Page 74 of A Song to Drown Rivers
I yanked the door shut behind me just as an arrow shot toward us, embedding itself in the carriage wood. The metal tip of it protruded, glinting through the red paintwork. I couldn’t stop staring at it with a kind of revulsed fascination, as if it were rising from my own flesh.
“Go,” Fuchai commanded the driver, and the carriage jumped into motion, the horses’ hooves drumming the ground.
Like this we fled into the night. Mount Guxu awaited us in the southwest; everything had already been arranged. I watched from the window as the palace disappeared behind us, ash-black smoke billowing from all the beautiful chambers and halls, the vermilionwalls made redder with blood, soldiers pouring in one wave after another, creating an endless flood of knives and arrows. If you had asked me to describe it, I might have called it beautiful. Beautiful not in the way of a painting or poetry, but a natural disaster: a storm, or a falling comet. The intensity of it drew your eyes in and held you there, the sheer scale of it breathtaking. How many were able to witness history as it unfurled? Already I could imagine the books composed for this very day, the tales told by the fireplace. But I could also hear the dying men’s howls and their curses as if they were right beside my ear, addressing me.
I was shaking. I didn’t realize it until Fuchai reached over from across the carriage seat and stilled my fingers with his. They were smooth, warm, not a single scar or callus on them. They had likely never touched blood before, not directly. All those men in court, in the training grounds, primed to handle those ugly tasks for him.
“It’s going to be okay,” he told me, his voice pressed low and soothing.
It wouldn’t be, and my knowledge of it strangled me. I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” I blurted.
“Sorry?” A faint furrow of his brows. He leaned back in that dim, cramped space, surrounded by embroidered cushions. “For what?”
I swallowed. “Because—because the Yue are attacking and… and I’m Yue.” It was the closest to the truth I could give him.
He studied me for a long time. Long enough to make me nervous. Then he smiled, completely sincere. “You know, if you hadn’t said so, I would’ve forgotten. The truth is,” he murmured, “you’ve long become a Wu person in my eyes. What is home, if not you?”
I smiled back at him, but ducked my head in the shadows, so he could not see my lips trembling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sun was just starting to pull itself up overthe horizon when we reached the mountain peak. The last time we were here, it had simply been to flee the heat of the summer. A small, isolated room had been carved into the rock, like a temple but without the altars and the sweet incense smoke and red mats for kneeling. But the air here was thick with prayer anyway.
There weren’t many of us left. Fuchai and I entered the room first, followed by a dozen or so guards, a few ministers I vaguely recognized, and a handful of maids, Xiaomin among them. She was still in her nightclothes, a flimsy layer of white cloth wrapped around her shivering body. Tears shone on her cheeks.
“Are you all right?” I asked her. A foolish question, but I could not think of anything else.
“My sister,” she whispered.
“What?”
“My little sister.” She choked out the word, like it might kill her. “She’s still somewhere inside that palace—I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t… I couldn’t save her. She must have been so scared…”
I stepped back, feeling sick. When I’d mounted the horse on the riverbanks, left my home for the palace, I had imagined the world righting itself, the scales tipping back, the balance finally restored in Susu’s absence. That was what revenge was. What it promised. But now the ground seemed to sway violently beneath my feet, everything spinning into reverse.
I raised a hand to comfort her, then withdrew it. She would likely wish to scrub her skin raw once she found out what I’d done.
Instead I made myself go back to Fuchai’s side. He was staring around the room. The furniture was simple, sparse, designed for practicality rather than aesthetic; there were none of the jeweled vases and intricate tapestries he was used to, the luxuries of a king. All of us seemed to be waiting for—something, I don’t know what. Perhaps he would kill someone, or kill himself, or fall to the ground and weep.
Then he shrugged off his traveling cloak and reached for a jug of wine. Popped the seal. Took a swig.
“This really doesn’t taste as good,” he muttered, but continued drinking all the same.
In my peripheral vision, I saw the looks exchanged, the questions asked by gaze only, with no one to answer.What comes next?The maid next to Xiaomin was crying, stifling her sobs with her fist. The guards wore varying expressions of shock, fear, disbelief. These were people who had been taught to obey the king at all costs, to forever place the kingdom before the self. It posed the greatest question of all: Could there be a king without a kingdom?
“Fuchai,” I began.
“Come sit with me,” he said, lowering himself to the ground until he was sitting cross-legged, like a student in class, then patting the space beside him. I approached slowly.
“Fuchai,” I tried again. “Are you…”
“I’m fine.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, resting his headagainst the faded gray wall, his dark hair falling over his eyes. The future plays about him would all be tragedies, I thought to myself, a small but sharp blade twisting in my heart. “Listen, Xishi…” His breathing was oddly staggered. I scanned him in confusion, and spotted the crimson patch staining his left sleeve. It didn’t stand out well against the black of his robes, but there was enough blood to reasonably conclude that the cut wasn’t fresh.
“You’re hurt,” I said, frowning.
I waited for him to pout, to lean close, to exaggerate his pain and ask for comfort. But he just shook his head, hiding his sleeve behind him, and drank deeply from the wine jug using his other arm. “Just a scrape,” he said, his voice mild.
“But—”
