CHAPTER EIGHT: Threads in the Dust

The Queen did not speak of Liora.

She didn't need to.

By the time the third servant was caught loitering outside Liora's quarters — each dismissed without reason — the warning was clear. No accusations. No scolding. Just subtraction. Quiet removal.

One thread at a time.

And still, Liora moved.

Not quickly. Not recklessly.

But she watched who returned trays with folded napkins, who swept without meeting her gaze, and who left incense that smelled subtly of ash root — a protective herb against palace spirits.

She kept a list in her mind, never written.

And it grew.

---

One night, while walking the side path of the East Cloisters, Liora paused.

A lantern flickered strangely ahead — not from wind.

She stepped into the alcove, and there, folded against the base of a statue of the First Empress, was a strip of silk. Crimson. Marked with one symbol:

听 — Listen.

She didn't touch it.

But that night, Ami found three strands of black thread woven into Liora's pillow stitching. When unraveled, they formed a single sentence in needle-script:

"There are ears even the Queen cannot close."

---

The Queen's mirror cracked that morning.

Hairline. Thin. But the silver warped.

She dismissed her maids with uncharacteristic sharpness, and for the first time in years, called for a prayer reading from the Mistress of the Old Rites, a position older than Empress or King.

The old woman came at dusk, draped in yellowing robes and silence.

They said she had no tongue.

They were wrong.

The Queen waited until they were alone.

"She is growing roots," the Queen said.

The old woman poured a fine powder onto the floor — black sand laced with gold — and traced seven concentric circles. In the center, she placed a single chrysanthemum seed.

Then she whispered:

"She listens."

The Queen narrowed her eyes. "To what?"

The seed cracked.

Not sprouting — splintering.

And the old woman answered:

"To things buried beneath the throne."

---

Liora's next visit was unplanned.

A favored maidservant from the Temple Kitchens collapsed — poisoned by a misbrewed tea said to be meant for Lady Zhen. The entire courtyard descended into panic.

Liora, who had only come to bring Lady Wen a book of foreign poems, found herself amid the chaos.

She knelt beside the girl, pressing a cloth to her lips, but it was too late.

As the body was taken away, one of the kitchen boys — no older than fourteen, with soot on his cheeks and fear in his eyes — slipped a small pouch into Liora's sleeve.

Later, in her chambers, she opened it.

Inside: a single lotus seed, dried and carved with ink so fine it shimmered.

And a slip of rice-paper, folded to a whisper:

"The hollow places remember your name."

---

She did not sleep that night.

Instead, she lit a single taper candle and placed it in the alcove of her chamber — where the moonlight never touched.

And for the first time, she spoke to it.

"I don't know who you are," she said softly. "But I see your work. I won't expose you. I won't worship you. But if you're listening—"

The flame jumped.

Not high. Not strong.

But once.

In answer.

---

The next morning, the Queen summoned Lady Wen and Lady Hua to the Winter Gallery for tea.

She did not summon Liora.

But the gift left in Liora's chamber said enough: a box of sugar-dried plums from the southern border, a delicacy only served when a concubine was being evaluated — as threat or asset.

Ami stared at it for a long time.

"They're watching you again," she whispered.

"No," Liora murmured, fingers brushing the top of the box. "They never stopped."

---

She looked out across the Lotus Courtyard — to the shifting tides of favor, fear, and false smiles.

The Queen had moved against her with silence.

But now something older had moved in return.

Not for her.

Through her.

And whatever it was…

…it remembered.