The Jade Empress

The jade seal had been warm to the touch since the night of the Emperor's death. Lian Wei noticed it first during the funeral rites, when protocol required her to press the seal into the vermilion ink and stamp the decree of mourning. The stone should have been cold — jade was always cold, that was the nature of the mineral, the reason the old poets called it the bone of winter. But when her fingers closed around the seal, it pulsed with a heat like a living heartbeat, and for one disorienting moment, she heard a voice speaking in a dialect so ancient that it predated the dynasty itself.

She said nothing. An empress-regent who admitted to hearing voices would not remain regent for long, and the court was already circling. Chancellor Mu had positioned his allies in every ministry. The northern generals were restless. The treasury was three seasons from empty. Lian Wei was twenty-two years old, the daughter of a minor concubine, elevated to the regency only because every more suitable candidate had died in the plague that had taken the Emperor and half the court with him. She was, by every political calculation, a placeholder — a name on the decrees until a real ruler could be arranged.

The seal spoke to her again that night, in her private chambers, where the only witness was the cat that had belonged to the Emperor and now refused to leave her rooms. The voice was clearerthis time, less like sound and more like memory, as though the words had always been in her mind and were only now being illuminated. It said: Granddaughter. I have waited four hundred years. It is time you learned what this empire truly is.

She set the seal on the lacquered table and stared at it. The jade glowed faintly in the candlelight, a deep green luminescence that came from within the stone rather than reflecting from its surface. The cat watched with the particular intensity that cats reserve for things that humans cannot see. Lian Wei, who had spent her life being underestimated, who had survived the plague and the court and the crushing weight of an empire she had never been meant to carry, did what she had always done when confronted with the impossible. She listened.