Before the gate of a hall in the northern part of the palace, lamplight wavered. A’Mao walked Mu Fulan out through the palace gate. “Empress, please go back and rest. Here at the Empress Dowager’s side — I will look after her well.”

Mu Fulan instructed the eunuchs to arrange for those on night duty to take turns keeping watch, said that if anything happened she was to be called at once, gave A’Mao’s hand a gentle squeeze, and told her to go and rest as well.

Palace attendants walked ahead holding lanterns, the dark red lamplight illuminating Mu Fulan’s path back to the Palace of Ziwei. But a little further ahead, at the farthest reach of her line of sight, was a vast and boundless expanse of darkness. The night had swallowed everything the palace held in daylight — the vermillion eaves and jade tiles, the jade towers and golden halls — and in their place was a world so desolate and still it resembled the realm of the dead. Walking through this palace in the deep of night, the ridge beasts crouching one by one atop the rooflines in the shadows overhead were like the cold eyes of the dark, looking down with indifference upon all the creatures passing beneath their feet.

Mu Fulan quickened her steps and passed through. The moment she entered the Palace of Ziwei, the gates were drawn firmly shut, as though sealing everything behind her outside.

The moon climbed slowly to its zenith, and its pale white light fell silently through the window into this hall where she had lived as a child — like something distant and dreamlike, half-seen and half-lost, luring her to go searching. Yet when she set foot on the path, the mist would close in, the towers vanish, the crossing blur — always within sight and always beyond reach.

She woke from her dream, drenched in perspiration, her throat so parched it seemed on the verge of catching fire.

She lifted the bed curtain, got down from the bed, and stepped barefoot onto the cool, smooth floor. She walked over, picked up the teapot, and without bothering with a cup, drank several mouthfuls directly from the spout.

The cool water flowed in through her mouth and throat and into her body. Like a stretch of earth so parched it had nearly cracked receiving the blessing of rain, she let out a long breath, stood in the night for a moment, and made her way to the main living hall.

She sat before the south-facing window where she habitually worked, without lighting a lamp, wrapped in the gentle embrace of the night — like a silent, soundless ghost, gazing quietly at the patch of moonlight filtering in from outside.

It had been three days since Xie Changgeng left the capital and led his imperial campaign to Hexi.

It was also three days since she had finished reading the medical diary sent by the Imperial Physicians’ Hall recording the treatment and medication for his injuries — his internal wound had still not fully healed, and he was about to leave the capital again. To ensure the best possible treatment and results, she had also separately requested the complete records of all his battle wounds treated by the military physicians over the previous several years.

On this journey to Hexi he was accompanied by Imperial Physicians. On the night before his departure, Mu Fulan had already given the new prescription to the physicians.

Three days had passed. By now he must have left the capital’s environs. But for reasons she could not quite explain, throughout these three days Mu Fulan kept feeling as though she had overlooked something.

Her instincts told her this something was important — that she must remember it — yet no matter how she tried, she simply could not determine what it was she had overlooked.

She sat still, and in her ears seemed to echo the sound she had heard tonight when visiting the Empress Dowager — her labored breathing, the kind that resembled sighing, as the old woman lay with her eyes closed.

The Empress Dowager was growing increasingly confused and no longer even knew that Xie Changgeng had left the capital. Mu Fulan bore no particular feeling, affectionate or otherwise, toward this old woman — nor did she resent her. She was simply a life that each passing day brought closer to its end, a common enough person — not particularly good, not particularly wicked — much like herself, and like so many others she had known. It was enough to fulfill her dual duty: that of a physician and that of a daughter-in-law, standing in for her husband in name, Xie Changgeng, in fulfilling the obligations of filial piety.

Before her eyes there surfaced, unbidden, the image of three nights ago — the night before Xie Changgeng departed, when he stayed up through the night in the imperial study dealing with the last batch of state affairs. Silent and heavy. And yet how different from the glorious, radiant figure on the morning of departure — riding out in a blaze of acclaim and reverence from ten thousand souls — how lonely and solitary that late-night image had been.

Mu Fulan raised her eyes, and her gaze fell once more on the stack of medical diaries on the desk. The moonlight outlined a luminous, hazy form. She looked at it, drifting in thought — and then, from somewhere deep in her memory, something flashed past like lightning. The light was faint and far-off, almost near. She slowly closed her eyes, not daring to move — afraid that the faintest motion might cause this sudden, fragile sensation to vanish without a trace.

And then, in a single blazing instant — she remembered.

She opened her eyes with a start, lit the lamp on the desk, reached for the medical diaries, found one of them, and began to turn the pages rapidly.

She turned page after page without stopping, from the first page to the last, then through once more — then her hand stilled. A moment later, she rose abruptly and walked out in a hurry.

The surroundings were utterly quiet. A palace attendant was leaning against a palace column, drowsing with lowered head in secret, when she suddenly heard the sound of hurried footsteps. She gave a start and raised her head, and saw the Empress striding out of the main living hall with a peculiar expression on her face, as though something had happened. Shocked, she felt her drowsiness vanish at once.

“Send someone immediately to summon the head of the Imperial Physicians’ Hall to the palace!” Mu Fulan gave the order.

The attendant assented and was about to go — when she was called back. Mu Fulan entered her sleeping chamber, changed her clothes, and went out of the palace herself, taking a carriage to the outer residence of the head physician, and instructing someone to knock at the gate.

The head physician was roused from sleep, and hearing that the Empress had come in the dead of night, hurried out to receive her.

Mu Fulan held out the medical diary and asked: “The complete record of all of His Majesty’s injuries and treatments during his time away from the capital over the past three years — are you certain it is all contained here, with no omissions?”

The head physician immediately knelt. “This matter was handled personally by this official. This concerns His Majesty’s dragon body — how could this official dare to be careless or negligent. This official can swear on his life — he has questioned the military physicians, and every record of His Majesty’s injuries from the past three years is listed in full, without a single omission!”

Mu Fulan went still.

She remembered clearly: on the day Xie Changgeng had come to Fuzhou and summoned her to meet him, when the two spoke at the river’s mouth, she had asked him why he suddenly intended to pass the imperial throne to Xi’er. His answer at the time was that injury had left him unable to have children any longer, and that he needed a Crown Prince.

But in this medical diary, not a trace of any injury related to this could be found. Even if at the time the military physicians had received Xie Changgeng’s orders to omit it from the record, the matter of having an heir was of the utmost gravity — Xie Changgeng could not possibly have failed to seek medical counsel elsewhere.

Li Yaoweng wandered free as clouds and wild cranes, and had not been seen in a very long time. Previously, unable to set her mind at ease, she had sent people to search and inquire on all sides, but no word had come. Setting aside the inconvenient-to-find Li Yaoweng, in terms of medical skill, who in the present age could be more trusted than the head of the Imperial Physicians’ Hall standing before her?

“Head Physician — has His Majesty truly never asked you to examine any other illness or ailment in the past? Any hidden condition, for instance?”

Mu Fulan fixed her eyes on him, her voice deliberate and weighted.

“This is a matter of the utmost importance. If there is anything, you must tell me truthfully — you may not conceal it even in the smallest degree!”

The head physician immediately shook his head. “There has not!”

He hesitated a moment, then asked carefully, “Has something happened on His Majesty’s end?”

Mu Fulan was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “Nothing.”

On the carriage ride back to the palace, she fell into deep contemplation.

From the head physician’s response, there was clearly no concealment at all. If that was so, then what he had told her that day — the most likely explanation — was that he had lied.

Why would he lie to her in this way, when they had been three years apart? Even more bewildering was that the purpose of his lie had been to elevate Xi’er to the position of Crown Prince.

This went entirely against reason. This life’s Xi’er shared not a drop of his blood — that he knew full well. If there were no other explanation, no matter how fond he may once have been of this child, how could a man who had claimed the imperial throne possibly do something so absurd?

From that day’s meeting in Fuzhou, to after she had entered the capital and become his Empress — his various inexplicable acts played through her mind one after another.

He had told her he would not compel her to do anything against her will.

On the night before the Crown Prince’s investiture ceremony, he had summoned the senior ministers and said those things.

On that very day, despite being gravely wounded, he had still insisted on completing the ceremony — for the sole purpose of proclaiming the Crown Prince’s heaven-ordained legitimacy before all the world.

Even more recently — he had actually gone so far as to arrange for her to meet privately with Yuan Handing.

He seemed like an entirely different person.

Xie Changgeng — this man — even in the past, even during the years he had pleaded desperately for reconciliation with her, he had never been able to entirely conceal his pride and the sharp, gleaming edges of his nature.

And yet now, in her presence, it was as though he had shed his dragon scales and smoothed away his hard corners. He had been pleasing her all along — using what he believed to be the greatest effort of which he was capable, carefully trying to win her good will.

She was not made of wood or stone. How could she have felt nothing?

Before they met in Fuzhou — what had happened to him in those months and years that she did not know about?

Suddenly, a thought rose unbidden in Mu Fulan’s mind.

It struck her with such force that she froze — her palms broke into a cold sweat, her heart pounding wildly without cease. The moment she returned to the palace, unable even to wait for dawn, she ordered someone immediately to summon Liang Tuan.

Liang Tuan now held the rank of Commander, commanding the Five Armies of the Capital, with authority over the key defense of the imperial city. Xie Changgeng had not taken him along on this campaign.

He entered the palace swiftly and paid his respects to the Empress.

“Commander Liang, you were always by His Majesty’s side before he entered the capital. I ask you: in the period before His Majesty went to Fuzhou to see me last year — aside from his usual affairs — was there anything unusual? Any place he went?”

Liang Tuan had been summoned to the palace in the dead of night to be asked this kind of question, which struck him as rather baffling. But seeing her seated there with an expression of great gravity, he dared not take it lightly, and after earnest thought for a moment, recalled that particular incident which had left an especially deep impression on him at the time.

He said: “There was one matter, which this subject has never forgotten. It was just after the affair at the Qiong Pavilion, when the Dowager Empress Liu had been removed. That same night, while all around were jubilant, His Majesty stayed awake until deep into the night and went out of the city to the Temple of the Guardian. At the time, His Majesty left this subject and the others waiting outside the mountain gate and entered the temple alone. The following day he had not been seen to come out, and this subject grew uneasy, went inside to search for him, and found His Majesty in the pagoda grove behind the temple. When His Majesty came out, I do not know what had happened the previous night — he was extremely weak, as though he had been through a severe illness, though fortunately he recovered quickly.”

“Aside from that one occasion, this subject does not recall His Majesty having behaved unusually in any other way.”

Liang Tuan finished speaking and held his breath in expectation. After a long while, he finally heard from across the way a low, quiet voice: “You may go.”

The venerable elder of the Temple of the Guardian had already passed into final tranquility at the beginning of the year.

But in this moment, there was no longer any need to go and see anyone, or ask anything further.

She still sat as she was, closed her eyes, and before her mind’s eye rose the scene from that afternoon — when he had come to the Palace of Ziwei to bid her farewell.

That man standing at the hall entrance, brow damp with sweat, looking at her with something unspoken and desolate in his gaze — who, exactly, was he?

From somewhere in the distance, in the direction of the drum and bell tower, came the faint and muffled sound of the water clock marking the hour.

She dragged her heavy steps to the window, and for a long while gazed northward into the boundless expanse of night sky. After a long time, she closed her eyes, turned, and walked outside. To the palace attendants, she said: “Have my carriage and guard escort prepared. I am leaving the city. I have a long journey to make.”