Chapter 26 Empty Sleeves
Yangxin Hall was packed, three layers inside and three outside.
Shock sat on every minister's face.
I walked forward. The crowd knelt in a dark mass, heads low, and no one dared speak.
Only Censor Yan still had his mouth open, stuck there. He looked as if he had not yet come out of the fright.
I patted his shoulder, had someone take him down, then walked toward Lan Zhi, curled in the corner.
Her ink-black hair hung loose. Her white clothes carried blood. A pair of severed hands lay in her arms.
Xiao Yan sat in the wheelchair beside her, breath thin as a thread. His two black sleeves hung empty and swung. A great pool of blood lay under him.
The hatred on her was thicker than I had thought.
I crouched before Lan Zhi. It was the first time I saw her with no red on her lips and no powder on her face. Her skin was thin and clean. Fine veins showed at the corners of her eyes.
Wind came. Her hair drifted, light, like orchids swaying by a stream.
She covered her belly and spoke to me with something like happiness in her voice. "Give them back to me... I made him give them back..."
"...Lightly darken the brows to add their glow, change me into red bridal clothes, give me green jade, let my husband still be stunned by my beauty..."
She hummed softly, as if she were again that famous opera singer of those years, water sleeves flying, hand-flowers turning dense.
The song stopped. Tears slid down. She closed her eyes and left, holding those dreams of scholars and beauties, of foolish men and bitter women, of heroes saving the beauty.
Sunset spilled in.
Xiao Yan stared at me. His mouth opened a little, as if a word were stuck there.
Begging? Curses?
Glad, I bent down and put my ear up to listen.
He opened his mouth and blood choked him. Only after a long while did he force out a few blurred syllables.
"...Did... you... ever... love... me..."
Ridiculous.
He had done so many mad things. This was the one I found most absurd.
I looked down at him with no expression.
He looked at me without moving.
The last of the sunset slowly shifted onto his eyes.
I reached out by instinct to block it for him.
But the light was a little hot.
I drew my hand back, and only then found he was already dead.
He had died with his eyes open.
The eyes that had been black and bright had gone dim, like a dead sea.