In Changshou Ward, a woman sat on a doorstep, picking over vegetables while watching the Imperial Guards dispersed throughout the lane. Ming Huashang noticed her and walked over with a smile: “Good day, auntie. Are you getting ready for supper? What are you having tonight?”

The woman was known throughout Changshou Ward as a warm and gossipy soul who enjoyed strolling about and chatting. Perhaps it was a natural recognition between fellow outgoing spirits — the woman was not the least bit intimidated, and took up conversation with Ming Huashang easily: “Soup with shepherd’s purse flat noodles, what else. And you all — what are you here for? Didn’t you lot come and ask questions once already? Why have you come back?”

Ming Huashang sat down beside her on the doorstep without ceremony, and helped her pick vegetables: “There are a lot of people in this area, and our superior feared there might be contraband explosives hidden in the ward, so he’s having us look again. Auntie, do you know of any men in this area, roughly thirty to fifty years old, who tend to stay indoors, have a peculiar and antisocial disposition, and whose children don’t live nearby?”

The woman thought for a moment, then said with ready enthusiasm: “Oh, plenty of those.”

She proceeded to list the local gossip about one household after another — but the “strange men” she described were clearly not the ones Ming Huashang was looking for. After listening to a good deal of neighborhood chatter, Ming Huashang steered the conversation gently: “Auntie, I don’t know enough about these matters to say anything without knowing the full story. When I say strange, I mean more the sort of man who likes to dabble with medicines and compounds, has a bit of a short temper, speaks in a serious and stiff manner, and isn’t very popular with children.”

The woman’s brow creased: “We’re all ordinary folk around here — who has time to go dabbling with medicines… although, come to think of it, whenever anyone hereabouts has a headache or fever, they do like to go ask Adjutant Liao.”

Ming Huashang ventured: “Adjutant Liao would be…”

“He’s at your Jing Zhaoyiin office too. Some kind of assistant clerk, I think.”

Ming Huashang tried to recall a clerk surnamed Liao at the Jing Zhaoyiin office and couldn’t. Then it came to her. “Are you speaking of Jing Zhaoyiin Liao Yushan?”

The woman nodded vigorously: “He’s been made Jing Zhaoyiin now, has he?”

“He has,” Ming Huashang said. “The Jing Zhaoyiin lives here too?”

“Right over there — the courtyard with the tree by the gate.” The woman went on readily: “Adjutant Liao is an educated man — no conversation with the likes of us, and we’d never dare trouble him. To think, he’s been made Jing Zhaoyiin now. How high a rank is that? What’s the salary?”

Ming Huashang shifted uncomfortably. “Those are his private affairs, and it wouldn’t be right for us to pry.”

The woman gave a disappointed little sound and nodded. “True enough. Still, it must be far better than us common people. I’d wager in a few days the Jing Zhaoyiin will be moving out of here to the eastern city.”

As Ming Huashang listened, a faint puzzlement brushed through her. The Jing Zhaoyiin had been promoted back in the ninth month of last year. An assistant clerk’s pay was meager — only enough for an old tenement in the western city — but a senior official of the third rank drew a considerable annual salary. How was it that the Jing Zhaoyiin still lived here?

“Has Adjutant Liao been here long?” she asked.

“Going on ten years,” the woman said. “Rare thing, that. All these years, to finally have a promotion. You should see him — every morning out early, every night back late, often still with a light burning deep into the night. Alone all this time, not even a companion to keep him company. Ah, but things are looking up for him now. Hard work does get rewarded.”

“He’s been living alone all these years?”

The woman sighed. “That’s right. His wife fell ill after childbirth — no money for medicine. She passed away a few years on. The neighbors tried to introduce him to a second wife; he always turned them down. Poor man — he’d barely managed to raise his daughter when a spring epidemic hit Chang’an ten years back. The girl caught it. Medicine prices were through the roof that year, and he couldn’t afford the cost. Watched his daughter die before his eyes. Such a pity. When that little girl died she was only seven years old. If she’d lived, she’d be about your age by now.”

Ming Huashang had heard the older officers mention vaguely that the Jing Zhaoyiin had once had a daughter who had died young. She had not known until now that the circumstances were so devastating.

She sighed, and continued asking the woman about things in Changshou Ward. As she listened, she caught a glimpse from the corner of her eye of Su Xingzhi approaching, standing at a distance with a hesitant expression, watching her. Ming Huashang excused herself to the woman, got up, and went to him quickly.

They moved to a spot where no one could hear. Ming Huashang lowered her voice: “What is it?”

It was working hours, and Su Xingzhi was out looking for her. Something serious had to have happened. Indeed — Su Xingzhi was visibly suppressing his agitation. “Something is very wrong. Yuji seems to have found out something. We argued last night and then she disappeared.”

Su Xingzhi had searched for Su Yuji throughout the night without any luck. With no mind left for the Censorate, he had taken leave and spent the morning scouring every place in Chang’an where Su Yuji might go. He had found no trace of her. Out of ideas, he had come to Ming Huashang, hoping she might have some clue.

Ming Huashang had been out searching the city with the Imperial Guards; it had taken Su Xingzhi considerable effort to track her down here. Hearing that Su Yuji had gone missing, Ming Huashang’s brow furrowed deeply. “Tell me from the beginning — what exactly did she say to you last night?”

After listening to Su Xingzhi’s account, Ming Huashang turned it over with a troubled expression. She had spent enough time around Su Yuji to know that she was not easily rattled by something as minor as a brother speaking kindly of another woman. Had she overheard something?

The detail that caught her attention: in the dream, when Su Yuji had appeared at the Ming household to reveal her identity as the true legitimate daughter, she had apparently brought a portrait — which was why her claim had been so convincing.

But Ming Huashang had spent seventeen years in the Duke Zhenguo household and found no trace of any such evidence. How could Su Yuji have known about the child-swapping, and even produced proof?

Where had the portrait come from?

Without Ming Huazhang in the picture, Ming Huashang would certainly have suspected a traitor within the Duke Zhenguo household — perhaps the second or third branch had deliberately stolen the portrait to stir up trouble. But taken together with her sudden death in the dream and all the leads she had gathered since, Ming Huashang now believed the matter might not be so simple.

She had been focused all along on the question of true and false identities — first questioning who she herself was, then questioning who Ming Huazhang was. She had never once considered why Su Yuji would have shown up at all. It had always seemed self-evident to her: a woman discovering she was the true legitimate daughter would of course come forward. That was only natural.

Yet Su Xingzhi had clearly said: Nanny Su had told Su Yuji nothing of her origins, and he himself had never said a word. So how had Su Yuji come to know?

This was the first time Ming Huashang had stopped to truly ask herself why Su Yuji had come to the door. The reason she had been so certain it was Nanny Su who had swapped a granddaughter from the Su family for a daughter from the ducal household was because of what Su Yuji had said in the dream. And where had that understanding of Su Yuji’s come from in the first place?

Ming Huashang’s heart lurched. Those who knew more about the child-swapping from seventeen years ago than anyone in the Duke Zhenguo household — aside from the people who had been with Wang Yulan — would most likely be people connected to the Li family. Prince Zhanghuai had his devoted loyalists, and he also had his enemies. Those who wanted to find Ming Huazhang were not operating from only one direction.

Ming Huashang began to form a picture. If she had never had that prophetic dream, she would most likely still be happily playing the role of an idle second daughter — never joining the Xuan Xiaowei, never meeting Su Yuji or Su Xingzhi. Meanwhile, Su Yuji would have been told by someone that she was the swapped legitimate daughter of the Duke Zhenguo household, and been encouraged to seek out her birth family — testing the Duke Zhenguo household’s reaction.

The person operating behind the scenes wanted to draw out Prince Zhanghuai’s orphan. So they added color and detail to the story of Su Yuji’s origins and pushed her to the front door to make a claim — to read the response. Su Yuji did not know Ming Huashang at all. She was also under the misapprehension that her foster brother’s family had deliberately swapped her life away so their own daughter could enjoy wealth and privilege. Who could endure that kind of betrayal compounded upon betrayal? Reeling from what felt like betrayal on all sides and overwhelmed with emotion, she had come to the Ming household to expose the truth — that was entirely understandable.

In the dream, the Duke Zhenguo had recognized it as an enemy’s trap. But to protect the true orphan, Ming Huazhang, he had no choice but to go along with Su Yuji’s account, insisting that Ming Huashang was the Su family’s child, even moving to send her away on the spot. It was Ming Huazhang who could not bear it — he had intervened — and so Ming Huashang had been spared the immediate fate of being cast out. But in doing so Ming Huazhang had exposed himself to danger, and those who guarded him had moved immediately to eliminate Ming Huashang. In this way, Ming Huashang’s identity appeared to have been confirmed: why else would she have died so abruptly, unless she truly was the one they feared?

And so the real orphan had gone undetected. A decoy had taken the blow in his place.

Ming Huashang finally saw the whole picture strung together. Whether it was herself or Su Yuji — both of them had been nothing more than pieces on a board being moved by those in power. The person who had manipulated Su Yuji had never given a thought to whether she lived or died. The force that had killed Ming Huashang had not hesitated for a single moment. Not an ounce of mercy in any of it.

Ming Huashang let out a slow breath. As a piece on this board, anger and grief were a burden she could not afford. What mattered right now was getting Su Yuji to safety. She said: “Su Yuji is in real danger right now. We must find her as quickly as possible. Where does she usually go?”

“I’ve already looked in all those places — the people there said they hadn’t seen her.” Su Xingzhi was deeply distressed. “I’ve run out of ideas. That’s why I came to find you. I thought she might have come to see you.”

Ming Huashang had never seen Su Xingzhi this undone. His unease was contagious, and a sense of urgency gripped her as well.

At that moment, someone called out from the lane: “Second Young Lady Ming?”

Ming Huashang responded at once: “Here. What is it?”

“Your household has come looking for you.”

Ming Huashang and Su Xingzhi both startled, and quickly went out — only to find Zhao Cai waiting outside. Ming Huashang’s heart jolted sharply and then eased, and she felt oddly strange about her own reaction. Of course it was someone from the Duke Zhenguo household — yet why had she half-expected Su Yuji?

Zhao Cai’s expression was grave. Seeing her, she hurried over: “Young Lady, the Duke has given orders for you to come home at once.”

Ming Huashang was surprised — the Duke had never before interfered with her going out. Why the sudden summons now? She asked: “Why?”

Zhao Cai’s expression was peculiar. She cast a quick glance around, then rose on her tiptoes and leaned close to Ming Huashang’s ear: “Young Lady, something has happened in the palace. The Gate of Vermillion Phoenix is in an uproar — it seems the Empress has flown into a rage and is punishing Prince Shao and the Prince Wei heir. The Duke feared something worse might come of it and sent me to bring you home quickly.”

Ming Huashang’s heart clenched. Without thinking, she asked: “And Second Brother?”

“The Duke sent for him first, but the people searching with Second Young Master said he had left the city and cannot be reached right now. So the Duke sent to fetch you instead.” Zhao Cai went on: “We thought you would be with Second Young Master — we had no idea you were this far apart, and spent a long time asking before someone pointed us to the Imperial Guards here in Changshou Ward.”

The case deadline was tomorrow. Su Yuji was missing. Ming Huazhang had left the city. The Duke was calling her home. All of it had crashed down on her at once, and Ming Huashang’s mind went blank for a moment, not knowing where to begin.

What could she do? She was not a three-headed, six-armed deity. Who was she supposed to listen to? How she wished, in this moment, that someone could descend from the sky — a savior who could find the killer, find Su Yuji, solve all of it for her.

But she knew there was no such savior. She could only rely on herself.

Ming Huashang pressed her fingers together and forced herself to be calm. She could not help wondering: if Ming Huazhang were here right now, what would he do?

When she thought of him, the frantic spinning of her thoughts seemed to catch hold of something solid. She tried to follow his way of thinking. If it were him — he would first steady everyone’s emotions, then establish priorities and address the most important thing first.

So Ming Huashang did the same, and asked herself: what mattered most?

The question had barely formed before the answer came. Without question — the people she loved. Ming Huazhang had left the city for reasons of his own, and had surely thought it through; there was no need for Ming Huashang to worry about him. Su Yuji, on the other hand, was the one who truly needed to be worried about.

Su Yuji might well be her elder sister. Ming Huashang could not let anything happen to her. She had to reach Su Yuji before the person operating in the shadows could, and tell her the whole truth. If Su Yuji fell into that trap and came to the Duke Zhenguo household to claim her identity, everything would fall apart.

She had to find Su Yuji first.

After that came the case. The deadline was tomorrow — if the killer was not caught, everyone would feel the Empress’s displeasure. Ming Huashang was not officially part of the Jing Zhaoyiin office and could, technically, step back and not be held responsible. But they had fought side by side for so long — she could not simply abandon her comrades and walk away.

As for the Duke’s summons to come home and wait out the storm — that was the least important thing of all. Hiding away was no solution. The Empress was punishing Prince Shao and the Prince Wei heir — Ming Huashang was not part of the imperial family, and worrying about it accomplished nothing. Better to simply do what she could, and make sure her own family gave their enemies no opening at this critical moment.

Ming Huashang made up her mind. Her thoughts cleared and settled, her head sharper than it had ever been. She turned to Zhao Cai. “Did you bring guards with you?”

Zhao Cai nodded. “I did.”

“Good.” Ming Huashang said. “Send the most capable ones now to the Jing Zhaoyiin office and relay the Duke’s message to Scribe Xie — what to do next, let Scribe Xie decide. You stay here with one guard to assist the Imperial Guards. The rest come with me.”

Zhao Cai answered instinctively, then looked surprised: “Young Lady — where are you going?”

“Imperial Censor Su has some trouble at home, and I’m going to help him find someone.” Ming Huashang handed Zhao Cai the list she had been working through, and said: “These few households, I had intended to question myself, but there’s no time now. You ask for me. These are the key points to cover — write down everything you hear, no matter what it is, and tell me when I get back.”

Zhao Cai and Ming Huashang had grown up together; they understood each other without having to spell things out. Ming Huashang trusted her completely with this. Whatever else one might say, no Imperial Guard could match a private household maid when it came to gathering information.

Zhao Cai hesitated. “But the Duke said…”

“I have so many guards with me — nothing will happen.” Ming Huashang said: “Don’t worry, I’ll explain things to Father myself; it won’t reflect on you. Zhao Cai, please help me with this — when we get home I’ll buy you pine nuts.”

Zhao Cai was Ming Huashang’s maid, and after all these years of listening to her Second Young Lady, she could only mutter and grumble: “Fine. Young Lady, please be careful.”

“I know.” Ming Huashang couldn’t even stop to say a proper goodbye — she turned and broke into a run toward Su Xingzhi, calling back hurriedly: “Go and ask your questions. I’m going ahead.”

·

The Daming Palace.

The sun melted into gold as it set, and evening clouds folded over each other in splendor. Wisps of cloud drifted across the sky, lit by the fading sun in colors so radiant they seemed to belong to a dream. Princess Yongtai knelt at the foot of the white jade steps, pressing her forehead to the ground again and again in supplication: “Grandmother, please — I beg you — spare Elder Brother and my husband this once. The fault is mine. I should not have brought my husband back to the Eastern Palace. I should have stopped them from saying what they said about Duke Ye. Every fault is mine. I beg you, Grandmother — please look upon this as their first offense, and release them.”

Above, the Hall of the Purple Constellation blazed in splendid gold, solemn and magnificent; sunlight scattered off its glazed tiles, so bright one could not look directly at it. Princess Yongtai’s face was as pale as ash, a dull ache bearing down in her lower abdomen, cold sweat beading at her temples — and yet she kept her gaze fixed on the long, seemingly endless flight of palace stairs before her, bit down on her pain, and went on kneeling on the cold, hard flagstone.

Princess Yongtai had stayed in the Eastern Palace the previous night. Wu Yanyi, seeing how severe her morning sickness had become, had stayed to keep her company for a few days near her parents. That morning, she had been resting in the Eastern Palace when a group of eunuchs arrived and took Li Chongrun and Wu Yanyi away.

The Eastern Palace fell into panic. People were quickly sent to find out what had happened, and word came back: the conversation between the three of them the night before about the two Zhang brothers had somehow reached the Empress’s ears, and the Empress, in a fury, had ordered Li Chongrun and Wu Yanyi to be flogged one hundred strokes at the Gate of Vermillion Phoenix.

These one hundred strokes were administered by the Empress’s personal guards — none of it performed with mercy. One hundred strokes were enough to kill a man trained for combat. How much more so for two pampered noblemen who had never known real hardship.

This was essentially a death sentence.

When the Crown Prince heard the news he fainted. When he came around he wept in his consort Lady Wei’s arms. Princess Anle also sobbed and cried out in fear. The Eastern Palace dissolved into chaos, and not one person went to intervene. With no other option, Princess Yongtai had forced her weakened body to move — sending one person to the Prince Wei residence to bring Prince Wei into the palace, and herself going to plead with the Empress.

She could not see clearly whether the doors to her grandmother’s sleeping chambers had opened or not. But she would not give up. The executioners had already been gone for some time. Princess Taiping was nowhere to be seen. Prince Xiang had not appeared. Even her father-in-law — Wu Yanyi’s own father, Prince Wei — had not come.

And so Princess Yongtai understood. They would not come. However dearly they loved a member of the younger generation, how could that weigh against protecting themselves, staying clear of trouble?

She had only herself. If she gave up too — what would become of Li Chongrun and Wu Yanyi? Could she just stand by and watch her brother and her husband beaten to death?

Princess Yongtai pleaded again and again, her forehead meeting the stones again and again. Those words pierced through costly nanmu wood doors, through vivid Persian tapestries, and arrived as nothing more than muffled thuds.

Shangguan Wan’er knelt before the low bed, watching the Empress on the couch above her with great care. The Empress lay back against the cushions with her eyes closed, listening to female officials recite governmental matters, as though she could not hear anything happening outside.

Shangguan Wan’er listened to those broken, tearful pleas, each cry more stricken than the last, and could not help but feel a pang of compassion. Yet one glance at the Empress’s serene profile, and that compassion dissolved like a ripple on still water.

Since ascending the throne, the Empress had grown ever more unfathomable, and Shangguan Wan’er had rarely seen her moved to such anger. She did not know what the two Zhang brothers had said — but the Empress had not cared that her ministers were still present, had ordered Li Chongrun and Wu Yanyi dragged to the Gate of Vermillion Phoenix for their flogging in full view, which meant that what they had said went far beyond dissatisfaction with the two Zhang brothers. They had struck against something the Empress held sacred.

Whoever interceded was putting themselves against the Empress. Princess Taiping and Prince Wei were the people the Empress loved most, and also the people who understood her best — and even they had not dared take the risk. What reason had Shangguan Wan’er to bring trouble upon herself for the sake of a prince and princess who had nothing to do with her?

Her own grandfather had been ruined because he stood on the wrong side. Twenty years in the palace women’s quarters had taught her the most important lesson there was: align yourself with the strong, and mind your own affairs.

Shangguan Wan’er finally lowered her eyes, and shut out the sounds from outside — each wail more desolate than the one before. Some sounds, if one closed one’s eyes, ceased to exist.

The Empress lay still, and listened in detachment to the reports below. Today’s business was no different from any other day — in truth it required no great effort. She had been listening this long because her mind was occupied with what Li Chongrun and Wu Yanyi had said.

What the court thought of the two Zhang brothers — the Empress knew it all perfectly well. She did not particularly care about those words. A man who became emperor could take a harem of three thousand women, and men who wielded power could kill and be called heroes for it — so why was it different for a woman?

She intended to show the world: those who followed her would prosper; those who defied her would be destroyed. Whatever a man could do, she, Wu Zhao, could do no less.

But what Li Chongrun and Wu Yanyi could never, under any circumstances, have been allowed to do — was call her a woman who kept male consorts, a disgrace to the ancestors of the Li family.

Only if a consort or an empress dowager kept favored companions was it a scandal. An emperor who added to the imperial harem — what was wrong with that? Li Chongrun’s lips called her “Your Majesty,” but in his heart he had never truly seen her as an emperor. When he looked at her, he saw only an old woman.

In her life, the thing the Empress was most proud of was having founded the Great Zhou dynasty. The thing she most regretted was also the Great Zhou dynasty. Her Great Zhou would end with her — extinguished without issue, without legacy. When posterity spoke of her, they would most likely still call Wu Zhao an emperor of the Tang, or even merely a consort.

She had been compelled by her ministers and the popular will to return the realm to the Li family — and that had become the wound she could never stop probing. If commoners said it, that was one thing. But what gave Li Chongrun the right?

She had once watched without blinking as she ordered her own second son to his death. She could order a grandson flogged to death just as readily.

This was the roar of a dynasty in its final days. The fury of the fall.

Princess Yongtai’s forehead had been broken open. Blood had run down past her lashes, and she could no longer see anything clearly. She went on mechanically pressing her head to the ground, pleading, pleading — perhaps her grandmother would relent and show mercy.

Some indeterminate time later, a palace attendant stopped in front of her and reached down to support her. The look in the attendant’s eyes held something between pity and cold appraisal.

“Your Highness, you have knelt for one full hour. Please go inside and rest. Prince Shao and the Prince Wei heir have completed their punishment and have been sent back to the Eastern Palace. If you return quickly, you may still arrive in time to see them one last time.”