Chapter 4

9.

For days, I barely slept.

Dispatch after dispatch arrived from the frontier. Enemy cavalry pressed fiercely outside Yanhui Pass. Lu Heng and his men held on desperately, but several sections of the walls were damaged. The troops sent from the capital were still on the road, while mountain rains had delayed the first grain convoy.

I summoned every official responsible for transport.

Some blamed natural disaster. Others said there were not enough laborers.

I slammed my teacup onto the table. “If a road is damaged, repair it. If a bridge breaks, rebuild it. If you need men, hire them on the spot and pay them by the day. Anyone who fobs me off with ‘it’s difficult’ again will be sent to Yanhui Pass to take his time over it under the enemy’s blades and horses.”

Only then did they scatter, each hurrying to his work.

Tang Wushi headed north with the recovered silver and grain accounts. Xie Heng shipped the fire mines in separate consignments, escorted by trusted craftsmen and imperial guards. Xiao Yan went to the Institute of Practical Learning every day to inspect the jars and fuses with the craftsmen. Forbidden to handle the most dangerous work, he carried materials, recorded quantities, and made sure everyone followed Xie Heng’s rules.

When I came to see him, he was crouching on the ground, handing a wet cord to a young eunuch.

“Keep this a little farther away. Don’t let a spark catch it.”

The eunuch’s hands shook with nerves. “Your Majesty, I’m frightened.”

Xiao Yan looked up at him and first offered him a sweet. “So am I. Master Xie says the more frightened you are, the more carefully you must follow the rules. Then you make fewer mistakes.”

I stood in the doorway, my eyes stinging.

He had learned far more than how a few devices worked. He knew fear was nothing to be ashamed of. He knew that when trouble came, he could ask for help and follow a procedure. He did not have to bear everything alone.

Several days later, at dusk, word arrived from Yanhui Pass: the fire mines and the first shipment of grain had reached them.

Lu Heng did not rush out of the city. Following Xie Heng’s drawings, he placed the earthenware mines outside the walls, beside the trenches and along narrow mountain paths, protecting the fuses with wet oxhide. Trusting their speed, the enemy cavalry charged after dark. As their horses reached the trenches, a signal arrow streaked up from the walls.

Far away in the capital, I saw only a terse line in the dispatch: Flame rose like dragons; the enemy cavalry fell into chaos.

The mines brought down the leading horses. Riders behind them could not stop and piled into one another. Yanhui Pass’s defenders seized the moment to open the gates, counterattack, and recover the lost ground.

More importantly, Xiao Yan’s supply route was open.

The bridges on the old salt road had been reinforced. Local people saw that the court was paying daily wages and heard that the little emperor had sold his own jade pendant for disaster relief. Many volunteered their carts to carry grain.

A few days later, the tribes withdrew.

News of victory reached Chongzheng Hall. Civil and military officials knelt throughout it.

Xiao Yan stood before the throne. A little black dust from the Institute of Practical Learning still clung to the sleeves of his bright yellow everyday robes. He read the report without a child’s cheering. His first question was, “What were the casualties at Yanhui Pass?”

The Minister of War answered gravely, “Over two thousand soldiers killed or wounded. Civilian losses are still being counted.”

After a short silence, Xiao Yan said, “Treat the wounded first. The families of fallen soldiers are to receive compensation according to their service, without delay. Once the Ministry of War clears the battlefield, Revenue is to release funds immediately to rebuild the villages outside Yanhui Pass.”

Tang Wushi had not yet returned from the north. A vice minister was temporarily overseeing Revenue. He hastily kowtowed. “As Your Majesty commands.”

Pei Shouzhuo knelt in the front row, looking dispirited. He regarded the little emperor he had once accused of being too fond of play, and at last bowed low.

“Your Majesty is wise.”

Xiao Yan showed no triumph. He merely turned to look at me behind the curtain.

I nodded.

He stood a little steadier.

10.

With the northern war settled, the court’s greatest problem became plain: there were not enough capable people to employ.

The investigation into ghost soldiers had exposed a string of parasites. Inspections of the granaries had uncovered another crop of corrupt officials. Pitifully few officials could actually do their jobs. In the provinces, the shortage of people who understood farming, water management, medicine, or accounts was worse still.

Two years later, Xiao Yan proposed a special examination on his own initiative.

That day, he had just finished a new waterwheel at the Institute of Practical Learning. He washed his hands and ran to my palace. He had grown a little taller, still slender and youthful, but a brightness was emerging in his features that the late emperor had never had.

“Mother, I want to hold a special examination.”

I looked up from some waterworks plans sent from the south. “What kind?”

“Not just essays,” he said. “People who can manage rivers, keep accounts, understand farming and sericulture, build devices, or treat the sick should all be allowed to sit it. They can write essays, but they must answer questions about work in the fields too. I don’t want people who can only write pretty words.”

I put down my brush. “Do you know how many people you will offend?”

“Yes.”

“People like Lord Pei will say you are overturning ancestral institutions.”

Xiao Yan smiled. It looked very like the expression I must have worn years ago when I knocked aside that bowl of medicine.

“If ancestral institutions can keep rivers within their banks, armies supplied, and people free of disease, I’ll preserve them. If they can’t, I’ll change them.”

I leaned back in my chair and could not help laughing.

“Good,” I said. “Hold it, then.”

The examination edict caused exactly the storm we expected.

Many sons of the great families signed joint protests. Letting farmers, craftsmen, and doctors become officials, they said, insulted scholars. Pei Shouzhuo was old now and no longer charged at the head of the opposition, but he too submitted a memorial urging Xiao Yan to proceed more slowly.

Xiao Yan read it, then went in person to the Imperial Academy.

I prepared no speech for him. I merely sat behind a screen and listened.

Scholars filled the hall, watching the young emperor and waiting to be reassured.

First, Xiao Yan had three things brought in: a handful of rice ears from Linchuan, a fragment of stone from Yanhui Pass’s walls, and a model of the improved waterwheel.

“You say scholars are noble,” he began. “Then tell me: who first brought the Linchuan epidemic under control? Who delivered the grain to Yanhui Pass? Who watered the fields outside the capital and kept them alive?”

The scholars exchanged looks.

“Physicians, boatmen, craftsmen, farmers, clerks who could keep accounts, and people who repaired bridges in the wind and rain.”

Xiao Yan pointed to the rice. “Without knowledge, they could not have done those things. Yet if they have the ability, why must they spend their lives shut outside the door?”

One student objected. “Your Majesty, scholars, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants have their places in the hierarchy.”

Xiao Yan looked at him. “When you are hungry, which rank grows your food? When you are ill, which rank do you ask to heal you? When a city falls, whose protection have you been sheltering behind?”

The student flushed and had nothing more to say.

Xiao Yan did not raise his voice. It only grew steadier.

“My examination will not abolish literary study. Those who write well should certainly serve if they can give voice to the people’s concerns and clearly carry out the court’s policies. But Great Yong cannot support nothing but a roomful of talkers. The realm is vast. Someone must work its fields, manage its rivers, test its medicines, and defend its walls.”

Behind the screen, I quietly lifted my teacup.

This child had finally grown into someone who could wield his own blade.

The examination went ahead as planned.

The first successful candidates included an old river worker who had repaired the Yellow River’s dikes, a woman who managed a saltworks and calculated accounts with astonishing speed, and a craftsman who had retired from the border army. The court grumbled at first. When these people began solving real problems, the objections gradually faded.

Pei Shouzhuo fell ill. After recovering, he submitted his resignation.

Xiao Yan brought it to me. “Mother, should I ask him to stay?”

I considered. “Keep him at the Imperial Academy. His knowledge of the classics is useful; it simply cannot be treated as the only path. Make room for people who are willing to change.”

Xiao Yan nodded and personally endorsed the arrangement, adding an instruction inviting Master Pei to oversee the policy essays for the new examination. He and Xie Heng were to set the questions together.

When Pei Shouzhuo received the decree, he was silent for a long time. In the end, he did not resign.

Later, I heard that on his first visit to the Institute of Practical Learning, he stared at the turning waterwheel for a very long time before reaching out to touch the wooden rim.

11.

On the day the examination results were posted, the crowd outside the palace gates was packed solid.

By the old conventions, the most prominent place on the list should have gone to a young man of distinguished family with an elegant literary style. This time, the top candidate was a woman in her thirties named Meng Qiushi.

She had run a saltworks in Huainan. Widowed young, she had managed over a dozen workers alone, calculating salt permits, keeping accounts, and improving the methods of evaporating brine. During the Linchuan epidemic, she had donated a shipment of earthenware jars and salt. She had also compiled a meticulous ledger showing how supplies in the local stores had been skimmed away at every level.

When she came to sit the special examination, people outside the grounds mocked her as a merchant woman. Some even said she would never make it through the gate.

Meng Qiushi argued with no one. She wrote about three things in her policy essay: how to reduce losses during salt transport, how to audit accounts to limit embezzlement, and how to ensure grain actually reached villages in a bad harvest year.

The examiners initially refused to rank her highly. Xiao Yan took her paper and studied it all night. The next morning at court, he asked, “Which of my ministers can show me where her methods are wrong?”

No one answered.

From behind the curtain, I saw Pei Shouzhuo make several attempts to speak. Each time, he finally lowered his hand.

“If they are not wrong, why can we not use her?” Xiao Yan asked. “Because she is a woman, or because she comes from a merchant household? If it is the latter, tell me: will a river spare a village because the man who repaired its dikes was lowborn?”

The words spread beyond the palace, and the capital buzzed for days.

In the end, Meng Qiushi was appointed a secretary in the Qingli Bureau of the Ministry of Revenue, responsible for public relief granary accounts and water transport. Someone who resented her deliberately handed her a tattered ledger accumulated over many years.

In just five days, she found three fictitious claims and two duplicate payments. Following an expense for ink, she even unearthed an embezzler who had hidden in the ministry for years.

After returning to the capital, Tang Wushi studied the evidence for a long time before turning to me.

“I used to believe rules preserved order. Now I understand that if they only protect people clinging to their posts, they ought to be changed.”

“Being able to see that puts you ahead of a great many people.”

Xiao Yan heard us and quietly edged closer. “Mother, may I praise Lord Tang?”

I glanced at him. “Yes. Just don’t praise him so much that next time he goes back to worrying about the meat in your bowl.”

Tang Wushi gave one of his rare smiles, then clasped his hands and bowed solemnly to Xiao Yan.

That afternoon, Xiao Yan set the list of successful candidates beneath his desk and ran to the vegetable garden to help me pick greens. His hands were muddy, and he was still muttering about Meng Qiushi’s way of keeping accounts.

I handed him a basket. “Well, Your Majesty? What have you worked out?”

“I understand now.” He looked up at the palace walls in the evening light. “You shouldn’t choose people by how grand their families are. You should choose them by whether they can do the work.”

“What else?”

He thought. “When someone does good work, other people should know. Accounts must be public and credit recorded, so the people doing the work aren’t cheated.”

I nodded in satisfaction.

Governing was never a matter of finding someone born wise and placing him on high.

It meant giving people willing and able to work a path forward, while making it impossible for the idle and the corrupt to hide what their hands were doing.

Xiao Yan was still young, but he had found the beginning of that path.

12.

It was not until my third year in Great Yong that I began to have days when I could breathe a little easier.

I still attended morning court. Memorials still piled up like mountains. But Xiao Yan could handle most of them. He came to me with difficult questions, yet when I told him to think for himself, he would take a group of people away to try to find a solution.

Cining Palace now had a little kitchen, a vegetable garden, and a small workshop that Xiao Yan had rearranged into utter chaos.

Xie Heng could not escape his persistent requests. He often entered the palace early in the morning and left in the afternoon with sawdust all over his head. Sometimes Xiao Yan came running with an armful of components, eager to show me his latest creation. Sometimes he brought a failed bowl of tofu pudding and solemnly promised he would make it set properly next time.

I never laughed at his failures.

“Why didn’t it work this time?” I would ask.

He would count the reasons on his fingers: the soy milk was too cold, he had added too much gypsum, he had failed to control the heat.

The next day he would return with an even larger team.

The palace servants whispered that, with the Empress Dowager, His Majesty was just like an ordinary child.

I loved those days.

An emperor had to bear the weight of the realm. But he also deserved somewhere he could put a failed bowl of tofu pudding on the table and hear someone say, “Try again.”

Spring returned, bringing a fine rain to the capital.

After it cleared, Xiao Yan took me up onto the city walls. The distant roof tiles had been washed bright. People streamed along Vermilion Bird Avenue, and the flower sellers’ baskets looked like a moving ribbon of spring color.

New waterwheels from the Institute of Practical Learning had been sent throughout the provinces. Linchuan’s rice harvest was considerably better than the year before, and the villages outside Yanhui Pass had been rebuilt. The first officials recruited through the special examination had set out for their prefectures and counties, carrying plans, medicine chests, and abacuses.

Xiao Yan stood by the parapet, wind lifting the hem of his robe.

He was no longer the child who had to check his nurse’s face before eating a piece of chestnut cake.

I remembered the day I woke up. All I had wanted then was to stay alive and find some corner where I could rest in this devouring palace. Only now did I understand that peace did not come from shrinking into a corner. First, you had to deal with those who overreached, protect the people who deserved protection, then teach the child to find his own way and stand on his own.

Xiao Yan had gone on ahead. He was bending down to speak to a junior officer guarding the wall, asking which sections were most prone to loose masonry, where rainwater should drain, and how old the officer’s children were.

I did not interrupt.

A spring breeze swept down the long palace passage, carrying the smell of damp earth and new shoots. Resting a hand on the still-warm bricks, I slowly made my way back.

Behind me, no one remained to force my head down in the name of propriety. Ahead, that child no longer needed me to shelter him all his life.

At the end of the passage, Xiao Yan turned and waved. A little mud stained his cuff. His smile was radiant.

A long future still lay beneath Great Yong’s sky. And now he could walk toward it on his own.