Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
This was how everything started.
This was how everything came to an end.
The words beat against my skull like a mallet as I followed Xiaomin down the clean-swept lanes. Gripped tight in my hands was the finalized map, now including a detailed diagram of the canal connecting to Lake Tai. It was what King Goujian was waiting for. The information he needed before he launched his attack on the Wu. Then, perhaps, I would be free—to return home, to reunite with my parents, to see Fanli…
As we cut across an empty, shadowy corner, I folded the map carefully into a flower and arranged it in my hair, tucking it just behind my ears. When we moved into the pale sunlight again, both my hands were empty.
“I never had the chance to ask you,” Xiaomin was saying, turning back to look at me. “Are you all right? After what happened with…”
Zhengdan. The name hovered in the air between us, unspoken.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. It violated the rule I’d made for myself, which was never to think of her, not unless it was to also think of revenge, of still bodies and spilled blood.
But Xiaomin continued, “I had someone like her too. Once.” Her voice caught, just briefly. “We were born in the same village, on the same day. I still remember their yard: They grew everything, including their own apricots. They were the sweetest apricots I’d ever tasted, so soft and always fresh. Every summer, she would invite me and my little sister over to pick the fruits together; she was taller than me by a head, and so she’d pluck the ones I couldn’t reach…”
We were almost at the southern gates now, the city looming beyond those crimson walls. Despite myself, I couldn’t help asking, “What happened?”
“War,” she said bitterly, and I found I wasn’t surprised, as if I’d known it all along. It was the same narrative that coursed through the veins of our kingdom, only the characters were changed, the enemy reversed. “The monsters from Yue slaughtered their way through our village—few survived. I was one of them; I took my sister and fled. But she… was not.”
My breathing suddenly felt very shallow. “You call the Yue monsters?”
“Of course. It’s what we all call them.” She looked at me in confusion, then seemed to remember something, her eyes widening. “So sorry, miss—I forgot you… Well, I don’t consider you Yue anymore. You are as Wu as I am, and no monster at all.”
I managed a small smile, but my gut roiled. I hastened my steps, eager to move past this next part, to outpace my own guilt. If Xiaomin knew what she was helping me accomplish, she would not consider me Wu in the slightest.
She came to an abrupt stop. “That’s him.” Her voice had changed, gone all soft and shy, and her cheeks were pink. Under different circumstances, I might have laughed at her. But strangely, I felt a faint stab of jealousy. How easy it would be, how great a luxury, to simply look across the lane at the one you love and say, That’s him. There he is.
The guard positioned outside the gates looked up, perhaps sensing our attention. He was young, seventeen or eighteen at most, with a naturally sunny, boyish face and crescent-shaped eyes. They crinkled at the edges when he caught sight of Xiaomin, though he did not forget to bow to me first. Etiquette reigned, after all.
“Lady Xishi,” he greeted.
I was surprised. “You know who I am?”
“Yes,” he said. He spoke a little quickly, and didn’t dare lift his eyes to meet mine. “I—I doubt there is anyone in the palace who doesn’t know of you.”
“You may be at ease,” I told him. “I am only passing by.”
If anything, he tensed up further. Now I really did laugh.
“It was Xiaomin who wanted to pay you a visit,” I added. “She speaks about you often.”
His gaze flickered up to the blushing maid, and he looked for a moment like he’d just eaten the sun, the euphoria shining through his features. I did not wait around to witness their small gestures of affection, their bashful expressions, all the displays of innocent young love. I stepped past him, toward the gate—
“W-wait, Lady Xishi,” the guard called, tearing his eyes away from Xiaomin with difficulty. Cold sweat broke out over my palms. “I’m afraid nobody is allowed to go through without written permission…”
“I only want to step out for a moment,” I said, plastering a casual smile to my face. “I’ll be quick.”
He hesitated. “But… we were instructed that—”
“It shouldn’t be a big problem, right?” Xiaomin spoke up, gazing at him expectantly.
“I…” I watched him waver, my heart flipping in my chest. But then he gazed back toward Xiaomin, her sweet, charming expression, and pursed his lips. “I suppose not.”
I wasted no time. With a firm push, the gate doors creaked open. I slipped out through them like a ghost, the flower arranged in my hair. The difference between the world inside and outside the palace walls was like that between two realms. The harsh wind struck my cheeks, and yellow dust billowed in the air. Whereas everything in the palace was spacious and vast, giving the impression that you could wander the lanes forever and never reach the end, all the old houses and stores here were crammed close together. I squinted at the dozens of passing faces, young and old, and finally found the one I was looking for. He was manning a cart that sold jars of candied fruit, the contents glistening red-gold. A distinct scar ran down the side of his face and twisted into the corner of his mouth. This was the man Fanli had asked me to find if I ever needed to deliver information to him, a trusted servant of Goujian’s.
I forced myself to walk over to him at a relaxed pace, my expression nonchalant. Pretending to inspect the jars, which all looked the same, I murmured, “Does the sparrow sing in the night?”
He stilled. With his head down, he replied, “Only when the river rises.”
They were the correct code words. I released a silent sigh of relief, then plucked the flower from my hair, pressing it into his palm. It was made of only ink and fabric, yet it seemed to weigh like stone. “Hurry.”
His fingers curled around it. He nodded once, understanding in his eyes.
When I returned through the gates, Xiaomin was laughing at something the guard had said. Her face was radiant, brighter than all the stars and the moon, her head tossed back, her giggles escaping through the spaces between her fingers. And he was there, watching her with such comfortable intimacy I wanted to turn away. The two were blinding in their shared joy.
“Tomorrow,” she was saying to him, shy and eager. “The usual spot?”
His face split into a grin so wide she might have just promised him the whole world. “Always.”
It felt as though someone had reached into my chest and yanked at my heart, made my old illness new again. I clutched at the front of my robes, waited for the worst of the pain to pass before walking up to Xiaomin, my face serene as that of a raised lotus flower. She immediately came to my side, but I could tell she did not want to leave him.
I’d never wanted to leave either.
I knew Wu Zixu would rise to the bait—it was only a matter of when.
I was in the king’s bedchambers that night, lounging on his desk while he pretended to work. He pressed the royal seal down on document after document, the ink bleeding red, barely looking before moving from one thing to another, his movements impatient. The only sounds that could be heard were the thin rustling of paper and an owl hooting outside. To his credit, Fuchai had been focused when I first came in—his head down, his expression stern, the slightest crease between his dark brows, the bright lamplight clarifying his sharp profile. For a moment, I couldn’t help hiding behind one of the carved rosewood pillars, just to study him in silence. It was rare to see him like that: proper, working hard. There was no malice or mockery to his features as he ground the ink and dipped his brush into the shallow pot.
Then I had stepped out, with my just-brushed hair and perfumed skin, and all that was forgotten.
“Am I distracting you, Your Majesty?” I asked now, adjusting my legs so they dangled just off the corner of his desk, my chin propped up on one hand. With my other hand, I combed my fingers slowly through his dark hair.
He stamped the seal down twice in the same spot, missed the next document completely, and said, “No, not at all.”
I smiled. “Are you sure? I’d hate to keep you from something important…”
“Stay,” he insisted. “I’m almost done here.”
I sighed and continued stroking his hair, my motions lazy, all while I secretly read his documents with utmost care. There were military reports, with statistics on everything from the weapons supply to the number of soldiers and steeds available. I memorized the numbers, repeating them to myself inside my head. When Fuchai lifted his gaze, I shifted my attention to him. “Your hair is so soft,” I said, tugging gently at a black, wavy lock. I knew it was what he liked.
Just as I expected, his breathing hitched, his eyes turned dark and almost drunk.
“What do you suppose people would say, seeing me treat the king this way?” I teased. “They must think me terribly impudent.”
“Well, there’s nobody around.”
“You raise a good point,” I said slyly. From outside, I sensed movement. Footsteps. The unmistakable silhouette of Wu Zixu was outlined against the thin windows, drawing closer and closer toward us. But Fuchai hadn’t noticed yet. “We’re all alone.”
He faltered briefly, then understood. He swept the papers aside, the royal seal and brushes all clattering to the floor, and turned me around so I was gazing down at him from his desk. He stood, leaning in to kiss me—
I turned away on purpose. Just a little longer now. The footsteps were getting louder.
“Wait. Let me look at you first,” I said, cupping his face. Every single time, it struck me anew how handsome he was. It seemed wrong; he ought to have the face of a beast, some malevolent creature, with blood-red eyes and deadly fangs. But instead his skin was smooth and clean-shaven and burning under my touch, his lips soft and parted. I wrestled down the uncomfortable emotion that reared its head inside me. No, I refused to be guilty. I had come too far already, lost too much.
And Zixu was here.
“My king,” I murmured, bringing my lips to his. There were just bare inches between us when the doors burst open with a loud thud .
Zixu stalked inside, his hands balled into fists. “Your Majesty—”
I let out a faint squeal and pulled away at once, putting up the perfect performance of surprise, but Fuchai was slower to untangle himself from me, his hand remaining on the small of my waist. His expression had changed from open anticipation to impatience. He looked ready to kill.
“If you aren’t here to tell me you’ve discovered the elixir of immortality, then I don’t want to hear it,” he said, his voice deadly soft, his eyes narrowed into knives. “Leave us.”
Zixu averted his gaze hastily, but didn’t retreat. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. Please excuse this minister’s brazen behavior, but this is a matter of great importance—”
“Funny, that is how you lead every conversation,” Fuchai said dryly, straightening his robes and sitting back down behind his desk. I slid off too, stepping to the side with my head bent at a subservient angle. “The annual banquet, the seating for the annual banquet, the granaries, the construction of the new palace—even the purchase of new spoons for the royal kitchens. All supposedly deemed important.”
For a split second, Zixu’s eyes caught on me, deep distrust written all over his features. Then he bowed low to the king. Urgency bled through his tone. “This is different—this could determine the fate of the whole kingdom—”
“You should learn to relax more, Zixu,” Fuchai continued in a slow drawl, leaning back in his seat. From appearances only, he seemed to be playing the role of king well enough, but he wore the look he always did when he wanted desperately to kiss me, the lines of his body tense and hungry. The minister prostrated before him might as well have been a wall, any inconvenient obstacle. “Spend time with your concubines, so I can spend time with mine. They would thank you for it, I’m sure.”
Zixu made a choked sound and said with barely held composure, “I implore you, Your Majesty, if you would just let me speak—”
“Aren’t you already speaking?” Fuchai said, annoyed.
Zixu flinched, but continued on. “There have been… strange movements along the Yue borders.” My heart thundered in my chest. I listened harder, mouth dry, latching on to his every word. “We have no proof of what they’re planning, but I’m certain they’re planning something . It will not do to just lie here, waiting for the enemy to spring upon us. We have the advantage right now—we must use it and take swift action, conquer them before they can attack us—”
“The Yue again?” Fuchai interrupted. He sounded unimpressed, unconcerned. Still, I held my breath. “Zixu, this is getting dull. We’ve been through this conversation before, and I’ve made my decision perfectly clear. We are not to attack the Yue, and they will not attack us. The days of war are over.”
A dark green vein twitched in Zixu’s temple. He bowed impossibly lower, his face almost pressed to the floor. “I wish that were the case too, Your Majesty. Believe me. Who doesn’t dream of peace? But Goujian is far more complex a character than you give him credit for—”
“You just said yourself you have no proof they will attack.”
“No proof yet .” Again his eyes snapped to me. “But I am confident that I will be able to find it, sooner or later.”
Fear sawed at my stomach. I could not give him time to collect proof, to build up a stronger case for conquest. If I was to be rid of him, then it would have to be right here. Tonight.
“Your Majesty,” I ventured, making my voice tremble. “Don’t be angry with him. I’m sure he has his… personal reasons for wanting to usher in another war. That is understandable.”
Zixu looked at me with such vehemence I did not have to pretend to flinch. I was half-certain he would forget his position and mine and simply strangle me. “How dare you—I have no personal reasons at all. Everything I say is for the good of the kingdom—”
“Is it really?” Fuchai regarded him coolly.
“Of course,” Zixu cried. “Your Majesty knows better than anyone how long I have served you, and your father before you—”
Fuchai’s eyes flashed. “Yes, how can I forget? What a loyal servant you were to him.”
A dark silence fell over the room.
For a moment I feared Zixu’s courage would fail him, that he would cower and crawl outside before the king had the chance to do anything. But Wu Zixu was a stubborn man and a faithful minister. He didn’t move.
“We must attack, Your Majesty,” he whispered. “If you are to grant any request of mine, let it be this. Your father had devoted his life to building this kingdom for you. Will you really tarnish his legacy by letting the enemy—those who brought about his death—invade our walls? Your father would never have allowed such a thing.”
Perhaps another king might have been moved by this speech. But I understood Fuchai in a way his ministers did not; I had kissed him in the moonlight, had coaxed his worst fears, his insecurities, his weaknesses, out of him night after night. He resented his father as much as he respected him, and any comparisons between the two of them was a sure way to erode what little patience he possessed.
“Enough,” Fuchai snapped, standing to his full height and looming over the minister in all his power, his black silk robes spilling around him like a great shadow. It was a scene for the legends: the two figures, one stooped as low as one could go, the other towering above him, the yellow candles flickering in the background, the painted murals of the kingdom’s tumultuous, blood-soaked history unrolling on either side of them. I watched Zixu from a distance, knowing how this would play out, and felt a thorn of something almost like pity.
Perhaps history would remember him as a hero. But a hero to many was still a villain to one.
“You are obsessed with the Yue,” Fuchai said, taking one forceful step closer, the movement like that of a predator advancing. “You speak of dangers that do not exist. All my other ministers disagree with you.”
“You mean Bo Pi?” Wu Zixu lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot. He had never looked so young, so desperate, so human. “Bo Pi cannot be trusted, Your Majesty. He is—”
“So I am not to trust anybody except you, is that right?” Fuchai demanded. “I remember you said the same thing of the Yue minister Fanli.” I tried not to react, even as the sound of his name cut my heart open. “And what happened in the end? You wounded him for nothing, and his blood dirtied the palace lanes. It made a bigger mess than it was worth.”
“That’s what you think now,” Zixu said, his voice low and throt tled with urgency. “That’s what they want you to think. But you never know, in the future—”
“Silence.”
Zixu shuffled forward on his knees, then lowered his head so it was pressed to the floor right before Fuchai’s boots. My stomach swooped, my shock barely concealed in time. It was the ultimate gesture of submission, like a dog rolling over to display its belly.
“Please,” Zixu whispered. His dark eyes shone with— tears , I realized, startled. I should have been enjoying this. I should have relished every detail. But it was also discomfiting, seeing a man of such high status be brought so low, down on his knees and begging his king. Knowing that it had everything to do with me. “You’re making a terrible mistake. That woman has poisoned your mind.” He pointed at me. I stared back with feigned innocence. “You are not thinking clearly. Ever since she came—”
“Speak another bad word about her again,” Fuchai said quietly, his voice ringing with danger, “and I will stitch your lips shut myself.”
But it was as if Zixu had been possessed by another force, something that propelled him to continue walking the path to his doomed fate. He persisted in a rush, like he already knew he was running out of time. “It’s not too late—Your Majesty, if we rally our troops tonight, we can still—”
“Zixu,” Fuchai interrupted. His expression was strange, unreadable, his tone almost gentle. He crouched down too, and in a rapid movement, seized Wu Zixu’s face. It might have looked intimate, like he was going to close the distance any second now and kiss him, if not for the points where his fingers dug into the flesh of Zixu’s cheeks like claws, applying such pressure the surrounding skin went white. “For years, I have let you stay by my side. I have tolerated you, and humored you, and given you much of what you’ve asked—”
“And I am honored, Your Majesty,” Zixu choked out, with an emotion that seemed torn between hatred and raw, wretched devotion. It was the devotion of a believer who would follow his god to the destruction of the very earth. Who would caress the hand that strangled him. “I wish—only to serve you—”
“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 city gates, 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.”