Page 65 of A Song to Drown Rivers
“Yet you defy me?” Fuchai purred. His fingers tightened.
“It is for your own good,” Zixu said, panting now. “For the safety of the kingdom—”
“Do you know what some people call you?” Fuchai cut in, still in that silken tone. “They say you’re my dog.”
For the first time, vivid color crept through Zixu’s complexion, making him look alarmingly vulnerable. He swallowed, the sound audible in the closed room.
“But you see, your behavior now is tantamount to treason.” Fuchai’s hand slid from the minister’s cheeks to a spot behind his ear, as if he really were a dog hoping to be scratched. Then his fingers traveled lower to the long column of his throat. It would have been instinct to shy away, but Zixu stayed utterly still, his eyes on the king. “And no owner will keep a dog that tries to bite them, time and time again.”
“Your Majesty… I beg you…”
“It is a pity,” Fuchai said, looking genuinely sad as he released Zixu. In the same instant, something heavy clattered to the ground. A sword. I understood the meaning the same time Zixu seemed to.
He showed no surprise, just profound sorrow. Shaking, he reached for the hilt. Drew the blade. It reflected a long slant of silver light onto the crimson walls. Then he paused.
“Will you please do me a final favor?” Zixu asked, hoarse.
Fuchai tilted his head.
“When I am dead,” Zixu began, his fingers wavering just a moment over the sword, “cut out my eyes. Hang them on the citygates, so that I may watch when the Yue army invades and captures our capital.”
Fuchai’s face hardened. Turning away, he commanded without so much as a glance back, “Do not get too much blood on my floor.”
But I stayed, staring.
Wu Zixu had always been a decisive man, always determined to follow through with every mission given to him. This was no different. He raised the sword to his own throat as smoothly and steadily as if it were someone else pressed to the blade, and drew it clean across in one swift, sharp line. Blood bloomed instantly. The sword fell. He made a choked sound, then clenched his teeth around it, refusing to surrender even that much of himself. As his heart thudded out its final beats, his eyes fell on me, and my body broke out into a cold shudder. The expression that blazed on his dying face was what transformed humans into hungry ghosts.
He said something right before his body collapsed to the ground, but his voice was already too weak, and thick with blood. In my days since, I have tried to decipher it, circled my way around it, questioned whether I might have heard wrong. Whether I ought to have listened more closely, taken his words to heart. At the time, I dismissed it as a threat, as him cursing me with his dying breath.
All I know is that it sounded like this:
“When the hares have all been caught, the hunting dogs are cooked.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The note came back to me six full moons later, after Zixu’s corpse had already been buried deep in the dirt.
It was folded into the same white flower, but the inside was different, the complex map and diagram gone, my annotations erased. Now there was only a poem, written in clean, crisp lines. I could still smell the ink on it.
The moon rises white
illuminating your beauty,
your shadow which wounds me
until my heart’s devoured
I stroked the words with my fingertips, as if it were some rare creature that would be scared away. Here was proof that Fanli was alive, that he had returned to Yue in one piece. Then I read the poem again and again to myself, silently, my lips parting around the syllables. I’d studied it before in one of the classical texts he’d taught me, but the memory was dim now. He had dismissed it astoo sentimental at the time, rushing through to get to the more political pieces, the ones where every couplet contained twenty different meanings.
I remembered teasing him for it: “Are love poems not important too? Perhaps I will memorize this for when I meet the king.”
We were both sitting inside his study. He’d cast me an indecipherable look without lifting his head, his face cast in beautiful shadow. “Memorize something else. Not this.”
“Why not?”
But either he had not replied, or I’d forgotten it.
I stared down at the flower. Was it a message? A confession? I felt shaken; the pain in my chest was suddenly overwhelming, more violent than a stabbing. I wanted to run to him. I wanted him to answer me himself, not speak in riddles, in inscriptions, in poetry, however lovely. I wanted to wrap my hands around the nape of his neck and feel the warmth of his skin.
