Chapter 2

I yanked the dumpling into my chest, wrapped him in the cloak, and already had the other hand on the knife.

"Don't make a sound," I whispered.

The shadow behind the rockery went dead quiet.

Ten full breaths later, a stray cat burst out with a mrow and tore off into the dark.

The sleeve was gone.

Had I mistaken a cat, or had someone already slipped away without a sound? Hundreds of guests at the winter-solstice banquet. The Imperial Garden ran every which way. Any one of them could have been those ears.

Cold sweat had soaked through my inner robe.

"Mom? What's wrong?" The dumpling poked his head out of the cloak.

"Nothing." I let go of the knife and looked down at him.

The spike of fear bled off. Sense came back. I started taking a cold look at this bargain son of mine.

Four or five. His eyes were Shen Yan's down to the last fraction — those phoenix eyes, tipped up a little, still carrying that born-precious air even when they were red from crying.

And because he looked that much like him, I had to keep a spare thought in my pocket.

A frame job this complete would find a child who looked like Shen Yan and have him call me Mom. Once that hit the capital tomorrow — the Northern Marquis and the Dingguo heir have a bastard — eight years of iron-man work on the court floor would collapse in a night.

"You say you came back from three years from now." I crouched so we were eye to eye. "Then I'll test you. Three years from now, who commands the Northern Frontier?"

The dumpling blinked. "Dad. After you died, the Northern Army fell apart. The court sent three commanders. None of them could hold it. In the end Dad asked to go north himself, and he stayed…" He counted on his little fingers. "A really, really long time."

"But in the end the traitors still killed him."

My pupils tightened.

A man running a frame could not have invented that answer.

Shen Yan was the head of the civil officials. House of Shen had been clean scholars for a hundred years. If he took the Northern Army, that was civil and military in one pair of hands — the whole court would have climbed the walls. Unless the north was so far gone nobody dared go. Unless he already had a life-and-death bond with those troops.

And the only way you got a life-and-death bond like that was if I was dead.

"Second question." I watched his eyes. "Three years from now — what about His Majesty?"

"Uncle the Emperor passed," the dumpling dropped his voice. "The new emperor was only six. The old Chancellor was Regent. Mom, Zhao Song, he—"

"Shh." I clapped a hand over his mouth.

Uncle the Emperor?

The Empress Dowager was a Shen. Shen Yan's own aunt.

This child called His Majesty Uncle — then the rest of him lined up. Shen Yan's son. The Dowager's grandnephew.

I let go slowly. A boulder sat on my chest.

If this was true, then three years from now looked like this: Zhao Song as Regent. My house and Shen Yan's executed to the last name. Three hundred thousand men on the Northern Frontier with no one to lead them. And the nemesis I was supposed to fight for the rest of my life went and picked that army up with his own life.

"Mom, do you believe me now?" The dumpling tipped his face up, careful.

I looked at him. Looked, and then something was wrong—

The little hand holding the oil-paper packet. The fingertips. Going transparent.

Like a drop of ink in clear water, thinning out thread by thread.

"Nianzhao!" It tore out of me.

"It's all right, Mom." He was the calm one. He tucked the little hand into his sleeve and grinned, two grains of baby teeth showing. "I can last a few more days. You have to get close to Dad, okay? Twenty-four hours. Not one hour short."

I wrapped him in the cloak and picked him up. Drew a long breath.

Fine.

Shen Yan, was it.

For this bargain son who had dropped out of nowhere. For that massacre three years from now—

I would go see him tomorrow.

I did not expect seeing him to be that close a thing.

And I did not expect that the way that dog of a man looked at me had been wrong from the start.