When the invitation arrived, Song Yaofeng was tending to the flowers and plants in the garden.

A young manservant from the front hall brought the card over. She rinsed her hands in a bronze basin, then walked toward the covered corridor, asking as she went: “Where is my husband?”

The maidservant accompanying her replied: “The Prince Consort is speaking with the Grand Preceptor.”

Song Yaofeng acknowledged this and opened the card. She saw that it was written personally by the Empress, who said the lotus flowers in the Huiling Lake were in full bloom and wished to invite her into the palace for an intimate banquet.

She read it carefully from beginning to end, then continued along the long corridor. The maidservant asked cautiously: “It is an invitation from the Empress—does Your Highness intend to go?”

Song Yaofeng said: “Let me first ask my husband and father-in-law before deciding.”

The maidservant said: “But Your Highness, you and Her Majesty used to be the closest of—”

Song Yaofeng glanced at her, and so she did not continue. After walking a little further, she finally heard the princess’s cool, indifferent voice: “We shared some friendship in our youth, that is all. When she was elevated to Empress, we had a falling-out, and it has been a long time since we have had any contact. Now that I am a married woman, and my father-in-law and Her Majesty are not on good terms, it is best that I not meddle in the affairs between them.”

The maidservant made no reply.

After Song Lan ascended the throne, Song Yaofeng was elevated in title to the Princess Imperial Shu Kang. Yet as the new Emperor was not her blood brother, her former status as a legitimate imperial princess—once ten-thousand-fold honored—had become something of a liability. After two years of mourning, the Princess Imperial hastily married, taking as her husband Yu Qiushi’s second son, Yu Suiyou.

From the time of her marriage, Song Yaofeng had shed her former proud and haughty temperament, closing her ears to the affairs of the outside world and becoming a devoted wife. Yu Suiyou had long admired her and was willing to forsake a promising official career to marry a princess. The two lived in marital harmony and had never once quarreled.

Yet the maidservants who had followed Song Yaofeng since childhood, when they looked carefully, always felt that the Princess Imperial was utterly changed from who she had been before.

Those sharp edges that had grown from a childhood of being indulged and spoiled—she did not know when they had been worn away completely, as if they had never existed at all.

Song Yaofeng had not yet crossed through the garden when she saw Yu Suiyou walking over from the front hall, a vexed expression on his face that brightened somewhat when he caught sight of her: “Yaofeng!”

Song Yaofeng fanned him gently, and said with gentle warmth: “What is the matter?”

Yu Suiyou said with indignation: “Nothing—I was just scolded by Father. Are there still cold sweet soups from noon?”

Song Yaofeng covered her mouth and laughed: “I set some aside for you. But I have something important to attend to first—come with me.”

She went with her husband to pay their respects to Yu Qiushi, then took out the invitation and asked whether she ought to go. Yu Qiushi read the card several times over, then said with deep meaning: “Her Majesty seems not to have sent a card to Your Highness in quite some time.”

Song Yaofeng lowered her eyes and replied: “We had a falling-out over my marriage, and the friendship of our youth proved shallow after all. Since then we have not kept in touch. So I truly do not know the purpose of this invitation, and must ask the Grand Preceptor for guidance before I can decide.”

When an imperial princess married, she might address her father-in-law simply as “elder brother.” Yet Song Yaofeng was respectful and could not be seen to lose the dignity of the imperial family, and so she followed others in addressing Yu Qiushi by the title “Grand Preceptor.”

She glanced up slightly and noticed that behind Yu Qiushi stood a civil official robed in green. She said at once: “I have come at an inconvenient moment.”

Yu Qiushi returned the card to her: “It is no matter. Your Highness may go if you wish.”

Song Yaofeng said: “Very well.”

After the two of them left, Chang Zhao stepped out from behind the folding screen at a measured pace. Through the growing distance, he could still hear the two conversing intimately.

“What would you like to do this afternoon?”

“The heat is growing heavy—I do not feel like doing anything. You had best come to the study and read books with me.”

“…”

Chang Zhao was silent for a moment, then sighed: “The Princess Imperial and your son are very deeply attached.”

Yu Qiushi said evenly: “Young people in love—that is all.”

At the time, he had not agreed to the marriage between Yu Suiyou and Song Yaofeng. He had always suspected that Song Yaofeng was scheming something. It was only when Yu Suiyou threatened to die for her sake, and Song Yaofeng broke decisively with the Empress, that he had relented.

Whether she had seen through something and sought to preserve her life, or whether her heart truly held nothing but the tender affairs of youth as it always had—now that she was confined within the household and had no access whatsoever to the hidden matters of the Yu family, she was actually less of a worry to him than if she had married anyone else.

Not long after Chang Zhao slipped quietly out through the small gate of the Yu family estate, Yu Qiushi summoned his eldest son Yu Suishan and asked: “That day you brought men into Fengle Tower together with Chang Zhao and Ye San—what did you overhear?”

Yu Suishan only shook his head: “Nothing beyond what he already told Father—things like ‘our enmities are alike’ and ‘we may as well make use of each other.’ However, the two whispered a few words between themselves in private. I noticed Ye San even reached out and pressed his hand against his sword, but those particular words I did not catch.”

Yu Qiushi said: “Do you not have among your men someone who can hear a needle drop?”

Yu Suishan replied: “That day the sound of the copper bells in Fengle Tower was too loud. Even he could not make it out.”

Yu Qiushi pressed his fingers to his brow and sighed: “Go.”

*

Before the intimate banquet, Luowei paid a visit to Xiuqing Temple.

She used to visit Xiuqing Temple often. This time Song Lan had agreed, but privately had dispatched Ye Tingyan with the Jintian Guard to follow at a distance.

The earnest sincerity he had displayed to her face that day had earned her nothing but deeper suspicion.

But that suited her purposes perfectly.

Between the end of spring and the beginning of summer, the visitors to Xiuqing Temple came and went in an endless stream. Luowei had no desire to make a grand show of herself and disturb others. She dressed in plain, ordinary clothes, paid her respects at the three main halls as customary, then dismissed the several masters who had accompanied her and went alone to the meditation chamber she used to frequent, to chant sutras.

This time she first climbed the back hill of Xiuqing Temple and wandered aimlessly for a few rounds among the old halls and ancient trees before making her way toward the meditation chamber.

As she had expected, she had not gone halfway before she spotted Ye Tingyan standing beneath a roadside tree, dressed in a light pink gauze literary robe. He held an old, worn book and was reading it with evident absorption.

Hearing the sound of footsteps, he showed no surprise: “Your Majesty has arrived.”

Luowei asked: “What are you reading?”

Ye Tingyan replied: “A work that claims to be able to divine the whole of a person’s life through arcane arts.”

“The Book of Changes?”

“Not at all.”

Luowei looked carefully at the book in his hands—its author was unknown—and said with surprise: “Is this not the astrology practiced by those in the Bureau of Astronomy?”

Then she added: “You are in a Buddhist temple, reading Taoist arts—are you not afraid of divine retribution?”

Ye Tingyan said with refined propriety: “All the heavenly deities and Buddhas are one family. My sincerity is known to all paths alike. Besides, one must study divinatory arts to be able to cast a horoscope for Your Majesty. Would Your Majesty care to hear it?”

Luowei smiled: “Why not?”

The two walked down along the mountain path together.

After the case of the late spring gathering, they had agreed to meet at Gaoyang Terrace once every three days. For reasons she could not fathom, after that day’s embrace and kiss beneath the bed canopy, Ye Tingyan had not made any further transgressive moves toward her. At most he would hold her hand, speaking softly and in detail of the schemes and calculations he had been engaged in at court.

Luowei found this strange in her heart but did not voice the question. Nor had she been stingy with her favors—she had made several deliberate, casual remarks before Song Lan and the officials she was on good terms with at court.

The remonstrating censors looked down on the Emperor’s favorites, so Song Lan had produced Ye Tingyan’s essay “On the Grief of Lost Knowledge,” and had him promoted to Qiong Ting as the Emperor’s Reader-in-Attendance.

Though still of the fifth rank, he now transcribed the Emperor’s secret edicts. His actual authority was no different from that of the third-rank Scholars of Qiong Ting. Combined with his martial abilities that also allowed him to handle other confidential affairs, he had in one leap become a figure of burning influence at court.

Promoted alongside him was Chang Zhao, who had already been a Lecturer-Scholar at Qiong Ting—though he went only from the full seventh rank to the sixth rank.

He was somewhat solitary by nature, with few close friends. In the archive tower he rarely conversed with others, and unlike Ye Tingyan’s diplomatic ease with all sides, this modest promotion attracted considerably less attention by comparison.

The remonstrating censors had already been arguing loudly for a long time about the Emperor’s heavy reliance on Zhuque and his promotions outside the proper channels. Ye Tingyan was now watched closely, and even leaving the palace late could become grounds for impeachment.

The two of them had not found an opportunity to be alone for five days. Luowei went to the archive tower and saw that he had inscribed on the corridor pillar at the entrance the phrase: “in smoke, range upon range of mountains, green beyond number.”

They could not meet here—but there was Xiuqing Temple.

She had deliberated long and carefully before coming out of the palace, just before hosting that lotus flower banquet.

With a slight distraction of her thoughts, Luowei found she had already walked with him to just outside the meditation chamber. She glanced back at Yan Luo, who understood and stepped forward to close the door behind them.

Ye Tingyan asked for her birth date and the hour of her birth, then sat down at the table, tore off a sheet of plain paper that should have been used for copying sutras, and began drawing a horoscope with great solemnity: “They say the birth date is where one’s fate is rooted—why does Your Majesty have no qualms about telling this to me? Are you not afraid I might harbor improper designs?”

“I do not believe in such things,” said Luowei, leaning on her hands across from him, speaking in jest. “Master Ye is quite capable—without even holding the Jintian Token, the Jintian Guard still follows your commands?”

“Once one has the eight characters of one’s birth, one can obtain a fixed horoscope. Among the one hundred and eight stars of Ziwei in the heavens, every one has its own place. What is called ‘fate’ and what is called ‘fortune’ are determined at the moment of birth—if Your Majesty does not believe it, why do you still listen?” Ye Tingyan concentrated on his calculations, answering casually as he spoke: “As for the Jintian Guard—Your Majesty flatters me. For the sake of seeing Your Majesty once, I am naturally willing to apply some ingenuity.”

As he spoke, he extended the brush toward her, holding his book open with one hand and pointing with the other to one of the twelve square boxes he had drawn that still remained empty: “My skills are lacking and I still need to consult the text. I ask Your Majesty to help add one stroke.”

Today was not like their hurried meetings of the past. Luowei had grown accustomed to his imaginative ways, and so she took the brush and, following his words, wrote the character for “Sun” in that empty palace position.

Ye Tingyan held the book, turning that page back and forth: “Your Majesty’s Spouse Palace… the Sun falls into decline.”

“Oh?” Luowei was still in the middle of calculating the situation at court in her mind. Hearing this, she only asked with casual indifference: “And what does this signify?”

Ye Tingyan seemed somewhat taken aback, and his voice dropped a great deal: “When the Sun and the巨门 star occupy the same degree and fall into decline, it signifies a hidden grief that cannot be spoken aloud.”

At these words, Luowei froze, then looked up sharply at him.

What did he mean by saying such things? Could he have discerned something?

He was now one of Song Lan’s close attendants. If he perceived even half a trace of her true intentions and informed Song Lan in advance, she would surely have no grave to be buried in.

Ye Tingyan was momentarily distracted and did not perceive the hostility that suddenly flared in her. He only continued: “The Ju Men star is a dark luminary, dwelling in the Yin palace—it is the darkness just before the dawn arrives. How fortunate, how fortunate. Were it in the Shen palace, it would be the pitch-black of sunset. Moreover, this Sun guards the palace while transformed into ill fortune, which may signify… the bringer of harm to one’s husband.”

A chill ran down her spine—she did not know if it was from panic or grief.

In that moment, Luowei truly did not know whether to fear that he had detected her secret, or to marvel at how accurately he had divined.

Suppressing the trembling of her lips and teeth, she forced out a smile: “The Empress bringer of harm—that is not a thing you should say to me, Grand Master. You ought to say it privately to His Majesty. His Majesty has always placed faith in celestial omens. I wonder whether he would resent and cast me aside for this matter? And besides, if there truly is such ill fortune, then Grand Master too should take care not to be claimed by it.”

Ye Tingyan slowly set down the book in his hand, and for reasons she did not understand, averted his gaze from her: “His Majesty is the Son of Heaven, a dragon in golden form—what could he possibly fear? As for me, how could I ever presume to be counted among Your Majesty’s husbands?”

He lowered his head, and then, by chance, reached over and pulled toward himself the sheet of paper on which the horoscope had been drawn. When he made out the two characters Luowei had written—”Sun”—he blurted out: “Why do you no longer write in the style of the Lanting Preface, with flying white strokes?”

Luowei suddenly rose to her feet, knocking over the old long bench behind her.

He lifted his head. She had already stepped close.

“I have not written in that style for many years. How is it that Grand Master… knows of it?”