I met Min Wei at court, which was not something I had arranged and not something I particularly wanted.
It was the season's formal assembly — the kind of event where attendance was less about actual governance and more about being seen to be part of things. I had been attending these sessions for months now, increasingly comfortable in the space, wearing the red shoes without thinking about it, reading the room with the efficient ease of someone who had done it in nine variations and found this one the most interesting.
He was standing near the eastern colonnade when I noticed him. Tall, well-dressed, the bearing of a man who had been told from childhood that he was significant and had chosen to believe it. He was speaking with Commissioner Ha's deputy, which told me something. He had come to work, not just to be seen.
He saw me at approximately the same moment I saw him.
