The laws of Tiancheng’s military were strict, and the spreading of gossip and idle talk was expressly forbidden.

Any soldier caught gossiping about military or political affairs would be flogged and stripped of their rank, barred from serving in the army for the rest of their life.

That said, there was no governing the heart.

Lately, there was something that quite a few people in the Tiancheng camp along the Tianmu River were quietly turning over in their minds.

On the night in question, the Black Feather Division’s advance scouts had captured a southern Qiang prisoner — a woman at that — who had been found carrying the identification tablet of the Left General, who had gone missing a month prior.

The prisoner camp interrogated her for a full day and night and could not extract a single useful word. In the end, the woman had succumbed to the ordeal and died, and was buried without ceremony at the edge of the dry riverbed.

Of course, the one buried at the riverbank was not Xiao Nanhui. At this very moment, she was lying inside her own small tent, idly digging in the sand out of sheer boredom.

The Black Feather Division — having grown up alongside the Emperor — were not ones to half-measures when it came to their work. It took them roughly the time of a single stick of incense to stage her body double and arrange the subsequent “death” with complete, meticulous precision.

She knew the Emperor had begun laying out a scheme, but she was not privy to the particulars. After that night’s audience, she had been tucked into a small tent not far from the main command tent, forbidden to leave without an imperial decree.

Now that she knew the Emperor was Zhongli Jing, she had not a single worry that he would come out the worse in this affair. Her own part was, for the time being, effectively concluded. What she didn’t know was whether Bolao had gone smoothly on her end, whether she had found Su Pingchuan and the others, and whether that stubborn ass Su Pingchuan would actually cooperate and follow along to Wancheng.

When it came to ability and skill, however, she had complete faith in Bolao — ten thousand times over.

If she could also find some way to get word to Xiao Zhun, this westward mission would be as complete as she could have wished.

While these thoughts were still wandering through her head, the tent’s rightful occupant lifted the flap and stepped inside.

For an instant, warm sunlight spilled in from outside, illuminating a figure — slender and graceful, with long, fine features — carrying a large bucket in one hand.

The next second, the flap was released without ceremony. The tent fell back into cold shadow.

Xiao Nanhui had already changed back into her men’s clothing from Tiancheng, and was bundled up in layer upon layer in a manner entirely unbecoming — but thanks to a certain someone’s stinginess, not so much as a piece of charcoal had been burned for warmth, and she was still so cold that her nose ran freely.

She rubbed her paws together, unable to hold back her complaint. “Mo Chunhua, if you want to freeze me to death, just say so. I can have the felt panel from this tent taken down for you — save you the trouble.”

The young woman addressed as Mo Chunhua gave a cold sniff and set the bucket down on the ground.

“His Majesty said you were trained in the military — a proper soldier. And looking at you now, you’re nothing of the sort. Head to toe, you’re as delicate as they come.”

Xiao Nanhui nearly choked on the words that rose in her throat.

This was the first time anyone had ever called her delicate. She honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

“Just because I’m not delicate doesn’t mean I have to go out of my way to suffer. Besides, this tent has been allocated charcoal — why aren’t you using it?”

“And how precious is that charcoal? Those who go up to fight don’t need it, so what gives you the right to use it?”

Oh. She was being accused of sitting around doing nothing, was she?

For all the hardship she had endured for the sake of this campaign, it seemed she wasn’t even entitled to a piece of charcoal now.

There was no point arguing about it. She had never been one for petty disputes, especially not with someone younger than herself by several years.

Bickering would only give her more grief. She decided to change the subject.

“What did you bring?”

Mo Chunhua said nothing, but lifted the lid from the bucket. A rush of steaming mutton soup filled the air, and Xiao Nanhui swallowed involuntarily.

Mo Chunhua shot her a sideways glance and fished two cold flatbreads from inside her coat, breaking them into pieces with practiced ease into a bowl nearby.

Her skin carried an innate warmth, a honeyed tone — not the mark of Lingxi’s wind and sand, but the complexion characteristic of southern Qiang women. Yet her frame was slender, and her features delicate, not quite matching the southern Qiang look.

Xiao Nanhui had found it puzzling at first, but once she learned her background, it all made sense.

Mo Chunhua was Yan Guang’s daughter — but a daughter who could not be entered into the family register, born of a concubine, and so she had only been given her mother’s surname, with a name chosen carelessly at that. To be fair, being born of a concubine was not in itself so serious a circumstance, but that concubine had been a southern Qiang woman — someone Yan Guang had taken in during his early years stationed in the west, initially treating her as little more than a coarse maidservant. How she eventually came to bear his child was another story.

Mo Chunhua was a person of remarkable equanimity. She had inherited the southern Qiang people’s characteristic directness, and had also absorbed a measure of the pride that came from her Tiancheng-born father’s blood. Her background may have been humble, but she had carved out for herself something that could only be described as the bearing of a commandery princess.

She was determined to be of service to her father. She had studied with numerous physicians and shamanic healers, hoping eventually to secure a position in the army so that she could follow him on campaign. Yan Guang, naturally, had no such plans for her — the thing he fretted over, always and only, was his daughter’s marriage prospects. That she had come along on this particular campaign at all had been the result of an unexpected turn of events.

The Emperor, for reasons unknown, had sent away the precious physician from the Qu Family who had been by his side, and finding another reliable person in this remote and wild place was no easy matter. Reluctant as Yan Guang was, he ultimately brought Mo Chunhua along to the camp.

The Emperor had not ended up needing her — but Xiao Nanhui had turned up just in time.

She looked down at the bandaged wound on her thigh and thought it felt a little itchy. The flesh was probably beginning to knit together.

She reflexively reached out to scratch at it. Her hand had barely extended halfway when — smack — it received a sharp slap.

The one who had struck her did not even glance her way, calmly continuing to break up the flatbread in her hands.

Xiao Nanhui rubbed the back of her hand, somewhat sheepishly.

She had grown far too accustomed to throwing her weight around with Hao Bai and his pretty, clean face. Now retribution had come: she had run into someone with a worse temper than herself — a small Dujuan, practically in the flesh. Even Bolao, were she here, would probably meet her match.

Aside from the bad temper and the refusal to add charcoal to the fire, Mo Chunhua treated her well enough.

Xiao Nanhui watched, with eager eyes, as the scalding mutton broth was poured over the bowl of broken flatbread. Dry rations were ordinarily the most tasteless of foods, but right now they seemed to rival the finest delicacies.

For cooking like this alone, she could put up with anything.

“Have you met the Emperor before?”

Mo Chunhua asked the question without warning. Xiao Nanhui had her mouth full, and could only hum a vague acknowledgment.

Hmph — “met” barely scratched the surface of it.

“His Majesty doesn’t say much, but his temperament is the most accommodating and open-minded of anyone I know. Did you do something to him before? He’s been keeping you confined these past few days — it rather seems like he has some grievance.”

What had she done to the Emperor before—

She and the Emperor had fought over a room. She had called him someone who lived by theft and trickery. She had entertained the idea of selling him off to a brothel. She had ripped his outer garment to pieces with her bare hands. And she had said to his face that his eyesight wasn’t all that good.

Xiao Nanhui seized her bowl and stuffed an enormous piece of flatbread into her mouth with great feeling.

“Look at you. You’ve clearly been up to all manner of guilty things.”

Now she didn’t like the sound of that. She had risked her neck working on the Emperor’s behalf — how had that become her fault?

“You’re young, so I won’t hold it against you. The truth is, when I first came to know him, he said nothing about being the Emperor.”

Of course, Mo Chunhua didn’t believe a word of it, and looked at her as if she were quite simple.

“What are you going to tell me next — that the Emperor is your blood-sworn brother?”

Xiao Nanhui felt a wave of helplessness wash over her. “It’s the truth! He and that stone-faced attendant of his conspired to deceive me, and told me his surname was Zhongli. I always thought — what kind of person goes around with a double-character surname like that—”

“General Xiao.” Mo Chunhua gathered the bowl and chopsticks to one side with practiced efficiency. “Let me ask you something. What is the honorable surname of the Duke Xuanyuan?”

She answered with reluctance: “Su.”

“And what is the honorable surname of the Tiancheng imperial family?”

“Su.”

She knew all of this perfectly well, but still—

“Then what foolish thing were you going on about?”

Foolish? In what way was it foolish?

She was determined to score a point back. “You’re clever, are you? Then tell me — what is the Emperor’s given name?”

Mo Chunhua visibly faltered. “I — why should I have to tell you that?”

“Ah, so it’s not that you won’t say — you simply don’t know.”

Mo Chunhua’s sore spot had been stepped on. Her fine brows drew together into an upside-down V, and she showed a flash of her southern Qiang roots. “Not saying it doesn’t mean I don’t know it! A name is reserved for those worthy of honoring — what would you know about that?”

Xiao Nanhui clicked her tongue. “Listen to you — ‘a name is reserved for the honored.’ You’re not that old, and yet you’re spouting maxims with the authority of the schoolmaster at the North City Academy.”

Mo Chunhua shot her a pointed look, then shot to her feet and made straight for her bed — where she grabbed the blanket and the rug and rolled them both up with considerable force.

She could see the situation was not looking good, and muttered cautiously, “I merely traded a few words with you. Do you really have to take my bedding away and freeze me to death?”

Mo Chunhua said nothing, and with long strides crossed to the corner of the tent, making directly for the few hard flatbreads she had privately stashed under a worn piece of felt.

At that, she could not sit still any longer.

Those were the flatbreads she had gone to great lengths to save! There was nothing to do in here — pulling one out now and then for a nibble was the only small pleasure left to her.

Xiao Nanhui lunged forward and attached herself to Mo Chunhua’s back, but she did not dare actually hurt her — she could only pry at Mo Chunhua’s fingers in a frantic effort to “rescue” what remained of her last scrap of provisions.

It was at that exact moment that someone slipped in through the tent entrance.

“Miss Mo, are you ready? His Majesty has given the order to break camp immediately — please do not be late.”

Xiao Nanhui was clinging to Mo Chunhua’s back like a bear when she heard this and looked around — meeting Ding Weixiang’s eyes and the deeply meaningful look in them.

What kind of expression was that? It was the sort he had clearly learned from his own master — oblique and sardonic — and it was genuinely insufferable.

She let out a huff through her nostrils as her only response.

Break camp, then. Breaking camp was fine. But warning her in advance first would have been nice. She had been sitting here thinking—

Wait.

“You — how long were you standing outside this tent just now?”

Ding Weixiang glanced at her with idle indifference. “Not long.”

That only made it more urgent. “How long is ‘not long’?!”

Had he heard her earlier commentary on the Emperor? And if so, how much had he heard?

Ding Weixiang ignored her and turned to walk out of the tent.

Xiao Nanhui panicked, dropped off Mo Chunhua’s back, and in a couple of quick strides threw the tent flap open and rushed out.

The long-awaited outdoor air flooded into her nose. Before she had taken even a few breaths of it, a black, battered burlap sack came crashing down over her from above, enveloping her completely.

Her instincts fired — she swung an elbow back and reached to control the other person’s joint, only to find her arm locked in return by a grab technique a hundred times more refined than her own.

“Ding Weixiang! If you have the guts, let go of my face and fight me properly—”

Even as she said it, her other hand was already moving quietly toward Pingxian, slung across her back.

But it seemed that a certain someone knew her methods thoroughly. Her hand had not even reached her weapon before she felt her back go light.

“Keep making noise and I’ll have to knock you unconscious.”

Xiao Nanhui wilted on the spot.

She knew he meant it. And she genuinely did not want to take another punch.

Ding Weixiang said nothing more. She heard Mo Chunhua’s voice in quiet conversation somewhere behind her, growing more distant. Then she was hauled onto a vehicle of some sort.

The vehicle moved through the camp. All around her were the sounds of horses and carts in motion, armor shifting against armor — but there were almost no human voices, which itself spoke to the iron discipline of the Black Feather Division.

Unable to see, her other senses had heightened sharply. Over the next half-day or so, she was transferred among three or four different vehicles — some transporting military equipment, others carrying provisions and supplies — clearly to prevent anyone from witnessing her presence.

During the last transfer, the bonds on her hands were finally released. The surrounding air had gone noticeably quieter, and the temperature had risen somewhat. This was the kind of atmosphere that only a well-sealed enclosed space could produce.

This was a carriage.

She thought about it for a moment and realized: in an army on the march, the people who could travel by private carriage could probably be counted on one hand.

Every hair on Xiao Nanhui’s back stood up. She could hear the breathing of another person inside the carriage, and yet no one spoke.

She sat perfectly still, not daring to move a muscle, like a stunned goose. After a little while, she could stand it no longer, and slowly — very slowly — raised her newly freed hands, first pulling the burlap sack off her head.

By now it was deep in the night. The interior of the carriage was softly lit; aside from a faint red glow from a charcoal brazier in the corner, there was only a single candle. Her eyes adjusted almost instantly, and her gaze landed on the man sitting not far away, on a low couch.

He was no longer wearing that cold moon-white color. He had changed into a deep, lacquer-black fur coat, and in the dim and uncertain light he seemed almost to blend into the dark animal pelt beneath him — yet it only made the face above seem more like cool, luminous jade.

The Emperor was not looking at her. Before him on a small table was a mountain of rolled reports; he went through them one by one, writing out his notes, his expression utterly blank.

The scene, somehow, reminded her of the days she had spent traveling with him from Huozhou, sharing the same carriage.

Xiao Nanhui swallowed, wondering whether she should speak. The other party, however, spoke first.

“Sharing a carriage with us — do you mind?”

You’re the one who had me stuffed in here — and now you ask?

She swallowed down the urge to roll her eyes and answered with her head lowered: “To share a carriage with Your Majesty is this subject’s honor.”

She was genuinely not suited to mouthing such hollow pleasantries. The rigidity in her voice made her sound like a different person entirely.

“Xiao Nanhui.”

She had been addressed by name.

Almost by instinct, her back pressed flat against the wall of the carriage.

“This subject is here.”

The Emperor’s dark eyes fixed themselves on her face. “Do you have questions you wish to ask?”

Questions? Of course she had questions.

She had a whole cartload of questions for the great deceiver “Zhongli Jing” — but who would dare ask them?

“Your Majesty — why did Your Majesty choose to lead the campaign in person?” She had held back for a long time and eventually produced a question she herself felt was embarrassingly simple.

“This is our territory that remains to be reclaimed. We come to reclaim it ourselves — what is inappropriate about that?”

“No — no, that is not what this subject meant. The battlefield is a place of swords and arrows without eyes, and Your Majesty’s person is beyond price — please take care to protect yourself—”

“When a general is in the field, he need not heed every command from his sovereign. When the sovereign himself is in the field, he need not heed every decree of heaven. If the heavens bring an unforeseen storm, let it fall upon whoever else they choose — why trouble oneself over it?”

Xiao Nanhui was left speechless.

This was the first time she had ever heard an Emperor say something that amounted to: if heaven wants me dead, then I’ll die, and let whoever wants the throne have it.

Perhaps she had led a sheltered life. This was the only Emperor she had ever encountered, and she had no way of knowing whether others were the same — whether they all lived so freely, so entirely outside conventional expectation.

Then again, this man was famously impossible to read. If he were saying something insincere, she wouldn’t have the faintest power to detect it.

Very well. Whatever you say, I’ll take it as truth.

“This subject was worrying too much.”

A silence fell over the carriage.

After a short while, the Emperor started up again, as though searching for something to say.

“How have these past few days been, getting along with General Yan’s daughter?”

Well enough, she supposed — it wasn’t going to kill her, was it?

“This subject and Miss Mo get along very well — she has taken excellent care of this subject—”

“Is that so. Still, she is not familiar with you and does not know your identity, and she is young — there are bound to be some shortcomings. It is of no consequence. Afterward, we will make other arrangements.”

Wait. She hadn’t said a word against Mo Chunhua — so why was “other arrangement” suddenly being mentioned? And where was she being arranged to? Another spy mission?

Xiao Nanhui was somewhat stricken. “That is really not necessary—”

The Emperor seemed to have one more thing to add, as though a thought had not quite finished: “If it were not for Mo Chunhua, we might never have known you were so interested in our name.”

Xiao Nanhui went still for a moment, and then it hit her. Outside Mo Chunhua’s tent earlier, Ding Weixiang had heard every single word she had said, not one syllable missed.

A flash of alarm, followed by a taste of dread. “This subject would not dare.”

“You have rendered meritorious service in rooting out corruption and treachery. We may, as an exception, let you alone be the one to know.”

No — no, she did not think she wanted to know.

Of course, the Emperor could not hear what was in her heart.

The Emperor shifted his wrist lightly. The brush in his hand was laden with deep red — like blood on the tip of a blade.

It was the vermilion ink used for annotating imperial memorials.

“Your hand.”

The man’s voice was neither heavy nor severe — there was even something almost offhand about it. And yet she found she had no power to disobey.

Her palm nearly broke out in a cold sweat right then and there. Slowly, she uncurled her tightly clenched fist and extended her hand toward him.

The tip of the brush descended lightly. The point, supple and resilient, swept across her palm — barely a tickle — and then was lifted away.

Xiao Nanhui looked down. There in her palm, in a brilliant vermilion, was a single character: Wei.

“Our name. Have you committed it to memory?”

Wei.

Su Wei.

This was his given name.

What Mo Chunhua had said was not wrong at all.

For a sovereign, a name was to be held in reverence and spoken with care.

Very few people in Tiancheng knew the Emperor’s true name. And even those who knew it — how could they ever dare to speak it aloud?

She was not foolish. She had simply never imagined she would be among those permitted to know.

She had assumed her connection to him would end with “Zhongli Jing.”

Xiao Nanhui stared at the character in her palm, and it seemed to her that the red grew warmer, and warmer still — as though it might sear through her skin, into her flesh, into the marrow of her bones.