Page 27 of The Immortal’s Mark

I’m surveying the perimeter.

“The Silk Guild dispute is resolved,” he says. “For now. Lord Wan’s family accepted the revised terms.”

“Thrilling.”

“You weren’t listening during the petition.”

“I was cataloguing threats.”

“Ah.” A pause. The crunch of gravel beneath our feet. “Find any?”

“Everyone in that room wants something from you. Half of them would kill for it. The other half just haven’t been offered the right price yet.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“That’s the only honest answer you’re getting.”

He almost smiles. I see the corner of his mouth twitch—just once, just barely—before he remembers himself and stops it.

I shouldn’t be tracking his mouth closely enough to notice that.

Perimeter, Lián. Survey the perimeter.

The garden opens into a smaller courtyard. Kitchen gardens, from the smell—basil, ginger, something sharp and green. Less ornamental than the formal paths. Clay pots instead of porcelain. The kind of place servants use when they think no one important is watching.

That’s when I hear the crying.

Small. Hiccuping. The particular devastation of a child who’s been lost too long to still believe anyone is coming.

My feet stop before my brain catches up.

A girl—four, maybe five—huddles against a planter, tears streaking her face, a rag doll clutched to her chest like a lifeline. She looks up when we round the corner, sees two adults, and the crying intensifies. Because adults haven’t helped yet. Because she’s been lost long enough to learn that adults walk past.

“I want my mama—”

I open my mouth—to say what, I don’t know, something useless and not funny probably—but Ren is already moving.

He crosses the courtyard.

And then he kneels.

Just… kneels. The Emperor of the Jade Throne, in the dirt, like it’s nothing. Like the black silk of his robes—hand-embroidered dragons, worth more than most families earn in a decade—isn’t currently settling into garden soil. Like he doesn’t have a throne room and a thousand servants and an entire empire’s worth of more important things to do.

He just kneels in front of a crying child, and the world narrows to that single point.

“What’s your name?”

His voice is quiet. Not emperor-quiet, not the careful modulation I’ve heard in court. Just… quiet. The way you talk to something frightened.

The girl hiccups. Stares. Her brain visibly struggling to process the impossibility of this man in fine robes kneeling in the dirt to ask her anything.

“M-Mei-Lin.”

“Mei-Lin. That’s a beautiful name.” No rush. No impatience. “Are you looking for your mother?”

A nod. Fresh tears wobbling on her lashes.

“Do you know where she works?”