Luowei today was dressed in a narrow-sleeved long robe of deep indigo blue, its borders embroidered with a ring of crimson lotuses, a scarlet bodice beneath, and a hundred-pleated mountain-white skirt — elegant and dignified, exactly the kind of private dress the ladies of the inner palace adored.

Ye Tingyan followed the line of her collar upward and found, to his surprise, that she had drawn long brows and touched her lips with rouge — she had deliberately made herself up.

His heart had just given rise to a flicker of something strange when Luowei sat down in the stone chair where he had been sitting, and gestured for him to rise: “Lord Ye, no need for such ceremony — please, sit.”

She swept a glance over Ye Tingyan’s crimson official robe, and her voice took on a note of mockery: “I have yet to offer my congratulations on Lord Ye’s promotion — a rise this swift is rarely seen in the annals of this dynasty.”

Ye Tingyan replied: “This subject thanks His Majesty and Your Highness for your generous regard.”

Luowei asked: “The last time the Lord invited me here, it was over the West Garden murder case. Now that matter has been settled and everything has gone smoothly — the Lord has effectively done me a favor. Today, might you have come to collect your reward?”

Ye Tingyan blew a breath at the dust floating off his fingertips, and said with helpless resignation: “Every time Your Highness meets with me, you insist on playing the fool while knowing perfectly well — why put yourself to such trouble?”

Luowei smiled: “Was it not learned from the Lord himself? If the Lord would be a little more forthright, I naturally would not need to exhaust myself in this manner.”

Ye Tingyan’s eyes flickered for a moment, then he said: “Very well — today I will speak plainly with Your Highness. I have come from the north after a long journey, wishing to secure a foothold here in Biandu and at court, to render some small service for His Majesty. Only, I do not know whether Your Highness would be willing to accommodate me.”

Luowei feigned ignorance: “My, how strange — the Lord serves His Majesty in loyalty, which is the same as serving me. What is there to accommodate or not?”

Ye Tingyan said: “Your Highness just said you wished for more frankness — since the first year of Jinghe, when His Majesty took the throne, the court has divided into streams. The Grand Councilor relies on the great families of Biandu, his partisans spread everywhere, his tree vast and casting deep shade. Your Highness has the support of the Yan family and the students of the Su school of thought, and along the way has kept the Grand Councilor’s influence in check, sheltering His Majesty until now. I have come into the court of Biandu as a lone figure; I must after all choose between Your Highness and the Grand Councilor.”

Luowei’s voice rose in pitch: “In that case, I simply appear more approachable than the Grand Councilor.”

Ye Tingyan blinked and said: “Your Highness is the central consort; the Grand Councilor is the chief minister. Deposing a chief minister — another can be set up in his place. Dethroning the central consort — the realm will know no peace.”

“But that is wrong — in this dynasty, deposing an Empress is rather a common affair.”

“Your Highness is different from them.”

Luowei picked up a rain-soaked leaf from the tabletop to play with, and said nothing.

So Ye Tingyan shifted to another tack: “Properly speaking, serving Your Highness and serving His Majesty are one and the same. Yet at present—”

He paused for a moment, and continued with measured significance: “What purpose His Majesty had in establishing the Zhuque Division through the West Garden affair — I trust Your Highness can guess. For three years, Your Highness and the Grand Councilor have jointly assisted in governance; His Majesty is no longer the unformed child of yesterday. If His Majesty still trusted Your Highness as he once did, why take such a step?”

These words were far too audacious. Luowei fixed her gaze on Ye Tingyan, composure withdrawn: “Oh? Then, these words, Lord Ye — would they not be better suited to tell His Majesty than to tell me?”

“Your Highness—” Ye Tingyan rose and lowered himself to one knee before Luowei, speaking word by deliberate word: “Before I was charged with taking over the West Garden case, I too wished only to be loyal to His Majesty. Yet the Zhuque Division has been established — if His Majesty harbors this much suspicion even toward the Empress who has accompanied him for so many years, then how might he treat his ministers? I am an ordinary man: I covet power and pleasure, and could never endure as a solitary official. Moreover — if Your Highness had no use for me, why risk coming to this meeting?”

Luowei watched his expression and finally broke into a smile again: “Lord Ye is far too clever — I dare not use you.”

Ye Tingyan feigned distress: “That is most unfortunate. If I am slow-witted, I fear Your Highness will look down on me; if I think too much, Your Highness grows wary. I truly do not know what to do — I beg Your Highness to advise me.”

Luowei casually picked up the wide-winged black official’s cap he had set neatly on the table and dangled it in her hand: “What advice is there to give? Lord Ye, just speak to me frankly and sincerely: you have come to Biandu — beyond rank, profit, reputation, and wealth, what else do you seek? Lu Fengying is dead, and I wish to reward you in kind. You and I are also old acquaintances; whatever you desire, I will naturally produce some show of sincerity.”

Ye Tingyan looked up at her; something stirred in his throat.

A thousand thoughts surged and tangled. In something of a bold departure, he fixed his gaze on the touch of red at the corner of Luowei’s lips — but in the end he bowed his head deeply, lowered the other knee, and knelt upright in a posture of utter respect: “Only so long as Your Highness remembers the bond between us as old acquaintances — this subject is satisfied.”

Both knees on damp ground. Ye Tingyan thought vaguely that once, he had seldom knelt at all.

He had been born too exalted, had grown up too smoothly — and in his young pride had always felt himself capable of anything. His two legs had knelt before the Emperor, before his mother the Empress, before the ancestral shrines — all else, gods, Buddhas, and heaven alike, he had scorned.

Afterward, fate had cracked his self-proclaimed proud bones, had struck at knees that refused to bend, and made him kneel before many people he had never once imagined he would bow to.

Now, prostrating himself in supplication, he was numb to it. He had learned to lower his head, to endure, to bide his time.

What was called unbending — perhaps it was not confined to a single posture.

Ye Tingyan was still dwelling on these dim, old thoughts when a delicate sensation grazed his cheek.

— A cool, slender hand, having fallen there at some unknown moment.

Fingertip by fingertip it passed over the outer corner of his eye, his cheek, his chin — gentle and unhurried, trailing an ambiguous, lingering tremor.

Ye Tingyan’s eyes shifted slightly. He raised his gaze and saw the Empress before him, her cloud-coiffure loosely set, her beautiful eyes cast downward, absorbed in tracing the contours of his face.

In the coiffure above, a rose-gold hairpin of intricate, muted pattern was inserted; the jade comb she wore today was carved from Hetian jade, in a clean, plain white color.

Yet her action was nothing like the composure of that jade. Had he not been experiencing it himself, Ye Tingyan could scarcely have believed that the ever-proper and restrained Luowei was capable of such a transgression.

The exploring fingertips were careful and hesitant, giving him an illusion of the most tender, precious care.

He ought to have put a stop to it. His lips trembled — he could not bring himself to speak.

Dense, tangled thoughts all surged forward at once.

— Though she had changed greatly, she surely had not come to this.

— Could it be that she had made herself up today for the sake of him — a mere outer-court official?

Luowei did not know the waves crashing within him. She simply traced that face with careful attention — elongated, elegant eyes; unpainted yet naturally red lips; well-proportioned bone and flesh; a refined and restrained manner, nothing at all like what one would expect of a military family.

There was truly not a single point of resemblance.

Only those jet-black eyes — when they flickered faintly, they revealed a trace of sincere, moving familiarity, like that of an old friend.

Were it not for this, she truly could not have understood why, as if enchanted, she felt these two wholly unrelated people to be so alike — so alike that not even his blood kin could compare.

The surroundings fell quiet for a moment.

“Your Highness!”

A suddenly raised voice shattered her thoughts. Luowei’s hand stiffened; the other person had already drawn back, avoiding her touch, and bowed his head low.

His voice also trembled slightly: “Your Highness, this subject…”

Luowei withdrew her hand and suddenly found it rather amusing: “It seems I have misjudged Lord Ye’s intentions? ‘On the sunlit slopes of Wushan Mountain, on the high mound that bars the way’ [1] — the Lord first invited me here, and I also asked whether he understood the import of this, and he replied with ease. Now you have what you wished for, and you perform this show of bashfulness — what is this for?”

Ye Tingyan’s lips trembled and his mind went completely blank for a moment. He could not produce a single sentence, and in the end only squeezed out: “It… it is this subject’s…”

Seeing his flustered state, Luowei found it rather novel — but he stammered and stumbled without producing a complete word, and the sky was growing dark, truly too late for further talk.

So she rose with some regret: “My sincerity has been shown. Today’s dusk is drawing to an end, Lord Ye — you had best leave the palace early. In a few days’ time, the grand outdoor memorial rites of Qingming will come, and there will be occasion yet for you and me to meet.”

Ye Tingyan did not contradict her, nor did he rise. His voice sounded muffled: “This subject respectfully sees Your Highness off.”

Luowei fixed her gaze on him for a moment, gave a light laugh, and departed on her own.

Ye Tingyan remained, stiff and upright where he knelt. Not until the wind sent his wide-winged official cap tumbling to the ground did he reach out and retrieve it — and only then did it settle heavily upon him that when he had first arranged for someone to recite the verse patterns and set this place for a meeting, it had been simply because this had been their childhood playground once upon a time… Never mind.