Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

I n those early days, Fanli would always seek me out by the lotus pond. Sometimes he wore robes of inkstone black, his sash belt embroidered with the finest gold threads, creating repeating patterns of open magnolias, layered clouds, cranes in flight. Sometimes he was dressed in silver, his broad sleeves floating in the breeze and flowing like water, soft and ethereal, and he would wave a white fan to match. I could not decide which appearance suited him more: god of war, or muse of poets. To me, he was both.

"We are learning something new," he told me one morning. He was in pure black, the smooth planes of his face made colder by contrast. "I believe you are ready."

"For what?"

In response, Fanli merely called: "Luyi. Bring it here."

The guard ambled out from behind the covered corridor, carrying a long wooden instrument in his hands. I recognized it from its distinctive features, rather than my own experience: the silk-thin strings stretched horizontally across it, the warm gleam of the wood under the sun. One end was curved and slightly wider than the other, and it was so large that if it were stood up next to me, it would be taller than my shoulders.

"Hurry up," Fanli told Luyi, but without any real impatience. "Don't tell me that instrument is too heavy for you."

Luyi made an exaggerated pout and walked no faster. "After searching every spot in the mountains the other day? Consider it a miracle I can even hold my body upright. My leg muscles are still sore."

"Do you truly care so little about your reputation as a guard?" Fanli said dryly. "Nobody will hire a guard who whines just because he was made to climb a few miles."

"A few ?" Luyi repeated, indignant, setting the zither down before us with a loud thud . "I doubt even the Kunlun Mountains are so high. And better yet, if nobody else wishes to hire me"—he grinned—"you'll be stuck with me all your life."

"Incredible."

Luyi's grin broadened. "I am, aren't I? About time you took notice."

"No," Fanli said, voice flat. "I meant it is incredible how your impertinence grows by the day."

I looked between the two of them.

"Why… were you searching the mountains?" I asked.

"Oh, security measures," Luyi said, waving a dismissive hand. "Seeing as both the great military advisor of Yue and future tributes to the Wu king are all gathered here in one place, Fanli wanted to ensure there were no assassins of sorts lurking around these mountains. Because, as you can imagine, that would be rather inconvenient."

Assassins. My blood beat faster within me. The word conjured up visions of blood and blades, men masked in black, the stuff of folklore. They barely seemed real. "Did you find anything?"

Luyi shook his head and offered me a wide smile that was perhaps meant to reassure. "Good news: Nobody wishes to kill you."

"How wonderful," I murmured.

"Yet," Fanli added, his eyes sharp as knifepoints on me. "It's no reason to let your guard down. Have you not heard that the loveliest flowers are usually the first to be plucked? Your beauty is dangerous—to others, but also to yourself."

"You're scaring her," Luyi said, jabbing a thumb at my face. I flushed, remembering again what Fanli had told me about my expressions showing. Were they truly that obvious? "Look."

"Yes, I can see quite plainly. It is another problem we must contend with." Fanli turned back to Luyi. "You may go now."

He pouted. "But I was hoping to watch—"

"If you truly have nothing better to do, then you can search the mountains again."

"Just joking," Luyi said hastily, backing away with impressive speed. The next moment, he was gone.

Fanli rolled his eyes at the wall around which Luyi had disappeared, then adjusted his position behind the instrument and gestured to it. "Do you know what this is?"

The word rose clumsily to my lips. I had only ever heard it spoken by others. "A guqin."

"Correct. And do you know how to play it?"

I lifted a tentative hand to the strings. Though I'd thought them to resemble silk, they were in fact so sharp to the touch I wondered how anyone could strum them without splitting open skin. Slowly, I shook my head. Such instruments were the pastimes of fancy noblewomen, girls born into royal blood.

"Let me show you." He leaned forward, swept his sleeves back in a great swishing motion, pressed down the string on one end, and plucked it on the other. A low, melancholic note reverberated through the air. It was so beautiful, so pure, I felt a stirring in my blood. The breath swelled in my lungs. Then he strummed the instrument in earnest, his fingers moving too fast for me to make out. Without pausing, he looked up and asked, "What does this remind you of?"

I closed my eyes. A breeze kissed my skin, and the music rose around me, like heat. "It reminds me of… a river running south. Water on rocks." I had no idea if this was anywhere close to the right answer, if there could even be a right answer to whatever test this was.

Fanli was quiet for a long moment.

"And now?" The melody changed, slowed down. There was a dark tone to it, something sad and terrible and slightly ominous.

"A fallen city. The aftermath of a war. Two lovers separated over two shores."

"Now?"

"Wisps of clouds moving over a full moon. The silence of solitude. An empty room, dust motes floating in a slant of pale sunlight. Regret for something you cannot take back. Happiness for somebody you cannot have."

The music stopped completely, and when my eyes fluttered open, Fanli was looking at me in a new way. Almost perplexed. As though a calculation he'd been certain of had suddenly rearranged itself, and he wasn't sure what to make of it.

"Yes," he said at last, that look falling away.

"Yes… what?"

But he did not elaborate. He just motioned for me to sit down before him. I did so, and was quickly made aware of his presence. We were so close I could feel the soft exhale of his breath against the back of my bare neck. Though we were barely even touching, his arms encircled my body, and his hands hovered over mine, guiding them to the strings. I was glad, then, that he could not see my face from his angle, for my expression surely would've betrayed everything I was thinking.

"Try to play it," he told me, demonstrating a few times and explaining all the different playing techniques and pitch positions until my head swam with unfamiliar terms.

I plucked the string just as he had, but the sound it made was dull, grating to the ears. Disappointment curled in my belly alongside a pinch of panic. What if I proved awful at everything Fanli attempted to show me? What if I was like all the villagers said: beautiful to look at, but little more than that? The entire mission suddenly seemed overwhelming, absurd. Impossible. I would never be ready, let alone within the mere eight weeks we had remaining.

"That is to be expected, for your first time," he said. "It would be a wonder if you could play it well right away."

For a moment I wondered if he'd sensed my tension, and sought to comfort me. But his voice was too matter-of-fact for that. I gave myself a small shake. I needed to stop scrabbling for sentimentality where there was none to be found.

"Adjust your finger positions here." He moved my wrist forward, his fingers cool through the thin fabric of my sleeves. "And do not pluck it with such blunt force. These strings are sensitive. A slight change in pressure can change the sound also. Listen."

All morning we stayed out by the pond, practicing with the instrument. I played again and again until my skin had been rubbed raw, but uttered no sound of complaint. It was Fanli who saw the fresh blood smeared over the hair-thin strings, and came to an abrupt stop.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked, frowning. "We could have taken a break."

"No." I didn't lift my fingers off the guqin. "I think I'm starting to get it. Let me try a little longer."

"You will ruin your hands this way."

I ignored him. I had always hated leaving things unfinished. But it was more than that: I needed to prove to someone, if only myself, that I could do this. That I was equipped not just with the pretty features I had been born into. That I would be just as good, if not better, than the sheltered girls who were instructed in dance and song and classical instruments from childhood.

When both my hands were slick with my own blood, I found that I was able to play a simple tune on the guqin from beginning to end. The heady rush of satisfaction instantly swept all the pain aside. I turned around, grinning, to Fanli. See? I wished to gloat. I can do it after all.

"Good" was all he said.

But he was staring at my hands.

We quickly settled into a routine. The mornings were dedicated to learning the guqin, among other instruments, singing, and all styles of dance. Some of them I had never even heard of before—they involved the swishing of brightly colored fans that flared out at the edges, while others required spinning around in rapid circles on the same spot. The first few times I attempted this, I ended up falling on all fours, the world swaying before me so violently I thought I would be sick.

"Watch the movement of the swans," Fanli would tell Zhengdan and me, pointing at the creatures' slender necks, the way they glided over the waters. "Dancing is an expression of beauty, and what is beautiful is always derived from nature itself."

"He only says such things to avoid demonstrating the dance for us himself," Zhengdan muttered into my ear one session. I had to fight so hard to control my laughter that I almost lost my balance on the second spin.

Lunchtimes were just as rigorous. There seemed no end to the number of rules that came with a single meal. Eating was no longer just a means of nourishing the body, of appeasing the empty stomach and ensuring one had the energy to work another day, but a highly complex ritual. It was considered a great offense to have the head of a fish dish turned toward the king; an offense to make audible noises while chewing in the king's presence. It seemed to me that the problem lay more with the king; who else would have the energy to be offended by nearly everything? Of course, I kept these thoughts to myself. I had not forgotten what Fanli told us the first day about the beheaded official.

But despite all this, what I looked forward to most were the afternoons. Here the focus shifted to classics, poetry, politics, and history. The stories Fanli told us—and to me, they felt exactly like stories, these romantic, dramatic, and tragic tales that did not happen to ordinary people—were wildly fascinating, made even more engaging by the fact that he himself was acquainted with many of the characters.

"What do you know about Wu Zixu?" Fanli asked, stepping around his desk.

We were sitting in his study, a closed-off room on the other end of the courtyard from our bedchambers. The late orange sunlight moved in filtered patches over Fanli's desk. A map of the fractured empire lay across it, marking the borders between the Wu and the Yue, and places beyond our two kingdoms, places so far away they felt to me like they belonged to another world entirely: the Chu to the west, the steppes to the higher north, the Yellow Sea stretched along the coast. From afar, the fragments of land looked like shattered porcelain.

Beside the map was a dense diagram of various figures, their relationships drawn out in a series of dotted ink lines and Fanli's tiny annotations.

"Wu Zixu…" The name was familiar, but I could not quite place where I'd heard it. Then I remembered the common saying, passed from villager to villager. Out loud, I recalled, "Wu Zixu is to King Fuchai what Fanli is to King Goujian."

Fanli's brows rose a fraction. "You are correct, in some sense. Though I'd argue he was more valued as an advisor by Fuchai's father, King Helü. Wu Zixu was the one who helped Helü assassinate his cousin and ascend the throne. From the inside reports I've received, Fuchai does not trust Wu Zixu quite as much as his father did. Which is good for us. Why do you think?"

I rummaged through what little I knew for an answer. The Wu's and the Yue's interests were forever at odds. What was good for us had to be terrible for them. "Because… Wu Zixu's advice could make the Wu stronger before we have a chance to attack. Because a king who doesn't trust his own advisor is easier to deceive. Or because… Wu Zixu is most likely to suspect King Goujian's plan for revenge?"

Zhengdan nodded beside me. "That makes sense. It takes like to know like, and Wu Zixu has always wanted revenge himself, hasn't he?"

I turned to her. Zhengdan spent more time in the village center than I did, and gossip sometimes proved a surprisingly reliable source of information. "Revenge for what?"

"For his father," Fanli explained, returning to his position behind the desk. He pointed an ink brush at another name on the cluttered diagram and traced it back to Wu Zixu. "Wu Zixu originally came from the State of Chu; his father was grand tutor to their crown prince. But this official"—he drew his brush farther down to a name written in red—"spread the rumor that his father and the prince were plotting a rebellion. While awaiting his execution, the grand tutor was forced to write a letter to his sons, asking that they come to the capital. Wu Zixu recognized it was a trap, and fled to the Wu Kingdom instead."

My stomach turned cold.

Treason. Traps. Treachery. The more I learned about these men and their methods of obtaining power, the more I dreaded entering the court myself. I was just one person. Could I really stand to outwit them all, to seduce their king right under their noses? How did any of them even manage to fall asleep at night, knowing that one wrong move could rip everything away from them?

As if I had spoken my thoughts aloud, Fanli fixed his gaze on me. "Zhengdan is right. Wu Zixu is a naturally suspicious man, who cannot tolerate the slightest speck of sand in his eye. Watch out for him. If my predictions are correct, he will be the first to suspect you, and will do everything he can to make your life in the palace difficult." His eyes darkened with urgency. "You must find a way to remove him from King Fuchai's side as soon as possible."

"Or else?" I could barely breathe, dreading the answer.

"Or else he will remove you."

When all the training was over for the day, I lay in bed, my mind swimming with fresh information and new threats and my body aching quietly. I could not remember ever being so exhausted in my life, even when washing giant baskets of raw silk on my own.

Then I felt a weight lower itself beside me. The tickle of long hair.

"Xishi-jie." Zhengdan's voice. She was whispering, even though it was just the two of us here. "Are you asleep?"

Without opening my eyes, I murmured, "Yes."

She snorted and shuffled closer until her pointy chin dug into my shoulder. "Talk to me. I'm bored."

"You're bored ?" My eyes snapped open in my incredulity. I blinked thrice in the blue darkness, before her face came into focus. "How are you not exhausted? I don't believe it's physically possible for our daily schedule to be busier than it already is." My hands stung even as I said it. The places where I'd rubbed my fingers over the guqin strings had already started to harden and form calluses.

"Yes, but there are so few people around here."

"What's wrong with that?" Privately, this was perhaps one of the things I most enjoyed about the cottage. There were fewer prying eyes, fewer bitter tongues, fewer people to worry over. "It's peaceful."

"For you, maybe," she grumbled, flipping over onto her belly. She was silent for so long I wondered if she had drifted off to sleep already. Then she asked, "What do you think about Fanli?"

Irrationally, I felt myself tense. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why ? I just want to know. It's not as if there is anyone else around here to gossip about."

I made a noncommittal sound. In truth, I did not want to discuss anything about Fanli or entertain any thoughts of him while lying in the dark of my bedchambers; it was enough that I had to be around him every hour of the day.

Just as I was debating how to change the topic, Zhengdan went on. "I wonder if he has a lover of his own."

"Wait—what?"

"I doubt it," she said. "If he spends all his time around us , and his heart remains still as water, and his face as cold as ice, then he must not be tempted by anything whatsoever. It's no wonder the king trusts only him with this mission. Perhaps he is not even interested in love. He will be one of those people who devote themselves to their kingdom, and pass through their whole lives alone."

A strange taste crept into my mouth, like day-old tea. I drew the sheets higher to my chin. "Is it really any of our business?"

"Come on, Xishi-jiejie." She nudged me. "Don't tell me you have no opinions of him."

For a moment I considered telling her about the riverbank, the little girl with bruises trailing down her limbs, and Fanli approaching with the sun blazing behind him, like a warrior from the stories made real. Yet something stopped my tongue. It was like telling someone that you'd dreamed of them; even if there was little meaning to it, it still felt too intimate.

"He doesn't reveal much of himself," I settled on in the end, gazing up at the high windows. A delicate latticework of branches could be seen through the thin rice paper, their flowers faintly visible as splotches of color. "All I know is that he would do anything for his kingdom."

"That alone reveals plenty," Zhengdan said. "Think: a man who has severed all worldly desires in order to save the world, who has sworn total loyalty to the state and so is loyal to nobody. Someone like him would put a sword through his own heart for the greater good. It's probably for the better," she added as an afterthought, "that he takes no lovers. He is too virtuous to have a good ending with any woman. In a world where everyone will demand something from you, it requires a certain degree of selfishness to be happy, you know."

Zhengdan, the great beauty and philosopher. There were times when she reminded me of a young, wide-eyed girl, a little sister to be protected and doted on, and others when she seemed possessed by a century-old sage who has already seen through the red dust of the world.

I reached over and flicked her forehead lightly, glad for the concealing properties of the dark. "Enough, now."

But even after she went quiet, it took me forever to fall asleep. I could not stop turning and prodding at what she'd said about Fanli passing his life alone. The thought sent a pang through my chest, though of course I wasn't able to fathom why. What did any of it have to do with me? Yet even then, there was another voice inside me that answered differently.