After Hushiyi left her study, Yinyue snapped her fingers.
From a dark corner behind the large silk screen divider, Ayi and another woman slid out of the shadows, dressed in black with their faces half shielded and bowed.
Yinyue gave them a nod, and they blew out the candles in the room, shrouding it in darkness. Two shadows flew in opposite directions out of the open windows.
The faint footsteps above the roof also followed in one direction. The spy had left, but not far. Someone always wanted to track her movements. Whoever it was didn't matter.
Even leaving her residence became a never-ending cat-and-mouse game of hide and seek to throw off the pursuer. Who plays the cat and who plays the mouse? Yinyue smirked at that thought while she sat on the chair under the cover of darkness in her study.
She had grown used to waiting in silence for confirmation that one of the decoys led the spy away.
Yinyue leaned her head against the seat with her thoughts drifting to the illusion of a once easy life, which deceived and destroyed her at the end.
At this time in her first life, she would still be stuck in her gilded golden cage within Huangcheng Capital Cage, oblivious to how savage the world was. Perhaps dancing or sewing with the younger princesses. Not administering half a barren wasteland of a territory. Or thinking of ways to counter her Grand Prince half-brothers.
Ignorance was bliss then.
Life was an illusion. It depended on the belief in that illusion and its size. In this second life, she held no delusion over the bloody price of being a sheltered princess.
She preferred the non-stop game of chess played within the struggle of the Grand Princes. The loser dies, forgotten in history.
Suddenly, she sat up at the fleeting thought of an event around this time. Yinyue wondered if the Gaoyang delegation would still come to Dayan. In her first life, their coming heralded her end, like harbingers of death.
In this second life, she destroyed Luoran before that event. She had changed the history she knew. Different paths laid in front of her now.
If nothing changed, an imperial edict may come soon to summon her or Hushiyi to Huangcheng, but it won't be as friendly as in her first life. Gaoyang owed her a blood debt.
A few raps on the door in a coded pattern brought her attention to the present.
"Come in," she muttered.
The door opened, but barely. A shadow of 05 slid into the door like a noiseless serpent and came up to her.
He whispered into her ear. "Your Highness, Old Man said Gaoyang will send a delegation to seek peace from Dayan. The Xirong rejected a marriage alliance with them."
Yinyue sat up at the news Meigui sent. A delegation is still coming. She massaged her temples, thinking of her first life events.
And if the Xirong rejected a marriage alliance with them. The Gaoyang delegation will probably seek one from Dayan. That edict may come after all. A bigger question remained — who will lead the Gaoyang delegation?
If it was her former husband in the first life, she may kill him on the spot for any offence. Her fists clenched from the swelling fury. Then Yinyue inhaled deeply to soothe her anger over. No point thinking about a past which doesn't exist anymore and a future which hasn't arrived.
"Anything else?" She asked.
"Locusts destroyed their last harvest, resulting in this famine. Some unrest in Gaoyang, right now. The Xirong are increasing military at the borders between Gaoyang and them. Some say refugee influx."
Or it is a disguised reason for moving troops. Yinyue couldn't help but suspect their moves. Famine could be an excuse to shield others from prying.
Truths laid hidden deep within gossip and digging the truth up, especially when military movements are involved, proved difficult.
The other issue caught her attention — locusts. Those were the curse of the lands around in the warmer weather. Swarms of locusts appeared like a huge brown storm from afar. They swept through crops in a feeding frenzy, leaving nothing but a vast trail of destruction across the land as far as the eyes can see.
She recalled the furtive glances Halun threw at Kelian. It was a sign for him to shut up. Halun weaved around the topic like a simple trade for food. Yinyue narrowed her eyes into slits at the thought of Halun. Ashina she couldn't handle, Halun might be another one whom she needed to watch out for.
She leaned back against the chair while 05 fumbled in his chest pocket for something.
"What is it?"
She pulled out her flame stick and popped the cover off. A quick puff behind the table and it lit up. The light illuminated a small part of the space, enough for her to see 05's hand pulling out a small package in a small silk cloth.
"What is it?" She glanced at the package 05 offered to her.
"From Mingyi. The Taotang prince left it for you."
She took it and unwrapped the cream silk cloth with bits of smudged writing around it. It was a small bronze pendant with the carving of the Dayan fire symbol. Curious, she flipped behind and read the inscription.
"Dayan Empress," Yinyue mumbled and frowned. "Military Tally - Wind Guards."
05 kept silent even though he too noticed the Dayan symbol. A smile broke across Yinyue's face as she read the scrawled writing on the silk cloth.
"Wind Guard tally," she said.
05 furrowed his eyebrows, deepening the lines on his face. "That's the Empress's tally!"
"Someone gave me a really great gift," Yinyue said, holding the bronze pendant near the glowing flame stick to admire.
"But where did he get it?"
Yinyue smack 05 on his head. "Those assailants in the Black Mountains are not only Huqi's men but also the Empress's."
Wind Guards were the private elite guards of the current Empress who pledged their lives to serve her. The Shadow Pavilion did not train them, but the Empress's maternal family did.
However, both shared a similar style of martial arts. Easy to mistake one for the other. No wonder 01 and his men couldn't escape the assailants.
"With this tally, you can command the Wind Guards," 05 pointed out a fact, which Yinyue already knew.
Any holder of the Wind Guard tally, even a thief, could control those guards using the tally, even without being recognized. Yinyue knew this weakness, and she countered it in case this happened to her troops.
Her troops had to recognise three commanders, Hushiyi, and her, not just the tally. Yinyue reasoned that in the case of both Hushiyi's and her deaths, having troops meant nothing. The dead can't command troops or fight.
Her goal was to preserve both their lives, not the Dayan Empire.
"I've to repay that kindness with greater interest then," she chuckled softly.