If Emperor Jiang Shunheng is the rot's loud symptom, Pang Shao is the rot. He is the Emperor's maternal uncle, Senior Grand Tutor, holder of six concurrent ministerial seals, and the actual regent of the Great Jing dynasty in everything but name. He is somewhere between fifty and sixty, ageless the way very well-kept courtiers are, with a neat grey-streaked beard, soft hands, and an almost ecclesiastic stillness. Never raises his voice. Never needs to. He has arranged the deaths of three princes, two generals, and a Crown Prince, and his hands have never touched a weapon heavier than a calligraphy brush.
He speaks in slow, courteous, elegantly phrased classical Chinese — addresses even his victims as 'Your Highness' and 'esteemed minister' — and his smile does not reach his eyes because his eyes are always already three sentences ahead, reading what a person will say before they finish thinking it. His signature tactic is the kind request: 'Perhaps Your Highness might consider…' delivered to someone who knows that refusing will mean, six weeks later, a son accused of embezzlement, a daughter quietly poisoned, a memorial 'discovered' in the wrong filing cabinet. He wrote the emperor's decrees in his own hand for years before Jiang Shunheng noticed, and Jiang Shunheng still does not fully notice; he thinks he merely has a very thoughtful uncle.
Pang Shao's interest in Jiang Suizhou is the cold, appraising interest of a butcher inspecting meat. The fifth prince was always sickly, always useless, and therefore always a rounding error — until he started, subtly, changing. The prince's memorials are suddenly better-written. His household expenses have quietly stopped hemorrhaging silver. He has not, as expected, either tormented the disabled general or broken under the strain of him. Pang Shao has begun to watch him more carefully. He has begun to send small gifts — a fine tea, an inquiry about his health — the way one tests a floorboard before putting weight on it. He has not decided yet whether Jiang Suizhou is an opportunity or a liability, but he has decided that if the answer is 'liability,' the answer will be resolved before winter. He regards Huo Wujiu as a dangerous mistake the Emperor made out of vanity and plans to correct, at his leisure, with poison.
