The snow had yet to melt in the Imperial City, and deep white drifts still covered the Palace paths.
Servants on either side bent over their shovels, clearing and carrying it away section by section. The dull scrape of their blades fell into the empty galleries.
Kou Yuan walked alone down the middle of the path, his steps unhurried but his heart unsettled.
His expression was as usual, yet his chest felt like snow piled deep: level to the eye, its true depth unknowable.
After a moment's silent consideration, Kou Yuan decisively turned his head and asked the Little Yellow Gate Eunuch,
"Eunuch, how is His Majesty's mood today?"
The Little Yellow Gate Eunuch bowed with an ingratiating smile and answered softly, "Grand Secretary, this servant would not dare presume to read His Majesty's countenance."
"But..."
"But what?"
"My elder, Eunuch Wang, attended His Majesty today. When he came out, he did say something."
"What did he say?" Kou Yuan stopped in his tracks.
The Little Yellow Gate Eunuch lowered his voice. "Eunuch Wang said, 'A thousand voices of assent, one voice of dissent.'"
A thousand voices of assent, one voice of dissent... Kou Yuan silently recited the phrase.
The "Biography of Lord Shang" in the Records of the Grand Historian quoted Shang Yang: "The hides of a thousand sheep cannot match the fur beneath a single fox's forelegs; the assent of a thousand men cannot match the frank dissent of one scholar."
Those thousand voices of assent filled the court-but who was that one dissenting scholar?
In this court full of officials, who offered assent? Who spoke in frank dissent?
As he pondered this, Kou Yuan suddenly smiled.
Ah, His Majesty was praising me.
*The whole court wears purple and scarlet, yet every one of them knows only