“You will not blame him for it,” JingYi told them gently, holding their gazes, willing them to understand. “I asked him to release me for reasons that were mine alone. He honoured that choice.”
Feng’s face softened with a dawning understanding. Wu Ma’s crumpled with sorrow, but even her indignation faded into a sigh of reluctant acceptance.
JingYi squeezed the woman’s hand. “Tell me. What happened after I left?”
Wu Ma exchanged a look with Feng. “After you left, things got truly out of hand.”
Feng nodded. “You knew dysentery started in the servants’ quarters. But without you here, no one was able to control it.”
“You’ve written protocols. Remedies.” Wu Ma’s voice lowered. “But Master Yu took credit for them and made a mess of the proportions. The nobles were terrified it’d spread to their palaces. They started hoarding everything. Goldenroot, most of all.”
JingYi’s stomach turned. That herb had been the base of half her most effective tinctures.
Wu Ma went on. “They locked it away. Refused to spare even a pinch for the servants or guards. ‘Precautionary,’ they said.”
“And the emperor?”
“Did nothing,” Feng said bitterly. “He just fretted about whether his autumn hunting trip to the Tzadun-Khör plains would be delayed. Said the weak should just perish, as they always did.”
Then Wu Ma smiled, small and grim. “But the Crown Prince didn’t sit idle. He stormed the Dispensary and ordered the doors opened. Made them release the goldenroots and the decoctionsto the lower halls. He had Master Yu dragged out by his collar and ordered a new apothecary rotation. He said if a noble had to fall ill for balance to be restored, so be it.”
JingYi leaned back. ShunLi had watched the nobility barricade their medicines, their consciences, and done what their father never would:acted. What the emperor had built glittered from afar, but inside, the beams were full of termites. Perhaps it had taken someone willing to strike at the root, even at the cost of their own blood.
“Is the kingdom better now?” she asked. “Are people happier? Healthier?”
“The common folk sing his name now, Highness,” Feng said. “The rice stores reopened, the medicines shared. Our grains are no longer shipped out to other kingdoms but sold to the people. Prices came down. Even the poor can afford to eat. There hasn’t been a dysentery death in weeks.”
The girl hesitated, then leaned forward to whisper, “But not everyone’s pleased. The noble families that courted Emperor HaiYán’s favours for decades lost their power, so they’re calling it a butcher’s peace. And there’s the matter of the Tzadun-Khör alliance . . .”
JingYi’s brow creased. “The marriage agreement?”
Feng glanced toward the doorway. “One of the broom maids in the West Lotus Wing told me she overheard two stewards discussing it as they passed through the courtyard. Something about the Tzadun-Khör envoy being furious that the new Emperor broke the agreement, refusing to take an Omega bride from their tribes, even though it was promised. Instead, he’s chosen someone who isn’t even Xûen.”
Wu Ma sucked in a breath through her teeth. “That’s a grave insult. The Warriors of the Plains have long memories.” She shook her head slowly, lips pursed in a grim line. “Thiscould bring war with the borderlands. Just when the kingdom is starting to see hope of recovery from sickness and famine.”
JingYi remembered the old maps that once lay before her—the jagged southern border of Xûen-Sarai, where the jade-coloured mountains gave way to the golden steppes. For generations, the Tzadun-Khör tribes had patrolled those vast and volatile frontiers. Their allegiance was crucial to guarding the southern gateway into Xûen-Sarai and into Issoirea.
Without their watchful warriors, the border would be porous, vulnerable.But the surrendering of their lands and their alliance came with a price: recognition, trade, and intermarriage with the imperial bloodline—namely the Tsaiqun-Veyara clan.
She stared down at the table, heart tightening. She hadn’t asked ShunLi to do it, hadn’t even known of the proposal when it was made. But she couldn’t pretend she didn’t understand. ShunLi had cast the decades-old pact aside and traded a powerful southern alliance for one with the northfor her.To get Tremore to agree to shelter her.
Her fingers curled into her palms. Was it wrong, then, to feel so conflicted? To feel both gratitude . . . and guilt?
She let the silence linger a moment longer, then as her eyes scanned the bookshelves, she asked, “Are there no more books on limyerite medical research? The one outlining the effects of prolonged exposures to the purple varieties? I can’t find them anywhere.”
Wu Ma’s brow furrowed. “When you asked High Princess LinXin, we helped her look but couldn’t find any. Strange. I thought I’d seen more, too.”
“I checked last week,” Feng added. “Just to see if someone who borrowed the books might’ve returned them. But there was no withdrawal slip. They could’ve been sent to the academy archive, but no one’s sure.”
“No one’s sure?” JingYi repeated, brows knitting.
Feng shrugged. “Some of the older tomes do get quietly cycled out during the reorganizations.”
JingYi nodded. Perhaps she was afraid of a shadow that wasn’t even there. Perhaps the disappearance meant nothing, merely a scribe’s carelessness.
For now, she tucked the unease away—a sliver of bone beneath the skin.
CHAPTER 66