Page 25 of A Song to Drown Rivers
My stomach lurched.
Then I spotted one of the women from earlier. She stood frozen in the middle of the street, her eyes wide with horror. The soldiers showed no signs of slowing.
Without thinking, I rushed forward and seized her wrist, pulling her back with all the strength I possessed. Just in time. The horses charged so close I could feel the heat of their breath prickling my bare neck, smell the oil and leather. The air trembled with their raw strength. Even the ground seemed to shake beneath my feet.
“A shame we didn’t run you over,” one of the soldiers called behind him. The others cackled with mad laughter.
My heart was still pounding as I drew back from the woman, though I no longer knew if it was from fear, or rage. Now the immediate danger was gone, I saw that the woman was really just a girl, her skin pressed with thick powder, her lips dabbed crimson to appear more mature. She was the one who had remarked on Fanli’s hands, though that already felt like it had happened a long time ago. It all seemed so trivial by comparison, so frivolous.
“Th-thank you,” she whispered, rearranging her robes with trembling fingers. “The soldiers have never come to this side of town before… I didn’t know—I wasn’t expecting it…”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Be more careful next time. The Wu are all monsters.”
She flushed, the redness of her cheeks visible even beneath that heavy powder. “I am from the Wu Kingdom myself,” she told me.
I stared at her. Something in my mind seemed to fracture, and briefly, for only an instant, the state borders faded away. The enemy lines shifted, separating girls like us from men like them, commoners from soldiers, the powerless from the powerful.
But then I remembered the look of wide-eyed terror on Susu’s face, the way she had struggled against the blade—
My teeth clenched. No, the enemy was and had always been the Wu.
I stepped back from the girl, letting her friends come forth and flock around her in a hurricane of silks and perfumes. At the same time, Fanli approached, with Zhengdan and Luyi trailing after him.
“That was very brave,” he said, his eyes dark, the line of his jaw hard, “and very foolish.”
“I will choose to believe you’re complimenting me,” I told him, straightening. “In which case, I am flattered.”
Zhengdan was gazing into the horizon, tracking the silhouettes of the soldiers as they rode farther and farther away. Her fist was clenched by her side. “I can’t believe I missed him,” she hissed. “He wasright there, and I couldn’t do anything.”
“Who?” I asked, taken aback by the venom in her tone.
“General Ma.”
It was only then that the name truly clicked.General Ma.In my mind, I saw the dented helmet in the official’s outstretched hands, the bronze smeared with blood. Zhengdan hadn’t shed a tear when she received the news. Instead she had grabbed her father’s sword and raced off into the forest. She had come back later that night with weeping calluses, shaking limbs, scratches slicing through her skin. I had found her and pressed a jar of homemade ointment into her hands and said nothing. I still didn’t have the words to hold my own grief. But she understood me.
“You couldn’t have done anything anyway,” I told her gently. “Not without exposing your identity.”
“One day, then,” she said, the lines of her face set with furious resolve. “One day, I will raise a sword to his neck, even if it is the last thing I ever do. I swear it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The following morning, King Goujian came to visit.
He was dressed like last time, without any of his royal finery, and rode alone on a chestnut steed. But I recognized his face instantly. It was as if his thirst for vengeance had been permanently carved into his features—his black, hungry gaze and sunken cheeks.
I hurried out to the cottage gates to greet him, with Zhengdan following close behind me, our bright skirts billowing around us like clouds. He stopped to watch us, and I imagined what he saw. Faces lovely as shimmering jewels. Dark hair shining down our backs like silk. Broad ribbons fluttering past our slender arms. How we treaded the tiles as if they were all water, how we moved like swans prepared for flight. Or perhaps we only appeared as weapons to him, daggers to be thrust into the heart of the enemy. However we glinted and shone in his eyes, it was because of our sharp edges, our potential to cut.
“Your Majesty,” I said, dipping into a low curtsy. At the same time, Zhengdan curtsied behind me, as a palace lady ought to.
“Well.” Goujian sounded quite pleased. He was looking at some place above our shoulder, and I knew, just from the subtle change in the air, the shadow falling over me, that Fanli had come out as well. “You have definitely been training them.”
“When have I ever failed a task assigned to me?” Fanli returned calmly.
I understood what he meant by it, that this was the proper way to speak to a king, yet I felt a twinge in my gut. This was all that I meant to him: a task. An assignment. Fanli and his unshakable sense of duty. Of course—what else could I expect from him?
“Ah, I’ve missed seeing you often in court,” Goujian said, moving past us to clap Fanli on the shoulder. Still, I did not fully lift my head, did not sway in my curtsy, even as the muscles in my neck began to cramp. “Though I see I was right to leave you here. If it had been any other man, I fear they would’ve already run away with one of the girls. But you—you can resist any temptation, can’t you?”
Though I had been taught otherwise, I wanted nothing more than to stand up, to see Fanli’s expression. Then again, knowing Fanli, his face would look as it always did, cool and controlled, giving none of his feelings away.
