Chapter 14

Life in the small study was far more comfortable for Wei Tong than before. Though the reduced contact with Kangxi left Liu Cheng exasperated, Wei Tong was, after all, merely a favored chess piece. Now that half his plans had been wrecked by Liang Jiugong’s stroke of genius, Liu Cheng had lately been giving Liang Jiugong trouble every so often. As for Wei Tong, no one had contacted him for the entire month.

Though Wei Tong burned to know where Wei Ning was, before and now were two entirely different situations, even within the same Qingning Palace. Back when he was a sweeper and kitchen hand, his living quarters and range of movement were confined to the outer hall. The small study, however, sat in the inner hall; apart from taking his meals, Wei Tong spent all his rest time in the room behind the small study, together with Zhao He.

The small study held a great many books, and once the cleaning was done, free time was plentiful. Eventually, the day came when Wei Tong caught Zhao He secretly reading, and he couldn’t resist starting to sneak reads himself. It broke the rules, but with hardly anyone ever coming to the small study, Wei Tong dared.

Watching Wei Tong become his partner in crime, Zhao He only smiled and said nothing. Wei Tong could read traditional characters and even write them, though not with an ink brush. Sometimes, after reading, he would go outside the study and trace characters in the dirt with a twig.

One morning, Wei Tong rose early, stretched his limbs outside, washed up, and carried water in to clean the study. The work really was light; since his arrival the two had taken turns day by day, so the other could rest.

Wei Tong was wiping down the lower shelves when the door pushed open. He turned, hastily set down what he held, and dropped to his knees. “This servant greets Your Majesty! Ten thousand years to His Majesty, ten thousand years, ten thousand times ten thousand years!”

Kangxi looked down at the kneeling Wei Tong, a strange flicker passing through his eyes that no one could have read. “Rise. Why are you alone here?” He remembered the small study was always manned by two.

“This servant and Zhao He rotate one day at a time, so today it happens to be this servant’s turn to clean.” Wei Tong rose and explained in a low voice, afraid Kangxi might blame Zhao He.

“Carry on. Zhen was merely strolling about with nothing to occupy Zhen.” Kangxi waved a hand at random, then ambled over to the shelves and picked up a book. Merely strolling, indeed. Wandering about in the early morning before court, with Liang Jiugong left behind no less! If Wei Tong couldn’t smell something odd in this, his brains had turned to water.

But a lowly eunuch’s words carried no weight; better not to know such things anyway. Obeying the sovereign’s will, Wei Tong went back to wiping shelves.

Kangxi sat down at the desk, but his attention was nowhere near the book he had plucked out at random. His gaze tracked Wei Tong’s back instead.

Was he really ‘him’?

Wei had given Kangxi far too many surprises.

He never cared for the proprieties between men and women; he had even once suggested that one husband with one wife and no concubines was the proper shape of a marriage. Though he never said so outright, in his words a street peddler hawking his wares and a minister whose power dominated the court seemed no different. He had once argued with Kangxi hotly over the question of legitimate versus concubine-born heirs; he understood the customs; he dared call Oboi by his bare name… And so much more besides, all of it making Kangxi more and more curious about just who Wei was.

Yet Wei was completely indifferent to being found out; if anything, he resisted it. He had said that the man he was in reality and Wei of the dreamscape were two entirely different people, and that the moment they woke, each would forget the other’s voice completely. Even when Kangxi had considered fishing this man out, Wei, who usually let information slip with barely any coaxing, grew remarkably guarded on this one point.

If not for that marvelous little creature, if not for that one call of “Tongtong”…

As for Wei Tong, this junior inner attendant, Kangxi had first noticed him purely for his skill with his fists. Then the man had inexplicably turned up at the Buku Training Ground. Knowing it was Liu Cheng squeezing him out, Kangxi hadn’t paid it much mind, only sometimes felt that sparring with Wei Tong was more satisfying than anything else.

But without Little Ke, Kangxi would never have connected Wei Tong and Wei.

Wei Tong knew nothing of this shift in Kangxi’s heart, nor that he seemed to be on the verge of having his cover slip. In truth, Wei Tong couldn’t care less. Among the millions upon millions of people in the world, who could have guessed that the person he had hung out and chatted with back then would be Kangxi?

Kangxi, of all people.

When he finished the shelves, Wei Tong straightened up and found Kangxi looking in his direction. After a hesitation, he shifted aside. Surely His Majesty wanted a book from that shelf behind him?

But who could have guessed that watching Wei Tong move, Kangxi looked as if he were grinding his teeth, then rose, flicked his sleeves, and stalked out, leaving Wei Tong utterly bewildered. What was that? Was shifting aside not good enough for him?

After finishing the cleaning, Wei Tong sneakily took a book from the inner shelves and read it in earnest. Classical prose was dense and hard going, but the more one read, the more one’s horizons widened.

“Wei Tong, you can actually read these?” When Zhao He came to the small study that afternoon, he asked suddenly, eyeing the book in Wei Tong’s hands with confusion. Wei Tong broke into a cold sweat, then calmly shook his head. “This book is far too deep for me. I’m only looking at it because the illustrations are pretty. What is it, Zhao He, can you read these characters?”

Zhao He shook his head and pointed at the shelf Wei Tong leaned against. “The deeper in you go, the harder the books get. I only know a few characters. How could I possibly understand them?”

The book in Wei Tong’s hands was about military matters. Two little eunuchs reading in private was already an offense; if they stumbled upon something classified, it would be crime upon crime. Of course, anything shelved in the small study was unlikely to be a problem. Still, Wei Tong read far more carefully after that.

But from that day on, Wei Tong noticed he was running into Kangxi far more often. It still didn’t compare to the Buku Training Ground days, when he had seen the man nearly once a day, but even now it was frequent, and Wei Tong was puzzled. Did this small study hold some peculiar charm that had made Kangxi fall in love with it overnight?

Naturally, such a quip would never pass his lips. He grumbled only in the privacy of his own skull.

Afterwards, whether Liu Cheng had reined himself in or simply steadied his nerves, one day when Wei Tong went to collect the meal, someone bumped into him, and a folded slip of paper found its way into his palm so smoothly he never felt it happen. Wei Tong watched the unfamiliar junior inner attendant beam an apology at him, then leave.

The note contained his next assignment. Since he was back in Qingning Palace anyway, Wei Tong should work his way into becoming someone close to Kangxi’s heart. As for the contacts, Wei Tong needn’t worry; when the time came, someone would seek him out. He only had to have the intelligence ready.

Wei Tong chafed at it, but it also showed Liu Cheng trusted him more now; some of the earlier restrictions had been lifted. Though of course it couldn’t be ruled out that certain measures simply couldn’t operate inside Qingning Palace.

“Wei, how have you been lately?” One day, upon “seeing” Xuan in the dreamscape, Xuan asked. Wei Tong thought carefully over recent events. “Nothing much has changed. Reading, writing, that sort of thing. Much more leisurely than before.” Xuan frowned on the far side of the screen. Reading and writing? That didn’t fit Wei Tong’s current circumstances at all. Could he have been mistaken?

“Never mind me. What about you?” Wei Tong’s fingers trailed along the bookshelf. What a collection, and every volume a treasure.

“What should be done has been done. What shouldn’t be done has been done too. The hour hasn’t come yet. When it does, we shall see whether heaven is helping me, or helping you.” A faint note of ferocity in Xuan’s voice was markedly different, and Wei Tong’s gaze drifted off the shelf toward the folding screen. “Making more trouble?”

“No. Just growing ever more unbridled.” Xuan said nothing more, and Wei Tong didn’t press.

The two drifted back into idle conversation, and the farther they wandered, the wider the topics sprawled, until at last Wei Tong said with great enthusiasm, “If it were ever possible, I’d like to sail out to sea someday and see whether the far side of the great ocean really looks the way they say.” The Americas at this point presumably still belonged to the natives; Europe was more advanced, sure, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the Qing. Then again, in this era, just getting out to sea at all would already be remarkable.

“The sea is all rolling swells and countless dangers. Why do you love it so?” Xuan’s voice carried a touch of helplessness. When the sea ban had come up before, Wei had declared his loathing of it without a moment’s hesitation.

Wei Tong shrugged, dragged a chair over to sit facing the folding screen, the book he had pulled from the shelf still in hand. “You can’t blindfold yourself to a thing just because it carries risk, then chain it up. Otherwise, when you truly need it, you’ll learn what suffering is.”

“Oh? Sounds like Wei speaks from experience.”

“I was a wild one back then. Couldn’t get a word of study into my head, thought it was all toil and misery, and flunked the big exams. My father spent a fortune finding me another school. The family was poor in those days; my parents wore themselves to the bone. Looking back, I was begging for a beating. Study is a thing that demands hard labor. But could anyone just skip studying because it’s hard?”

Ten years of hard study by a cold window, unknown to any man; one day of success, and the whole world knows your name. Without the agonizing struggle, how could there be the beauty of a butterfly bursting from its cocoon? And yet without those ten years of cold-window toil, forget the world knowing your name; you would never even brush against the word “success” itself.

“However dangerous the sea, it’s not as if others stop striving just because we wall ourselves in. Xuan, understand this: yes, the Qing belongs to the Emperor. But the realm under heaven does not belong to the Emperor alone. And this world holds more than just one country.” By the end, the words had edged into treason, but Wei Tong said them anyway. The consequences of the sea ban had once been far too grave; whenever it came up, Wei Tong couldn’t help saying a few words more.