Chapter Ten #2
The marchioness pointed at the braised fish, which had been broken apart; a serve now upon Official Park’s plate.
‘The carp,’ she said. ‘Serve the prince a portion now.’
‘No.’ The word slipped from Xian before he could think on it. ‘No fish. I do not prefer it.’
‘Today you will.’ Her calm manner and soft-spoken words froze the blood in Xian’s veins. ‘Manhao is a river city, to refuse seafood shall insult our guests. Eat it.’ She pointed at her own plate. ‘Give me some, as well. I shall take a morsel.’
‘Very noble, mother.’ Lady Tian nodded approvingly.
Xian watched the fish’s flesh come apart, stained by the darkness of the sauce, to a colour not unlike that of the ash he cleaned from the manor’s hearths. He stared down at the sliver of meat on his plate, where it swam in juices and scallions, instead of the hornwort and waters of its pond.
Xian’s stomach roiled, and he clenched his teeth.
‘A tender fish, succulent and complimented by this sauce. A rival to the best I’ve had in Manhao, I must confess.’ Official Park devoured the rest of his small portion. ‘There is a sweetness here in the carp that is unusual. What do you feed your stock, marquess? For it does it much justice.’
Marquess Tian looked to his wife, his eyes more glazed than at the start of the meal. ‘I must confess I did not know we raised any carp for eating, on account of my lady not taking to them well. Did you have these bought at the market?’
Xian dug his fingers into his thighs, his ears ringing, his eyes beginning to burn. The captain was served a sliver, and he sucked it between his teeth, like an oyster being taken from a shell.
‘Manhao might need to take your cook with us, as well as your prince,’ he said, licking his stout fingers.
‘I think it likely is the fish, and not the cook, that can be credited.’ Lady Tian danced her silver chopsticks around a piece of crispy brown pork on her plate.
Xian could hear his own heartbeat; it thumped so hard. He could not take his eyes from the half-gutted fish, its eye shrunken and shrivelled from the braising. He sat silently, barely able to breathe.
‘Then tell us what merchant deals in such delicacy and we shall see if they have any dried,’ the usually silent secretary said, a piece of flesh between the tips of his chopsticks. ‘For our journey tomorrow.’
He bit at the darkened flakes of carp, dragging his teeth along the chopsticks, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the pleasure.
‘Oh, I’m afraid there was only one.’ The Lady Tian’s laughter was coquettish.
‘You should chew slowly, for there are no more like this carp. And it is his highness we have to thank, for such a succulent fish.’ She looked to him, and Xian’s heart tried to break itself against his ribs; the roaring in his ears was near to deafening.
‘No,’ he whispered, though he doubted the word made it past the great knot in his throat.
‘How so?’ Official Park asked. ‘Do we have more delights to expect from the prince than his talent for dance?’
Lady Tian bit into a chestnut, casting a sidelong glance to where Xian sat rigid and sickened. ‘Prince Xian tended this carp very well. Too well, some would say. But I suppose his attention was worthwhile for it fairly melted upon the tongue, did it not?’
Xian heard her cruel words from a great, unfocused distance. He was fragile as paper lanterns caught in summer rains.
‘Why?’ Hot bile seared the back of his throat.
The lady gave him the most vapid of smiles and placed a hand on his arm, leaning in. ‘You shall not be here to indulge her whims, dear brother. She would have died long before you returned, with her pond neglected. This was a mercy, would you not say?’
Xian shook so hard his veil trembled, and he felt certain his fingernails would pierce fabric where they dug at his thighs.
Lady Tian moved away, and the conversation carried on. The carp lay with her bones showing, all her meat picked clean.
Xian’s breath came in shuddered gasps. The consuming wave of panic threatened him yet again.
The entire room seemed to resonate with laughter; foul, coarse sounds that beat at Xian as surely as fists.
He grabbed the edge of the table and pushed back his chair, rising to his feet; desperate to leave, to get away from the sunken stare of lifeless eyes.
He’d known. The moment the cover was lifted from the platter.
He knew too well the shape of Mercy’s lips, the curve of her head, and the glorious sweep of her tail.
He knew his friend.
Xian’s legs seemed barely attached to his body; he could hardly recall how to make them work. All he could picture was Mercy in her pond, and the lady and her attendant leaning over her, as Xian walked away and left her to her fate.
He’d always known Yu Ming held no love for him, but this…this was a cruelty beyond his comprehension.
He whimpered, and his vision blurred with stinging tears.
‘Sit down, you fool.’ Marchioness Shen hissed.
Lady Tian elbowed him. ‘You embarrass yourself, do not put on your performances here.’
A looming figure came to stand beside him.
‘Allow me to assist you, your highness.’ Captain Duan was there, gripping him too tight. ‘It seems all this excitement, the journey ahead, has left you looking rather pale.’ He sought permission from the marquess to take their leave.
‘Go, go.’ Marquess Tian waved them off, too deep in conversation with Official Park about incoming shipments of red wine from Italia.
But the marchioness rose from her chair. ‘Captain, do not let us take you from the meal. I shall see to his highness’s well-being.’
The captain’s hand clenched Xian’s elbow before he relented with a deep bow. ‘Of course, your grace.’
Xian stood through it all like a statue in danger of crumbling. Marchioness Shen dug her fingers into his arm. ‘Come now, your highness. The excitement seems to be too much for you.’
He stumbled with the quickness of her pace, but each time his knees buckled she had him upright again; her strength unexpected considering her diminutive size.
‘Yu Ming intended this as a jest. That is all. You need not appear as though you are about to return the contents of your guts to the table,’ she hissed as well as any snake, but her words had his hopes struggling to rise.
‘Then it was not Mercy, there on the table?’
‘Of course it was your wretched fish. And good riddance to it, your affection for that cold-blooded creature has always been unseemly. I tolerated it when you were a child, but you are a grown man now.’ She pushed him down another corridor.
‘Does no hot blood flow in your veins? If I was not assured that your manhood still exists, unscathed by the fire, then I would have said you became a eunuch that day your mother’s sorcery got the better of her. ’
Xian was too numb to even grow cold at her words, certainly too numb to protest the mention of his mother.
He moved where he was taken, loss eating away at his body.
His grief had faded over the years, only rising to plague him on the oddest occasions, but now it thundered in renewed; crippling him as surely as the meanest of diseases.
‘Your Grace? Is something wrong?’
Deep in the suffocating grip of heartbreak, Xian still recognised Daiyu’s voice. His pounding heart stuttered.
‘Daiyu…they killed her…’
‘What?’
‘Never mind that, he is unwell,’ the marchioness snapped.
‘I must return to the banquet. Take him to your father, see that he is treated for this unfortunate melancholy. I won’t abide it.
He must not drag himself about as he does now, like a ghost, when he travels with the envoy. Tell your father to do what he must.’
‘Your grace, may I ask what has brought this melancholy on?’
As the marchioness drew breath, Xian found his voice. ‘Mercy…they killed her, they killed her.’
‘Your carp?’ Daiyu’s shock was laid bare. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
‘Girl! Do as you are told.’ The marchioness pushed Xian towards Daiyu. ‘See to it he is ready to travel without protest tomorrow morning, or you and your father will be severely punished.’
A sob choked Xian, and his eyes burned. The marchioness was a blur as she leaned towards him.
‘Do not disgrace your father, our beloved Son of Heaven, as you mother did, boy. I will not hesitate to inform my sister the moment that you do, and there shall be no hope of you ever entering the Forbidden City again.’
But what did he care about such things? His friend was gone.
Torn apart and delivered to those who cared nothing for her importance to him.
Marchioness Shen, lips tight with her displeasure, turned in her gown of crimson; its elaborate gold embroidery depicting a mountain scene, a four-clawed dragon coiling around the highest peak.
‘Take him away.’
She moved back down the corridor in a hush of silken fabric and utter disregard.
Xian ached to join Mercy. He’d go wherever Yan Wang, the great god of death, deemed to send her. Surely it could be no more barbarous a place than this?
‘Prince Xian, what has happened?’ Daiyu asked urgently. ‘Surely they deceived you? They would not harm Mercy, I’m sure.’
Xian said nothing. He did not blink. He barely breathed.
How he wished it were deception. But his friend’s flesh had been laid before him as a grotesque feast. His grief festered like a wound at his core, the infection seeping into his blood.
He knew what it was to feel low, but this…
he could not name this ache. The enormity of the loss loomed like that of the storm his senses told him approached Kunming.
If only the lightning would strike him down and take him from this agony.
Daiyu led him with soft encouraging murmurs. ‘That’s it, we are almost there. My father will help you with your shock.’
She squeezed his arm, and it was as though his body cracked open. His tears flowed like rivers, soaking into the veil and sticking the fine silk to his face. A flood he wished to drown himself in.