“Why are you so hesitant about this? Everything he said is true,” River said.

  Since the Marshall’s meetings had run into the evening, and I had stayed behind to speak with Noble Lion, the lady was already waiting for me in my rooms when I returned, and she served both me and Windstopper dumplings before sitting down to her own meal.

  After having seen her pendant and having realized that she was Rank one-hundred-and-five it probably should have been me who was serving her. She was worth about three times what I was – even though I was an officer, a knight, and an heir – and you’d have to search the far corners of the Land Under Heaven to find more than a dozen people who outranked her. But when I had said as much, she blew me off.

  She was keyed into my agitation and had filled my winebowl to the brim more than once. I took another long drink before responding.

  “I have to go to the reading. I know that. In fact, Noble Lion has done exactly what I would do if…”

  “If what?”

  Difference in rank or not, this was the conversation I had most feared since deciding that I was interested in a future with River. In fact, I had hoped that I would never have to have this conversation. One little flash of power, one little bit of evidence of my gift and there would have been no need. Even so, it wasn’t something I could hide from someone I cared about. I could never ask River to tie herself to me without first letting her know my prospects… or the lack thereof.

  “My father took me for countless readings over the years. They never make any sense. This is because as far as I know…”

  She put the porcelain wine jug back in its place and sat beside me, giving me her full attention. There was no help for it. Tear the bandage off and clean up the blood afterward.

  “As far as I know, I have no Mandate of Heaven.” The words came out in a jumble.

  She looked at me, expression unreadable.

  I repeated myself but she still didn’t react so I went on. “Er, not yet anyway. But my hope is that if I push myself for the next year or so…”

  The words sounded hollow and desperate, even to me, and I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.

  “And you’re worried that if you go to the reading, the Philosopher will say as much in front of everyone.” It wasn’t a question.

  When River shifted closer and put her hand on my arm, Windstopper looked up from his bowl for the first time. His eyes flicked to me and then to River and then, shrugging, he helped himself to some more buns.

  I couldn’t meet River’s eye.

  “Wait, you think I care about your Mandate,” River continued. “You think I care if you have one or not. Sparrow, some of the most horrible, hopeless, useless people I have ever known have had some of the most powerful and impressive gifts I have ever seen. You’re not them. You are destined for greatness if Heaven wills it or not.”

  I was thunderstruck. River didn’t care about my lowly rank in comparison to hers. In fact, I don’t think she cared about rank at all. She had served dumplings to Windstopper and he was literally one step up from a peasant – not that I cared. Windstopper’s job was to keep me safe and he looked damned good at his job. Plus his innocence was rare and had kept me sane on more than one grim occasion. I valued Windstopper more than his rank did. I valued myself more than my rank did. So I could understand how River could disregard rank when it came to people close to her. But now River was saying she didn’t care about the Mandate of Heaven either? Even when it came to decisions she would have to make about her future?

  “I know I can do great things if given the chance. I will. It’s not my fortune I fear, River. It’s the hexagram they will assign me in front of everyone. I once watched an entire room full of lords write someone off because of two false steps. If I were to be assigned a fate that seems weak or useless in front of the others, I may never be worth an alliance, much less a position of prominence among them. Even if I manifest some powerful Mandate and ascend to my father’s seat, if people believe that my destiny is to be weak or inept, they will never stop harrying me. Something as simple as a misstep could be the end of my ambitions, so imagine how detrimental a reading of every step I’m going to take for my entire life could be!” I snorted a bitter laugh. “Other than that, Noble Lion’s invitation would be everything I could hope for.”

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  “Windstopper?”

  “Hm.” The big man looked up, noodles dangling from his chin.

  “Could you please fetch my scroll?”

  “Hm.”

  “The one I was reading earlier on the couch.”

  “Hm Hm.” He crossed to the far side of the room.

  “No, not that one, the one about the woman and the carriage.”

  She turned back toward me as Windstopper began rifling through the scrolls to see which one she wanted. “Can I tell you a secret, Sparrow? Something not a single other man under Heaven knows?”

  “If it doesn’t put you in any danger.”

  She waved a hand. “Among the many concubines chosen by the Gray Dowager to pull her son out of his stupor, every one of them had a very powerful Mandate.”

  I wasn’t sure this was making me feel any better, but I trusted River enough to let her get to her point.

  “You see, we were chosen not just for our ability to reason with his majesty, but our potential for giving him an heir with a very powerful and unique gift. They’re not wholly hereditary, but it's said that once-royal bloodlines play a part. Some of the other girls could dance with the wind, or shape the rain as it fell, or summon serpents from beams of solid wood. But do you want to know the women I feared most in the harem?”

  This was definitely not making me feel any better, but she drew my face up to meet hers.

  “The most frightening ones were those who hid their gifts, but had been chosen by the Gray Dowager anyway. The very fact that they were in the same room as those other girls meant that they had real power, but until they used it, I had no idea what they could do, nor any idea how I could prepare to defend myself. They might be able to read thoughts, or steal the breath from my lungs, or control my body like the strings of a puppet. The things I imagined they could do were far worse than anything they ever wound up using against me. So I kept my own gift secret. And to this day, not a single person, aside from the Gray Dowager, has ever seen what I can do and lived. What I learned from that harem is this: no matter how terrible the things you know, there is always greater fear lurking in the unknown.”

  “So you’re saying… that I should pretend to have a gift.”

  “Here You Are My Lady.” Windstopper looked uncertain as he handed River the Song of Luofu. She took it and thanked him. Task accomplished, he let out a breath. It wouldn’t have mattered what book Windstopper handed her, but I was surprised to find that the big, simple man had chosen right. He was certainly… unique in the way he approached things. And barely literate, like many of his rank were. But he was not, in any way, unintelligent.

  River turned my face back towards her own.

  “I’m saying, Sparrow, that if you’re there in the same room as those other powerful people, the absence of your gift will be far more frightening to them than if you were to dangle the very power of the Great Ancestor before their faces. Say nothing about your Mandate. Do nothing about your Mandate. Deflect and be humble, and they will assume you’re more powerful than the most brazen of them. By the time anyone even suspects this is your plan, you will have found a dozen other ways to surpass them.”

  "And... my Imperial card. My pendant. Anyone with access to the Imperial Ministry of Heralds or even Histories would know that I have no Mandate listed and no fate to speak of."

  "Psch." River waved a hand in the air. "The Imperial system is as manipulable as the people who run it. A word to a friend and I could have your Imperial card say you command the Heavens themselves. No one would believe it but still..." She reached across the space between us and took my hand in hers, perhaps to soften the blow of her next words. "You're young. And low in rank. You would not be the first person to manifest whose card was not updated until you reached a position high enough for their Mandate to matter. And you certainly wouldn't be the first person to actually matter who claimed little talent, and little rank only to keep a very powerful and very subtle Mandate a secret. Not everyone who is gifted raises castles in the middle of battlefields."

  She leaned back and sipped her wine to allow her words to sink it. The lasting impression her words left me with was that I was very out of my depth when it came to matching wits with River in any regard. And when it came to scheming, in particular, River was very much in her element, unless she were overstating her knowledge and her connections. Then again, I didn't think so. Everyone in the Land Under Heaven knew about the famous Noble Lion, but her words hinted at a deeper knowledge of his character.

  “Hm, that might actually be a sound plan,” I said, finishing my wine and refilling River’s bowl before my own. “I can’t wait for you to see it in action.”

  “What do you mean?” I always appreciated when she directed her well-honed feminine arts against me, so long as they were a deceptive means to a virtuous end. But I took real joy in seeing the cold, shiny smile of her facade crack. Even after weeks of spending time together, I still had to work to get to the real River beneath the surface.

  “Well, you’re coming with me,” I said, “And don’t worry, I checked with Noble Lion. Many of the young lords will be accompanied by concubines. This is, after all, a palace affair.”

  “What?!” The surface of her calm shattered.