Page 24 of The Immortal’s Mark

The merchant blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

Ren continues: “However, the marriage did complicate matters of inherited trade routes through the Western Province. I will have the relevant documents reviewed and a revised proposal sent to both guilds within the week.”

He knows the trade routes. The tariff history. The families involved, going back three generations.

I expected him to delegate. To nod along and let advisors handle the details. Instead he knows the Silk Guild’s dispute with Porcelain goes back to a warehouse fire forty years ago. He knows the merchant’s daughter married into the problem last spring.

This is not performance. This is care.

Something in my chest does something inconvenient.

Focus. The job is finding conspirators. Not finding reasons why the emperor is-

I do not finish the thought.

Ren moves to the next petition. A farming village with flooding concerns. He asks after the village headman by name. Knows his daughter recovered from fever last month.

I should be watching the courtiers. Wei’s expense discrepancies. Liu’s too-easy smile. Feng’s grinding jaw.

Instead I am watching his hands. Still on the armrests. Always still. How does anyone hold that much tension so quietly?

He is good at this. That should not matter. I am watching my captor do his job.

My nails press into my palms.

Why does it matter that he is good at it?

The corridor between audiences is quiet.

I hate quiet. Quiet is where thoughts live, and my thoughts have been misbehaving lately.

I’m cataloguing the stonework—third dynasty, renovated twice, load-bearing arch that could be exploited if you knew where to plant the charges—when the footsteps hit.

Fast. Desperate. The particular rhythm of someone who’s already decided dignity is a luxury they can’t afford.

A woman rounds the corner. Servant’s robes, hands shaking so hard I can see it from twenty paces, face the color of old parchment. She sees Ren and drops like her strings have been cut.

“Your Majesty—please—my son—”

Palace protocol has seventeen layers of bureaucracy between a servant’s sick child and imperial attention. Petitions, forms, supervisors, waiting lists. The system exists specifically to prevent this—commoners flinging themselves at the emperor’s feet with their small, inconvenient tragedies.

I know how this goes. I’ve watched emperors handle it before.

The dismissive wave. The guard summoned to escort her out. The vague promise that ‘someone will look into it’—a promise designed to evaporate the moment she’s out of sight.

“Rise.”

His voice is gentle.

I blink. Actually blink, like an amateur who’s forgotten how to control her face.

“Tell me.”

The woman stammers it out— something about a fever, three days, the apothecary’s grim prognosis, medicine that costs more than she’ll earn in a year. Her voice breaks on the word son, and something in my chest flinches.

Don’t.

I know this story. I’ve lived this story. Watched mothers beg for children who were already beyond saving, watched fathers trade everything they had for one more day, one more hour—