The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis
Chapter 68: Preparing For A Banquet

Chapter 68: Preparing For A Banquet

By the time Shi Yaozu and I had left the study, the sun had begun to burn off the morning chill, but the wind still clung to the scent of distant rain. Not enough to clean the air. Not enough to matter.

I didn’t speak as I walked, and neither did the man beside me.

Shi Yaozu matched my pace like he’d been doing it his whole life. No sound from his boots. No unnecessary glances. Just the ever-watchful silence of a man who knew his role—protect me, follow me, disappear when needed, kill when told.

I hadn’t given him orders.

He followed anyway.

The servants in the manor kept their heads low as we passed. Some bowed. Some didn’t. None dared speak. In this part of the palace, silence walked before me like a herald.

The air shifted as we turned down the covered corridor that ran along the outer courtyard, away from the pavilions and east wing gardens. This path wasn’t meant for the women of the household. There were no decorative lanterns here, no painted columns or shaded benches—just stone, wood, and shadow.

Most wives didn’t even know where we were going. They spent their days composing poems or painting butterflies, trying to look fragile enough to be favored. But this was the route for those who had keys to the manor. Keys like mine.

Besides, I had maps to find.

The storage hall beneath the records wing sat recessed into the hillside, hidden behind a wall of flowering vines and a single plain door. The steps creaked beneath our feet as we descended, dust blooming with every shift of air. I’d been here twice before since our marriage, and every time, I tried to remember to make a note to get someone to dust.

Clearly, I was failing at that.

The guards at the bottom stiffened when they saw me. One of them, a boy with too much eagerness and not enough sense, opened his mouth to speak.

I looked at him once.

He said nothing else.

Smart boy.

Shi Yaozu opened the door for me. A small gesture. Subtle. Automatic.

But I noticed.

The records room was colder now with the damp air around us. The stone walls, slate floors, and rows of scroll racks were arranged like a scholar’s maze. The scent of old ink and mildew clung to the air. Torches had already been lit in the wall sconces, their glow flickering against the iron lattice.

I walked past the first row without pausing. Agricultural records. Household accounts. Boring lies on polished paper. The next row held border tax decrees and old land grants, none of them worth the ink used to fake them.

Then, finally, the far wall—marked by a crimson tag: Unassigned Territories.

That was where they kept the places no one wanted to claim. That was where I lived, once.

I pulled the scroll free, careful not to tear the paper I had painstakingly made to write down what needed to be written. The air shifted behind me as Shi Yaozu moved closer, but he didn’t speak. I unrolled the paper across the central table, pressing down the corners with brass weights shaped like lion paws.

There it was.

The western ridge, where the west meets the south.

The map was marked in great detail; the trails I used to run barefoot through, before the Empire remembered we existed, my traps, my markers. Even my warning signs were etched in tiny strokes of ink that looked like rotted threads to anyone but me.

I reached out and let my fingers trace the valley pass closest to the Yelan border—a place the maps labeled Shēn Gorge. But I called it something else.

The Graveyard.

"You made this?" Shi Yaozu asked, voice low as he fingered the paper.

"I did," I replied with a casual shrug.

He didn’t press. He didn’t need to.

I opened two more scrolls—one detailing flood paths during the spring melt, the other showing ghost towns long since devoured by forest. Shi Yaozu caught the edge of the silk as it threatened to curl, his fingertips barely brushing the cloth before placing another weight down.

I didn’t thank him. He didn’t expect it.

"You don’t have to follow me everywhere," I said quietly.

"I do," he replied.

"Orders?"

"Yes."

"Yours, or his?"

There was a pause. Just a breath too long.

"Both," he said.

I smiled faintly. "Good."

We fell into silence again, this time thicker. Steadier.

I marked a few locations with small jade pins—an old habit of mine—while Yaozu studied the ridge lines. He didn’t speak, but I could feel the questions rising in him like steam from a kettle.

"If Yelan has some say in what comes next, they’ll move toward the rice towns," I murmured. "Not the mountain villages. They are too high, too hard to hold. Besides, the Yelan army is terrified of the mountains. They’ll go for the fields. The ones with irrigation canals wide enough to move boats through, but narrow enough that two men with spears can cross without resistance."

"And they’ll kill the villagers," Shi Yaozu nodded with agreement.

I hummed as I studied the map. "Not out of cruelty. Out of efficiency. They don’t want complaints. They want silence."

He watched me for a long time after that. Long enough that I had to speak again.

"That’s what makes them predictable," I said. "They think strategy is about numbers. But it’s about patterns. It’s about pride."

"And you know their pride," he said.

I gave a soft sound that might have been a laugh. "I’ve crushed it enough times to recognize the taste."

I leaned forward and brushed the dust from one of my hidden symbols—three dots inked into a curve that formed a crescent moon. A signal I left for myself long ago.

"Metal trap," I explained before he could ask. "Buried five feet deep. Still active. Takes the legs, not the life. That’s the point."

"To send a message?" he asked, his head cocking to the side as he studied my work.

"I don’t send messages," I purred, making his eyes go wide. "I just wanted to make them scream for a bit before they died."

He didn’t flinch.

They never trained him to flinch.

I rolled another scroll open and studied it. This one showed the old herbal lines—plants that only grew in blood-rich soil. The places people didn’t linger near. The places animals refused to cross.

"You think they’ll take the river first?" Shi Yaozu asked, stepping closer to the newest map.

"No. They’ll take the hills near the river. Use them to pin our people between the high ground and the water. Then wait. Then push."

His brow furrowed. "Wait for what?"

"For weakness."

He didn’t ask whose.

I met his eyes then—really met them. "You understand now, don’t you? The Emperor’s playing dress-up while the borders rot. Zhu Mingyu’s trying to steer a ship with holes in every deck, and the Emperor is so paranoid that all he sees is betrayal, even if there isn’t any."

His mouth moved like he wanted to say something. But instead, he nodded.

"That’s why you’re still here," I said. "That’s why I haven’t sent you away. Zhu Mingyu trusts you to tell him if I am going to stab him in the back. He is just as bad as the Emperor when it comes to seeing betrayal behind every smile."

Shu Yaozu was silent for a long time, like he was trying to think of an answer, but disregarded them as soon as they popped into his mind. "I wasn’t planning to leave," he replied at long last, and I had to smile.

I wondered if he wasn’t planning to leave because Zhu Mingyu didn’t want him to, or because he wanted to be beside me.

We worked like that for another hour. Pinning routes. Labeling sites. Comparing maps older than the Crown Prince’s rule. And when I finally rolled up the last scroll, my fingers were stained with dust and ink, and I felt more awake than I had in days.

I didn’t need the council to begin.

The war had already started.

And if the Emperor wanted to keep playing at shadows and smiles, that was his problem.

Me? I was setting the table for a banquet of my own. I just hoped that the Crown Prince knew I was going to the South to have a bit of fun.