“I will not fail you today, Lady Mingxia.”

Xiao Yan knelt at the bedside, her own sleeping robe pooled about her feet as the light of dawn filtered through the slats covering the windows. Her lady’s bedchambers were cavernous, but sparsely furnished. Temperate and subdued, as was the style in these days, for to show ostentation was to invite accusations of unfitness.

Only their… the bed was an exception, a heavy construction of Imported Emerald Seas wood and a mattress stuffed with the finest downs available in the lakes, hung and covered by sheets of fine silk from the Celestial Peaks.

Xiao Yan thought it might be her favorite place in the world. Where things were simple, where there was only her Mistress and herself. But dawn had come, and the brief time where softness could be allowed had gone with it.

“You will not,” her Mistress replied. She was a blurred behind the silken curtains of the bed, seated with her legs to side, long white hair tumbling down her shoulders and back to pool on the bed. Her robe just slightly parted, plain unenhanced silk. No talismans, no active defenses. Vulnerable.

Xiao Yan would never cease to be honored by such a sight. A thing even the Lady’s Lord Husband was not permitted. It filled her with determination, renewing it, making her light and certain in her success.

Today she would exercise the arts of her clan, of Great Yao, and eliminate the enemies of the Bai. Her Mistress had procured, in her posting here in the West, great prosperity, even after Xiao Yan’s blunders had locked her from her first choice. Managing the defense against the jungle in this commandery had suited her Mistress’ strong hand and harsh discipline well.

“Your role in this cannot be overstated, Xiao Yan,” Bai Mingxia said softly.”Sabotaging the defenses on the construction work, keeping the Sun from completing their expansions in the north, is vital to the clan. Not only is having such a success key to my being allowed back into the good graces of the court in Zhenjian. We cannot allow the traitors to grow and prosper, they must be vulnerable and weak when that Butcher King dies.”

“I understand,” Xiao Yan replied lowering her eyes. Working against the great enemy, the traitors, as the lower castes knew them, was the duty of every Bai. She was glad for this. Working against her fellow Bai, as Mistress sometimes had her do, was unpleasant. She understood the her lady understood the situations better, but to strike against their own blood had sat less and less well with Xiao Yan as she aged.

Once, she had even seen herself banished from Lady Mingxia’s presence for a week, when she had foolishly let such insignificant thoughts out of her head. “I am ready to do my duty to the Bai, and to you Mistress. Shall I take my leave and begin preparations?”

Lady Mingxia looked down at her from behind the shimmering curtains, and Xiao Yan saw a rare uncertainty there, as she slid forward, lowering her bare feet over the edge of the bed, parting the curtain with her hands.

Xiao Yan almost startled as Bai Mingxia's small, cool hand reached down to cradle her cheek. She remained still, ceasing her breath. It was impossible to Miss, the concern there, and her heart swelled even as she felt like she could shrink in on herself with shame. How dare she be so unskilled that her Mistress would doubt her so.

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She promised herself she would be better, and erase those doubts from Lady Mingxia’s heart.

“Xiao Yan, I-” Bai Mingxia began, only to halt. “Return here by week’s end. Do not fail me, Xiao Yan.”

***

Bai Mingxia drummed her fingers on the arm of her throne, set upon the dais at the rear of the commandery’s meeting hall. The irrelevant red caste soldier with his forehead pressed to the hard polished floor before her continued to drone on and on about the state of low realm supply in the region, the damage the growing season had done to the roads, the maintenance requirements of the warding stones, the desperation of the situation, following the last incursion by jungle horrors.

She was so strongly tempted to melt him down to the bone where he sat in a torrent of venom, and order his whole cadre culled for intruding on her time with such petty business.

But she was not a child. Not one of the spoiled hatchlings being ruthlessly and rightly drummed from the courts and governorships by Heir Suzhen’s increasingly bold directives.

Yet, her heart beat furiously with the rage of her great ancestor, with the desire to kill and kill until all of her problems ceased to be.

It was the eighth day.

By the fifth, news had been good. Rumor trickled across the border that the road construction camps throughout the north of the jungle had gone dark, one by one, failing wardings seeing their crews and garrisons devoured by jungle beasts. The noted secession of the Jungles roots clawing at the Sun’s foundations did not extend to its beasts, they still ravaged as they pleased. Then news of a rampage, across the half constructed fort. Perfect Success, she had been so proud.

Days had ticked by after though. Days alone. There was no news. Of course there was not. The Xiao Clan, even in death, would never allow their bodies or identities to be recovered by the enemy. The clan's arts were thorough.

She could not do this today.

“Triple your budget. Solve the problem. This is beneath me,” she hissed tersely, turning her eyes to the mans back. To her satisfaction his entire body shuddered under the weight of her gaze.

“Lady Bai, I am most thankful, but there is not so much in the coffers to manage this, I…?”

“Take dispensation from my coffers then,” she interrupted him, her patience at its end. “I will fund it myself if the coin counters cannot be bothered. Now. Get. Out.”

On a better day it would have amused her to see a grown man scramble backward across her throne room floor like a crab. Now she felt nothing. Her eyes turned to the rest of the clerks and functionaries, all with sweat beading on their brows, wisely not letting themselves meet her eyes. “All of you.”

They scrambled too, and it was a mere effort of will dragging against the water in the humid air to slam the door shut behind them.

They rattled in their foundations with the force of it. Slowly, bai mingxia lowered her face into her hand. Her channeled roiled and her Law threatened to burst from her pours, a wave of venom fit to melt this pointless, empty chamber.

Instead the air merely sizzled, the acrid scent of melting wood and metal as her throne shuddered, its adornments cracking, scorching, melting.

She had almost spoken it that morning. Forbidden words, not to be spoken no matter how tenderly one meant to spend the night.

She despised the burning the grief tinged qi, threading through her mind, that wished to express as tears. She was glad that her cultivation had put her beyond base physical displays.

Under the grip of her hands, wood went black and withered.