The Immortal Emperor Returns novel · Chapter 5 of 24
Chapter 5: The Adjutant
Su Mian came over the garden wall, landed in the snow and said a word that would have got him flogged in any camp.
He was twenty-six, small and quick, with a nose that had been broken twice and a soldier's grey coat patched at both elbows.
He saw Chu in the window and stopped with one boot half in a drift.
"Boss," he said, in a cracked whisper. "They said you were dead."
"They tried."
"I was in the Square. I was on the roof of the tea house. I watched the sword break and I fell off the tiles." Su Mian wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I landed on a cart of cabbages. I have been hiding in a cabbage cart for an hour."
"Come in before you freeze."
Su Mian came in.
He stopped dead at the sight of the Third Princess, bowed so deeply that his forehead nearly touched the floor, and said, "Your Highness, I am a loyal subject, I have never stolen your cabbages."
"I know," said Shuang. "Sit down. Eat."
He sat.
He ate two bowls of congee without breathing, with one eye on Chu the whole time.
Chu let him.
He knew what this man had given up for him in the first life.
Su Mian had followed his coffin out of the capital and had died in a ditch at the Northern Gate a year later, defending nothing.
It was a strange, warm, painful thing to see him alive and talking with his mouth full.
"Tell it plainly," Chu said, when the bowls were empty.
"The army thinks you are dead already." Su Mian wiped his mouth. "The Chancellery sent a rider to the camp three days ago. Said you had been taken in the act of writing to the Bei Rong, and that Acting Marshal Han has the Emperor's own order to keep the peace."
"What peace?"
"The Winter Muster. Boss, the Chancellor wants the whole Northern Army in the capital for the Offering. Three hundred thousand men. Han has the Marshal's half of the Tiger Tally in his coat. In nine days, he marches."
Shuang had gone very still.
"Nine days," she repeated. "That is the second of the month."
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