The summons came at dawn.
No fanfare. Just a single eunuch in white silk bowing at my threshold, voice flat as a blade laid on stone.
"His Majesty requests your presence in the Hall of Judgement. Immediately."
It was not a request.
I crossed corridors that remembered more footsteps than prayers. Guards did not follow—they waited. That was worse. Men who wait have already chosen a side.
The Hall of Judgement was a lacquered mouth waiting to close. Ministers stood in two clean rows, heads bowed in pious theatre. The air was heavy with sandalwood, but something sour coiled beneath it, like incense burned to mask a corpse.
Wu Kang stood to the left of the throne, armored in ink-black, his gauntleted hand clenched around a scroll as if he meant to strangle it. Beside him, Wu Ling—my sister—veiled in crimson, face turned just enough that I could feel the knife-edge of her attention. Behind her waited the old monk, bone beads dull as teeth in old gums. His fingers moved; the rosary clicked softly, counting something only he knew.
The Emperor sat above us all, spine straight, gaze unreadable. He did not look at me. He looked through the hall, as though measuring whether it would hold when the roof finally fell.
The chief herald called, "Prince Wu An, summoned to answer."
Wu Kang stepped forward—and unrolled the scroll with the deliberation of a headsman.
"Your Majesty, honored ministers," he intoned, "this is the sworn testimony of Guo Sen, witness to Prince Wu An's secret meetings with southern envoys—meetings held apart from the revised treaty, during which letters were exchanged and patrol orders altered to weaken Bei Ling."
Murmurs. The sound was small, but it traveled like fire under paper.
"And there is more," Wu Kang said, lifting a second sheet. "A command in the prince's hand, ordering northern patrols withdrawn on the eve of a southern incursion. We present this not as conjecture, but as proof."
I let silence gather weight.
"Where is the witness?" I asked at last.
Wu Kang smiled with his mouth, not his eyes. "Under Imperial protection."
My gaze slid to the monk. His head tilted, as if curious how an animal would react to salt.
Wu Ling's voice came then—cool, precise. "Brother, the rot of Nanyang walks at your heels. Black lotus, spirals in ash, shrines burned clean to their foundations—now the same marks appear in the outer wards of Ling An. Will you call those letters forgery too?"
The monk's rosary stilled.
The Emperor lifted a hand. "Enough."
The hall exhaled. He studied me without warmth, without cruelty. The dragon in his eyes no longer felt carved from paper.
"Prince Wu An," he said, "the court will consider the charges. Until the investigation concludes, you will remain within the city walls. Your men will not cross into the palace precincts. You will make yourself available when called."
Not an order to kneel. But the floor seemed to tilt all the same.
I bowed. "As His Majesty commands."
When I turned, the monk watched me go with the calm of a physician who has already measured the fever and knows the hour of night in which you will die.
Liao Yun and Shen Yue waited in my outer rooms, the door barred, the brazier low.
"We have him," Liao said without preface. "Not in the dungeons—off the books. The monk's people moved Guo Sen to a sealed temple. The Hall of Still Waters."
Shen Yue's jaw was tight. "The city registry says 'unsafe.' It's been locked since… since your mother's mourning rites."
"The monk was once keeper of the Inner Seal," Liao Yun added. "He knows which doors the court forgets."
"Good," I said. "We open one."
We left near moonrise, the city dim under a sky the color of a bruise. Down along the river bend the mist lay thick, as if the water had forgotten whether it meant to flow or sleep. The temple rose from it—the Hall of Still Waters—white stone gone the color of old bone.
Chains hung broken from the gates. No guards. No lamps. Only the wind moving through empty throats.
Inside, spirals of ash had been drawn across the flagstones—each ring large enough for a man to stand in, their lines too tidy for chance. Acolytes knelt within them, heads bowed, mouths bound with black cloth. The smell of herbs burned too long clung to the beams: bitter, metallic, almost like blood ground into incense and dried in the sun.
At the far end, the monk waited. Guo Sen knelt in front of him, shaven scalp catching what little light the candles allowed. Red cord bound the steward's wrists. His eyes were open but unfocused, as if reading something written very small on the air.
"Release him," I said.
"Release?" the monk echoed, amused. "He is safer here than in your court, Prince."
"He is my court," I answered.
"No," he said gently. "He is your mirror."
Behind my ribs, the thing stirred. Not a voice. Not even a thought. A pressure, as if the air inside me were water about to turn.
"What did you put in him?" I asked.
"What your house tried to burn out of you," the monk said. "What the North learned to harness and the South learned to fear. What priests call blasphemy and kings call omen. The silence before the tide."
He lifted a finger; the acolytes' heads rose in one slow, shared motion. Their eyes were blacked with soot. Not painted—stained.
"You stand where it began," he said. "Do the stones remember? Your mother thought so. She barred this hall and called it mercy. But mercy is a poor shepherd."
"For whom?" I asked.
"For you," he said, as if the answer were obvious.
I moved. Liao Yun moved with me. Shen Yue circled left, low and quiet. The monk did not resist when I seized Guo Sen's shoulder and hauled him up. The steward's lips moved with the dry scrape of paper on paper.
"Letters," he whispered. "A seal. A hand that is not a hand. The river recedes; the fish learn to breathe ash."
"Enough," I said.
The monk watched me. "Take your witness. Carry him to the dragon. You will not like what the dragon does with him."
Shen Yue leaned in. "Now," she murmured.
We began to back away. The acolytes did not block us. They only stared, eyes black, unmoving. The candles guttered once, twice; the air pulled tight as a drum-skin.
"Tell me one thing," I said to the monk, because the question had already sharpened in my mouth. "Wu Ling. How long has she stood inside your circle?"
He smiled, soft as a funeral hymn. "Long enough to forget where it begins."
I almost drew blood from my own palm to keep from answering.
We left.
Outside, the mist had thickened, and the river sounded far away, as though someone had moved it while we were inside. I threw Guo Sen over the saddle and we cut back through alleys that had learned our names.