Zhao Bing and Lu Qianfan had already settled the matter between them: if Li Fei insisted on joining the Demon Suppression Bureau, they would grant her a blue-black python robe and watch how she conducted herself.
But the gifts Li Fei had brought were simply too generous, and Zhao Bing found himself torn.
And now that Li Fei had laid her cards on the table and the Song Emperor was visibly wavering, the assembled ministers could no longer keep their seats. Remonstrances came thick and fast.
"Shameless boasting! Our celestial empire has no lack of fine young men. Since when have the affairs of the realm fallen into a woman's hands?"
"If a woman is set in high office, what becomes of this court's dignity? Your Majesty, the laws of the ancestors must not be altered!"
"Insolence! To offer congratulations to His Majesty is nothing more than a subject's duty, yet you dare hold your favor hostage for reward! Your Majesty, this woman's intent alone merits death!"
"..."
They might drool over the elixir of immortality, but they feared Lu Qianfan more. If Li Fei were left free to bewitch the sovereign's heart, none of them could survive Nine Thousand Years' retaliation.
In the swelling clamor, Zhao Bing's resolve softened, and he sighed. "Allow me to consider the matter a while..."
Dog emperor. Serves him right to be hounded for an heir every single day.
Li Fei let exactly the right measure of disappointment cross her face, then bravely mustered a smile — farming goodwill by the point.
In truth she had expected nothing else. Zhao Bing was soft by nature, with neither the nerve to break with precedent and set a new one, nor the ruthlessness to bring his ministers to heel. Even if he genuinely wished to hand her the post of Commander, Lu Qianfan would not have to lift a finger; with the entire civil and military court boiling over, the man was bound to retreat.
Barring surprises, how high this round of tribute would carry her still depended on the Song Emperor going home and hashing it out with Lu Qianfan behind closed doors.
Li Fei's tact only left Zhao Bing more ill at ease. He thought for a moment, then turned to the eunuch and said, "Bring brush and ink."
"At once."
The eunuch bowed and hurried off, returning with the Four Treasures of the Study.
Before the whole hall, Zhao Bing swept his brush across the paper and left four great characters:
Peerless in All the World.
He signed it with the name Yunshan the Recluse, then placed the scroll into Li Fei's hands himself, his manner warm and gracious.
"Minister Li, last time I promised you a piece of my calligraphy. Today I suppose that promise is kept."
"Thank you, Your Majesty!"
Li Fei accepted the scroll, lingered over it with a look of open admiration, and only then put it carefully away.
"Minister Li has the ambition of the swan, and wishes to serve the court. I would never let so bright a pearl be cast into the dark. Only, as to precisely what office suits you, I must weigh the matter a little longer." Zhao Bing's voice gentled. "Come and share the evening banquet with me."
The words had barely left his mouth before another stir ran through the ministers.
"Gladly."
Li Fei accepted without a hint of hesitation.
She knew the custom well. Every Longevity Festival, famed cooks from every corner of the land were summoned to the imperial city to work alongside the palace chefs on two feasts: the Ministers' Banquet and the Imperial Family Banquet.
The former was a magnificent spread laid on for the high officials who had presented gifts. The latter, as the name said, was a family gathering of the imperial clan and its relations — and only ministers whom the emperor especially trusted and favored, or who had rendered enormous service, or whose gifts had been extraordinarily precious, ever received a personal invitation to it.
For Li Fei to be invited meant the dog emperor now counted her as one of his own.
With the last of the tribute delivered, a eunuch sidled forward, eyes lowered. "Your Majesty, the auspicious hour has come."
"Good. Then let it begin."
Zhao Bing nodded, pleased.
"At once."
The eunuch turned and withdrew.
Before long, fireworks burst in brilliant flowers across the night, lighting the sky, and bells rang out through the palace.
In the Golden Throne Hall, palace maids wove back and forth like shuttles on a loom, bearing exquisite dishes carved into dragons and phoenixes. The musicians struck up their instruments, and the place became an immortal realm brought down to earth.
Zhao Bing raised his cup, offered a few gracious words, drank three toasts, and departed amid the blessings of his ministers.
"Hero Nie, won't you come along?" Li Fei asked, seizing the gap.
"No." Nie Yunyi did not soften it. "I want an explanation."
Clearly her performance tonight had earned his disapproval.
"Then we'll talk when I'm back," Li Fei said, perfectly composed.
"Fine."
Nie Yunyi gave her a long look, brushed off the eunuch who came to invite him to the Imperial Family Banquet, and left with his sword.
Li Fei followed Zhao Bing out, together with several of Lu Qianfan's adopted sons and one old Daoist of the Mountain-Moving Sect, leaving the Golden Throne Hall under cover of night and making for the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the emperor's own residence.
The Empress came too, silent from beginning to end, without so much as sparing Li Fei a second glance.
Soon enough the party reached the Hall of Mental Cultivation. Zhao Bing halted before the vermilion doors and waved a hand.
"Go in ahead. I would have a private word with Minister Li."
Lu Qianfan's lapdogs knew that the noise Li Fei had made tonight was well past anything they were fit to decide, and filed obediently inside.
"Minister Li, these past few days in Lin'an — has the food and lodging suited you?"
After a few rounds of idle small talk, Zhao Bing could hold back no longer. "That Heaven-Grasping Vase is truly no ordinary thing. An Immortal Venerable gave it to you?"
"That's right." Li Fei smiled faintly. "The Immortal Venerable judged me a kind-hearted physician. But even the cleverest cook cannot make a meal without rice, so he gave me the Heaven-Grasping Vase, that I might ripen more spirit herbs and carry my medicine box through the world. Yet little by little I came to see that however fine my skill, however marvelous the herbs, I could save a hundred lives, a thousand — set against all the suffering multitudes, that is a cup of water thrown on a burning cart. And so I am willing to carry on the Immortal Venerable's will, and place the Heaven-Grasping Vase in hands more worthy of the trust."
"Oh? It seems Minister Li already has someone in mind." Zhao Bing asked the question he already knew the answer to.
"Your servant has been lodging these past days in the Prime Minister's Residence, and Hero Nie told me that Chancellor Liu threw his whole heart behind the true dragon all those years ago because he saw Your Majesty's kindness. Your servant agrees with him entirely!" Li Fei clicked her tongue in admiration. "Chancellor Liu may be a mortal man, but he grasps the great principles, and his thinking and the Immortal Venerable's run along the very same line!
"Understand this: not even an Immortal Venerable can attend to every matter himself. Like the Duke of Zhou, who spat out his food to greet a worthy guest, he must choose the virtuous and employ the able before he can hold up a clear and ordered heaven.
"It is the same with emperors! The Great Song is a land rich in talent. So long as Your Majesty keeps a kind heart, men and women of ability — such as your servant, such as Chancellor Liu — will be moved of their own accord to handle the particulars for you and set the realm in good order. But if a sovereign's heart is crooked, then though he possessed the talent to order heaven and earth, in the end he would be abandoned by all, his people groaning with resentment, and this fair land of rivers and mountains ruined in a single day!
"And Your Majesty — Your Majesty is a benevolent ruler such as comes once in a thousand years!"
Li Fei grew more impassioned with every word, until at last she raised the Heaven-Grasping Vase in both hands and offered it up.
"Your servant wishes to help Your Majesty sweep the demons away, sweep across the six directions, contend for the empire, unite men and ghosts and demons and devils alike, and found a legacy for ten thousand generations!"
The stream of flattery left Zhao Bing thoroughly comfortable in his own skin, and yet he set his face into severity.
"Minister Li, I know your sincerity is genuine, but how could I lightly take so precious a thing for my own... Put it away, put it away."
At that, any number of beautifully turned phrases surged up inside Li Fei — none of them fit for the ears of a sovereign — yet she kept her head bowed, her tone earnest, and played along with the posturing dog emperor.
"Only in Your Majesty's hands will it be put to its fullest use."
"Let it be. I would be ashamed to accept it." Zhao Bing shook his head again.
"The Immortal Venerable said: to establish a heart for heaven and earth, to establish a destiny for the living, to carry on the lost learning of the sages past, to open an age of peace for ten thousand generations." Li Fei sighed. "Your servant lacks the Immortal Venerable's grandeur of spirit, but with an enlightened ruler standing before me, how could I begrudge a mere outward possession?"
"'To open an age of peace for ten thousand generations' — what a line. The Immortal Venerable's bearing must be beyond compare. It stirs my very soul." Zhao Bing clasped his hands behind his back, and at last a smile broke through. "Still, you are honest indeed. Were I in your place, I might not have resisted claiming those words as my own."
"Your servant's learning is shallow, but I understand that one deals with others in good faith. Would I go about swindling people and passing off another's leavings as my own?" Li Fei said it without a blush or a flutter of the pulse.
"Good, good, good!"
Judging the ritual of three offers and three refusals to have run its course, Zhao Bing dropped the false modesty at last. "Since Minister Li treats me with sincerity, then I shall no longer let your goodwill go to waste."
He paused, and then made his promise.
"Naturally, I shall not leave you short-changed. Your office still requires some deliberation, but apart from that, this much I can decide on my own: choose three items from the Inner Treasury. Consider it my gift in return."
Only then did Zhao Bing take the Heaven-Grasping Vase, cradling it carefully, staring at it for a long moment before handing it over to a guard with obvious reluctance.
"Keep it well."
He said nothing more, because the guard was no fool. The man held the vase in both hands with his breath stopped in his chest.
A Heaven Realm master, proof against heat and cold — and within moments the front of his robe was soaked through with sweat.
Li Fei watched it all with a smile, as though gratified to see the Heaven-Grasping Vase pass into worthy hands. Yet on the half of her face that the moonlight cut away into shadow, the light in her eyes ran distinctly deep.
No one in this world understood better than she did that to catch a thing, you first let it run. Had the Song Emperor been an enlightened ruler with his court firmly in hand, she would have squeezed him for everything he was worth, using the vase as a chip to bargain for the greatest possible return.
Unfortunately this emperor was a waste of a man, which forced Li Fei to revise her plan. All she wanted now was to win as much of his trust as she could — hence the lowered posture, hence offering the vase up unasked.
And the brilliance of the smile on Zhao Bing's face was a fair measure of how well it had worked.
"Enough of that. Come and dine with me. Tonight's banquet is the masterwork of the finest cooks in the realm, poured out with all their heart. I trust it will not disappoint Minister Li..."
With the vase in hand, Zhao Bing was attentive enough to lead the way himself, guiding her into the Hall of Mental Cultivation.
Li Fei let her gaze travel around the room. Even counting herself and Zhao Bing, barely a dozen people were seated.
Several of Lu Qianfan's adopted sons were present, which was only natural. Given the relationship between the emperor and Nine Thousand Years, these men could have called Zhao Bing 'stepfather' without anyone blinking, so of course they enjoyed his deepest trust. Lu Qianfan himself, however, had not come. Who knew what he was scheming.
The Perfected of the Mountain-Moving Sect was there as well. The sect was the largest religious order within the Song Dynasty, and with demons prowling on every side it had always shared one breath and one branch with the court; no thought of suppressing it had ever existed.
Beyond them, there remained only the Empress and a trio — one old man, two children.
The old man was tall and heavily built, his features cast in a ferocious mold; in his youth he must have been a hard man indeed. Now, though, even his eyebrows had gone white, and he was watching a girl of twelve or thirteen and a boy of five or six with a doting expression.
That, plainly, was Prince Rong — the one who had come within a hair's breadth of taking it all, and who had been confined ever since to his princely manor in Lin'an.
Judging by his comfortable paunch, the mild-tempered Zhao Bing had treated him decently, going so far as to fatten a man whose hands were steeped in the blood of his own kin into a broad-minded, well-fed country squire. The two children were presumably his direct descendants, and both wore the same look of untouched innocence.
"Come, drink a cup or two with me." Seeing Zhao Bing enter, Prince Rong raised his cup with a hearty laugh. The two of them seemed on tolerably good terms.
This few? That was all?
The question flickered through Li Fei's mind, and she worked it out soon enough.
An Imperial Family Banquet ought never to be this thin. Every emperor before this one had brought along, besides the Empress, at least a handful of favored consorts, plus a crowd of imperial relatives, princes and grandsons, princesses and their consorts — enough to fill the room with noise.
But this emperor liked men, and on top of that had an elder brother with a taste for butchering his own siblings, and between that and the disasters of heaven and man, the vast imperial house had withered down to this...
Li Fei's smile grew brighter still.
The fewer members the imperial house had, the harder the dog emperor would press Lu Qianfan to produce children...
Prince Rong, you slaughtered them beautifully. Beautifully! I'll break my rule and toast you a cup later.
"Minister Li, no need to stand on ceremony." Zhao Bing spoke up, his manner amiable. "Just now I heard how highly you spoke of the Empress... then sit beside her. Get to know one another properly."
Su Wen's eyelids trembled. The imperial physician, for her part, hemmed and hawed with all the reluctance of someone dying to be persuaded.
"This — this is hardly proper. Your servant and the Empress are separated by rank..."
"Tonight is a family banquet. There is no rank here." Zhao Bing waved it off. "If a minister of my own right arm were to become sworn sisters with the Empress, word of it would make rather a fine story..."
"Your Majesty is truly broad-minded!" Li Fei praised him from the bottom of her heart.
In all her years, this was genuinely the first emperor she had met who was so eager to fit the cuckold's hat onto his own head.
Rather than let such kind intentions go to waste, Li Fei sat down beside the cold, silent Empress with a charming smile, and said in her sweetest voice, "I hope Her Majesty the Empress will not take offense."
Su Wen's heart would not stop shuddering, and the demon in the mirror's baffling nonsense — something about being 'taken right in front of the husband' — went on circling her ears without end.
She held her composed, upright bearing together by force of will and looked straight ahead. "Pour my wine."
Li Fei obliged, her voice low and warm. "Your Majesty, please."
"Again."
"Again."
Three cups went down one after another, and only when the burning of the wine numbed the tremor inside her did Su Wen say coldly, "Why do you not drink yourself?"
"Your servant is a physician. I must keep a clear head at all times." Li Fei lifted one snow-pale hand, five slender fingers stirring nimbly in the air, her breath as sweet as orchids. "If I drink, these hands stop obeying me. They get into trouble."
The wine must have been strong, for a flush had risen to Su Wen's cheeks. As one humiliating scene after another surged into her mind, her gaze turned hazy — and her voice turned colder still. "Hmph. Then those hands have surely committed their share of sins."
"How could you say such a thing?" Li Fei put on a look of piteous, wronged innocence, her body shifting as if by accident until she was pressed against the Empress and the last sliver of space between them vanished.
Su Wen started, and glanced at Zhao Bing out of the corner of her eye without meaning to.
He was trading cups with Prince Rong, the mood between them lively, and had not noticed this side of the room at all.
Su Wen let out her breath, though the flutter of alarm inside her would not disperse. She meant to edge away — and then, for no reason she could name, the desolate courtyard outside Funing Palace rose in her mind.
So she did not move. And a tremor too faint to catch had entered her voice.
"Pour me another cup."
"Your Majesty must not drink so quickly. You should take care of your health." Li Fei coaxed her gently, yet filled the cup all the same, her eyes bright with sidelong light.
The wine went down, and did nothing to untangle the snarl in Su Wen's chest. If anything it drew the knots tighter.
She had only to turn her face aside and that smiling, laughing profile would leave the edge of her vision. She had only to draw in her arm and their elbows would stop brushing.
But Her Majesty the Empress was greedy for the tea-fragrance lingering at the tip of her nose, and for the lovely, beguiling voice that would not leave her ear, and so she did nothing at all, and let herself struggle back and forth in a torment of wanting and fearing to lose.
And so, at a family banquet meant to be warm with good cheer, this stately, coldly beautiful, impeccably dignified Empress passed the evening in unbearable torment, every second stretched into a year. Su Wen had never been so tense in her life — and yet something rose in her that she could not name or explain, something that seemed to be praying for time to slow down.
Her eyes drifted, without intent, to the Song Emperor, laughing again and again, visibly drunk, and she felt colder still. Even her faint resentment had vanished without trace, as though he were some middle-aged stranger met on the road, a man with no connection to her whatsoever, unworthy of so much as a glance from a true phoenix. The Empress curled the corner of her mouth in a soundless laugh, lifted her cup again, waited for the imperial physician to fill it attentively for her, and then tasted it slowly — and found this wine far more fragrant than any before, without the least trace of bitterness.
Her Majesty, always so measured and self-possessed, finally understood why some people became greedy for drink. If the imperial physician were the one pouring, she could go on drinking until dawn.
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