Inside and Outside the Palace
Sunlight struck the gilded eaves, scattering a wash of gold across the great hall. On the dragon throne at its highest point Helian Qi sat rigid as carved jade, his gaze sharp enough to cut through the assembled ministers. The strings of golden beads on his beaded crown tinkled as if to punctuate the fury in his face.
Below him, at the head of the ministers, Chancellor Nangong was bowed, urgent. “A nation cannot go a day without an empress. Your Majesty must appoint a new one.”
Standing at his side, Chancellor Dongfang’s voice curled with offended pride. “Do you have to lecture us on how an emperor conducts his court?”
Helian Qi watched them both with an expression like winter. These men were pitted against one another for nothing more than their own clout.
Chancellor Nangong pressed on. “The empress erred and was sent from the palace. Whose fault is that, if not yours, Chancellor Dongfang? Your family failed in its duty. If Your Majesty does not name a new empress, the realm will be imperiled!”
Dongfang’s temple veins jumped; the old man’s accusation stung as if aimed at his household. “Ha!” he snapped. “Do not forget that our Concubine Chu is of the Dongfang—”
“Enough!” Helian Qi’s voice cut across them like a whip. “Silence!”
He rose, the light catching the hard line of his jaw. “Must you two decide matters of the harem? Perhaps one of you should be emperor, then.”
The pair of chancellors sank to their knees so suddenly their robes wrinkled. “Your servant dares not—”
Helian Qi’s lips twitched in a bitter smile. “I think you dare quite a lot,” he said, and then, with an abrupt motion of his sleeve, signaled the end of the audience.
The hall filled with the sound of ministers falling to their faces. “Long live the emperor—have mercy!” they intoned. Helian Qi gave only a faint sweep of his hand and left the dais. The courtiers rose and called after him in unison, “We escort Your Majesty!” Then they dispersed, whispering, eyes darting to one another.
Outside the palace gates, Nangong swaggered, triumphant. “Old Dongfang,” he taunted, voice edged with malice. “With your empress gone, your family’s power has lost its strongest pillar. It’s only a matter of time before my Nangong clan stands over you.”
He turned sharply and stalked away, too pleased with himself to wait for retort. Dongfang remained where he was, anger collapsing into a tighter, colder worry. His daughter—what had become of her now that she was out of the palace? Was she safe? Had she been hurt?
He stamped a foot as if to drive the worry back. The times were unforgiving; the border wars favored military families like the Nangongs. That, he thought, had been the root of their current misfortune.
Back in Chengqian Palace, Helian Qi sat at a desk buried in memorials. One hand propped his temple; his eyes were half-closed from the strain of the morning’s court.
“Your Majesty, Consort Shun pays her respects,” announced a eunuch at the door.
Consort Shun. Helian Qi frowned—he couldn’t immediately place her. Then the memory clicked into place: she had been sent by the Nangong household and given the rank of concubine as a courtesy to them. The palace had buzzed about it as if she were favored overnight.
Consort Shun swept into the room with a shy eagerness. “Your Majesty,” she said, bowing, and then brightened. “I made you purple sweet-potato soup with my own hands. It’s a taste from my home.”
Helian Qi’s gaze flickered, oddly soft for a moment. He reached out, drew her into his arms, and the courtiers’ grand palace heard its emperor murmur, “How thoughtful of you, my dear.”
She flushed, sixteen and trembling, heart pounding like a drum. In the Nangong uncle’s house where she had been raised, she had been told from the day she was sent to the household that one day she would enter the palace, that one day she would be bound to an emperor. The man in front of her—handsome, distant, and suddenly warm—felt like destiny.
“Your Majesty—” she giggled and buried her face in the emperor’s chest.
The smile did not last long on Helian Qi’s face. It smoothed back into the familiar mask of cool distance, and he let her go with a quiet, almost automatic grace.
Far from the palace, on the north bank of the Nanwu River, the Duoyu Inn vibrated with a different kind of life.
“What is this you’re serving, landlady?” a man at a corner table bellowed, half incredulous, half delighted.
Dongfang Yi—landlady, former noble, and to anyone who knew her story, the ex-empress who had fled the capital—flipped a dish with a flourish. “Pineapple fried rice,” she said. “Didn’t you ask for something both sweet and tart, flavorful but not greasy? This is perfect.”
The guest dug a spoon into the hollowed-out pineapple and popped a forkful into his mouth. Then he leaned back, eyes closing. “Delicious! Woman, you’re a miracle worker!”
Dongfang Yi laughed and waved him off. Her grin was so wide it threatened to lift her off the floor. Since transmigrating—since the impossible had happened and she found herself in this era—she had clawed her way to this small triumph: half ownership of the Duoyu Inn. That stake had been enough to set her heart racing with schemes. She would grow it, one step at a time, become prosperous, and become someone the world could not ignore.
She swayed with her ledger in hand, delighted by the simplicity of the joy around her.
Situ Qing had just come in and paused in the doorway, watching her with a soft, amused smile. He had seen her like this before—easily pleased, hugely dramatic. If people didn’t know she'd once sat in a palace, they would think her a naïve country girl. He almost laughed aloud at the contrast: once an empress, now enchanted by pineapple and fried rice.
“Xiao Dong,” he murmured, moving close enough to ruffle her hair.
“Qingqing, you’re back!” Dongfang Yi’s brow puckered the momentary crease of worry into a scolding. “Why have you been gone so long this time?”
Situ Qing, who sometimes disappeared for a day or two to attend to matters she didn’t know about, had been absent for over a week this time. Had he not returned, she joked to herself they might have set the inn adrift.
“It was a little complicated,” he said, scratching his head and smiling crookedly. “That’s why I was late.”
“Late?” she snapped, though her tone softened. “A week is hardly ‘a little’ late.”
Situ Qing’s grin deepened until his eyes shone with mischief. His face, kind and open, was the sort that made people confess things they hadn’t planned to. “Dongfang,” he teased, “tell me—did you miss me?”
She pretended to glare, but the flare of her cheeks betrayed her. In the small world they’d carved out together—two fugitives from court life decamped to an inn by the river—there was room for warm, everyday intimacies like this. Outside the palace, where power and pretense ruled, such moments were luxuries. Inside, beneath the carved beams and the scent of frying rice, they were home.