When Emperor Jingren woke the next day, he was alone in bed. Last night, when the empress had come back to lie down after changing, Emperor Jingren had been dimly aware of it, but he’d had no intention of anything happening between them then, so he had gone to sleep. He had planned to wake early in the morning and have a pleasant lie-in with the empress, but when he woke, the empress was no longer beside him.

He checked the time and saw that he didn’t have to go to court yet. The burden of all his cares meant that he never slept well at night. He could only manage to fall asleep toward dawn, so he had to be woken up every day to attend court. But last night he had slept unusually soundly and had woken up this morning because he was fully rested, much earlier than usual.

Seeing that the emperor was awake, Xiahe wanted to run off to get the empress, but Emperor Jingren waved a hand. “No need. The empress said yesterday that she performs spear dances in the morning. We wish to go see.”

Xiahe attended Emperor Jingren as he washed and dressed, then took him to a small training field in the rear courtyard of Qifeng Hall. This had previously been a garden; past empresses had planted flowers and kept fish here, or punished maids and eunuchs and schemed with others. But Xiao Jinyi, the present empress, had pulled up the flowers and filled in the pond, turning the garden into a miniature training ground.

As soon as Emperor Jingren reached the garden, he saw a sweat-drenched maid and eunuch, dressed in fighting clothes, wielding a spear and a chain whip as they faced off against the empty-handed empress. The maid and eunuch were young, but they were extremely agile, a match for the guards of some noble residences. Yet the empress was easily fending them off single-handed.

The empress was dressed in white fighting clothes, her hair not in its usual intricate and dignified coiffure but simply pulled up. It seemed very cool. She was strong and vigorous, like a lithe cheetah dodging between the path of the whip and the point of the spear. Her long hair now flew over her shoulder, covering half her face, and now flew backward, revealing her handsome countenance in its entirety—she was extremely attractive.

Emperor Jingren was stunned.

As he stood there staring, the empress caught a glimpse of him and immediately left off playing with the children. She snatched their weapons away from them and dropped them; the two weapons landed in their places on the weapons rack with perfect precision. The empress reached Emperor Jingren in a single leap and said with a slight smile, “Pardon me, Your Majesty.”

After a pause, Emperor Jingren said, “You are bold and valorous, Jinyi. We like that very much.”

True enough, he did like it very much. But…

For once Emperor Jingren didn’t keep his eyes under control and failed to abide by the principles of propriety; he couldn’t resist looking at the empress’s chest. Fighting clothes were close-fitting. He saw a slight swell there, very small, but still present. Though he was relieved, Emperor Jingren also felt a little regretful. With the empress’s heroic bearing, it would have been much better for her not to be a woman. A person like Xiao Jinyi shouldn’t be confined, frittering her time away in the palace; she ought to be out on the battlefield making war for the good of the realm. The position of empress was holding her back.

But as matters now stood, Emperor Jingren couldn’t tell her that the palace was holding her back. He could only nod. “If you like, there is no need to restrict yourself to this tiny garden. Chaocheng Palace is very close to Qifeng Hall, and no one lives there. If you like, you can remodel it. Palace staff who are suited to studying martial arts can join you. It will be a little hard for them, but if ordinary people in the palace also have some martial arts training, everyone in the palace will be safer.”

When she heard this, the empress could no longer keep the calm look on her face. In spite of herself, she looked at Emperor Jingren in astonishment. As an emperor, Emperor Jingren was truly too good to an apparently unappealing empress like her. No one could shake the empress’s power in the harem. Beautiful as an immortal being the pure consort might be, impressively highborn the virtuous consort might be, but when the emperor had been injured, neither of them could even reach the door of Zichen Hall, and all because no matter how much Emperor Jingren might like these consorts, they were nonetheless only consorts; he gave the empress practically everything she asked for… No, rather, the empress didn’t even need to ask; Emperor Jingren would offer what she wanted on his own initiative, provided it didn’t violate palace restrictions.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” When her astonishment passed, the empress recovered her usual calm and bowed to Emperor Jingren, thanking him briefly. Emperor Jingren didn’t need her to perform a ceremonial obeisance, so she didn’t.

Actually, at a time like this, a wife ought to make some intimate gestures toward her husband by way of encouragement, but Emperor Jingren didn’t need that, and the empress, looking as she did and soaked in sweat on top of that, wasn’t about to kiss Emperor Jingren shamelessly in front of the palace maids and eunuchs and all. So the two of them were businesslike, a Thank you and a You’re welcome, as if this were a very ordinary trifle.

After breakfast, the empress saw Emperor Jingren off to attend court and returned to her room. Xiahe followed meekly in her wake, not saying a word. Soon the glass lantern that Emperor Jingren had promised was brought. The empress looked at the lantern for a while, then abruptly said to Xiahe, “I had only meant to get through this, and when someone succeeded, leave and go back to my regular life.”

Cold sweat beaded Xiahe’s forehead. She bowed her head even lower. “M-me too.”

“Enough, don’t think I don’t know. When the emperor was unconscious, you were planning to burn your incense,” the empress said. “If you had, given the emperor’s temperament, when he woke he probably would have made you a concubine. You’d have had it easier from then on. But I remained by the emperor’s side, so you couldn’t light the incense. It was the same for Imperial Physician Chen. He kept glaring at me because I had spoiled his plans.”

“I-I won’t do it again,” Xiahe said, shaking.

The empress sighed softly. “Actually, I don’t care what you do. It normally doesn’t matter whether all of you burn your incense or not. But he had a head injury. It would have been bad for him to have those unseemly dreams. Of course, there’s very little Imperial Physician Chen can do. In his position, his only chance is when the emperor is his patient. If he doesn’t seize an opportunity when it appears, he’s unlikely to have another one.”

“Then…” Xiahe raised her head. A gleam of hope flashed through her eyes. She knelt and touched her head to the ground. To the empress she said, “I really need the money. Please help me win!”

“No.” The empress’s placid countenance turned cold. The edge of a blade flashed through her eyes. “Order the Department of Prudence to go through the palace and confiscate that incense. I won’t let any of you burn it again.”

“That’s not fair!” Xiahe exclaimed, lifting her head. “We’re all starting from the same place, and we all have to rely on our own abilities. What gives you the right to strip us of our power?!”

“I am the empress, beneath the one, above the many,” said Xiao Jinyi with dignity.

Xiahe’s reproaches and arguments were of no avail. Not everyone in the harem was like them; otherwise, they’d have had a mess on their hands long ago. The empress held great power. All she had to do was say the Imperial College of Medicine had determined that this foreign incense was bad for one’s health, and she could take everyone’s incense away. Not even Emperor Jingren would find out about it, because a minor matter like this wasn’t worth the emperor’s attention.

When he had left court and was dealing with affairs of state in the imperial study, Emperor Jingren had no idea that a nameless battle was playing out just then in the harem. He felt full of energy today. In one fell swoop he finished reviewing all the memorials that had piled up over the last few days and at last decided to deal with that palace maid.

He wasn’t satisfied with the information that the Embroidered Guard had turned up in its prior investigation and had told them to investigate anew. In the information that came from the secret guard watching the pure consort, meanwhile, apart from the unclear bit about the “square dancing,” there was nothing else unsuitable. Emperor Jingren concluded that the pure consort wasn’t being impersonated by someone else; that perilously beautiful face alone couldn’t be replicated.

“Square dancing… What is that?” Emperor Jingren said to Eunuch Lian, who was attending him.

Eunuch Lian’s old face stiffened. He put his teacup on the desk, considered it at length, then said, “Dancing done in a public square?”

“Out in the open for all to see?” Emperor Jingren frowned. “You mean those folk dances common people hold in the streets to celebrate the New Year? It did look something like that.”

Eunuch Lian wiped the sweat from his face. Smiling, he nodded. “It must be that.”

Emperor Jingren sighed. “Such a fine woman, why would… Instruct someone to tell the pure consort that even if she likes them, she can’t perform these overly folksy dances in the palace again. She ought to focus on improving her dancing.”

“I hear and obey.”

Eunuch Lian went out and called over a cute and chubby young eunuch. Grinding his teeth, he said, “Go and tell that idiot the pure consort to knock it off with the square dancing. She should learn some other dances and stop making a fool of herself!”

The young eunuch was also shocked; he’d never imagined someone would actually dare to square dance in front of Emperor Jingren. What he couldn’t understand was, why hadn’t the pure consort burned her incense?

Inside, Emperor Jingren went on reading the Embroidered Guard’s report. Yan Xu, commander in chief of the Embroidered Guard and commander of the Imperial Guard, swore on his life that Su Huailing really had no martial skills.

As soon as Eunuch Lian came in, he saw Emperor Jingren frowning. He said, “Summon Yan Xu to see us.”