Chapter 10
1576 Words
The door hinge turned.
Wind and snow swept into the room, carrying a bone-deep chill. The candle flame at the corner of the desk sputtered and died.
Zheng Wantang stood in the doorway, her black feather cloak dripping melted snow. She pushed the door shut behind her, her back straight.
“Prince of Henan.” She pulled off her half-wet leather gloves. “I have come to borrow grain.”
Gao Xiaoyu leaned back in his rosewood chair, a scroll of *Nan Hua Jing* in his hand. His eyelids lifted, and suddenly he brought a fist to his mouth, erupting into a fit of dry coughing.
“My sister-in-law, breaking into my residence in the middle of the night—this does little for the dignity of the imperial family.” His voice was slightly hoarse. “My household stores are empty. You’ve come to the wrong place.”
Zheng Wantang strode to his desk.
Her palms slammed onto the surface. She leaned forward.
“Feigning illness. Playing the idle dilettante. Turning a deaf ear to the world.” Her eyes were cold. “Brother has been performing for half a year. Do you truly take the court of Great Qi for a stage?”
The coughing stopped.
Gao Xiaoyu set down his scroll. His gaze turned ice-cold.
“You smashed the Yue ware celadon from the previous dynasty to draw every spy Zu Ting has toward your tantrum.” His fingers tapped the desk. “Just to cover your climb over the wall to reach me?”
“My life is in the hands of the man trapped at Zhangzi City. I don’t have time to play physician with you.”
Zheng Wantang flipped her wrist.
*Slap.* A bloodstained scrap of paper landed on the desk.
Six charcoal characters, written in blood, burned into Gao Xiaoyu’s vision.
“Gao Wei watches from across the water. Lu Lingxuan cut off three hundred thousand *dan* of grain. The Ministry of Revenue sent nothing but sand to the front.” Zheng Wantang’s words came fast. “They want the fourth brother dead.”
Gao Xiaoyu leaned back, his posture softening again into measured calm.
“I do not involve myself in court affairs. If the Gao family wants to kill each other, let them.”
“You don’t have to choose sides.” Zheng Wantang held his gaze. “You only need to help a man dying at the front.”
Gao Xiaoyu laughed.
“Are you lecturing me?” His tone was ice. “Why would I gamble the lives of hundreds in my household for you?”
Zheng Wantang threw her cards on the table.
“Because you have no choice.”
“A third of the hidden estates around Yecheng. The salt routes south. The fur trade north.” Her voice dropped. “Do you truly believe Lu Lingxuan doesn’t know about these shadow assets?”
Gao Xiaoyu’s tapping fingers stopped mid-strike.
“She hasn’t touched you because Gao Changgong’s sword still hangs over her head.” Zheng Wantang’s words were clear, cutting. “If Gao Changgong dies, Lu Lingxuan’s appetite will swallow your private stores whole.”
“When the nest overturns, your feigned madness will not save your life.”
Silence filled the study.
Gao Xiaoyu studied the woman before him.
Her reasoning was clean, precise. She had shattered the shell of pretense he had spent half a year building.
“You see so clearly,” he said slowly. “Then why save a man who is already dead? You should write a petition for remarriage while the imperial physicians are still at your door.”
Zheng Wantang looked down at the blood-stained scrap of paper.
When she raised her head again, she said:
“Because I don’t want to be a widow.”
Gao Xiaoyu froze.
In this imperial household, where every word was wrapped in righteousness and dynastic duty, she had spoken the crudest, most selfish, and most honest declaration he had ever heard.
He lowered his head and let out a low laugh that shook the fur loose from his collar.
“Fine.”
Gao Xiaoyu rose and walked to the bookshelf.
He turned the bronze beast on the third shelf.
The wall pivoted, revealing racks of command tokens and hidden route maps.
“Ten li west of the city. My estate holds thirty thousand *dan* of fine wheat. Use my salt route to bypass the official roads. Four days, no more, to Zhangzi City.”
A black iron token cut through the air.
Zheng Wantang caught it, turned, and walked out without a word of wasted breath.
“Wait.” Gao Xiaoyu’s smile faded as he watched her go. “The woman you replaced would not even hold a blade. Yet you have pressed one against every throat in this city.”
Zheng Wantang pushed open the door and stepped into the wind and snow.
“People change.”
---
Four days later. The front lines at Zhangzi City.
No campfires. The wood had long since burned.
Wounded soldiers leaned against the battlements, clutching spears frozen solid, chewing snow mixed with grit.
Inside the main tent, the air was thick and stifling.
Gao Changgong’s silver armor was crusted with dried blood.
On his desk sat a bowl of thin gruel, grey-black sand floating on its surface.
The last rations of the army.
“My Prince!” His deputy stumbled through the tent flap, dropping to one knee, sobbing. “Four men have starved to death at the western gate! Slaughter the horses! If we don’t eat, we won’t even have the strength to lift our blades!”
Gao Changgong stared at the bowl of sand and grit.
“The horses are the cavalry’s life. Slaughter them, and we cut off our own retreat.” His voice was very low. “We are the kingdom’s gates. We do not retreat.”
The court had laid a trap—to starve him and eight thousand men to death.
“Send word.”
Gao Changgong picked up the broken bronze demon mask from the desk and fitted it over his face.
“Every man who can still hold a blade—gather at the inner walls. I will lead the charge. If we die, we die on our feet.”
Before the words finished—
A roar erupted outside the tent.
Warhorses screamed. Wheels groaned against frozen ground, piercing the night.
Had the Northern Zhou broken through?
Gao Changgong gripped his sword and strode out of the tent.
He stopped in his tracks.
A line of supply wagons, their cargo covered in heavy oilcloth, was streaming through the city gates.
No official seals. Every driver wore the rough cotton clothes of the black market.
Han Changluan threw himself from his horse, scrambling to Gao Changgong’s feet.
“My Prince!” He dropped to one knee on the frozen ground, his voice shredded raw. “The grain has come! Thirty thousand *dan* of fine wheat. Not a single *dan* missing.”
The camp was silent for a heartbeat.
Then a roar erupted that shook the heavens.
Wounded soldiers dropped their handfuls of snow and scrambled toward the wagons.
Gao Changgong stood motionless.
Zu Ting had locked the imperial granaries. This grain was not from the court.
“Who sent it?”
Han Changluan swallowed, his mouth full of blood. “The Prince of Henan.”
Gao Changgong’s thoughts scattered.
His elder brother, who had played the madman for half a year?
“And…” Han Changluan raised a letter high. “The Princess Consort. She spent every coin in the household, broke into the Prince of Henan’s mansion in the dead of night to plead for grain. She arranged the entire smuggling route herself.”
Gao Changgong’s hand tightened on his sword.
The Princess Consort?
The woman who screamed at mice and spent her days crying?
He ripped open the letter.
No inquiries about his health. No words of comfort.
Two lines of bold, reckless script:
*If the city falls, the nobles of Yecheng will pick the meat from your bones.*
*Come back alive. Old Han and the men are waiting for next month’s pay.*
Arrogant. Blunt.
Gao Changgong’s eyes burned into the page.
The woman who had looked at him from inside a coffin and said, coldly, *I am not her*—she had carved a path through a game rigged to kill him.
He folded the letter carefully and tucked it against the breastplate over his heart.
*Clang—*
Gao Changgong drew his longsword and pointed it at the Northern Zhou army beyond the walls.
“Open the stores. Light the fires. Tonight, we eat. Tomorrow, we fight our way out.”
---
Yecheng. The Minister’s Mansion.
*Crack.*
The walnut Zu Ting had been rolling in his hand splintered into pieces.
He stared at the sweating spy kneeling before him.
“Three hundred thousand *dan* of grain are still locked in the granaries. Where did Zhangzi City get thirty thousand?”
“A merchant convoy working the black market waterways. Han Changluan was waiting to receive them.”
Zu Ting rose and kicked his chair over.
Han Changluan had no resources in Yecheng. No money. No men. No connections.
The only explanation—someone in the Prince of Lanling’s household had broken his game.
That weak, cowering woman he had never bothered to look at had just overturned his board.
- Writer
