The proceedings ran well into the night.
After Voss and Crane, two more mid-ranking Officials were removed both unambiguously guilty, both exactly the kind of people that no one in the hall was prepared to defend. By the time the last case concluded, the mood in the Grand Hall of the Golden Phoenix had undergone a quiet but thorough transformation.
Those who had been passed over waved off with a dismissal and told to move on had arrived at the private conclusion that Ethan had deliberately spared them as a gesture of goodwill. A show of restraint. An olive branch.
They were wrong. Ethan simply hadn't recognized them from the novel.
But the effect was the same. By the end of the evening, the appointment of Deputy Minister Ethan Crest went entirely without further objection.
"The court is dismissed," Vivienne said, rose from her throne with a sweep of her robes, and was gone.
The Officials bowed and filed out in reasonable order.
The moment Ethan stepped into the corridor, the crowd transformed.
"Congratulations on the appointment, Deputy Minister. Please look after us going forward"
"Watch the steps, sir. The stone here is uneven"
"Deputy Minister! A small gathering tonight at my residence nothing formal. I recently came across a rather remarkable young woman who, as chance would have it, shares your family name. I thought perhaps you might be distantly related"
"If the lady doesn't interest you, I completely understand. I have an antique piece at home, supposedly left behind by a Morning Sun Realm cultivator centuries ago truly one of a kind"
Ethan walked with his cane at a measured pace and said nothing, which the Officials apparently interpreted as dignified consideration rather than polite indifference.
"You're all very kind," he said eventually. "My wife will be wondering where I've got to. I'll take my leave."
He was moving away from the crowd when the stars above the courtyard disappeared.
Something enormous and red descended from the sky, the Queen's carriage, dropping softly to hover just above the ground. Vivienne stood at its edge, hands folded, her expression the kind of relaxed that very powerful people could afford.
She looked down at Ethan.
"You have no lodgings in the capital. Come back to the palace tonight."
She was in a good mood. The court session had exceeded her expectations, she hadn't anticipated that a Sage's readings could be deployed quite like this, as both a purge and a demonstration. It was elegant. And she was, occasionally, allowed to be impulsive in small ways.
"I'm not sure that's appropriate," Ethan said.
"In Goldmere, no one comments on what I do."
"My wife will worry if I'm late," Ethan said patiently.
He was, of course, using that particular shield with full awareness that no one in the crowd knew the truth. As long as he didn't volunteer the information, the fiction held.
Vivienne went quiet for a moment.
She turned the word over privately. Wife.
"I'm curious," she said, with the studied neutrality of someone who is not going to admit to being curious. "Do you like her very much?"
Ethan, who was tired and had a mild headache and had not expected the evening to include an interrogation about his personal life, said: "Somewhat, yes."
"Elaborate."
Does this woman not have a country to run?
"Honestly, the details don't amount to much. Appearance doesn't really factor for me the most beautiful face in the world is just air to someone who can't see." He paused, searching his memory for the right register. He'd read enough about this sort of thing in his previous life to have opinions.
He spoke toward the sky, voice calm and even:
"In this world, there are three things I love. The sun. The moon. And her. The sun is for morning; the moon is for evening. She is for both."
The carriage went very still above him.
Vivienne's eyes had gone wide.
"…Is there more?"
Ethan tilted his chin up slightly, the moonlight catching the clean line of his jaw.
"I watch the sky at dawn and the clouds at dusk. I think of her whether I am walking or sitting still."
A pause. Then, because the evening had been long and he was committed now:
"A welcome surprise at first sight. A quiet warmth that only grows."
Vivienne's lips had parted slightly. She closed them. She straightened. She made a small sound that was technically a cough and waved her hand with approximately the composure of someone who had not just been knocked sideways by a blind man talking to the open air.
"I understand. You may go."
The carriage rose and was gone in moments, moving faster than its usual dignified pace.
The Officials left standing in the courtyard looked at the space where it had been, then at Ethan.
"Simple language," said a former second-place Examination scholar, slowly, "but it goes straight through you. No ornamentation. Just truth." He gave a quiet, sincere nod. "Deputy Minister Crest has a remarkable gift."
The Official who had mentioned the young woman of the same family name quietly revised his evening plans.
"I spoke out of turn earlier," he said, to no one in particular. "Clearly the Deputy Minister and his wife share something genuine. A dinner to apologize another time, perhaps."
Ethan pressed his fingers briefly to his temple.
Modern romantic language is several centuries ahead of this world's vocabulary. That was essentially an ambush.
"Good evening, everyone," he said, and left.
By the time he cleared the palace gates, the city had gone quiet. The streets were empty, the lanterns few and widely spaced. Finding an inn at this hour in an unfamiliar city was unlikely.
He sighed. A disused building would have to do tonight. He'd sort out lodgings tomorrow.
Then a faint, familiar scent reached him on the air.
Outside the palace gate, leaning against the wall with a sword at her side, Vivienne stood in plain traveling clothes, watching him. Lily hovered a few steps behind her in white, peering around her shoulder.
Lily had been in the carriage for the entire exchange. She had heard every word.
The phrases were still moving through her head in slow rotation:
A welcome surprise at first sight. A quiet warmth that only grows.
I watch the sky at dawn and the clouds at dusk. I think of her whether I am walking or sitting still.
She was not a person of much worldly experience and the effect was proportionate.
"You're still here," Ethan said, surprised.
"Waiting," Vivienne said. Her voice came out somewhat flatter than intended. Her cheeks had a quality she would have called wind-burn if anyone had asked.
Right Lily had mentioned earlier that Vivienne had come to the capital and was staying for the foreseeable future. She'd apparently heard he was being turned loose into the city with no arrangements made and had come to the gate.
"Let's go," Vivienne said, turning. Her tone was its usual cool efficiency.
But Ethan noticed she was walking slightly more slowly than her natural pace, and that her footsteps were landing with just enough weight to be clearly audible so he could track her direction, know what was coming, know where the path was clear.
She hadn't said anything about it. She'd simply done it.
"I've been part of the family for a while now," Ethan said, making conversation as they walked, "and I still haven't met your relatives. Should I pay a visit at some point?"
"No father, no mother," Vivienne said. "Only a distant uncle on the family side. That's all."
Ethan went quiet.
Not suited for conversation. Only suited for terrible romantic poetry, apparently.
About ten minutes of walking brought them to a residence near the center of the city modest from the outside, with a small plaque above the gate bearing a single character: Qin.
Having a house here, in the most expensive part of the capital, spoke to resources well beyond what a court Official's salary covered. Ethan made a note of it and said nothing.
He did not know that this building was not simply a family property. It was the ancestral estate of Goldmere's royal bloodline, older than the palace, more significant in ways that the palace's grandeur obscured.
He was impressed by the real estate. He had no idea why.
In the courtyard, something came bounding toward him immediately.
"Woof! Woof woof!"
Ethan stepped to the side and pointed the end of his cane at it. "Back. I just finished a very long day."
The animal, which had come in with considerable enthusiasm, received the blunt end of the cane across its nose and retreated.
Lily, standing just inside the gate, looked at the Nation-Protecting Divine Beast of Goldmere an ancient creature of tremendous power and spiritual significance rolling in dignified silence across the courtyard flagstones.
She turned her eyes to a nearby plant and studied it carefully.
The Divine Beast came to rest on its side, stared at the night sky, and spent a moment in genuine reflection.
It was a Nation-Protecting Divine Beast.
A blind man had just treated it like a badly-behaved dog and sent it rolling across the yard.
"Grrrr." It got back to its feet, bared its teeth, and locked its gaze on Ethan with the specific offended focus of something deciding whether this constituted a formal grievance.
Ethan turned his head slightly, registering the shift in the air. Something was different about whatever he'd just kicked.
He let the smallest thread of Space-Time Blade Intent unspool barely a wisp, just enough to probe the shape of what was in front of him.
The Divine Beast's fur stood straight up from nose to tail.
Its pupils doubled in size.
That killing intent.
That sword.
This man is a Sword Saint.