"Never, Majesty," Lian said. "I would remember."
It was the right answer and it came out steady. He searched her face a moment longer, then nodded, embarrassed, and led her up the remaining six steps. The court let out its breath. The officiant found his place in the chant.
But his hand stayed tight around hers all the way to the top, and when they turned to face the court together she felt his thumb press once against the inside of her wrist, exactly where the pin lay hidden, as if he were checking for a pulse.
The wedding banquet ran from dusk until the moon cleared the palace roofs.
Lian sat at the Emperor's left on a cushion of gold silk and ate nothing. Below the dais the long tables stepped down in order of rank, purple to blue to green, and the noise rose with every jar of osmanthus wine the servants carried in. Musicians played in the gallery. A troupe of acrobats built a pagoda out of their own bodies and the lower tables cheered.
She was watching the green tables.
Luo Pingshan did not drink much. He touched his cup to his lips at every toast and set it down still full. He laughed when the men beside him laughed, half a breath late, and in between he watched the dais. Who spoke to the Emperor. Who the Dowager nodded to. Which eunuch refilled whose cup.
In her first life, eighteen months from now, Luo would be assigned to audit the Grand Granary. He would find a shortfall of forty thousand measures of rice and lay it at the feet of the Minister of Revenue, a stubborn old man who had refused the Duke of Rong's daughter as a bride for his son. The Minister would hang himself. Luo would be promoted three ranks in a year, wearing the Duke of Rong's gratitude like a new robe.
The rice had never been missing. Lian had learned that eight years too late, from a granary keeper's widow who'd walked four hundred miles to tell her.
"You're staring at someone," the Emperor said.
She turned. He was holding his cup without drinking it either, studying her sideways. Up close he smelled of sandalwood and ink.
"I'm learning faces, Majesty. I'm told an empress should know the court."
"Whose face?"
There was no use lying about something he could check. "The secretary in green at the third table. Thin. He's been counting how many times your mother smiles."
Zhao Heng looked. "Luo something. Rites, I think. Or Revenue." He frowned. "How do you know what he's counting?"
"Because I was counting the same thing." She lifted the wine jar and filled his cup herself, which made a nearby eunuch flinch. "Majesty. May I ask a wedding gift?"
"You may ask."
"The Mid-Autumn banquet. Who arranges it this year?"
He blinked. Of all the things a bride might ask for, she could see this wasn't on his list. "The Household Office. Some deputy. Why?"
"Give it to him." She tipped her head toward the green table. "The secretary. Luo. He has the face of a man who wants to be noticed. Let him be noticed. Put him in charge of every cup and every dish and every servant at the Mid-Autumn banquet, and let the whole court see what he does with it."
The Emperor was quiet. Below them the acrobats' pagoda collapsed, on purpose, into a heap of laughing bodies.
"That's an odd gift," he said at last.
"I'm an odd bride."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. It wasn't quite a smile. "Very well. Luo something gets the Mid-Autumn banquet." He drank, finally, and set the cup down. "You'll tell me someday why."
"Someday, Majesty."
Revenge was like tea. Rush the water and you scalded the leaves and got nothing but bitterness. In her first life she had never once thought about revenge. She'd thought about duty and seating plans and whether her husband was eating enough. That woman had died on her knees.
This one had nine names and ten years.
Luo, she thought. You first. Not tonight. In fifty-three days, under a full moon, in front of everyone.
The bridal chamber was red from floor to ceiling. Red curtains, red quilts, red candles as thick as her wrist burning in pairs on every surface, a bowl of red dates and peanuts and longans on the table for luck and sons. Tao and two palace maids undressed her down to the inner robe, took the phoenix crown off her aching head, combed out her hair, and left her sitting on the edge of the bed under a red veil.
She waited. She remembered waiting the first time, giddy and terrified. Tonight her hands were still.
The door opened. Closed. Boots crossed the floor and stopped.
"I'm supposed to lift this with a scale rod," Zhao Heng said. "For a balanced marriage. Whoever invented that wanted us to feel foolish."
The rod slid under the veil and lifted it away.
He stood over her in his own inner robe, a plain dark thing, his hair already down. For a long moment neither of them said anything. Candle flames bent and straightened.
In her first life he had sat beside her and talked about poetry until she fell asleep, out of shyness and kindness both. She had loved him for it. She had loved him for ten years.
He did not sit.
"You look at me," he said slowly, "as if you're waiting for me to hurt you."
Lian kept her face still. "I'm tired, Majesty."
"Yes." He set the scale rod down on the table beside the dates. His fingers lingered on it. "I'll sleep in the outer room tonight. Tell anyone who asks that I was clumsy and you were gracious." He paused at the door with his hand on the frame. "I meant it. On the steps. I've seen your face before. I just can't think where."
The door closed.
Lian sat until the candles had burned down a finger's width. Then she reached into her inner sleeve for the pin, because she had started to need the feel of it.
Her fingers found paper instead.
A slip, folded small and tight, tucked into the sleeve lining right beside the pin. It had not been there this morning. She had dressed herself in that sleeve. Since then a dresser, a mother, a brother, two palace maids, the officiant, the Dowager's attendants and the Emperor had all touched her, adjusted her, guided her by the arm.
She unfolded it near the candle.
Seven words, written in a quick plain hand she had never seen.
You are not the only one who remembers.