Page 62 of A Song to Drown Rivers
This was how everything came to an end.
The words beat against my skull like a mallet as I followed Xiaomin down the clean-swept lanes. Gripped tight in my hands was the finalized map, now including a detailed diagram of the canal connecting to Lake Tai. It was what King Goujian was waiting for. The information he needed before he launched his attack on the Wu. Then, perhaps, I would be free—to return home, to reunite with my parents, to see Fanli…
As we cut across an empty, shadowy corner, I folded the map carefully into a flower and arranged it in my hair, tucking it just behind my ears. When we moved into the pale sunlight again, both my hands were empty.
“I never had the chance to ask you,” Xiaomin was saying, turning back to look at me. “Are you all right? After what happened with…”
Zhengdan. The name hovered in the air between us, unspoken.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. It violated the rule I’d madefor myself, which was never to think of her, not unless it was to also think of revenge, of still bodies and spilled blood.
But Xiaomin continued, “I had someone like her too. Once.” Her voice caught, just briefly. “We were born in the same village, on the same day. I still remember their yard: They grew everything, including their own apricots. They were the sweetest apricots I’d ever tasted, so soft and always fresh. Every summer, she would invite me and my little sister over to pick the fruits together; she was taller than me by a head, and so she’d pluck the ones I couldn’t reach…”
We were almost at the southern gates now, the city looming beyond those crimson walls. Despite myself, I couldn’t help asking, “What happened?”
“War,” she said bitterly, and I found I wasn’t surprised, as if I’d known it all along. It was the same narrative that coursed through the veins of our kingdom, only the characters were changed, the enemy reversed. “The monsters from Yue slaughtered their way through our village—few survived. I was one of them; I took my sister and fled. But she… was not.”
My breathing suddenly felt very shallow. “You call the Yue monsters?”
“Of course. It’s what we all call them.” She looked at me in confusion, then seemed to remember something, her eyes widening. “So sorry, miss—I forgot you… Well, I don’t consider you Yue anymore. You are as Wu as I am, and no monster at all.”
I managed a small smile, but my gut roiled. I hastened my steps, eager to move past this next part, to outpace my own guilt. If Xiaomin knew what she was helping me accomplish, she would not consider me Wu in the slightest.
She came to an abrupt stop. “That’s him.” Her voice had changed, gone all soft and shy, and her cheeks were pink. Under different circumstances, I might have laughed at her. But strangely,I felt a faint stab of jealousy. How easy it would be, how great a luxury, to simply look across the lane at the one you love and say,That’s him. There he is.
The guard positioned outside the gates looked up, perhaps sensing our attention. He was young, seventeen or eighteen at most, with a naturally sunny, boyish face and crescent-shaped eyes. They crinkled at the edges when he caught sight of Xiaomin, though he did not forget to bow to me first. Etiquette reigned, after all.
“Lady Xishi,” he greeted.
I was surprised. “You know who I am?”
“Yes,” he said. He spoke a little quickly, and didn’t dare lift his eyes to meet mine. “I—I doubt there is anyone in the palace who doesn’t know of you.”
“You may be at ease,” I told him. “I am only passing by.”
If anything, he tensed up further. Now I really did laugh.
“It was Xiaomin who wanted to pay you a visit,” I added. “She speaks about you often.”
His gaze flickered up to the blushing maid, and he looked for a moment like he’d just eaten the sun, the euphoria shining through his features. I did not wait around to witness their small gestures of affection, their bashful expressions, all the displays of innocent young love. I stepped past him, toward the gate—
“W-wait, Lady Xishi,” the guard called, tearing his eyes away from Xiaomin with difficulty. Cold sweat broke out over my palms. “I’m afraid nobody is allowed to go through without written permission…”
“I only want to step out for a moment,” I said, plastering a casual smile to my face. “I’ll be quick.”
He hesitated. “But… we were instructed that—”
“It shouldn’t be a big problem, right?” Xiaomin spoke up, gazing at him expectantly.
“I…” I watched him waver, my heart flipping in my chest. Butthen he gazed back toward Xiaomin, her sweet, charming expression, and pursed his lips. “I suppose not.”
I wasted no time. With a firm push, the gate doors creaked open. I slipped out through them like a ghost, the flower arranged in my hair. The difference between the world inside and outside the palace walls was like that between two realms. The harsh wind struck my cheeks, and yellow dust billowed in the air. Whereas everything in the palace was spacious and vast, giving the impression that you could wander the lanes forever and never reach the end, all the old houses and stores here were crammed close together. I squinted at the dozens of passing faces, young and old, and finally found the one I was looking for. He was manning a cart that sold jars of candied fruit, the contents glistening red-gold. A distinct scar ran down the side of his face and twisted into the corner of his mouth. This was the man Fanli had asked me to find if I ever needed to deliver information to him, a trusted servant of Goujian’s.
I forced myself to walk over to him at a relaxed pace, my expression nonchalant. Pretending to inspect the jars, which all looked the same, I murmured, “Does the sparrow sing in the night?”
He stilled. With his head down, he replied, “Only when the river rises.”
They were the correct code words. I released a silent sigh of relief, then plucked the flower from my hair, pressing it into his palm. It was made of only ink and fabric, yet it seemed to weigh like stone. “Hurry.”
