Chapter Twenty-Nine
AS XIAN spoke, Lim resorted to what he knew best in the world.
He shifted from the prince’s side to sit at his feet and took the slipper from Xian’s lap.
He nodded at talk of daemons and incubi, of naturals and purebreds, and fire in emerald eyes.
Xian’s words came quickly, spilling from him as the water spilled from the Dragon King’s teeth.
He said nothing of Lim cupping the back of his ankle and sliding the plain silk shoes from his feet.
Xian took the other slipper from a pocket deep within his sleeve, and did not pause in his storytelling as he handed it to Lim. There was dirt caught in the seam at the heel; likely from the flowerpots where Xian said it had been hidden. Lim licked his thumb and set to work cleaning it up.
Xian’s voice went lower and lower as the tale was told, and only once did Lim speak up.
‘What is a fairy godmother supposed to be? And why does it require him to wear a woman’s gown?’ There was no reason for Lim to interrupt with that, but he needed to vent before a thousand questions overrode his mouth.
A quirk of the prince’s lips set Lim’s belly twisting, and he looked back to the dirty shoe, using the edge of his jacket now to work at the infernal grains of dirt that wouldn’t budge.
Xian’s tale took shape, a hurried account of unimaginable events. Words that made Xian’s knuckles white with being said.
Finally, he was done. ‘That is the truth of what happened to me last night.’
The poor man looked wretched; the colour drained from his face, his lips pale; his trepidation palpable, paining Lim to see.
For a selfish moment, Lim wished the Englishman had simply taken Xian to his bed, and left the prince with only some soreness to be healed; a fleeting encounter, forgotten in the New Year.
‘Huli jing.’ He tested the remarkable words upon his own tongue, aware of how fixedly Xian watched him. He could not make a wrong move here, fearing the damage that might be done if he did not choose perfectly.
But, gods, what a tale had been told.
‘Say something more, Lim,’ Xian said. ‘Do I frighten you?’
Lim’s head shot up, a shocked laugh jumping from him. ‘Frighten me? Gods, Xian. No.’ He paused. ‘I am frightened for you. Sir William spoke to me of midnight, as well. That I must find you before then, if I wished to stay with you. And if I did not, that I would miss my chance.’
Xian’s lips parted with a silent gasp.
‘But what if that were a threat, and not advice?’ Lim’s mind churned. ‘What if he seeks to trap you with this promise of freedom? And to speak of going to England? That is more miles than I can imagine, Xian. He sets an impossible target for you.’
‘This is a port town,’ Xian whispered urgently. ‘Would it be so impossible really? To steal away upon a boat bound for the British Isles.’
Fear prickled beneath Lim’s skin. He set down the slipper, having polished it until he’d likely worn down the facets. ‘Xian, please promise me you’ll not do such a thing without me.’
‘Of course not!’
‘Then how shall I find you after the dance? If you say I should stay here, helping this godly idiot.’
‘Because if you are here with the idiot, then I know exactly where to find you.’
Lim had not seen the fire in Sir William’s eyes, but he imagined it might look as it did in Xian’s gaze now; the burnished glow of determination.
‘And then we go where? I have a horse, and he’s decent enough, but its much to ask him to carry us both.’
‘We can find another easily enough.’ Xian’s anxious excitement was breathtaking. ‘We shall find a way. I know we will.’
‘Find a way to England?’ Lim twisted his lips. ‘From what I’ve seen of their footwear, they need a shoemaker of my ilk desperately. Though I should warn you, I’ll not be much company on a boat. Doesn’t agree with my belly at all.’
‘But you would still travel with me,’ Xian hesitated. ‘Despite everything, you’d undertake such a journey?’
‘Despite what? You being the most intriguing man I’ve ever met and only likely to become more so?
Yes, of course.’ Lim smiled at Xian’s breathlessness, at the nervous flutter of his lashes.
He considered kissing him upon the lips.
‘That, and the high likelihood I shall become terribly rich and well-known in the endeavour.’
Xian laughed, rocking back. ‘If I am intriguing, you are truly confounding, Song Lim. All that I’ve told you, and you think only of your shoes?’
Lim shrugged, picking up Mercy’s slipper. ‘Well, if you cannot agree that I am talented beyond compare, then best I take these back.’
‘You’d not dare.’ Xian tilted his head, looking far more of a prince than he’d done in a long time. ‘It would be futile to hide them from me now, Master Song.’
‘Really, you think so, do you?’
‘I know so. I could sniff them out, a mile away. They smell like,’ he waved his hand, considering the scent, ‘wet sandstone, and morning dew, with a hint of apricot from the osmanthus flower.’
‘Remarkable!’ Lim, struck by an unpleasant thought, looked to Xian. ‘Don’t lie to me. Am I pungent?’ He sniffed his armpit for good measure. ‘Let me die now and never hear your answer.’
‘You are not dying, and you are not pungent,’ Xian laughed. But Lim did not share his amusement.
‘I’ve not bathed in days.’ He pressed the slipper over his eyes. ‘I rode a horse almost nonstop for ten days, and I sweated for every one of them, not to mention I fell in the dirt. Add to that a bloody wound, and I’m realising what a wretched egg I am.’
‘But a wretched egg made easier to find by his need for a bath.’ Xian replied with a keen sparkle in his eye.
‘Don’t torment me! And can I just say, your feet do not smell like magnolia either.’
Laughter burst from Xian, but Lim heard the strained lilt beneath the happiness; the tension that could leave neither of them before the night was done.
Xian’s laughter stopped short, and he glanced over his shoulder. Lim’s heart dropped.
‘He’s close?’
‘Closer than he was.’ He turned back to Lim.
‘We have a little time, though. Would you fit the slippers again for me? I know it sounds foolish…but when you last did so…’ He tucked his cheek against his shoulder, charming in his shyness.
‘It’s just that, I don’t mind when you…I mean, I quite like…
when you touch my feet. It is very calming.
’ He covered his face with his hands, exhaling.
‘Argh. How much stranger you must think me now.’
Strange was far from the word; Lim’s tightening trousers knew it.
‘The only thing strange is thinking you need to apologise to your shoemaker for wanting him to touch your feet. The most perfect pair I’ve ever seen. I’d write poetry about these feet if I had the talent, paint them too, if I knew how to handle a brush.’
He drew laughter from the prince again. If Lim had dropped dead right then, he’d have died the happiest man who ever lived.
Grinning, Lim took up the prince’s left foot, and slid the slipper over Xian’s toes, and then his heel; the shoes fitting so easily it was as though they were slicked with melted butter.
He lifted the other, where Mercy’s scales lay, and sobered with a thought. ‘Xian, are you certain Sir William does not deceive you?’
‘No,’ Xian said, leaning down to watch Lim work. ‘I’m not certain, but I am sure that I cannot go on as I have. The change in me is too great. We will leave tonight regardless.’
Xian shivered as Lim cupped his hand beneath the arch of his foot. ‘Then let them speak of the Dancing Prince in his glass slippers for centuries to come.’
‘And his shoemaker, who gave him the strength to find his way.’
Lim, a man not prone to quietness, had nothing worthy to say. He slid Xian’s foot into the second slipper.
The sudden violent glare of light, a flash of pure gold, was blinding. Xian uttered a soft cry.
Lim squeezed the bridge of his nose, blinked madly. ‘What happened? Are you hurt?’
‘No…no…I am not hurt.’ He set his feet to the ground, rolling them from side to side, setting off a gentler glint; one that still held a gold hue, rather than the usual moonlight gleam. ‘Lim, do you see? The scales…’
Lim’s vision tinged with gold, but he saw well enough. The row of scales — those unique marks of the golden carp — was nowhere to be found.
‘She is gone,’ Xian said quietly. ‘Truly this time.’
‘But never really so.’
‘Never really so.’ A smile curved Xian’s lips only to fade in the next blink of an eye. ‘Oh…the flowers…’ He planted his hand over his mouth and nose, face crinkling with repulsion. ‘Their scent is overwhelming.’
Lim sniffed. ‘I smell nothing.’
‘You are lucky in that. They are almost too rich to bear.’
Xian dashed to the other side of the pavilion, where the narcissus blooms teetered back and forth, their yellow centres like tiny waving suns. He must have moved on his toes, for the slippers made barely a sound against the floorboards.
‘What is going on?’ Lim stared out at the sea of yellow and white and green; the flowers shuddered on their stalks.
Violent shifts back and forth, as though something foraged beneath the long strips of their leaves.
Not so strange an occurrence, normally. Except this was not just one flower, but all of them at once.
‘Xian? Unless the earth is being shaken by a tremor I am numb to, that does not look natural to me.’
‘Because it is not.’ Xian turned to him, clearly harried. ‘I think they are telling me to leave.’
‘The flowers?’
‘Or Mai, through them, somehow. Her light is around them…but, I don’t know. I’m new to floral conversation, Lim, to all of this,’ he said, a familiar tinge of panic in his voice. ‘There is so much to take on at once, the sounds and the scents and…I feel so strange…’