Page 52 of The Immortal’s Mark

“People will talk about anything.”

“They’re saying he wouldn’t let anyone touch you. Not the guards. Not the physicians.” Her voice drops. “Lady Mei has already asked three servants what they saw.”

Of course she has. The spymaster that isn’t a spymaster collects information like Dumpling collects sunbeams—compulsively, comprehensively, without any apparent purpose until suddenly you realize she’s holding all the pieces.

Speaking of sunbeams.

Dumpling abandons my pillow to investigate Jing’s lap. Traitor.

She freezes. Then, carefully, she scratches behind his bent ear. He permits it. Leans into it with shameless enthusiasm.

“He likes you.” I hear myself say it like an accusation.

“He likes anyone with warm hands.” Jing pauses. Her fingers still in orange fur. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Like him.”

I go still. “The cat?”

“The emperor.”

The silence stretches. Dumpling purrs, oblivious to the fact that he’s sitting in the middle of a conversation I am not in any way equipped to have.

“That’s not a question I can answer.”

“Can’t?” Jing looks up. Braver than she was a week ago. “Or won’t?”

“Both.”

I reach for the soup, mostly to have something to do with my hands. “Thank you. For this.”

Jing recognizes a dismissal. She’s getting better at reading me. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

She goes.

The soup is excellent. Ginger and chicken, the kind that’s supposed to restore strength after illness. Or, I suppose, after death.

I barely taste it.

Do you like him?

Eight hundred years of avoiding that question. Now a nervous archivist asks it over borrowed soup and suddenly I don’t have an answer.

Wonderful.

The summons arrives at the hour of the Rooster.

A servant performs the three-bow approach—the formal protocol that means imperial request. “The Emperor requests your presence in the Moon Garden. To discuss the investigation.”

The investigation. Right. The cult. The inside advisor. The conspiracy that almost killed us both. If either of us could actually die.

I should be thinking about supply manifests and military logistics and which of his advisors wants him dead.

I’m thinking about what to wear.

The first robe is too formal. The second is too casual. The third—