Chapter 28: Rendong Was a Bold Cat Part 3

Word of the exchange between the Grand Empress Dowager and the Empress Dowager soon reached the Palace of Peaceful Longevity.

Dowager Consort Wang frowned faintly, leaning back, a shade of gloom at her brow. But the gloom lasted only a moment before something like delight crept in.

Since Emperor Taichu’s ascension, Dowager Consort Wang could no longer plant her spies so freely, though the Emperor had never intended to hide anything in the first place. Word was, ever since the boy had been brought back, he had stayed at Emperor Taichu’s side.

The Emperor was raising him personally, with a patience never before seen.

Compared with the Emperor falling for some woman and producing an heir, choosing a man was, to Dowager Consort Wang, by far the better outcome. If word ever spread, the upright courtiers would surely bristle too.

But this was not enough. On this alone, she could not blunt the Emperor’s deepening authority.

After all, doting on a man was no great stain. So long as he didn’t ruin himself over the fellow for life, such favor, given time, always drifted elsewhere.

Just as Emperor Changle had once doted on his Empress.

Dowager Consort Wang let the thought go. After a moment she summoned Danzhu and murmured her instructions. Danzhu’s face changed, going pale. “Your Ladyship, if something goes wrong…”

Dowager Consort Wang’s expression turned cold, venomous. “Then wouldn’t that be even better?”

While mistress and servant spoke, a cat lay sprawled beneath the soft couch.

Soft, and fluffy, for all the world like a small blanket.

The little cat head rested on the floor, ears swiveling back and forth with the voices, like alert little inverted triangles.

After a while, the cat shifted from lying to crouching.

The space under the couch was low, so the cat crouched low to match.

The little head, flattened from sleep, stayed flattened even after rising.

The cat didn’t notice, still washing his face, stroke after stroke.

Once reasonably awake, the cat yawned hugely.

Dowager Consort Wang’s wicked schemes were so many!

The cat thought, head swaying.

“Your Ladyship, this hem…” Outside, Danzhu’s voice hesitated. “It seems to have been scratched.”

“Show me,” came Dowager Consort Wang’s voice at once.

Uh oh.

The little furry face went grave. Today, the cat… might not have held back!

All Dowager Consort Wang’s fault, always wearing those sparkly clothes. To a cat, that was temptation itself!

Every visit to the Palace of Peaceful Longevity, the sparkles had swayed before the cat’s eyes. The cat holding out until now had been a heroic effort!

The cat began creeping toward the door.

Danzhu’s voice went on. “…Come to think of it, the servants assigned to sweeping have been saying the hall is always full of fine fur. No one knows what animal it comes from.”

“Fur?” Dowager Consort Wang’s voice dropped, a chill threading through. “What color?”

“Black,” said Danzhu.

“Where in the hall?”

Danzhu hesitated. “This Servant hasn’t asked yet. I may need to…” Her words cut off. Her gaze had landed by the soft couch, on the fur stealthily poking out.

Then the fur drew back, revealing a pair of brilliant gold cat eyes.

A cat!

A cat!

Danzhu’s eyes went wide, and Dowager Consort Wang, sensing something wrong, whipped her head toward where Danzhu stared, just in time to catch a small black whirlwind streaking past.

Black!

Dowager Consort Wang thought at once of the Black Cat Emperor Taichu kept.

Instinct took over. “Catch it!”

The palace attendants sprang at the shout, but their first thought was that no person was visible, and only when the black whirlwind whipped past their ankles did they realize it was not a person but a cat that must be caught.

The cat ran fast.

Out the doors in a flash.

What a rush!

As the people gave chase, Rendong’s cat eyes dilated with excitement.

The cat had not the slightest awareness of his own mischief. He was having a marvelous time, treating this as a special sort of race. If the cat’s speed beat the humans’, the cat won!

And of course a cat’s speed beat a human’s, even if a cat’s stamina fell short.

A cat couldn’t run long distances. Could a human, then?

The distance from the Palace of Peaceful Longevity to the Hall of Blessed Tranquility was not short, and the cat couldn’t sprint it in one go. When he ran out of breath partway, the cat shot up a tall tree in three bounds, then onto a low wall, then scrambled swiftly onto the roof.

So tired!

The cat panted, thrilled.

Exciting, exciting!

His black tail hung down, swinging deliberately before the attendants’ eyes.

Like fishing.

What a wicked cat!

Toes trod back and forth across the tiles, leaving one damp paw print after another.

After that headlong dash, the cat was sweating from every pore, tongue lolling as he panted lightly.

Rendong caught the murmurs below.

“…The cat is black… must be the one His Majesty keeps at his side…”

“Her Ladyship ordered us to catch it, but if we anger His Majesty…”

“…Then do we still catch it?”

Catch it and die, or don’t and die.

The attendants wavered, caught between.

The cat gave a yowl and said magnanimously, “Then you may all go.”

Rendong bore no grudges.

After all that excitement, the cat was happy too!

Sadly, the attendants below understood no cat-speak, and still they lingered.

And not far off, a silent, suffocating procession came to a halt. The grand Imperial Carriage stopped, its curtains lifted, and Emperor Taichu stepped slowly down.

The attendants went white-faced and dropped to their knees one after another.

Up on the eaves, Rendong’s eyes lit too. He rose at once and leapt down, tail high.

The still-panting cat was soon hanging off the human.

A cat of middling size had some weight to it, and the Emperor’s robes gave an earsplitting rip.

Unbothered, Emperor Taichu cupped the cat’s bottom so the hanging cat wouldn’t hurt his tender paws.

That cold, killing gaze swept over the ashen attendants of the Palace of Peaceful Longevity below.

In the silence, nothing sounded but meow after meow.

Entirely oblivious to the cold the Emperor was radiating, Rendong released his grip on the robe and plopped his bottom right into Taichu’s palm, surrendering his whole cat-safety to the human, easy and natural, meowing away at him.

Meow!

Human, Rendong was amazing just now. They were all slower than the cat.

Meow!

They were so dumb. Couldn’t catch the cat, and didn’t dare go back either.

Meow meow!

Luckily Rendong was an exceptionally magnanimous cat and held no grudges whatsoever.

Tail swinging lazily, the cat chattered on at his own pace, not caring in the slightest whether Tantai Tian understood a word, and when he’d said his fill, he triumphantly pressed a damp toe bean to the human’s wrist, like stamping a tidy little seal.

One cat paw, warm, toe beans a bit damp. One cat paw, cool, fur cool, toe beans cool.

Tantai Tian looked down at the little rascal in his arms, the cat who had only just discovered his toe beans were wet and was now stamping wet seals all over him, and tightened his hold. “And how does Rendong think they should be dealt with?”

Rendong, who had just stamped a mangosteen print on Tantai Tian’s collar, tilted his little head, thin cat ears flopping as they brushed the human’s body. “The cat said, the cat is magnanimous~”

Racing humans was fun too. The cat didn’t mind!

“But they harbored ill intent. If they’re let off this easily, more will do the same next time. Then won’t Rendong eat badly, play badly, and have to run for his life wherever he goes?”

Compared with the attendants kneeling on the ground.

The one speaking now was the one truly brimming with malice.

If Rendong weren’t lying limp in his arms, panting like a pup; if that warm little body weren’t wriggling about so merrily, stamping seals everywhere, Tantai Tian would have put every attendant here to death already.

Injustice?

Wrongful blame?

What did it matter?

The moment they gave chase, they had earned death!

Violence lurked in Tantai Tian’s eyes, a viper already coiled to strike, aching to sink its venom into its prey and listen to them die shrieking.

Rendong thought the human made sense.

The cat didn’t really care, but if everywhere he went had people chasing cats, that wouldn’t be fun at all.

The little furry face went grave in thought. “Punish them with running. Run hard, mm, run around the whole Imperial Palace!”

Hmph. The palace was so big. One lap would run them to death!

A large hand covered Rendong’s little head. Tantai Tian drew a slow breath, as if forcibly suppressing some violent surge. “Ten laps around the palace daily. They stop only when they can finish before noon.”

The smug little cat’s eyes went round.

That many!

Once the order was given, the Emperor climbed back into the Imperial Carriage with the squirming cat in his arms, and the grim, oppressive procession soon moved off, rolling slowly away.

The attendants of the Palace of Peaceful Longevity still hadn’t stopped kowtowing.

Not until all sound of it was gone did they collapse to the ground, wearing the faces of the barely spared.

That flash of killing intent just now. They had truly believed they were about to die.

The Emperor’s sentence would take half their lives as it was. The palace was enormous; ten laps a day was a fate worse than death.

There was no finishing ten laps before noon!

…But at least it was living.

Painful living, but living.

One of them said, shaken, “Am I imagining it? Just now… was it the cat that changed His Majesty’s mind?”

“A cat? How could it?”

“True. It’s only a Cat…”

“And if not for that Cat, we wouldn’t be in this mess…”

“And yet,” the first one pressed on, “His Majesty truly meant to kill us just now.” Emperor Taichu never hesitated to kill. That violent killing intent, they weren’t fools; how could they fail to sense it?

The attendants of the Palace of Peaceful Longevity exchanged a look all around.

Could it really have been… the Cat?

A Divine… a Divine Cat?

If Rendong had known their thoughts, he would have nodded his little head, every inch the smug cat.

Yes, yes. That would be the Divine Cat!

The Imperial Carriage glided without a sound, without even a jolt.

The human was wiping the Divine Cat’s toe beans with a damp handkerchief. Sprawled on his back across Tantai Tian, the cat’s paws splayed and kicked, doing battle with the handkerchief!

The cat thought the human was acting strange!

Well. The human had never once been normal.

The cat groused secretly in his heart.

But just now, whatever the cat said, the human seemed to know what he meant. Could the human… understand cat-speak?

Meow.

“Human,” Rendong called sweetly, “can you understand cat talk?”

Tantai Tian went on wiping toe beans. Not a flicker of response.

“Sugar Is Too Sweet~” [T/N: ‘Sugar Is Too Sweet’ (Táng Tài Tián) is a homophonic pun on Tantai Tian]

The cat slurred out the human’s name.

The human moved.

The cat watched his every motion intently.

The human tossed aside the soiled handkerchief, took a small pair of scissors from the cabinet nearby, and began trimming the fur between the cat’s toes.

Rendong licked his toe bean.

Hey, hey! The cat worked hard to grow those furs!

Then again, overlong toe fur made a cat slip.

Rendong didn’t often scamper about outside in his human shape, so he shed less naturally, and a light trim did a cat good.

The human, solemnly trimming away, didn’t look like he understood a thing.

The cat relaxed, flopping boneless as spilled water across Tantai Tian’s lap, big tail swishing back and forth, sweeping every which way over the human.

After a long while, Tantai Tian’s hands stilled.

He held up Rendong’s pink toe bean and examined it, and only after confirming the cat bore no injury did that low pressure ease somewhat.

Rendong rubbed himself all over Tantai Tian, quite deliberately transferring his damp chill to the human as well.

The Emperor let the cat have his way. Kneeling at the carriage entrance, Yu Zeming said softly, “Your Majesty, the Young Gentleman kept to his quarters today as well. He received no visitors.”

The cat’s motion paused.

The Young Gentleman, wasn’t that Rendong!

How dare the human sneak off and whisper behind the cat’s back. Was he going to badmouth the cat?!

The cat’s ears shot up, wary.

Tantai Tian’s gaze lingered darkly on Rendong’s Bugles-shaped ears.

Fluttering back and forth, just like the cat’s mood at this moment.

“Rendong,” the human said, his voice soft, his eyes shadowed, “tell me. Why does Suisui keep hiding from me?”

A monster scheming with every breath.

Beneath words that sounded almost wounded coiled a warped shadow, swaying lightly like the cat’s own tail, ready at any instant to spill its dreadful, malign desire.