Ming Huashang heard the door outside open and close. She let out a breath, tugged the heavy, suffocating cloak from around her neck, tidied herself up, and prepared for sleep.

Let the great figures deal with what was falling from the sky. Affairs of state — what did any of that have to do with an ordinary woman like herself? Better to sleep.

Jiang Ling was sleeping perfectly well when someone dragged him out of his dreams. He looked up to find two tall, straight black silhouettes standing before his bed, and instinctively pulled his blanket up around himself. “What are you two doing in the middle of the night?”

Ming Huazhang cupped his hands toward Jiang Ling in greeting. “Forgive us for disturbing you at this hour — but we have something urgent, and we wish to ask the Young Master of Jiang Ling for assistance.”

Jiang Ling, still blank-faced, asked: “What is it?”

“We have pressing business and need to request an audience with Princess Taiping. We would trouble the Young Master of Jiang Ling to convey this message on our behalf.”

Ming Huazhang and Xie Jichuan had no particular connection to Princess Taiping’s household — in this place they were no different from any ordinary guest. But Jiang Ling was different. His father was one of Princess Taiping’s trusted confidants; even if Jiang Ling himself was a thoroughly unambitious young man, he still had many familiar faces within the Princess Taiping household. Sending a message to the Princess in the middle of the night was something no ordinary official’s family, however powerful, could manage — but Jiang Ling certainly could.

Jiang Ling instinctively glanced at the night sky outside, then scratched his head. “Right now?”

“Indeed.” Ming Huazhang clasped his hands again in courtesy. “Many thanks.”

The Feihong Hall.

Princess Taiping reclined against her armrest, pressing her fingers to her temples against a headache. Yao Huang entered softly, saw that the Princess’s mood was poor, and asked: “Your Highness, it’s already the hour of the Rat — why haven’t you slept?”

Princess Taiping sighed. “One person after another is dying on this estate. Who knows which ghost has set its eyes on someone tonight — how am I supposed to sleep?”

Yao Huang trimmed the candle wick and moved it gently closer to Princess Taiping. “Your Highness is the daughter of the Son of Heaven, blessed with deep fortune, and protected by heaven itself. What ghost or spirit would dare come near you?”

Princess Taiping exhaled a long, stale breath. On the first night someone had died she’d told herself the same thing — and then Wei Zi had been found with her eyes gouged out, dead in the estate, and Princess Taiping had been afraid.

The shock of a stranger’s death and the shock of someone you see every single day — the two were simply not comparable.

“If it were truly a ghostly haunting, I’d have nothing to fear,” Princess Taiping said. “I’d summon eminent monks for an exorcism rite and be done with it. What I fear is what lies behind the ghost.”

After Wei Zi’s incident, and although the third death was that of a minor maidservant named Lian Xin, Princess Taiping somehow felt with inexplicable certainty that the killing intent was aimed at her.

This was the intuition she had honed through more than a decade of navigating the treacherous currents of palace life — an intuition that had saved her life countless times. Now it was telling her: she was being targeted again.

Yao Huang did not dare say more and silently held the candle for the Princess. Princess Taiping voiced her complaints briefly, then quickly reined her emotions back in. “Where is the Prince Consort?”

“The Prince Consort has already retired to the eastern hall.”

Princess Taiping gave a faint nod. Beyond those who attended to her directly, few outsiders knew that despite their reputation for marital harmony, Princess Taiping and her Prince Consort kept separate rooms.

This was perhaps the one matter on which she and Wu Youji had reached a tacit understanding. Both were in their prime, young and attractive, and both were drawn to the other’s good looks; since their marriage they had had four children together. Princess Taiping loved poetry and music, and Prince Ding had considerable musical talent as well — the two of them were fond of pleasure and found pleasure together, and over the years had rarely quarreled.

Yet, just as Princess Taiping could no longer recapture the shy, fluttering joy of being a bride for the first time, Prince Ding never refused the obligations of husband and wife but seldom slept beside her. Perhaps, in his heart, he was also wary of her.

Princess Taiping’s first Prince Consort had been the cousin she had grown up alongside — the man she loved. Their wedding was spoken of in Chang’an as a beautiful story to this day. But Xue Shao was the son of Princess Cheng’yang, unmistakably of the Li family — and her mother felt she had married wrongly and insisted she remarry into the Wu clan.

Princess Taiping had resisted, of course. But even when she knelt at her mother’s feet holding her newborn child in her arms, her mother still ordered Xue Shao put to death.

By the most cruel means possible: starvation.

After that, Princess Taiping understood two things. First: the arm cannot be stronger than the leg — never do anything that only invites humiliation upon yourself. Second: love is merely a plaything. Power is the finest lover of all.

Princess Taiping gave up fighting. Following her mother’s decree, she chose from among the Wu nephews the one who suited her best. That person was Wu Youji.

Xue Shao had died in prison because she had chosen him; Wu Youji became the second man to receive her favor — so, to make room for the Princess, he had to have his own wife killed.

Yes — Wu Youji had once had a wife. Whether he had any feeling for that woman was a question no one ever asked, because it did not matter. Even if he had refused to act, his parents and brothers would have acted for him.

The two of them married amid song and dance, with ten thousand people offering blessings. Wu Youji was thereafter granted the title Prince Ding and became Princess Taiping’s Prince Consort — the envy of the age.

Princess Taiping could no longer remember what expression Wu Youji had worn on their wedding night. In a blink, these two people on their second marriages had walked together for so long that even their eldest daughter had already been wed.

Whether her concern about Prince Ding’s whereabouts was more suspicion than care, or more care than suspicion, Princess Taiping could not quite have said. Wei Zi was dead. Someone wanted to kill her. When Princess Taiping grasped this, the very first person who surfaced in her mind was Prince Ding.

Princess Taiping made no comment and asked again: “And Prince Wei?”

“Prince Wei has called for people to come to his hall and perform for him. He makes noise like that every night until very late.”

Princess Taiping was not surprised. This was what the nobility did best. If not for the series of deaths, the entire estate would be filled with song and merriment right now — and Princess Taiping would have no reason for this sleepless restlessness.

Thinking of why she had held the Feihong Banquet in the first place, Princess Taiping said with irritation: “What an inauspicious omen. I should never have named this place ‘Feihong’ — ‘flying red.’ I haven’t seen the splendid gathering I hoped for, but I’ve certainly seen plenty of flying red corpses.”

Yao Huang smiled along politely, not daring to echo the sentiment. Thinking of Wei Zi’s condition, she couldn’t help but shudder involuntarily.

In this era of widespread Taoism and Buddhism, people believed in both gods and the afterlife, and in the existence of spirits. Yao Huang was genuinely afraid that Wei Zi had met a ghost and been chosen as a stand-in to take her place, and that the ghost would come looking for her next.

After all, she and Wei Zi had worked side by side; the times they had exchanged glances were uncountable, and petty quarrels were unavoidable.

Princess Taiping had no desire to sleep, so even if Yao Huang was about to drop dead with exhaustion, she had to keep her eyes open and keep the Princess company. She was racking her brain for something to say when a maidservant suddenly announced from outside the door: “Your Highness, the Young Master of Marquis Jiang’an and the Second Young Master of the Duke of Zhenguo’s household request an audience.”

Those words made no sense whatsoever in context. Princess Taiping frowned with displeasure. “What have they come here for?”

Although Princess Taiping kept male favorites and paid little heed to things like proper appearances, two half-grown young men coming to call on her in the middle of the night was quite another matter — that was impertinence. The maidservant could feel the Princess’s displeasure and trembled as she replied: “This servant doesn’t know either. It was the Young Master of Marquis Jiang’an who insisted this servant come and report. The Second Young Master also said he wished to discuss philosophical matters with Your Highness.”

Princess Taiping was the sort of person who had no patience for sitting down with a crowd of nobodies to philosophize — especially not in the middle of the night. She was on the verge of refusing outright, but even as the words formed in her mouth, her instincts made a swift circuit of her mind.

Jiang’an’s son was a useless good-for-nothing — that much she knew. But even the most unaccomplished of children would know that harassing a Princess at this hour was an offense worthy of beheading. So why would he do it?

And that Second Young Master of the Ming household — she had just seen him not long ago, and he was unmistakably not the sort of man to act without purpose. Whatever he intended to say — why couldn’t it wait until morning?

Philosophical matters… Princess Taiping’s mind flashed to something; her palm clenched tight. She forced herself to relax again and, in a deliberately offhand tone, said: “How tiresome. Well, since I can’t sleep anyway — show them in.”

Yao Huang was astonished that Princess Taiping had agreed to receive them at all, and even more astonished that she immediately dismissed every attendant from the room. The two young men had barely stepped through the door when Princess Taiping sent all her serving women out.

Yao Huang cast a glance at the Second Young Master Ming’s uncommonly striking bearing, and couldn’t help thinking: surely this young man hadn’t found studying too arduous and come to offer himself to the Princess as a shortcut to advancement?

She looked Ming Huazhang over critically from head to foot and was compelled to admit: given his looks, he certainly had the assets for it.

Once everyone had been dismissed, Princess Taiping dropped all pretense and asked directly: “What have you come here for?”

Ming Huazhang and Jiang Ling stood in the hall. Ming Huazhang, seeing no reason to exclude Jiang Ling, spoke without reserve. “Your Royal Highness, the rumors of a Snake Ghost harming people — there is every reason to believe they are directed against Prince Luling.”

Even setting Princess Taiping aside, Jiang Ling drew in a sharp, audible breath. Ming Huazhang and Xie Jichuan had stood at his bedside deep in the night and said only that they had found the killer and needed him to carry word — they had never said it also had something to do with Prince Luling.

Jiang Ling was already regretting having climbed aboard this ship, but having come this far, all he could do was brace himself and listen as Ming Huazhang finished speaking. “The guard in blue who stood beside Prince Ding today is very likely the perpetrator behind all three killings. This one does not know the inner workings of the Princess’s household, and so ventures to ask Your Highness: is this man someone who once served in the military but was pushed out, fierce and combative, physically formidable — and does he have a wife who was once a maidservant and later ran off with a man of wealth?”

Because of his family connections, Jiang Ling had frequent dealings with Princess Taiping’s household and had some passing knowledge of the Princess’s and the Prince Consort’s personal attendants. With each thing Ming Huazhang named, his eyes widened a fraction more — until at last Jiang Ling stared in astonishment and blurted: “How do you know all that?”

Judging from their expressions, Ming Huazhang knew that Ming Huashang had been correct on every single point. He said: “There is no time to explain the circumstances fully. I ask Your Highness to trust me — my sole intention is the good of the Great Tang. The guard beside Prince Ding has committed one murder after another specifically to substantiate the story of a Snake Ghost killing people, as a means of moving against Prince Luling. They will strike again tonight. My friend Xie Jichuan has already gone to shadow the killer. The situation is extremely urgent — I implore Your Highness to intervene and help these innocent souls obtain justice.”

Jiang Ling let out a slow, vague sound of understanding. Only now did he realize where Xie Jichuan had gone. He wasn’t quite convinced that Ming Huazhang could wake up one morning and suddenly know who the killer was, and in one breath declare with certainty that the target was Prince Luling — that seemed too extraordinary. He had summoned no coroner to examine the bodies, deployed no constables to question anyone. Had a bodhisattva told him all this in a dream?

This was so far-fetched that not even a pig would believe it! Jiang Ling was about to open his mouth to ask Ming Huazhang to calm down — when Princess Taiping shot abruptly to her feet, her face drained of all color. “Where is he?”

“Xie Jichuan left markers along the way.” Ming Huazhang’s voice was clear and concise, without a single wasted word. “Please gather your trusted people, Your Highness, and follow me.”