. Just old ink.
I placed it in the hollow of the broken prayer wheel outside the Temple of Wanshi.
It bore no name, but its message was clear:
"The doors have opened. The cost has been paid.
Watch the rivers. They will run backward."