The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 325: Hungry Mouths Talk

The second packet Deming laid out held notes I recognized by rumor, not sight—short lists with no titles, sums tallied in code that had pretended to be clever until today. Ren’s name appeared three times where it had no right to appear once.

"Messenger," I said, not raising my voice. The hallway supplied one. "Go to the south storehouse and ask Gaoyu whether he’s finished with Ren’s steward. If he has, tell him I want the steward’s tongue in a bucket. If he hasn’t, tell him to keep the man whole until dusk and teach him the word ’why’."

The messenger ran like I had promised him a hot meal for bringing me the answer before it cooled.

Zhao Hengyuan found backbone where deceit had lived. "You overreach. You command outside your remit. You threatened to mutilate a merchant’s man in a matter of accounting. You—"

"I govern," I interrupted. "You stole." I pushed the ledger to him, and the page with the dead man’s signature winked up like a joke told by a fool in a funeral hall. "Look at your work, Minister. Look at what you teach your daughter to call legacy."

He didn’t look. He had looked already, for years, and had taught his eyes to call it virtue.

Mingyu closed the ledger with a soft clap that sounded like a palm on a cheek. "Enough ink," he concluded. "Two orders. First, the Left Prime Minister is placed under winter discipline. No petitions touching family, harem, or heir will leave his hand for thirty days. His office ledgers will be copied and compared by Revenue and Censor and returned with annotations that teach him the difference between the empire’s purse and his own."

Zhao Hengyuan opened his mouth. Mingyu lifted a finger. Closed again.

"Second," he continued, "Ren’s holdings in the capital are to be seized for audit. Not confiscated—yet. Audited. If his books run honest, he keeps his warehouses with a fine he’ll feel for a year. If they run like this—" he tapped the closed ledger— "he will watch them burn from outside the gate."

The Guard Commander had the orders before the words finished landing. He didn’t bow. He didn’t need to. We were past the part of the day that required decorations.

Meiling found a place to stand where she could look dutiful without being trampled. "If the Empress will permit," she ventured, "I request assignment to the weaving halls as previously discussed. Let me demonstrate efficiency there. Let me bring cloth that breathes like numbers do—exactly, without knots."

The girl had good instincts for survival; she had learned to offer labor when power disliked her mouth.

"Granted," I returned. "Aunt Ping will supervise. If you breathe wrong, she’ll swat you until your lungs remember who they belong to."

A sound that wanted to be a laugh escaped one of the Revenue deputies and died under the Censor’s look.

Zhao Hengyuan gathered what remained of his pride and tried to wrap it around his daughter. "Meiling is not a laundress to be swatted by broom-women."

"She is a petitioner at my mercy," I countered. "As are you."

Yizhen’s fan clicked open and shut once, a punctuation mark that had nothing to do with charm. "Shall I escort the Minister to the first of his thirty quiet days," he offered blandly.

"I can find the corridor," Zhao bit back.

"I’m sure," Yizhen returned, pleasant as tea. "I’m less sure you can resist whispering into the wrong ears on your way to it."

Mingyu didn’t look at either of them.

Instead, he addressed the room. "By dusk," he set the line, "I want three lists on my desk: contracts that smell of Ren, clerks who sign for dead men, and warehouses whose inventory increases when the doors are locked. If any list is short because someone got sentimental, I will lengthen it with names I choose."

The room understood him.

I let my eyes fall to the ledger one last time and then away, because numbers are a blade that dull when stared at too hard. "We’re not finished," I told Zhao Hengyuan. "We’re simply at the part of the road where you learn how cold stone feels when you kneel on it without a cushion."

He bowed because he could not stand. Meiling bowed because she had learned how to follow a fall and make it look like dance. They left with Yizhen behind them and two guards who would call themselves furniture if anyone asked.

Yaozu returned through a different door than the one he’d used to leave. He tossed a pouch that clinked softly; the Guard Commander caught it without looking.

"From the monk," Yaozu reported. "Payment for doctrine. Copper, not silver. Your thief is cheap."

"Cheap thieves are the most expensive," I replied.

A runner stumbled in, cheeks raw as if the air had sharpened itself to punish him for being slow. "From Gaoyu," he gasped. "The steward is... learning vocabulary."

"Tell Gaoyu I prefer nouns to screams," I returned. "Names. Dates. Doors."

The runner nodded hard enough to bruise his own neck and fled.

Longzi tilted his head toward Mingyu. "Captain’s circuit changes," he informed, no flourish. "We walk the Emperor’s route with shields today. If Minister Zhao’s men panic, the panic will go for softer corners."

"Walk," Mingyu approved.

Deming had been very quiet, which never meant inactivity. He finally looked up from the packets he’d been stacking into new order.

"I’ll take the east barracks," he volunteered. "If a sergeant suddenly remembers he has an aunt who needs him in the country, he’ll remember he has a post instead."

"Do it," I told him. "And feed your men. Hungry guards hear rumor louder."

He grunted assent and moved—three strides and gone.

The room emptied the way important rooms do when work has been properly divided: all at once, with no one looking back.

Mingyu lingered. So did I. The ledger sat between us, closed, not finished.

"You could end this now," he observed, not a challenge. "Strip him, stamp him, send him south before noon." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"I could," I agreed. "Or I can let him test all his doors and close each one while he watches." I looked at the corridor where Meiling had vanished. "Some lessons stick better when the echo teaches them."

Mingyu’s mouth did that half-smile that belongs to men who prefer ink to blood but married both. "We’ll do it your way."

"We always do," I reminded him with a half smile, which made him laugh under his breath in a way that made the table seem less like a weapon.

I lifted the ledger once more, not to read—only to feel its weight.

"Bring me Ren’s steward before dusk," I told the air, which meant I told Yaozu. "Alive. If he arrives with fewer fingers than he left with, he had better arrive with a mouth that makes up the difference."

"Hungry mouths talk," Yaozu’s voice drifted from nowhere in particular.

"Feed him once," I answered. "Then talk."

Mingyu’s hand brushed the corner of the book, light as if he were blessing it or damning it; with him, those were sometimes the same. "Porridge," he remembered. "Yours is cold."

"I like it cold," I lied.

He tipped his head. "You like justice more."

I didn’t argue. The door breathed. The court would soon, too. I set the ledger down for the last time and reached for the bowl I’d abandoned. The spoon scraped once.

The runner barreled back into the chamber, hair wild, breath torn. "Your Majesty—news from the west gate—Ren himself—he’s trying to leave the city with a sealed cart and a priest’s banner—"