◎ Clockwork ◎

Song Chang had only summoned Zhou Tan and Chu Lin into the palace, so Qu You did not go along. Chu Lin left behind a squad of guards to protect her.

Qu You rode in a carriage to see Zhou Tan off at the East Gate. When she lifted the curtain, she saw the towering Tower of Burning Candles. Before, she hadn’t understood the meaning behind that tower and had only found it awe-inspiring; now, looking at it again, she felt a tangle of emotions.

Zhou Tan admonished her with some worry, “Take Old General Chu’s guards and go straight back to the residence. Shut the gates tight and wait for me to come out—then we’ll discuss things together.”

“I mean to go back to the Qu residence first,” Qu You said. “Father is a court historian, and Xiangwen now serves in the Ministry of Rites. His Majesty is still alive, so the Crown Prince wouldn’t dare make a great commotion at my family’s house. If I return to your residence alone, it would only give him an opening to exploit.”

Zhou Tan knitted his brows in thought. Hearing Chu Lin call to him from outside the carriage, he said hastily, “Very well. Take care of yourself.”

Qu You smoothed out a crease in the fabric at his shoulder and neck. This deep crimson official robe had not been worn in a long while; seeing it again now, she felt that it truly suited him. “You too.”

She watched his figure disappear amid the vast halls and pavilions before sitting back in the carriage. Perhaps because the Emperor was gravely ill, there were far more guards stationed at the East Gate than the last time she had come.

The guards Chu Lin had left obeyed her instructions, leaving the Imperial Avenue and heading toward the Qu residence. Sitting in the carriage, Qu You could hear the heavy clash of armor even through the curtains.

Feeling drowsy, she dozed off briefly in the carriage. About the time it takes for a stick of incense to burn, a horse suddenly whinnied sharply outside, jolting her awake. Before she could gather her senses, she heard a guard’s low voice: “Madam, there are Crown Prince’s mansion soldiers at the gate of the residence—about fifty of them, in gold armor with iron spears. They mean no good.”

Song Shiyan was a clever man; he had no doubt calculated that she would return to the Qu residence first once back in the capital.

But just as she had told Zhou Tan earlier, with Song Chang still alive, Song Shiyan would not dare make a large move. If they were blocking the gate rather than breaking straight through, it was clearly her alone they were after.

The Qu family estate had been left behind by Qu Cheng’s own branch of the family, located in a bustling part of the capital with plenty of passersby. At her side she had thirty of Chu Lin’s guards, all elite soldiers. If it came to blows with Song Shiyan’s men, she still stood a good chance.

Thinking this over, she steadied her heart.

Just as she was about to lift the curtain and step out to deal with the Crown Prince’s soldiers herself, the guard who had gone to scout returned, cautiously bringing someone with him.

Then she heard a polite, courteous voice outside the curtain: “Madam Zhou, His Highness invites you to Fanlou for a talk. Please, come this way.”

The Qu residence wasn’t far from Fanlou. That Song Shiyan had chosen a bustling place like Fanlou to meet her told her he hadn’t come to seize her and use her against Zhou Tan.

So then—what did the Crown Prince want with her?

The guard beside her looked somewhat worried. “Madam, even at Fanlou, we cannot afford to be careless…”

Qu You’s eyes suddenly snapped open. “Turn the carriage around. To Fanlou.”

The guard wanted to advise against it, but after glancing at the soldiers standing in full battle readiness before the Qu residence gate, he said nothing more. With a shout of “Hyah!” he led her toward Bian River Street instead.

Sitting in the carriage, Qu You listened to the long-missed bustle and clamor of Bian River Street.

That Song Shiyan had deliberately avoided Zhou Tan, arranged this meeting, and chosen a place like Fanlou of all things—he surely had a particular purpose in mind.

Whatever that purpose was, if he dared invite her, she dared go.

Within the dim, flickering candlelight of Shengming Palace, Zhou Tan strode inside. The maids and eunuchs on either side, as though obeying some silent command, bowed their heads and withdrew quietly from his path, their footsteps so light they left almost no sound at all.

For a moment, the clearest sound in the hall was the drip of melting candle wax.

Zhou Tan turned to look at the towering palace doors closing behind him, feeling faintly dazed.

He had spent too long in Ruozhou and had not seen such servants—tamed until they seemed like mere objects—in a long time. It was strange; he had never had this feeling before. It was only after Qu You had described to him her impressions of her first time entering the palace that he began, from time to time, to recall her odd, out-of-place remarks.

“In the West there’s a kind of toy called a windup toy—you could think of it as a delicate little mechanism. The owner winds the spring, triggers the mechanism, and the little toy repeats a fixed set of motions on its own, following its preset design. The first time I came with you to the East Gate and saw those palace servants, that’s exactly what they reminded me of—windup toys.”

She had said this was the most merciless kind of domestication that feudal imperial power inflicted on people—that it crudely implanted a spring into a being who once had a will of their own, stripping away their capacity for thought.

She had also said that the reason she had refused, at first, to let servants kneel to her, was that she feared that one day she too might become someone who wielded power without ever noticing what it had done to her. Once a person used power to tame others, she said, they themselves would inevitably be tamed by that same power.

Half-asleep, she had held onto him and murmured, softly, over and over, that she must never become a clay figure or wooden puppet shaped by a feudal system—that no matter what happened, she must always remember where she came from.

In truth, he hadn’t understood much of what she said, but since these were words spoken in her drowsy half-dreaming state, he never pressed her for an explanation.

He had thought that since he didn’t understand these words, he would forget them once they were spoken. And yet today, standing in this hall, he found he could recall with perfect clarity the words “windup toy”—and even felt that he had, perhaps, come to understand what she meant.

Back at Jinghua Mountain and atop Fanlou, he had already known she was different from those around her, and Qu You herself had once admitted outright that she came from a world unlike theirs.

Most likely it was a world she had pieced together in dreams, after reading strange and wondrous books and meeting travelers from the West. She never explained it in detail, but she often mentioned it in passing, without meaning to.

Such a fine place—he could never have dreamed it up himself, no matter how he tried.

A fit of coughing came from behind the bed curtains, pulling Zhou Tan’s thoughts back to the candlelit hall of Shengming Palace.

The Emperor lay upon his couch, attended only by an old eunuch at his side. Zhou Tan glanced at him again—this was still the same old eunuch who had seen him off out of the palace that day.

“Xiaobai, you’ve come.”

Song Chang called out to him.

In just two years, his voice had grown old to this degree.

A tangled feeling of pity and disgust rose in Zhou Tan’s heart. He lifted the hem of his robe and knelt three paces from the imperial couch—neither too close nor too far. “Xiaobai pays respects to Your Majesty. How fares your health?”

“Qinggong, you may withdraw.”

The old eunuch complied, bowing as he slowly shuffled out of the hall. From the moment Zhou Tan had first seen him, the man’s back had never once straightened.

The person closest to Song Chang had served him, bent-backed, for a lifetime, and yet believed that to earn the Emperor’s favor was the highest honor. By Qu You’s way of putting it, this was, more or less, “oppression.”

“It’s no small thing that you were willing to return from Ruozhou. Now that you’ve entered the palace, Old General Chu must have returned as well—I can finally set my mind somewhat at ease,” Song Chang said weakly, without drawing back the curtain. “Was the border hard on you?”

“How could a place my forebears once guarded be called hard?” Zhou Tan said flatly. “I have known peace and openness at Ruozhou. If not for Your Majesty’s urgent need, I would gladly have spent my whole life guarding the foot of Mount Geli.”

He had not spoken falsely.

Song Chang was silent for a moment, then suddenly said, “Before you left the capital that day, you once asked me whether there was anything I regretted. I did not tell you the truth then. In truth, I regret things, day and night.”

He no longer called himself “We,” but used “I.”

“In this life of mine, close friends have scattered, elders have died young, and my own children have proven unfilial—it could be called both absurd and pitiful. When illness plagues me, the only one I dare still trust is Xiaobai, far away in Ruozhou… Today, speaking as kin to kin, tell me the truth, Xiaobai—the case of the Tower of Burning Candles. Do you know of it?”

So he had asked, after all.

Zhou Tan thought to himself, mockingly, that on that day he had pressed too hard in forcing Fu Qingnian to his death, then feigned retreat to advance, hurrying off to Ruozhou. Song Chang must not have had time to react—had even forgotten to press him further about the Burning Candles case.

The frail Emperor reached a hand out from behind the curtain and drew it back. The young official kneeling before his couch looked no different from when he had left two years ago. The deep crimson official robe had not added a trace of gloom to him—if anything, it only made his clear, elegant features look all the more striking.

A young man like a slender bamboo stalk—youthful, clean, carrying the faint fragrance of still water. Compared to him, the Emperor felt he could almost smell the decay of his own body, already nearing its end.

He too had once been young like this—riding wild horses across the northwest with Xiao Yue, singing loudly beneath the open sky, pouring out lofty ambitions, full of hope.

Then his old friend’s bones were buried beneath drifting sands, and he himself became a rotting old man within the palace walls.

It was hard to say which of them had been the luckier.

The pity and disgust in Zhou Tan’s heart deepened.

He cleared his throat and bowed his head to the ground, but did not answer the Emperor’s question directly. Instead, he said slowly, “Your Majesty, when my teacher rescued me from the imperial prison that day, he told me in detail the words of the Late Emperor before his passing. I find myself thinking how very similar this moment is to the secret edict left by the Late Emperor back then.”

Emperor Xuan had fallen gravely ill and urgently summoned Gu Zhiyan; within the palace walls lurked guards of uncertain loyalty, while outside the city, the Crown Prince waited like a tiger eyeing its prey. The circumstances now were exactly the same as then.

Song Chang gave a bitter laugh, but what Zhou Tan said next froze that smile on his lips.

“Your Majesty, do you know why my teacher was so insistent on stopping you from building the Tower of Burning Candles?” Zhou Tan lifted his eyes calmly to look at him, his amber eyes turning slightly cold. “It was the Late Emperor’s dying charge—that the secret of the True Ascension Palace remain buried forever. Do you think, Your Majesty, that this was for what reason?”

His voice was soft, carrying a note of something like pity. “—It was for your sake, Your Majesty. The Late Emperor knew of this long before, yet did not disturb it while he still lived. Even on his deathbed, he charged my teacher to do everything in his power to stop you, so that you would not be consumed by resentment and hatred over this matter. As for the question of bloodline—by the time he was dying, even that no longer mattered to him.”

“My teacher, honoring the Late Emperor’s final wish, did everything he could to stop Your Majesty, but never had the chance to explain any of this before the Burning Candles case had already begun. Now I have one more reason to deeply hate Chancellor Fu. Surely Your Majesty understands my heart by now?”

Song Chang said nothing for a long while, sitting there on the couch as if in a daze. After a moment, he seemed to come back to himself and broke into a violent fit of coughing, his hand gripping the bed curtain beside him so hard it trembled.

“What I came to say, I have now said.” The candlelight flickered, and something glinted in Zhou Tan’s eyes as he spoke earnestly. “So then—Your Majesty summoned me back to the palace so urgently. What was it you wished to say?”