A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang

Author:Ann Liang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Winter crept in slowly.

The flowers in the gardens wilted and withered, their rose blushes fading into dry browns. Sheets of ice hardened over the palace’s curving artificial creeks. Flimsy gauze dresses were swapped for thick, luxurious coats made of silver-white fox fur and wolfskin. The maids busied themselves filling and refilling buckets of boiling water and wheeling in carts of fresh firewood. Whenever I went outside, my breath trembled in the cold, pale air, and my fingertips quickly lost all feeling. My shoulder healed, but the pain in my chest sharpened, though I could not tell if it was from the bone-deep chill or my old illness or something else. Throughout everything, I could feel time trickling away from me. Back in the Yue Kingdom, they would already be preparing for the next step of the plan, training their soldiers, forging new swords, mapping out the lines of battle with what information they had … and waiting for me to do my part too.

It was snowing when I arrived outside the king’s court. The white shone starkly against the dark emerald roofs and crimson ledges, the frost glistening like fine crystals. The palace looked more remote than ever in the falling snow, a place made for ghosts instead of mortals, its cold stillness like the silence between breaths. All the marble steps had been swept clean by maids at hourly intervals, with salt spread over them to melt the ice and prevent anyone from slipping. From both sides, a silent row of guards waited, their halberds raised to head height, their eyes staring straight ahead. I tightened my grip on the tray of wine and made my way carefully up, my cheeks pink from the cold.

The court was empty, with only Fuchai spread out on his throne, head dipped back, one leg dangling over the gilded armrest. Locks of crow-black hair tumbled past his brows, and the black fox fur draped around his neck made him resemble a deity of devastation and destruction.

Then he saw me, and he snapped instantly into a sitting position, a smile blooming at the corners of his lips. There were times when he gazed at me with such pure sincerity, such boyish eagerness, that I almost forgot how much I loathed him.

But I always remembered again.

“I brought wine,” I said, crossing the distance between us.

He surveyed the tray in my hands, his eyes bright with a rapid quickening of interest. Then he glanced up at the windows, where fat squares of daylight streamed in. “At this hour?” he asked. “I’m meeting with a few ministers soon—it’s important, according to them anyway.”

I know, I thought to myself as I smiled at him with utmost indulgence. That was why I’d come. Yesterday, Xiaomin had overheard Wu Zixu preparing for the meeting. “It’s only a few sips,” I said, pouring the yellow wine out into a deep goblet. “It’ll help you relax. And besides, I’ve already warmed it for you.”

“It seems quite unwise,” he said, but he was already reaching for the goblet, as though his mouth and body were divorced.

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