Chapter 6 The Cat in Cinnabar
I clutched the family letter Elder Brother had sent from the frontier. My fingertips rubbed again and again over the four words "unrest in the north."
Outside the window lattice, Xiao Huai An's bright yellow honor guard rolled over the bluestone slabs before Wen Manor.
Lately he always waited outside the manor at the yin hour, saying it was to "discuss morning court matters with Lord Wen." Yet after Father withdrew, he always turned alone into my study.
Today he arrived with frost clinging to him. He draped a black fox cloak over my shoulders.
"Last night I saw your study lit until the third watch. Is Grand Tutor's policy essay that hard?"
I stared at the unmelted white frost in his hair. Suddenly I remembered the last life, before he led the campaign himself. I had brushed snow from his shoulders just like this.
Snow had fallen on his brow bone and melted into water, so like tears.
"Nothing but old platitudes."
I stuffed the family letter under the inkstone. Ink bloomed into dark clouds on the xuan paper.
He suddenly pressed down my hand. The pad of his finger rolled over a faint scar on my wrist—left from the last life, when I tested poison for him. Even living this life over, I still carried it.
"When did this scar come?"
"I was wild as a child. A cat scratched me."
I pulled my hand back and knocked over the cinnabar inkstone on the desk.
He laughed, took my wolf-hair brush, dipped it in cinnabar, and drew a crooked cat on the back of my hand.
"Then you ought to be punished. Copy the Zizhi Tongjian for me for three months."
The fog outside the window had scattered without my noticing. Sunlight came through the carved wooden window and cast fine gold on his lashes.
The scene was too familiar. Familiar enough to make my heart seize.
In the last life he had smiled like this too, and had me sort the roster of Wen Clan disciples, and had me stamp the Wen Clan's private seal on memorials that impeached his political enemies.