I let her cross three tiles before I acknowledged her.
Lady Huai entered the music garden like a banner brought to the wrong battlefield—brocade too bright for winter, pendants ticking against each other as if they could keep time from cutting her.
Court ladies peeled back in a ripple. Two junior ministers drifted after her like minnows behind a carp, their faces arranged into concern that wanted to be gossip.
"Empress," she called, not waiting to be announced. "We need words."
"You've already spent too many," I returned, not rising from the long stone bench where I'd been reviewing the kitchen rosters. I closed the bamboo slip with one finger and set it beside the tea. "Walk."
She didn't expect that.
For a heartbeat her mouth made the shape of refusal; then she remembered whose garden this was and moved as directed. I set the pace toward the cypress shade where anyone with ears could hear and anyone with sense could pretend they hadn't.
