Chapter 40 - 1#

Jingzhe rarely slept beside Rong Jiu.

They had shared a bed before, but the occasions where they had actually gotten in together and settled down to sleep were remarkably few. The unusual circumstances of the previous night were a different matter entirely — he’d barely had time to register anything before it was over.

Jingzhe wrestled with himself for a moment. “Why don’t you sleep first?”

“Why?”

“I’m worried you won’t be able to sleep.”

Rong Jiu had already pulled back the covers and lay down before Jingzhe finished the sentence. His manner suggested this was not a problem worth acknowledging.

“It’s fine.”

Jingzhe ventured carefully, “But aren’t you a light sleeper?”

Rong Jiu’s brow moved slightly. “Shi Li told you that?”

Whatever had passed between Jingzhe and Shi Li, Jingzhe couldn’t imagine they’d had much to talk about. But he’d managed to glean a few things from the conversation — enough to understand that Rong Jiu slept lightly.

Or rather: that being woken up gave him a very bad temper.

Jingzhe thought about the expression on Shi Li’s face when he’d mentioned it, and found himself very curious about exactly what kind of “bad temper” could produce that look of barely suppressed suffering.

Probably genuinely quite bad.

He didn’t expose Shi Li — not that it made much difference, given how transparent everything was anyway — and only coughed. “I just thought, the few times before, you always woke up early. I wondered if I’d been disturbing you.”

In those handful of occasions, Jingzhe had almost never woken up next to Rong Jiu. Most of the time, he would open his eyes to an empty space beside him.

And Jingzhe was already the earliest riser in the palace.

The fact that Rong Jiu was consistently up before him was remarkable.

“You didn’t,” Rong Jiu said. “Go to sleep.”

Jingzhe lay looking at the soft bed and found he genuinely could not settle.

This wasn’t him making trouble for its own sake.

Now that those particular external circumstances were gone, he was experiencing — belatedly and rather acutely — the peculiar embarrassment of simply lying in a bed next to Rong Jiu.

Rong Jiu was already lying down, though, and Jingzhe had run out of reasons to stay sitting up. He lowered himself slowly and pulled the covers up to his chin.

He was even stiffer than the night before. For quite some time he lay there like a board.

Rong Jiu reached over without looking. “If you can’t sleep,” he said coldly, “I can press a point and knock you out.”

“The reason I can’t sleep is you,” Jingzhe muttered. “Couldn’t you just say we should sleep separately?”

What kind of solution was knocking someone unconscious?

That was awful.

He wouldn’t have minded a floor pallet. The spring air was a little damp, but it was manageable.

“I could pull out Shi Li’s tongue instead.”

Rong Jiu’s voice came from beside him in the dark, thin and cold. Jingzhe’s heart lurched. He fumbled around under the covers until his hand found the long, cool fingers beside him and grabbed on.

“He’s actually quite decent. Don’t do that.”

“In what way decent?”

“He and the other guard helped me chase away all those birds, and—” Jingzhe stopped himself. Something felt off. He redirected. “But however decent he is, he’s nowhere near as good as our Rong Jiu.”

He pivoted smoothly into flattery.

“I’ve never seen anyone as genuinely beautiful as Rong Jiu. That nose, those eyes, and his mouth — soft — everything just right, honestly I don’t know where you—”

“You’re always like this,” Rong Jiu interrupted, flat. “You’re only interested in the face.”

Whose nose wasn’t a nose, whose eyes weren’t eyes?

Jingzhe immediately objected. “That’s not it at all. Rong Jiu is as good-hearted as he is handsome — helping someone buy a house, handing over evidence, constantly bringing gifts — where else would I find such a generous fool?”

“Generous fool?”

Rong Jiu repeated this.

Jingzhe’s voice wavered almost imperceptibly. He chose to ignore this and continued with great warmth, heaping praise until he had placed Rong Jiu somewhere beyond the reach of celestial beings.

He did privately feel that Rong Jiu was, in certain respects, genuinely at a loss on this deal. The amount of money that had been spent was considerable. Jingzhe felt somewhat pained about this on his behalf. He worried that Rong Jiu had gotten the worse end of this particular exchange.

When Jingzhe got going, his mouth rivaled a sparrow’s.

Apparently Rong Jiu had had enough. Using their joined hands, he pulled Jingzhe into his arms and clamped his hand over Jingzhe’s mouth.

Jingzhe: “Mm-mf. Mmh.”

Right. Silenced. Nothing further could be said.

Rong Jiu looked down and bit Jingzhe’s upper lip, worrying at it like something that could be chewed, and did not release it until the lip had been thoroughly gnawed to a slight swell — then let go, and said at his leisure:

“No amount of flattery will get you the floor.”

Jingzhe swatted at him several times before the arm finally loosened, and he scooted back sharply, pressing a hand over his mouth. It throbbed and tingled.

He tested it gingerly. Still puffed.

This was insufferable. How was he supposed to go anywhere looking like this?

Jingzhe had, by now, seen straight through Rong Jiu’s reasoning.

All those concerns about safety, all those seemingly sensible points — in the end, it was just locking him in. That was all it came to.

He rolled over and dropped his head heavily onto Rong Jiu’s arm.

See how you like that.

Rong Jiu wrapped himself around Jingzhe with his full length of limb, drawing him in until there was nowhere left to retreat. “Stop overthinking everything,” he said — his voice quieter now, with the faintest suggestion of a sigh. “Things have a way of working out. Isn’t that what you always say?”

Jingzhe rarely heard Rong Jiu sigh.

This was a person who would sooner let others choke than let himself breathe out. On the few occasions Jingzhe could recall, every single one had seemed to be on his account.

Overthinking was not something Jingzhe could simply turn off — it had become wired into him as a survival instinct. Quieting an overactive mind was going to take a long time.

At the very least, it would take until he no longer had to worry about how to live—

But actually, the heaviest weight on him was nearly gone. The fall of the Huang family was close enough to touch now.

Thinking about it, a strange elation moved through him.

…It wasn’t admirable, being happy about someone’s downfall. But they were enemies. He was allowed a little of this.

He pressed his lips together, not wanting Rong Jiu to know he was being a little petty about it.

He lay in the warmth of those arms for a moment, then brought up the old question again.

“So — do you really have a bad temper in the mornings?”

Rong Jiu’s voice was cold, and reluctant. “Somewhat.”

Jingzhe, carefully: “How much is somewhat?”

He had learned by now that Rong Jiu habitually understated things. If you didn’t press further, you would be very easily misled.

A large, cool hand dropped over Jingzhe’s face and pressed his restless head down.

“One more word and I’ll lock you up.”

Rong Jiu had, apparently, identified exactly the right threat. On that single sentence, Jingzhe went silent, sank down, and closed his eyes without another sound.

Only — a hand crept surreptitiously beneath the covers, making its way along for a moment, until it found another large, cool hand. It was immediately caught and held firmly in place, and with no further means of escape it lay there, still and quiet.

Very much like Jingzhe himself — eyes closed, to anyone watching, convincingly asleep.

Rong Jiu held him close, long limbs curved around him so that there was nowhere left to go.

As Jingzhe had suspected, Rong Jiu did have a bad temper when woken. But he slept deeply once he was under, and almost nothing could disturb him.

Anyone who insisted on prying him awake from that had only themselves to blame.

This was entirely reasonable.

Rong Jiu was unreasonable, and unapologetically so.

*

Inside the Directorate of Palace Cleaning, several days of sweeping and clearing had restored the damaged rooms to something resembling their usual state. The chaos of before was mostly gone.

During those days, the entire Directorate — not just the Directorate of Cleaning itself — had few people coming or going. A suppressed, tense atmosphere had settled over all of it.

Several people in the Directorate had died in the infestation.

Guards were still patrolling in force throughout the palace, clearing out gu insects wherever they were found, and the cleaning staff had been released from their usual duties for the time being — left with nothing to do, which meant talking.

Human nature.

What drew the most attention, though, was the Directorate of Cleaning specifically.

Not a single person there had been hurt.

Even Laifu, who had been flat on his back in bed with nowhere to run, had come through without so much as a scratch. The only damage was to furniture and fittings.

Which, compared to lives, was nothing.

People came asking. The Directorate of Cleaning said, uniformly, they had no idea.

Jiang Jinming had been very clear about this.

The moment he realized everyone else had casualties and they had none, his first move was to gather everyone and issue a strict prohibition on saying a word about it outside.

Jiang Jinming was a capable head official. He had not gotten there on good temperament alone. He was prepared to use the rod on his own apprentice — as Yunkui could attest — and the people beneath him knew better than to cross him.

At the order of the head official, they complied. They told anyone who came asking that they had simply been lucky.

The people who came asking smiled along and cursed inwardly. Lucky? These things didn’t take detours. The Directorate of Cleaning was squarely in the path those insects had taken. How could they be the only ones untouched?

Jingzhe’s disappearance was the other thing people were watching.

From the day he had gone out into the rain to check on things and hadn’t come back, Huiping had been out of his mind with worry. Every time a patrol guard passed, he asked them three times over — had they found anyone? Was there a Jingzhe among them?

He was terrified of hearing nothing. More terrified of hearing something.

He had asked so many times that the guards, on sight of him, would raise a weary hand before he could open his mouth.

That meant no.

The inner palace was under intense surveillance in those days. The guards were run ragged — some had gone two or three days without rest.

Gusheng and Shi’en had been going with Huiping on his checks, pulling him back when he needed it, talking him down on the way. Their own faces weren’t particularly reassuring, either.

Each time they returned to the Directorate, someone else was there asking questions. One evening, an unidentified irritation rose up in all three of them at once.

Shi’en’s tongue was quick and sharp. He stepped forward and disposed of the questioner in a handful of pleasantly cutting sentences.

Once they’d gone, the young eunuch who’d been caught in the middle rubbed his head, looking faintly put-upon. “I really don’t know what they keep coming here for. With everything in chaos, shouldn’t they be looking after their own first?”

Huiping said flatly, “They resent that none of us died.” He dropped the words and walked inside without expression.

The young eunuch stared after him, slightly taken aback. Huiping was widely considered one of the easiest-tempered people in the Directorate.

Gusheng exhaled. “Still no news of Jingzhe.”

At that, the young eunuch’s expression softened into understanding.

Who said the Directorate of Cleaning hadn’t lost anyone?

Jingzhe had been silence itself — not a word, not a sign. No one knew whether he was somewhere, or whether he was nowhere.

What many people quietly believed, without saying it aloud, was that Jingzhe was probably gone — consumed so thoroughly that he hadn’t been identified yet. The guards apparently still had several unidentified skeletons.

Perhaps it was this grim sense of shared misfortune that had kept everyone from letting slip why, exactly, the Directorate of Cleaning might have come through unscathed.

It very possibly had to do with Jingzhe’s incense.

*

But then, not long after Huiping and the others had returned, visitors arrived at the Directorate of Cleaning — and these weren’t the usual patrol guards. Something about them was different. They looked like—

Imperial court attendants.

They went straight to Jiang Jinming, spoke with him at some length, and then brought Huiping in as well.

Shi’en and Gusheng, alerted, arrived to find Huiping already inside. They didn’t dare interrupt, and stood outside in anxious silence.

After a quarter hour, Huiping came out.

His face was calm, his person unruffled, nothing suggesting he’d been pressured or hurt. Only then did the other two breathe.

Shi’en: “Huiping — what did they want?”

Huiping: “Jingzhe’s been found.”

He said it without preamble, which was enough to leave Shi’en and Gusheng completely blank for a moment — before both faces broke into expressions they couldn’t suppress.

Gusheng actually jumped. “Really? But how could people like that be coming about Jingzhe?”

Huiping: “Those were imperial court attendants.”

He explained: Jingzhe had apparently been unconscious for the past several days and had only woken today. He had lost his identity token during the chaos, which had made identification impossible, and things had been delayed accordingly. As it happened, Jingzhe was also someone the imperial court had been keeping a particular eye out for.

“They said other than a few scattered bite marks, he doesn’t have serious injuries.”

Gusheng looked puzzled. “Isn’t that good news?”

Shi’en: “Of course it is. But how do you explain the fact that he was practically fine?”

Same problem as the Directorate of Cleaning.

Huiping nodded. “They just took all of Jingzhe’s incense.”

This was not a situation anyone could push back against. Imperial court attendants had authority that went over the head of even a head official, let alone a junior eunuch. There was nothing to be done.

The attendants had taken the incense, examined it, and explained to Jiang Jinming that these were fragrant materials bestowed from the imperial court — rarely available elsewhere.

Which immediately raised the question: how had Jingzhe come to have them?

The look Jiang Jinming had swept in Huiping’s direction at that moment had sent cold sweat down his back. With the answer bearing down on him, he had reached, in desperation, for a single thread in his mind.