Page 17 of A Song to Drown Rivers
When all the training was over for the day, I lay in bed, my mind swimming with fresh information and new threats and my body aching quietly. I could not remember ever being so exhausted in my life, even when washing giant baskets of raw silk on my own.
Then I felt a weight lower itself beside me. The tickle of long hair.
“Xishi-jie.” Zhengdan’s voice. She was whispering, even though it was just the two of us here. “Are you asleep?”
Without opening my eyes, I murmured, “Yes.”
She snorted and shuffled closer until her pointy chin dug into my shoulder. “Talk to me. I’m bored.”
“You’rebored?” My eyes snapped open in my incredulity. I blinked thrice in the blue darkness, before her face came into focus. “How are you not exhausted? I don’t believe it’s physically possible for our daily schedule to be busier than it already is.” My hands stung even as I said it. The places where I’d rubbed my fingers over the guqin strings had already started to harden and form calluses.
“Yes, but there are so few people around here.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Privately, this was perhaps one of the things I most enjoyed about the cottage. There were fewer prying eyes, fewer bitter tongues, fewer people to worry over. “It’s peaceful.”
“For you, maybe,” she grumbled, flipping over onto her belly. She was silent for so long I wondered if she had drifted off to sleep already. Then she asked, “What do you think about Fanli?”
Irrationally, I felt myself tense. “Why?”
“What do you mean,why? I just want to know. It’s not as if there is anyone else around here to gossip about.”
I made a noncommittal sound. In truth, I did not want to discuss anything about Fanli or entertain any thoughts of him while lying in the dark of my bedchambers; it was enough that I had to be around him every hour of the day.
Just as I was debating how to change the topic, Zhengdan went on. “I wonder if he has a lover of his own.”
“Wait—what?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “If he spends all his time aroundus, and his heart remains still as water, and his face as cold as ice, then he must not be tempted by anything whatsoever. It’s no wonder the king trusts only him with this mission. Perhaps he is not even interested in love. He will be one of those people who devotethemselves to their kingdom, and pass through their whole lives alone.”
A strange taste crept into my mouth, like day-old tea. I drew the sheets higher to my chin. “Is it really any of our business?”
“Come on, Xishi-jiejie.” She nudged me. “Don’t tell me you have no opinions of him.”
For a moment I considered telling her about the riverbank, the little girl with bruises trailing down her limbs, and Fanli approaching with the sun blazing behind him, like a warrior from the stories made real. Yet something stopped my tongue. It was like telling someone that you’d dreamed of them; even if there was little meaning to it, it still felt too intimate.
“He doesn’t reveal much of himself,” I settled on in the end, gazing up at the high windows. A delicate latticework of branches could be seen through the thin rice paper, their flowers faintly visible as splotches of color. “All I know is that he would do anything for his kingdom.”
“That alone reveals plenty,” Zhengdan said. “Think: a man who has severed all worldly desires in order to save the world, who has sworn total loyalty to the state and so is loyal to nobody. Someone like him would put a sword through his own heart for the greater good. It’s probably for the better,” she added as an afterthought, “that he takes no lovers. He is too virtuous to have a good ending with any woman. In a world where everyone will demand something from you, it requires a certain degree of selfishness to be happy, you know.”
Zhengdan, the great beauty and philosopher. There were times when she reminded me of a young, wide-eyed girl, a little sister to be protected and doted on, and others when she seemed possessed by a century-old sage who has already seen through the red dust of the world.
I reached over and flicked her forehead lightly, glad for the concealing properties of the dark. “Enough, now.”
But even after she went quiet, it took me forever to fall asleep. I could not stop turning and prodding at what she’d said about Fanli passing his life alone. The thought sent a pang through my chest, though of course I wasn’t able to fathom why. What did any of it have to do with me? Yet even then, there was another voice inside me that answered differently.
CHAPTER SIX
In the cottage, the days flew away from us like autumn leaves snatched by a violent wind. I learned how to pluck the sweetest melodies from the guqin; how to win and lose deliberately at a game of chess; how to drink my wine in silent, delicate sips, with my face hidden behind my sleeve. I memorized the names of the Five Hegemons, and could recite in my sleep the series of conflicts between the Yue and the Wu, the attempts of King Helü to invade our kingdom, only to lose the Battle of Suli and eventually die from his battle wounds. I trained my facial features into obedience and learned to turn my mind to beautiful fantasies when I wished to fake smiles and laughter. When I tired of the training, I picked a deep-ripened plum from the tree and relished it alone, the cool juice dribbling down my wrist.
At times, I would stray to the courtyard, where Fanli and Zhengdan were practicing. It seemed a privilege to simply stand there and watch Fanli fight. In his hands the sword became fluid, moving silver. His blade would pierce the air, his hand following in a silent line, and the plum blossom petals would shower downon him like spring rain. But when he stopped, and looked up, his breathing just slightly uneven from exertion, I was always quick to avert my eyes.
Throughout those final weeks, I could feel myself changing; in the mirror, or the reflection of the still pond, the face that stared back was lovelier yet more cunning, with a new sharpness to the gaze. Sometimes, if I pretended that time could slow and the rest of my days would pass just like this, I could even be happy.
But I was always reminded yet again that there was a point to what I learned, andthatwas my life, my destiny, not this calm interlude among the plum blossoms and windfall fruit.
And my destiny was rapidly approaching.
“In a week, you will be meeting King Fuchai,” Fanli told us. The weather had started to cool, and we were indoors, a controlled fire blazing close by. I held my fingers closer to the flames, watching the red-orange light flicker over my skin. “From your very first encounter, you must make him desire you. But what is desire?”
