It was possible for emperors to formally adopt children by concubines to grant them a permanent royal title, but Empress Song never allowed it. Lady Limei didn't even have any children by the late Emperor and this meant that she had no real leverage whatsoever. She had little influence left and was inconsequential enough that she could safely be used as a test subject for Yasuko's abilities. If something were to go wrong, it would be less of a problem.

Unlike the Emperor, Yasuko didn't have much reason to want Lady Limei dead. She honestly didn't know enough about her to even know if she deserved to die, other than the fact that she was a well-connected Celestial. Yasuko was going to kill her because that was what she was told to do and by killing her, she would get the opportunity to go after bigger prey. If she let her conscience prick her too much, she'd never get her revenge.

Shui had Yasuko cleaning her room. Little did her tormentor realize that this was a golden opportunity to plant evidence. With each of stroke of that damnable bamboo switch, Yasuko relished the thought of Shui taking the fall for Lady Limei's death.

It was only the promise of so much worse happening to her if Yasuko's frame-up plan worked that kept her from just killing Shui now. If Yasuko were wearing the muscle suit, she wouldn't feel any pain no matter how hard Shui tried to hit her, but she went without it as part of her plan. She could bear the blows. She'd been doing it long enough, after all, and it was nothing compared to the beating Prince Sturla gave her. It was just the annoyance of it all that was getting to her.

It was Lady Limei.

Yasuko bowed.

Lady Limei was just wearing her single-layer robe as she was fond of doing. She had her usual lazy way about her but she seemed a little more genuinely tired. No doubt she hadn't taken the Emperor's death well. Everything she had worked for was being swept away, but she wouldn't have to worry about all that much longer.

Yasuko had several ideas for how she was going to kill Lady Limei, but it all depended on what opportunity she was given.

Shui looked appalled and stammered, "B-but, my lady..."

Lady Limei left and Shui stood there in a mix of disbelief, confusion and anger.

If Shui wanted to make Yasuko regret what she was going to do to her, this wasn't the way to go about it. Not that Yasuko wanted to give up on such a deserving patsy. Shui went through her chest of drawers and found two robes, one a seafoam green with crisscrossing stripes and the other pink with a peach motif. Yasuko thought both looked a little tacky, but they were supposed to be clothes Shui intended to burn later. Yasuko wanted to tell her to burn them now.

It was really hard not to go ahead and kill her now. Only the promise of a far more miserable fate held Yasuko back.

She changed into the robes she was given, leaving her serving clothes in a pile on the floor just to spite Shui. When Shui turned around, she looked at both Yasuko in her robes and the pile of clothes on the floor in ever growing irritation, but as they were pressed for time, there wasn't much she could do about it right now.

Yasuko gave her a little bow and said, "Of course, Dajie."

She left Shui's room and there was a maidservant there waiting to escort her to the tea room. Unlike the banquet hall, the tea room was reserved for smaller, more intimate gatherings of no more than ten people. There were a variety of tea ceremonies practiced by the Celestials. A common version had the host mix and serve the tea to the guests, but a variant of that had the host serve the first guest and then each guest would serve the next until they returned to the host. Luckily for Yasuko, Lady Limei opted for this variant, which was supposed to be a symbol of friendship.

As Lady Limei poured Yasuko's cup, Yasuko subtly mixed in a dose of the poison. She would need to have some of it in her system for her alibi. It was easier to mix in the poison when it was her turn to pour. She then slipped the rest of the packet into the teapot before she set it back down. After all, if just the cups were poisoned, it would be harder to implicate someone else for tampering with the tea.

When Yasuko returned to her seat, Lady Limei raised her cup and said, "Gonbui."

Since she was not using standard Celestial, Yasuko decided to use the Wo version.

While Yasuko held the cup in proper ladylike fashion as her etiquette tutors had drilled into her, Lady Limei drank in the casual one-handed style usually associated with men.

Officially, the legal drinking age was twenty for Celestial and paisano alike, but in a lot of places on the surface the water would make you sick, so children would have to drink diluted wine or small beer. Idly, Yasuko wondered if Mithridates' Gift worked on alcohol the way it did for other toxins.

Lady Limei took another drink and said, "We have not really spoken, you and I, Miss Ling. You still had your training and then all of this happened. I will not get to stay in the Capital much longer. I could try to work my charms on Prince Wupeng, but the Empress would never allow it. There might be some lord who would see one of the Emperor's concubines as a trophy worth having, but after you have been with the Son of Heaven, can any other man compare?"

Yasuko's tongue tingled from the memory of the Emperor's sour breath when he kissed her. It was enough to make her want to kill him again.

Lady Limei smiled bitterly and said, "Once you start playing the game, you cannot stop until you are at the top or dead. And I was so close..."

Lady Limei took a long drink, then rested her chin on her free hand and stared at Yasuko.

Yasuko took another sip of the tea. She needed the poison to be fresh or else Mithridates' Gift would break it down before they would pick up any trace of it. Lady Limei also took a long draught of her tea.

Lady Limei sighed.

Yasuko remembered Lady Tsui using the same name for the Emperor and Lady Limei seemed to catch that she recognized it.

She took another drink of tea.

Her gratitude sounded so genuine that Yasuko nearly found herself losing her nerve. However, the poison was already doing its work. There was no turning back now.

Lady Limei felt the blood trickling down from her nose. She held up her handkerchief to wipe the blood away, then looked at the red stain as the blood started coming out of both nostrils. She tried to hold back the bleeding, giving Yasuko a look of momentary shock before her eyes rolled back and she collapsed. Now it was time to see how good of an actress Yasuko was.

Yasuko hurried over to Lady Limei's side and turned her over. It seemed like a perfectly natural gesture, but Yasuko was making sure that if the poison didn't kill her outright, she would probably drown in her own blood.

With some genuine concern, though not likely for the reason they would expect, Yasuko asked, "My lady, is she—?"

Yasuko bit her lip. She should have given Lady Limei an extra dose to finish the job, but she only had the one packet on her. The rest were planted in Shui's things. She couldn't leave Lady Limei alive. What was she going to do?

The Imperial Guard stepped forward and said, "We have identified the poison and found it in the possession of a Shui Peifang, one of your fellow ladies-in-waiting. Can you think of any reason why she might have wanted to poison Lady Limei?"

While the temptation was to bury Shui as quickly as possible, that would be too suspicious. She thought about the sort of things people would always say when someone near them was revealed to be a heinous criminal.

She shook her head, saying, "No. She always seemed very loyal. However..."

The Imperial Guard stroked his chin.

The Imperial Guard gave her a curt bow and left the room.

Yasuko had to wait a couple more hours while the IV flushed her system. The doctor came back to check her over, then had a nurse prepare her for release.

The nurse offered Yasuko her shoulder and helped her into the bathroom. Once the door closed behind them, Yasuko caught the nurse in a headlock and held her there until she passed out. She then changed into the nurse's uniform, donned a surgical mask and stepped out of the room.

She was in fact a little wobbly on her feet, but she had to walk around like there was nothing wrong and that she knew where she was going. Although it was meant for her protection, the Imperial Guard posted outside rather clearly identified Lady Limei's room. She tried to go in the door, but the Guardsman stopped her.

Yasuko swiped the nurse's keycard and went into Lady Limei's room. She already looked like she had one foot in the grave. He skin was ashen and slick with sweat. Finishing her off would be a mercy.

First she went over to the vitals monitor and turned it off. When she was recovering from her reconstructive surgery the other day, Yasuko tried pulling off the electrodes they had stuck to her and it set off an alarm that sent the nurses into a panic. If someone was paying attention, they'd notice the monitor was turned off, but at least now there wouldn't be an alarm when Lady Limei flatlined.

There was probably a more subtle way to finish the job, but Yasuko didn't know it and she didn't have time to think of anything. She pulled out the tubes going into Lady Limei's nose and mouth, then took the pillow from under her head and held it down over her face. If she remembered right, it took about 90 seconds to suffocate a person. She held the pillow down for twice that long just to play it safe.

She counted the seconds while watching the door. Knowing she would have doctors looking at her to confirm her alibi, she wasn't wearing her muscle suit, so it wouldn't be easy fighting that Imperial Guard if it came down to that. If the alarm was raised, she couldn't go straight to the estate and if she was captured, Prince Sturla would disavow her. Her success depended entirely on people being sloppy and inattentive. It wasn't the soundest basis to go on, but it seemed to be a common weakness of the Celestials in their decadence.

When three minutes were up, she removed the pillow and checked Lady Limei's pulse. She was dead for sure this time and unless Celestial medical technology could raise the dead—surely it couldn't—, she wasn't coming back.

There really was no need for it, but Yasuko put the pillow back under Lady Limei's head and folded her hands over her chest. She really didn't have anything against her other than being a Celestial. It was just orders. She had to die so Yasuko could move on to more deserving prey.

As she exited the room, she told the Imperial Guard, "False alarm," and then continued back to the room she came from.

She dressed the nurse—who was still unconscious—back in her uniform and put on the robes they had brought for her. She then went to the front desk to be discharged. Once she was done and heading out the door, she heard the nurse tell a technician, "I'm not getting anything from 218. Go check it out."

There wouldn't be much to find. Just a dead woman, the first notch in Yasuko's belt as Prince Sturla's pet assassin. She wouldn't be the last.