In her private audience chamber, the air was still and cold, despite the incense and the warming braziers. Cixi stood before a massive, intricately painted map of the Great Qing, her back to the room. Her small, slender figure was rigid, a study in contained fury. She was not looking at the vast, prosperous heartlands of the empire. Her gaze was fixed on the distant, rugged lines that marked the western territories, a place on the map where she had just been forced to cede a portion of her own authority.
Li Lianying stood a few paces behind her, silent, his head bowed. He knew this mood. It was not the explosive, fleeting anger of a common woman. It was the cold, patient, and far more dangerous wrath of an Empress who felt her power slipping.
"Prince Gong thinks he is clever," Cixi said, her voice deceptively soft, yet carrying the sharp chill of winter ice. She did not turn. "He used the child's supposed 'dreams' and 'questions' to maneuver me into a corner. He put a weapon in Zuo Zongtang's hand and thinks I do not see the game he is playing."
"He is arrogant, Your Majesty," Li Lianying murmured, his voice a soothing balm. "And in his arrogance, he has greatly underestimated the depth of your wisdom."
"He is a blunt instrument," Cixi countered, finally turning from the map. Her face was a beautiful, serene mask, but her eyes were like black diamonds, hard and unforgiving. "A charging bull. I cannot move against him directly—not yet. To do so would make me seem petty and vindictive, and would rally the other princes to his side." She began to pace slowly across the thick, soft carpets. "But the whispers that arm him… the stories and 'prophetic dreams' that give him his righteous cause… they all originate from one place."
Her pacing stopped. She looked directly at her head eunuch. "The Emperor's study."
"The boy's 'illness' has become a convenience for our enemies," she continued, her voice dripping with contempt. "It has made him a hollow vessel, a mouthpiece for someone else's ambitions. We have been trying to control the puppet, Lianying, when we should have been purifying the source of the whispers."
She gave a sharp, decisive nod. "Summon the Imperial Tutor. Now."
Weng Tonghe arrived half an hour later, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He had been torn from his modest quarters by two of Li Lianying's stern-faced eunuchs with no explanation. He knelt on the floor of the audience chamber, his forehead pressed against the cold silk of the rug, not daring to look up. He could feel the Empress Dowager's cold fury radiating through the room like the chill from a block of winter ice.
Cixi allowed the silence to stretch for a long, agonizing minute, letting the scholar's terror ripen. When she finally spoke, her voice was as sweet and delicate as a poisoned pastry.
"Grand Tutor Weng," she began. "Please rise. There is no need for such formality."
Weng Tonghe shakily rose to his feet, his eyes still fixed on the floor.
"This Empress has been reviewing your service to the throne," Cixi said, her tone light and conversational. "Your dedication to the young Emperor has been exemplary. Truly. You have taught him so much. History. Poetry. Even matters of river engineering and military appointments, it seems."
The sarcasm was a physical blow. Weng Tonghe flinched as if he had been struck. He opened his mouth to deny it, to explain, but Cixi continued, her voice hardening slightly.
"However, the Emperor's continued ill health, his chronic fatigue, and his… distracting 'visions'… they suggest that your gentle methods are not what his spirit requires. His disharmony persists. It is clear to me that he requires a more vigorous and disciplined hand to guide him back to the proper path of quiet study."
She paused, letting the finality of her next words sink in. "Therefore, as of this morning, you are relieved of your duties as Imperial Tutor."
The words struck Weng Tonghe with the force of a physical collapse. He staggered back a step, his face ashen. It was his worst fear, realized. He was being fired. Disgraced. Cast out. All his years of loyal service, his reputation, his position—gone. He saw his future in a flash: a lonely, impoverished exile, scorned by his former colleagues, a laughingstock in the very circles that had once revered him.
"Your… Your Majesty…" he stammered, his mind reeling. "I… I have tried my best…"
"And your best was noted," Cixi said dismissively. "You will not be left idle. This Empress is not without compassion. You are a man of letters, after all." She waved a hand gracefully. "You will be reassigned. Effective immediately. To the Imperial Archives. There is a great work that needs doing: a comprehensive history of the early reigns of our glorious dynasty. It is quiet work. Important work. You will have a great deal of time for… reflection."
It was a brilliant and cruel political move. She had not executed him. She had not exiled him. She had not even stripped him of his rank. To have done so would have given Prince Gong a clear reason to protest, a martyr to rally around. Instead, she had simply removed him, silencing him, cutting the line of communication that she believed Prince Gong and his faction controlled. She had surgically excised him from the Emperor's presence and buried him alive under a mountain of dusty, irrelevant scrolls. He was being put on a shelf, like a book no one intended to read again.
Weng Tonghe could do nothing but bow his head in defeat, the taste of ashes in his mouth.
Cixi turned to Li Lianying, her voice crisp and business-like, the matter of the tutor already forgotten. "Assemble a list of candidates for the new tutors. I want the oldest, the strictest, the most orthodox Confucian scholars in the Hanlin Academy. Men of unimpeachable loyalty and rigid principles. Men who will not fill the Emperor's head with anything more dangerous than the virtues of filial piety."
She had been outmaneuvered once. She would not allow it to happen again. She had lost control of the army's western command, but she would reassert her absolute control over the mind of the Emperor himself. She would build a new cage around him, one made not of bars and guards, but of ideology and dogma so thick that no dangerous ideas could ever get in or out again.