Work Text:
Seeing the spirits of those who had died yet not passed on was not a gift.
Long decades of practice meant Concubine Jing rarely reacted anymore when she saw ghosts, but it was still a near thing when the scholar Su Zhe stepped into the Dowager Empress’ presence and bowed. The sleeves of his robes swept the ground along with those of dozens of disembodied presences. Concubine Jing hid a shiver, and wondered how nobody else noticed the dead’s chill. Perhaps Su Zhe himself felt something, since those ghosts followed his lead, mirrored his motions and attention, and he was wrapped far more warmly than any other living soul.
The ghosts distracted Concubine Jing so much that she did not notice what upset the Dowager Empress until she needed to offer the Dowager Empress soothing tea and sweet-smelling herbs, familiar calming rituals.
Su Zhe—alongside Mu Nihuang and the other men—escaped during the fuss.
Concubine Jing kept a careful ear—and eye, when she could—out for those ghosts, especially after Jingyan told her that Su Zhe would be his strategist, and she did not ask her son why a scholar was haunted by the ghosts of so many soldiers.
The answer, when it came, was tragic in its simplicity.
Concubine Jing saw Lin Shu’s hand in Mei Changsu’s travel book, and understood the bitter truth: Su Zhe was no scholar, but a betrayed young marshal seeking justice for the dead.
She smiled to hide her burgeoning tears, and then opened the secret altar she allowed no other living soul to enter. She lit incense, bowed, and spoke to the shimmering remnants of her old friend’s soul: “Your son’s honor will soon be restored to him.”
For a moment, Concubine Jing thought she almost saw Princess Qi’s ghost smile.