Chapter 41 Snowstorm
SNOWSTORM
There was a sunlit study attached to our accommodations, and it was there that Terren spent most of his days, reading and working on his Blessings, which he set aside for battlefronts, the House’s stores, or far provinces.
Sometimes he went up to the temple to pray—or, I suspected, to feed the carp; sometimes he took walks by himself alone, in the snow-drenched forest. He must have used those walks to find inspiration, because the moment he was back, he would pick up his pen immediately.
He did not hurt me much during our retreat.
When he did, it was perfunctory. As if it was something he didn’t want to do, like sweeping leaves off a footpath, but had to anyway.
There was none of his usual creativity in his torture methods, no light in his eyes.
He simply cut me, mended me, and was done with it.
The rest of the time, he ignored me, as if I did not exist at all.
He drank wine. Lots of it. He never did it within the limits of the temple—such indulgences were not allowed according to Aolian teachings—but every other evening, he would take a few jars of it to a quiet, shrouded cliff not far away.
I knew this because one night, he did not come to sleep in our bed, so I went looking for him.
I found him sprawled on the jutting rock, unconscious, right beside a steep plunge into the clouds.
I thought about pushing him off, but I knew the Aricine Ward would not let him die.
Maybe it would sprout him wings like a crane’s; maybe it would let him land softly like mist. Most likely, it would have stopped me from being able to touch him in the first place.
In any case, he would wake up and cut off my head.
How unfair it was, I could not help but think, that the most wicked of us also got to be the most invincible.
Be patient. Wield the concubine’s weapon.
Instead of throwing him off the cliff, I brought him tea, the way a dutiful wife might have done for her husband.
I hiked all the way up to the temple on the mountain, braving the still-throbbing pain in my chest, and boiled together ginger, pine bark, and honey.
Then I brought it back to him, along with some plain glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves.
He left the tea and food untouched, but since he did not punish me for it, I kept bringing them to him other nights too, especially nights he did manage to make it back to our quarters.
I felt like I was taming a tiger.
A violent, rabid tiger that wanted nothing more than to tear into my flesh. But if I kept bringing it treats, would it then begin to recognize me? Would it begin seeing me as a thing that could be trusted—even if it was powerful and did not need to trust anyone?
A few days before the end of our retreat, there came a blizzard. I happened to be at the temple when it started, and two Aolian disciples approached me.
“There have been omens pointing to it being an unusually large snowstorm,” one said from behind their black mask. “We have seen a violet snake in the sky, and we have heard the whistling of the frost bunting.”
“We suggest you take victuals back down to your quarters,” the other said from behind their white one. “Enough for several days. It may become difficult to leave your room.”
Terren was not awake for the storm’s beginning.
He had taken an overabundance of wine the night before and slept like a stone in his bed.
I sat at the window alone, holding a warm cup of tea between my hands, watching the morning’s light flurries transform into something angry and vicious.
Something that battered at the ceilings and pounded at the windows, as if the sky were a beast screaming to be let inside.
I could not even see the pine trees five paces from the window through all the blinding white.
I had read about snow like this in the books, and in Maro’s journals, but seeing it in person for the first time was like seeing magic.
I opened the door a sliver. Instantly, the wind came whooshing in, and when I held one hand outside, it filled with frigid white pellets within the span of a breath.
I laughed, wishing I could take some home to show Bao.
When I woke up in the morning, on the second day of the storm, Terren was gone. He had left in such a hurry that hadn’t even taken his winter cloak, which was still hanging near the door.
There were no footsteps outside—any he made would have been immediately buried under new snow—but I had a suspicion about where he’d gone.
It was a treacherous journey to the top of the mountain. I could barely see past my arm in front of me, and the blizzard kept stinging my cheeks, my hands, my still-aching chest. I lost myself in it twice before making it to the temple.
As I neared its courtyard, I spotted a faint silhouette.
“Terren,” I shouted over the raging winds.
He didn’t hear me.
I drew closer. It was only when I was three paces away that I could see him clearly: crouched by the shore of the pond, still in his bedrobes, holding a dagger. He was digging stiffly at the snow with it, but was making no progress. Every dent he made was immediately filled again by the storm.
He must have been out for a long time. The ice had already caked over him, his hair, back, and collar frozen white.
“Terren,” I said again. The way he was acting, I was reminded of the scared child from Maro’s story. “Get to the temple.”
He did not acknowledge me.
“You’re going to freeze out here.” Did the Aricine Ward protect him from the cold?
He kept hacking away with his knife.
“Terren, the fish are already inside.”
That made him finally look up.
“Come,” I said. I threw him his cloak, but he didn’t put it on. He just clutched it in his arms, as if he had no idea what to do with it, and stumbled dumbly after me. I led him through the knee-high snow for a cold forever, until at last, we were safe through the temple doors.
The summer he turned sixteen, Hesin had said, he poisoned all the carp in the peach garden.
I had believed it at first, because why wouldn’t I? Terren had killed many things. He had killed many, many people. If someone came and told me he had slaughtered an entire city, I would not have questioned it for even a heartbeat.
But, importantly, he had not killed those fish.
It was the most surprising thing I had learned from Maro’s journals, in one of the very last entries. I did not think I could ever write Terren’s poem without it.
Inside the temple’s stone doors, the loud of the storm had given way to a peaceful quiet.
Several disciples were inside, copying classical texts with wooden blocks.
Some of them knelt by the giant statue of Ao, a stone beast with eight legs and a mane like the sun.
Others were offering incense to the statue of Li—a carved fish-creature with an eagle’s wings and scales like shining moons.
Several large tubs, low and made of lacquered ceramic, were spread around the hall. Each was as wide as a table, and each held several dozen of the carp.
Terren stood beside one of them, staring numbly into the water.
“I was here at the start of the storm,” I explained to him. “When I heard there was going to be a blizzard, I asked the disciples if I could move the fish indoors. They said the fish would be fine—they had survived many winters on the mountain before—but they did agree to help me in the end.”
He didn’t say anything, and at first I supposed he was having one of his quiet spells.
Then it occurred to me that the cold might actually have hurt him.
His lips were blue, his face gray as ice, his lashes still frozen with snow.
Even the band of characters around him seemed to swirl slower than usual.
For a moment, I regretted bringing him inside. If I had left him out in the storm, maybe it would have killed him. I doubted his ward would have let him die, but still, I could not help but indulge in wondering what if.
I moved one of the braziers in the hall next to him so that its flames might warm him. Around us, the Aolian disciples carried on with their rituals, as if we were merely ghosts, not of this world.
“Why?” Terren finally said, breaking the silence.
I assumed he meant saving the fish. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
Maybe it was because subconsciously, I knew he would want me to, and it was my own way of wielding the concubine’s weapon.
Maybe it was because the poem he’d written as a child had affected me—even the summary of it, as retold to me by Hesin in his story.
My life might be smaller than yours, but it is full of joy and worth living.
Maybe it was how helpless they seemed.
“Even if they would have been fine outside,” I said, as much an explanation to myself as to him, “I don’t doubt that if they had a choice, they would have gone somewhere warmer.
We were the ones who confined them out there, made them at our mercy, forced them to face the storm.
So when the storm did come, I felt it was only our duty to bring them somewhere safe. ”
He fell back into silence. Sometime later, he finally seemed warm enough to hold a cup, so I brought him ginger tea. He removed the silver needle that he kept pinned in his hair and dipped it in the cup; his ward made him immune to poison, but likely he wanted to test my intentions.
When the needle did not turn black, he took a small and shaky sip and said nothing more.