Shen Xiao looked at Li Shu’s bare shoulder and thought: he wondered what it would feel like to hold her.
And so he stepped forward, and reached out, and drew her into his arms.
Contrary to Shen Xiao’s expectations, she did not feel soft when touched. Whether it was because of how thin her clothing was, he did not know — but her skin carried a slight coolness, yet also a certain softness and moisture. The sensation was strange and contradictory, as if she, now held, both wanted to push him away and wished to be kept close — a distant, guarded quality.
The figure in his arms was briefly stunned, then immediately raised her hands and shoved him away. Her pale face flushed slightly with indignation, and she said in a cold voice: “Shen Xiao, you are insolent!”
Still that composed, indifferent manner. Though her dress was different, she still had that imperious, overbearing air.
And so the flicker of an emotion Shen Xiao had just felt — the sense of her being pitiable — vanished without a trace.
He looked at her cold and haughty face, and something suddenly flared in his chest. He asked abruptly, “Why?”
Li Shu’s brow furrowed. “Why what?”
Shen Xiao stared at her, as if trying to bore a hole straight through her. “Why did you treat me that way? Three years ago you toyed with me. Not long ago, you looked on in cold indifference while Grand Princess Kangning toyed with me.”
His voice dropped, “Why?”
That sense of grievance had been lodged in Shen Xiao’s chest the whole time, from three years ago all the way until today.
He was no saint. In many a night of long, solitary study, he had had moments when he wanted to give up. But every time he closed his eyes, the cold and haughty gaze of Princess Pingyang was there before him — and he held onto that bitter resentment, pushing himself to keep climbing. Climbing until the day he had her at his feet, and could look down at her from above and say: I did not need your patronage to get here.
And then he would demand one cold answer from her — why.
Why had she treated him that way. Toyed with him. Humiliated him.
He had only wanted to seek an official post. If she was unwilling, she could have sent him away. But she should not have made him sacrifice every shred of his dignity, only to dismiss him with a contemptuous kick once it was done.
She should not have treated him that way.
At this, however, Li Shu showed not the slightest remorse. She let out a scornful laugh. “Why? There is no why in this world. Because my status is higher than yours — I want to do what I want, and so I do it.”
She tilted her chin slightly upward. “If you will not accept that, then wait until the day you have me beneath your heel and come to take your revenge.”
It was the same haughty expression — yet because her garments were disordered, those eyes now carried a different quality: provocative. She was clearly so slight and slender, yet she struck an insufferably arrogant pose, as if purposely goading someone into anger, inviting them to break her apart.
Shen Xiao’s anger erupted. How laughable — that he had, just a moment ago, thought her forlorn and pitiable in her thin clothes. Pitiable? She was infuriating.
He closed in on Li Shu, driving her into a corner of the pavilion. She had no room to retreat, her back pressed against a pillar, breathing in quick, shallow gasps out of alarm. Shen Xiao noticed her collarbones standing out in sharp relief, carrying a kind of cold, fragile beauty.
He did not know from where some dark impulse rose. He slammed her against the corridor pillar. He glanced down and saw the delicate line of her exposed collarbone, his gaze dropping to the subtle rise and fall of her chest.
Shen Xiao said in a cold voice: “Then right now, I also wish to do as I please.”
Li Shu froze, as if she could not believe these words were coming from Shen Xiao. That silent, unremarkable Shen Xiao, standing at the very bottom of the social order — daring to say something like this to her.
She could not help but feel a tremor of fear, yet she still forced herself to look composed, meeting Shen Xiao’s gaze from below. “Shen Xiao, if you dare lay so much as a finger on me, this Princess will make you—”
Shen Xiao only smiled lightly, leaning close to Li Shu’s ear. “Then we shall speak of that afterward.”
He had no need to wait until the day he had her beneath his heel.
She was a woman. He could simply pin her beneath him instead.
*
Li Shu finished sorting through the affairs that had accumulated over the past two months, and the sun had already begun its westward descent.
On the rosewood table in the study, there was now a small mountain of name cards — she had hidden in the mountains for two months, and the residence had received an uncountable number of calling cards. Ever since grain requisitioning began at the end of the third month, countless people in Chang’an had wanted to see her.
Li Shu had not seen a single one. She did not wish to see anyone. She could not afford to see anyone.
Yet it turned out that today, her rule had been broken by Shen Xiao.
And it had not merely been bent — it had been shattered. Shen Xiao had entered the residence at noon, and the people outside did not know that he had fainted from heatstroke. They only knew he had been let in, and that he had remained at the residence for an entire afternoon.
It was not idle gossip about any romantic entanglement that Li Shu feared — what she feared was the political implications that lay beneath the surface.
She swept the calling cards aside with one hand, brow furrowed tightly, her mood darkening with unease.
Three months ago, when she had proposed the grain-in-lieu-of-silver scheme, her original intention had been simply to crush the Second Prince decisively and consolidate the Crown Prince’s position. But the variables in the court were too many, and the grain requisitioning affair had now evolved into something far more complicated.
According to Li Shu’s original plan, the grain-in-lieu-of-silver matter was to be a contest solely between the Crown Prince and the Second Prince, with court officials divided into two factions — support the Crown Prince or support the Second Prince. The Crown Prince’s odds of winning were high.
What she had not anticipated was that Shen Xiao, for the sake of climbing higher, would willingly become a blade for the Second Prince to wield in the requisitioning. Still less had she anticipated that the Emperor himself would issue Shen Xiao a requisitioning decree, personally throwing his support behind the Second Prince’s grain effort.
The Emperor was displeased with the Crown Prince’s performance, and had propped up the Second Prince with his own hand.
After all, the Second Prince’s grain requisitioning targeted the wealth of the great families — at its root, it was for the good of the common people. But the Crown Prince’s opposition to grain requisitioning was for the sake of entrenching his own power, with no regard for the welfare of the populace.
The grain requisitioning matter had now evolved into a contest between the Crown Prince and the Emperor. If the great families refused to cooperate with the requisitioning, they would be defying the Emperor. But if they obediently surrendered grain, they would be defying the future Emperor — the Crown Prince.
Aside from staunch Crown Prince loyalists like Cui Jinzhi and Zheng Pushe, very few great families were willing to take such a risk.
To give grain or not to give, to stand with the Emperor or to stand with the Crown Prince — everyone was deliberating.
When the situation was unclear, one always looked for a reliable weathervane. And so the eyes of every civil and military official in the city fell upon Princess Pingyang.
Princess Pingyang was one of the Emperor’s most cherished daughters — yet at the same time, her husband Cui Jinzhi was an undeniable Crown Prince loyalist. Princess Pingyang stood caught in the gap between Emperor and Crown Prince. Which way would she lean?
Whichever way she leaned, those officials who were still wavering would follow.
Yet Princess Pingyang had somehow risen above it all — the moment the Emperor stepped into the grain requisitioning matter, she had retreated to the mountains, beyond anyone’s reach.
Now, at long last, she had returned to the residence. But the very first thing she did upon her return was receive Shen Xiao — and worse still, Shen Xiao had remained within Princess Pingyang’s residence for an entire afternoon.
What had they deliberated over for so long? Was Princess Pingyang this time going to side with the Emperor and release grain to Shen Xiao?
Li Shu did not even need to think about it — she knew that the eyes of the great and small houses across Chang’an were all fixed on her residence at this very moment. She exhaled slowly, feeling truly driven into a dead end by Shen Xiao.
Shen Xiao, Shen Xiao! He really was the bane of her existence!
Li Shu suddenly stood up from behind the table, her expression cold as she strode toward the door.
She never should have let Shen Xiao into the residence today. She should have let him bake to death under the sun!
*
The young gate attendant, from some distance off, saw Princess Pingyang coming along the covered walkway and quickly bent at the waist and jogged over. Li Shu said: “Where is Shen Xiao?”
The attendant replied: “Your Highness, after the physician gave him medicine for the heatstroke, Master Shen has been asleep and has not yet woken.”
Li Shu raised her chin and pointed toward the guest room door, her voice flat. “Knock on the door. Wake him up.”
The attendant hunched his neck and gave an obedient “Yes,” then ran over to knock.
“Master Shen?”
No response.
“Master Shen?”
Still no response.
Li Shu walked over, pushed the attendant aside with impatience, and called out in a voice that seemed to carry ice: “Shen Xiao!”
Was he going to linger in her residence overnight as well?
*
Inside the room, Shen Xiao’s eyes flew open, and he sat up gasping.
To cool him down from the heatstroke, several ice basins had been set up in the room. By now they had all half-melted, and the room was pleasantly cool — and yet he was drenched in sweat.
He sat up and tugged at his collar to let out the heat. When he lowered his hand, his gaze fell on the front of his clothing.
The dream clung to him, as substantial as something real, still lingering in his mind and in his hands.
He still remembered what she felt like to touch.
A body that was not soft, skin that carried a faint coolness — touching her was like touching a piece of jade: seeming cold and hard on the surface, but with a gentle inner quality beneath.
Shen Xiao suddenly clenched his hands into fists, buried his face in his palms, and slowly pieced together every fragment of the dream.
Had someone placed a curse on him? How on earth had he… how had he come to have such a dream?!
Such a shameless dream!
Shen Xiao was by nature cool-headed and disciplined, yet at this moment he wished he could slam his head against one of the bed posts.
It had to be the heatstroke. He forced himself to calm down and reached for an excuse — the last thing he had seen before losing consciousness was her, and so of course he had dreamed of her. That was perfectly normal.
Even dreaming of… doing that with her… was completely normal.
He repeated this to himself inwardly several times and finally settled down.
There was still no sound from outside, and then that ice-laden voice rang out again: “Shen Xiao!”
Li Shu’s voice came through into the room like a bolt of lightning crashing straight down on Shen Xiao’s head. Guilty consciousness shot through him, and he bolted upright from the bed in an instant, terrified that Li Shu possessed the gift of reading minds and could tell, even through a closed door, exactly what he had been thinking.
He yanked back the thin blanket to climb out of bed, but—
Shen Xiao looked at the state of the bed, and the urge to end his own life surged through him. How on earth had he… how had he come to this!
The sounds of movement inside the room reached those outside. The gate attendant’s sharp ears caught them, and he quickly called out: “Has Master Shen woken? The Princess wishes to see you. Please open the door.”
Shen Xiao heaved the blanket into a heap on the bed, covering the entire mess, and said: “…Yes, I am awake.”
The last rays of the setting sun slanted through from outside, casting their glow through the tightly shut door. Through the door, Shen Xiao could see the faint shadow of a figure on the walkway, standing just outside.
Thin gauze robe, a pair of mist-veiled eyes flushed red, lying beneath him, containing humiliation and hatred as she stared up at him. Just like three years ago, when he had knelt before her in humiliation.
Shen Xiao hastily drove the image from his mind, heard the gate attendant call out again from outside: “Master Shen?”
Shen Xiao quickly said: “I… have just woken and am not yet presentable. Please ask the Princess to wait a moment.”
Outside the door, Li Shu was sorely tempted to roll her eyes.
What was there for a grown man to be embarrassed about over his appearance? The two of them had seen each other in rather more than an undressed state before.
She waved a hand impatiently at the attendant. “Send people in to help him dress. Be quick about it — this Princess does not like to be kept waiting.”
Here she was in her own residence, and it turned out she had to wait for someone else to get himself ready. What an extraordinary development.
The attendant bent in a bow and scurried off to the courtyard to call a few of the general household maids to bring washing and dressing articles.
Li Shu crossed her arms, turned around, and leaned against the corridor pillar, waiting for Shen Xiao inside to make himself presentable.
As she waited, she began to think through today’s events.
Three forces ruled the court: the Emperor, the Crown Prince, and the Second Prince.
Li Shu had no wish to throw in her lot with the Second Prince. Even though she and her second elder brother had once been genuinely close, even though the Emperor had grown increasingly attentive to the Second Prince in recent years.
But Li Shu understood clearly: what the Emperor valued was not the Second Prince himself — only using the Second Prince to check the Crown Prince.
The Crown Prince had sat in the Eastern Palace for ten years. Half the court’s great families had gathered under his banner. The Emperor was growing old; these past years he had been losing his grip on the Crown Prince, and could only prop up the ambitious Second Prince to compete with him.
The Second Prince’s everything had been given to him by the Emperor. Once the Emperor chose to abandon him, he would plummet into an abyss in an instant.
In this court, there were only two pillars that would never fall: the Emperor, and whoever became Emperor next. Li Shu could only keep herself from falling by clinging to them.
From the very beginning, clawing her way up out of the Cold Palace, she had simultaneously curried favor with Emperor Zhengyuan while quietly working on behalf of the Crown Prince — in just a few short years, she had risen dramatically, arriving at her position today.
But by placing all her weight on both sides, she faced twice the pressure of anyone else. The Crown Prince wanted to use her; the Emperor also wanted to use her. Before, she had been able to move fluidly between the two. But in this grain requisitioning matter, she could not.
The Emperor and the Crown Prince had locked horns. There was no neutral option available to her. She had to make a choice.
She had let Shen Xiao into the residence today not out of pity for him, but because Shen Xiao carried the Emperor’s grain requisitioning decree.
Li Shu was still deep in thought when she heard Hong Luo give a small startled exclamation from behind her: “Your Highness, the Prince Consort has come.”
Li Shu looked up to see Cui Jinzhi coming toward her from the far end of the corridor.
She frowned. The sun had not even fully set — was Yongtong Canal so idle today? What brought him back so early?
Since the two of them had their blowup, Li Shu had retreated to the mountains, while Cui Jinzhi had been occupied with overseeing the construction. Two full months had passed without the two of them seeing each other.
Li Shu watched him stride closer and found that she simply looked at him plainly — with none of the old feeling of joyful surprise.
Cui Jinzhi seemed to be in a hurry. He walked toward Li Shu with long, rapid strides. His face was taut with displeasure. He seized Li Shu’s arm. “Why is Shen Xiao at our residence?”
No preamble, no greeting after two months apart — he went straight to an interrogation, fully in the manner of someone demanding an accounting.
Li Shu gave a cold laugh. “This is my residence, not ‘our’ residence. Whoever I wish to let in may come in.”
Cui Jinzhi was equally unsparing: “Anyone else may enter, but not Shen Xiao!”
He turned his head to the servants behind him and said with a cold face: “Break the door down. Throw the person inside out of the residence.”
Behind him were seven or eight attendants. They surged toward the guest room door at the order. Hong Luo was jostled to the side.
“Everyone stop!”
Li Shu suddenly raised her voice: “This is this Princess’s residence. Who dares lay a hand on this Princess’s guests!”
Cui Jinzhi’s grip tightened sharply. His fingers dug into Li Shu’s forearm as if he meant to grind her bones to dust.
Her guest?
Li Shu was being pinched hard enough to hurt. She struggled forcefully to pull free. Cui Jinzhi startled, and Li Shu broke away.
She stepped back one or two paces. Beneath the thin gauze, a vivid red mark had appeared on her left arm.
That red mark jolted Cui Jinzhi into clarity. He did not know what had possessed him to fly into such a rage just now. He pulled a taut expression and waved for the servants to stand down.
He had important business to discuss with Li Shu. He did not want an open confrontation with her.
Inside the room, Shen Xiao was drenched in a cold sweat, staring at the state of himself and the bed, his mind a complete blank.
Outside.
Cui Jinzhi pressed down the fury inside himself with effort. “Li Shu, do not make a scene with me. You do not need to use Shen Xiao to deliberately provoke me.”
He lowered his voice to a more somber tone: “I did not come here today to speak with you about our personal affairs. I need to speak with you about court matters.”
“You received Shen Xiao in the residence at midday today. By afternoon the Crown Prince had already heard of it and called me directly back from Yongtong Canal to the Eastern Palace. The Crown Prince asked me — has Pingyang lost her nerve and decided to capitulate to the Emperor?”
Cui Jinzhi looked at Li Shu. “I did not know how to answer. You answer on my behalf.”
Li Shu was staring at the faint red mark slowly fading on her arm, but she knew the bruise would appear by the following day. She said flatly: “I have not. I have no intention of submitting to anyone — still less any thought of lending grain to Shen Xiao.”
She kept her eyes down, not looking at Cui Jinzhi.
The person before her was not Cui Jinzhi — he was merely the Crown Prince’s mouthpiece. She lowered her head, transmitting a posture of submission toward the Crown Prince.
“Then why did you see Shen Xiao? And let him linger in your residence for an entire afternoon? Do you know what those wavering great families will think — Princess Pingyang has seen the Second Prince’s man. She may be about to release grain to him. They will start releasing grain themselves too!”
Li Shu explained: “I had no intention of receiving Shen Xiao. He simply refused to leave no matter how many times he was turned away. If something had happened to him right outside my gate—”
The “Crown Prince” before her let out a scornful laugh. “Then let something happen! He is nothing but an eighth-rank minor official, without a scrap of family or backing. Is that worth your consideration?”
Li Shu extended her right hand and laid it over the red mark on her left arm. Her voice was soft as she explained her reasoning: “The Emperor supports Shen Xiao’s grain requisitioning. If I treat Shen Xiao too harshly, what will the Emperor think of me?”
“Then perhaps you should think about what the Crown Prince would think of you?!” Cui Jinzhi’s voice suddenly rose sharply.
At this, Li Shu’s right hand clenched hard around her left arm, crushing the red mark with a sharp ache. She suddenly gave a small laugh, and raised her gaze to look at Cui Jinzhi.
“What does the Crown Prince think of me?”
Her voice rose to match his: “Cui Jinzhi — the grain-in-lieu-of-silver scheme was my idea. From first to last, I have stood on the Crown Prince’s side. For the Crown Prince’s sake I have pushed my second elder brother into an impossible position. And now, simply because I received Shen Xiao in my residence, the Crown Prince concludes I have betrayed him?”
Li Shu gave a cold laugh. “You take note of this — all these years, it is true that I rose on the strength of the Crown Prince’s support. But I am not the Crown Prince’s dog — not obliged to do whatever the Crown Prince commands without a single independent action to call my own.”
Cui Jinzhi was briefly taken aback by Li Shu’s sudden burst of anger. He could sense that she harbored some grievance against the Crown Prince, though he could not tell what lay behind it.
A suspicion surfaced in his mind — that in this matter of grain requisitioning, Li Shu might lean toward the Emperor’s side rather than the Crown Prince’s.
He could not allow her to stand in opposition to him.
“No one said you were the Crown Prince’s dog. Li Shu, what are you really thinking? You and I and the Crown Prince are bound together in shared destiny — our interests are one. To help the Crown Prince is to help us—”
“—That is you. Not me!”
Li Shu cut Cui Jinzhi off.
“Helping the Crown Prince helps you, not me. Cui Jinzhi, you seem to forget — apart from the Crown Prince, I also answer to the Emperor’s constraints. The position I hold today was half built on the Crown Prince’s support and half on the Emperor’s favor. When Shen Xiao was first appointed to his post, the Crown Prince wanted to keep his rank low, but the Emperor wanted to give him a high post. I stood wedged between the Emperor and the Crown Prince, unable to offend either side.
“Several months have passed, and now on this grain requisitioning matter, I am again caught in the gap between the Emperor and the Crown Prince.”
Li Shu’s gaze suddenly sharpened. “Cui Jinzhi, do you know what it feels like to stand in a gap like that? On the left: swords and blades. On the right: also swords and blades. Not a single moment of ease, not a single side that can be offended.”
“You speak of nothing but the Crown Prince, straining every nerve to drag me to that side — but once I am on the Crown Prince’s side, how will the Emperor regard me? Cui Jinzhi, I am not as decisive as you seem to think. I cannot simply cast the Emperor aside and stand forever with the Crown Prince. I am exerting my own best judgment to strike a balance, doing what I can to support the Crown Prince.”
She turned her gaze away, her voice dropping quiet: “If it is possible… I hope you might also consider my situation — think about where the difficulty lies for me.”
Cui Jinzhi was silent for a moment, looking at Li Shu’s slight frame. “You have your own calculations, your own plans — that is fine. But your plans cannot work at cross-purposes with the Crown Prince.”
He knew Li Shu responded to gentleness but not to force. He made an effort to soften his voice. “No one anticipated that the Emperor would take such a decisive stand in support of the Second Prince. For now, even though Shen Xiao is still twenty thousand piculs short, you and I both know how many fence-sitters there are in Chang’an — people who waver back and forth, afraid of the Crown Prince one moment and afraid of the Emperor the next. They may well deliver their grain in one great rush at the final hour. If that happens, the Second Prince will still be thriving in the court — and because of his success in grain requisitioning, might even rise further, growing into a greater threat to the Crown Prince.”
Cui Jinzhi reached out and took hold of Li Shu’s shoulders, bending his head toward her. “This very afternoon, the moment you allowed Shen Xiao into the residence, some people panicked and rushed to donate several thousand piculs of grain. Qing Que, in the matter of grain requisitioning, you are the key. You… cannot afford a single misstep. If you do — what becomes of the Crown Prince, and of me?”
Cui Jinzhi gripped her shoulders, breaking down the court situation piece by piece, word by careful word, laying it all clear before her.
Li Shu felt a moment of blankness, still thinking of those early years when she was not yet in favor. At the palace, no one had given her so much as a glance. Only the third son of the Cui family had been willing to stay by her side, teaching her to read, teaching her the workings of the court. She never knew why he was willing to help her, only that he was the one person in all the palace who had treated her with kindness. He treated her well and asked for nothing in return.
In those days he had worn finely cut robes, sitting casually on the dust-covered steps outside that remote and neglected palace hall. He had turned his head to smile at her and asked: “What I just explained — did you follow it?” Li Shu had looked up at him and nodded.
Cui Jinzhi saw that Li Shu had fallen silent, but her manner had softened, and he exhaled slowly. “The Crown Prince is fighting with everything he has to topple the Second Prince. This grain requisitioning matter — he cannot afford to lose. If the Crown Prince loses his standing, neither of us will have good days ahead. Your connections with the Emperor and the Crown Prince are closer than anyone else’s. Everyone is watching what you will do. The slightest move you make will send ripples through the entire court, far more than one or two ripples. “
Li Shu seemed to come back to herself. Like that little girl of long ago, she gave Cui Jinzhi a slow, gentle nod. “I know. I have not thought of betraying the Crown Prince. I will not lend grain to Shen Xiao. I only wanted to manage this more gracefully — I do not wish to offend the Emperor beyond all repair.”
Cui Jinzhi reached out, hesitated for a moment, then gently ruffled the back of Li Shu’s head — just as he used to do to encourage her. Li Shu did not pull away.
Cui Jinzhi said: “Have Shen Xiao open the door.”
Cui Jinzhi’s attendants had just been scolded and were now too cowed to act as recklessly as before. Li Shu gave a wave to the gate attendant, who bent low and hurried back to knock on the door.
“Master Shen?”
A rushing sound of water came from inside the room, followed by a metallic clatter, as though something had fallen to the ground. But still no one came to open the door. The attendant looked at Li Shu. Li Shu also had no idea what Shen Xiao was doing inside.
Was he planning not to leave, hoping to take root in her residence simply because he had failed to collect enough grain?
The attendants had already received their orders and were preparing to break the door down, when the door suddenly opened from within.
Shen Xiao emerged from behind the door looking as though someone had dumped a bucket of water straight over his head — drenched to the skin, standing there like a half-drowned bird, soaked from collar to hem.
Behind him the floor was awash with water, and the bed itself appeared to be dripping steadily as well. Every ice basin in the room was now empty.
Li Shu’s brow knitted together.
Whatever had Shen Xiao been doing? Idle as he was in her residence, had he also gone and taken a cold-water bath?
Cui Jinzhi also stared at the chaos inside the room with a momentary blank look, but quickly composed himself into the manner of a court official. “What happened to Master Shen? Did the servants fail to attend him properly?”
Shen Xiao bowed to Cui Jinzhi. “Not at all. This official… this official was careless and knocked over a water basin. Deputy Minister, please do not laugh.”
He raised his eyes and saw Princess Pingyang still wearing that plain, thin gauze robe. She stood there, arms folded, her expression cool and distant, collarbones slightly prominent — identical to how she had appeared in his dream.
The one difference was that someone else was standing beside her.
Cui Jinzhi noticed Shen Xiao’s gaze drift toward Li Shu. His expression immediately cooled. He stepped half a pace forward, blocking Li Shu from view.
Then he said coldly: “Since Master Shen is in good health, and the hour is not early — if there is no further business… you may take your leave. As for the grain requisitioning matter, I will be candid with Master Shen — both Qing Que and I did have the intention of lending some grain, but over these past two months, the Ministry has been sending grain to Yongtong Canal in fits and starts, and there have been times when supply ran short. We had to use our own household grain to fill the gap.”
Cui Jinzhi smiled. “There is truly no grain left in the residence.”
Li Shu listened to Cui Jinzhi spin this obvious fiction.
Unexpectedly, Shen Xiao, hearing this transparent lie, did not argue. He was silent for a moment, and then gave a quiet “mm.”
Li Shu’s brow creased slightly. She felt that Shen Xiao was… not quite himself.
This was someone who had stood baking in the sun for half the day just to force her into granting him an audience. He had finally managed to enter the residence, and now he was leaving without having said a single word about grain requisitioning, looking like a sodden, half-drowned bird.
Had the heatstroke actually cooked Master Shen’s brain?
But since he was not raising the issue, Li Shu let out a small breath of relief — it would have meant another prolonged back-and-forth otherwise.
Seeing that Shen Xiao was soaked through from head to toe, Li Shu suddenly said: “Hong Luo, go and fetch a set of the Prince Consort’s clothes.”
Over Cui Jinzhi’s shoulder, Li Shu glanced at Shen Xiao. “Change into something dry before you go.”
At this, Cui Jinzhi immediately stiffened his face. “I have no spare clothes.”
Li Shu looked at him as if she could see straight through his thoughts. “New summer clothes were recently made for the residence. I had been meaning to send them to you at Yongtong Canal. I just thought that Qing Luo’s side would surely have had plenty prepared for you…”
She smiled, and determined to contradict Cui Jinzhi, she turned to Hong Luo: “Go and fetch a set.”
Cui Jinzhi was left with nothing to say.
Shen Xiao, dripping where he stood, noticed a particular look cross Princess Pingyang’s face when she mentioned the name “Qing Luo.”
Hong Luo brought a set of summer clothes. While Shen Xiao was changing, Li Shu and Cui Jinzhi stood on the walkway outside.
After a moment of silence, Cui Jinzhi suddenly said: “The summer clothes at the residence — I do wear them.”
Li Shu gave a cold “oh.”
Cui Jinzhi seemed to want to say something more, but behind them the door had already opened. Shen Xiao stood in the doorway, holding his soaked official robes.
He wore a dark raven-blue robe with a subtle woven pattern. His features were deep and concentrated. He glanced briefly at Li Shu and then looked away. In the fading light of evening, he had a quality about him that was not gentle — like still deep water, like ancient mountain timber, carrying a kind of silence that could not be read.
It was a quality wholly unlike Cui Jinzhi’s.
Cui Jinzhi habitually wore light colors. Hong Luo had deliberately chosen a deep-colored garment for Shen Xiao — precisely to make sure it would not be something the Prince Consort would ever covet.
Shen Xiao held his robes and, unable to bow properly, gave a nod to Li Shu and Cui Jinzhi. “Today… I have caused inconvenience to Your Highness.” Then he followed the attendant leading him toward the gate and walked away.
His spine was perfectly straight.
He rounded the bend in the covered walkway. Not until he was certain Li Shu could no longer see him did Shen Xiao finally relax, exhaling a long breath.
He had wasted the entire day. His original intention had been to persuade her to lend grain, yet after what he had done — that shameful, unforgivable thing — he could not face Li Shu and speak to her directly. He was terrified she might notice something was wrong.
*
Cui Jinzhi stood beside Li Shu, watching Shen Xiao walk away wearing his clothing. He felt only that Shen Xiao had taken something of his — even though it was something he had never particularly cherished.
He finally could not restrain himself, and said with a slight grumbling edge: “I was actually quite fond of that outfit.”
“Oh…” Li Shu said, flat and indifferent. “I was under the impression you did not like wearing dark colors.”
“I liked that one.”
Li Shu rolled her eyes inwardly and had no wish to discuss clothing with Cui Jinzhi.
Childish.
She said: “I did not intend to lend him clothing. It is only that if he walked out of my residence soaked through, people would think I had deliberately humiliated him and doused him with water. Shen Xiao is here to requisition grain on the Emperor’s behalf. I can find every possible excuse to refuse him grain, but I cannot treat him that way.”
Li Shu exhaled lightly. “If it reached the Emperor’s ears, he would think I had grown estranged from him.”
Living on a knife’s edge in the gap between two powers — what that felt like, Cui Jinzhi could not feel, nor would he feel it on her behalf.
Long ago when he was teaching her, he had said that the first principle of court life was caution. Now she had learned caution in the narrowest of gaps — and he stood outside that gap, on easy and open ground, demanding to know why she was being so timid.
He seemed unable to see that on both sides of her, the fall was ten thousand feet deep.
Hearing this, Cui Jinzhi understood that Li Shu had given Shen Xiao the clothes purely out of political calculation, and this cheered him somewhat.
He smiled, those long, slightly upturned eyes carrying a hint of warmth. “Qing Que—” He hesitated for a moment, reached out, and grasped Li Shu’s forearm. “It’s late. Shall we go eat together?”
But Li Shu immediately pushed his hand away. She seemed to recoil as if escaping, stepping back swiftly, then looked at Cui Jinzhi — and her eyes held nothing at all.
“I am not hungry… I will return to my room first.”
She turned and walked away, leaving Cui Jinzhi alone, his outstretched hand hanging empty in the air.
“Qing Que.”
He called out, but Li Shu did not seem to hear. She was walking further and further away along the covered walkway.
*
Shen Xiao followed the attendant along the lakeside and was very nearly at the outer courtyard when the attendant, seeing him still carrying his wet robes, offered kindly: “This servant will take them for you.”
But Shen Xiao said quickly: “No need.”
The attendant privately grumbled to himself — it was just a set of clothing, what was Master Shen reacting so strongly for? Did he look like someone who would steal clothes?
As the two of them paused in their exchange, Shen Xiao suddenly looked across the lake and saw Li Shu walking slowly into the pavilion. From this distance, he could only make out her outline.
Qing Que…
He thought of how Cui Jinzhi had just called her that. So that was her childhood nickname.
The attendant nudged him along, and Shen Xiao pulled his gaze back and continued walking toward the gate.
*
“Qing Que.”
Li Shu stood at the pavilion railing, thinking of how Cui Jinzhi had just called her that.
This name had been given to her by her mother, because stray little sparrows would often come hopping into the abandoned palace courtyard where they lived. Li Shu had no playmates and could only spend her time with them.
When he was in a good mood, or when he needed something from her, he would call her by her childhood nickname. Any other time, he called her by her given name.
What had she traded today to earn that one call of “Qing Que”? Ah — her agreement to stay on the Crown Prince’s side.
To receive a little warmth from him, she always had to first give something up. It was like a transaction of equal exchange.
Li Shu looked up and watched the shadow of Shen Xiao’s figure on the far side of the lake growing smaller and smaller as he moved away.
Sometimes she felt that she and Shen Xiao were quite alike. He, for the sake of advancement and power and ambition, could trade away many things that belonged to him — his body, his mind, his life. He was cold and hard as a blade, and no matter who wielded him, no matter how many notches were carved into him, as long as someone was willing to use him, he could seize that chance to climb.
Li Shu leaned against the pillar and thought: when he was being used, did he also feel pain?