'Your highness Ning guipin. Her majesty is not yet ready for you.'
'It's alright, Song *gugu. This palace** shall wait here. May I please have a spare teapot? This palace shall perform her duties and collect the dew for her majesty's tea.'
Just before the doors of the main hall closed, Song gugu caught a glimpse of the frail, petite figure drifting towards the imperial garden, two maids trailing alongside her.
She sighed.
No matter what the others said, the irrefutable reality remains. Despite the incident with the First Princess, Ning guipin was still the one who bore two healthy princes for the imperial family.
'The son depends on the mother; the mother depends on the son', such was iron rule of the imperial household. And as the bearer of not one but two imperial male heirs, Ning guipin should have been the one of the most respected and powerful women in the imperial court.
But here she was, dishevelled as a mistreated kitten she'd once seen cowering in a street alley, shunted into an unwanted corner of the imperial city, and eight ranks below the snake-hearted bitch who'd only just born forth a daughter. A pathetic laughingstock of a has-been consort.
The absurdity of it all sent chills down Song gugu's spine.
Ning guipin was but a concubine. What if... by some unsightly witchcraft, that bitch made it so the same happened to her mistress?
'Zhilan.' A female voice echoed from the depths of the darkened palace.
Song gugu shook her head, willing those stray thoughts to disappear. She would deal with them when the time finally came.
'What could've taken you so long?' A musical voice chided as she set foot into the palace's innermost bedchamber. A gold and bronze censer stood on a pedestal of fat jade bricks in the middle of the room, its misty tendrils curling about with hints of sandalwood and frankincense. Cloisonne urns stood in all four corners of the room, bursting to the brim towering branches of red plum and the melancholic fullness of pink and pale peonies.
Out of the corner of her eye, Song gugu noticed a single petal break off the teacup-sized blossom, fluttering onto a small pile of withered ashes in the corner of the doorframe. Without blinking, she stretched out a hand and plucked the peony free, stuffing the offending thing into the depths of her plum-coloured robes.
'Add it to the censer if you'd please. It seems such a shame to waste it.', said the woman turning towards her from the nightstand. She was dressed in a shift of the finest silk, the blood red fabric a shocking contrast against the pale rose blush of her jade fair skin. Her crow black hair fell in rich locks down her back, all made the more striking with her sensual almond eyes.
This was the most powerful woman throughout the Empire of Qi. Empress Zhangsu of the Hanrong clan.
'So? What was it?'
Song gugu paused for a moment. 'It was... her ladyship Ning guipin, your majesty.'
A brief silence.
'I see.' The empress nodded, turning her attention back to her nightstand. Her fingers wrapped around a jadeite comb, bringing it to her forelocks and running it's stone cold teeth though her multitudinous midnight strands.
'Your majesty... she...'
'No need to bother. Since she so wishes it, let it be so. A pot of morning dew tea is nothing dangerous. She's been in here for long enough. It's about time she learnt the courtly dance.'
For a moment, silence reigned in the bedchamber.
'Today is the day the new concubines complete their official greeting, yes?'
YOU ARE READING
Reincarnated as A Concubine
General Fiction(UPDATES INTERMITTENTLY) A regular guy gets reincarnated into a palace intrigue novel that he's been reading as a background character. Yes, you've heard it right. Man to woman transition. Introducing Imperial Noble Concubine Ning, mother of a who...
