After watching the blue-green figure of the other person disappear into the garden of former days, Yan Luo stepped closer and asked: “What did he say to Your Highness?”

Luowei said nothing. The palace attendants had not yet been called back to the garden. She leaned against the pillar to rise, then—suddenly, like a girl in her chamber—she swung her wide official sleeves, shaking off the fallen petals. After that, she simply stripped off her outer robe, hitched up her layered skirts, and vaulted over the surrounding fence, landing directly beneath the flowering tree.

Yan Luo received the heavy outer robe and called with some concern: “Your Highness…”

Luowei closed her eyes, stretched out both arms, and—as she might have done in the most carefree days of her youth—turned a slow circle beneath the tree.

Hairpins and combs chimed softly together, pearls and jade knocking against each other, swaying on the verge of tumbling free—and still she paid no attention.

Yan Luo came around from the walkway carrying the outer robe, and saw that the Empress had already stopped. She was standing with her head tilted back, looking up through the gaps in the branches.

Sunlight fell in broken pieces. New blossoms drifted down. It was the height of spring—why the sorrow?

Yan Luo set the outer robe carefully away inside the hall, then brought out from a dim corner of the inner room a potted sickly plum—ugly and gaunt, with stark, protruding branches.

Luowei took the flower-and-grass shears Yan Luo handed her, studied the plum for a moment, then raised her hand and brought it down without hesitation—cutting away the lowest branch flush against the main trunk.

Though the branch was withered, after she had cut it away, there still remained a faint, barely visible wound on the trunk. She discarded the severed branch without a second thought, and held the pot of plum for a long while without saying a word.

Yan Luo raised her gaze. Amid the shower of petals, the young Empress—though her face wore a smile—had in her eyes a glimmer of flickering tears, barely restrained.

“A’Fei, come with me—let us recite a scroll of sutras together for Buyun.”

A dull, aching soreness stirred in her heart.

Because she knew—Buyun was Zhang Siyi’s childhood name.

* * *

In the final years of the Changning reign, fourteen-year-old Zhang Buyun took personal leave from the Silk Brocade Bureau and, for no payment at all, sewed a set of mourning garments for an old acquaintance—the daughter of the Chief Minister, the young Miss Su. For convenience, and also as a gesture of gratitude, Luowei invited her to stay at the Su family residence.

At the time, the Crown Prince Chengming was also at the Su family home. It was through this chance encounter that she met one of the Crown Prince’s personal guards.

The deputy commander of the Jintian Guard, Lu Heng—courtesy name Fengying.

He was a young man in his finest years, dressed in the narrow-sleeved robe of the Hairpin-and-Gold Guard. He followed behind the noble Crown Prince, his short coiled serpent-blade cold as ice, his spine as straight and upright as the pot of green bamboo she kept by her window.

Buyun had heard that every member of the Jintian Guard was a youth from a poor family personally selected by the Crown Prince from his earliest years—trained through years of relentless drill with knives and spears, fists and feet, tempered through a thousand hammer blows before emerging as a truly elite force.

And he was the finest among that group.

When Buyun watched him, she did not know that in another moment he had also been watching her—that when she sat before the window, carefully embroidering a crabapple blossom on the Crown Prince’s sleeve, her spotlessly white hands moving like clouds, there was a certain charm all its own in that moment.

That year, the young Miss Su and the Crown Prince Chengming became betrothed. Because of the paternal mourning period, the wedding was postponed.

To celebrate the occasion, the Emperor changed the reign name beginning the following year to Tianshi.

In the first year of Tianshi, Buyun received the Crown Prince’s consort’s favor and was transferred from the Silk Brocade Bureau into the inner palace.

The Crown Prince was deeply beloved by the Emperor above. Even after having his cap-pinning ceremony and receiving his own residence, he came and went freely from the Forbidden City.

Buyun and Lu Heng now had far more opportunities to meet.

In the third year of Tianshi, the Crown Prince was assassinated.

By the time Buyun heard the news, Lu Heng had already been reassigned to serve at the side of the new Emperor, who had hastily ascended the throne. She felt no joy at the glory and position that came his way. What was truly worth thanking the gods and Buddhas for was that he had survived the assassination attempt without injury.

The Crown Prince was dead. The young Miss Su had married the new Emperor and entered the palace as the central consort.

Buyun, who had long enjoyed the favor of this mistress, became her Mistress of the Wardrobe.

The new Emperor changed the reign name to Jinghe.

Peace and harmony—though it ill suited the clash of swords and shadows playing out above the court, for a small and ordinary person such as herself, this was the greatest hope she could hold in her heart.

In the early winter of the third year of Jinghe, Buyun made up her mind to petition for an imperial decree granting her leave from the palace. Her years of service had been fulfilled—and although continuing to hold her post within the palace might have led to great distinction, she was not greedy. To be allowed to marry the man she loved would be a blessing beyond anything she dared ask for.

This should have been a calm and sweet story, ending here without incident.

Yet on the day Buyun went to take her leave of the Empress, she was unexpectedly told that the Empress had caught a chill and was confined to bed.

Because she had always been close to the Empress, the palace attendants allowed her in.

The chamber was filled with a heavy, almost sharp perfume. She could pick out the scent of sandalwood; the rest blended into a single indistinct haze she could not separate. Smoke and mist swirled as though in a fairyland. She parted the light gauze curtains and tiptoed closer—only to find that in the cutting early-winter cold, the Empress wore only her inner garment. Her hair hung loose and unpinned, propriety cast aside, slumped before the couch in a heap, clutching something so desperately, so tenderly, as though trying to press it into her own body.

Hearing footsteps, the Empress looked up. The dazed expression had not yet left her face, and when she saw who it was, her lips trembled twice. First came two lines of tears, and then in a trembling voice she called: “Buyun!”

When had Buyun ever seen her like this? Frightened, she knelt at once—but refusing to act the ordinary servant and stay at a distance, she shuffled forward on her knees, reaching out to help the undone young woman sit upright: “Your Highness—why is this…”

Luowei raised a hand and pulled her close around the neck, weeping without restraint.

Buyun’s heart ached with a dull soreness. She thought of Luowei in the days before she was raised to Empress—when she had stayed overnight at her family home, sitting up late with a candle, bringing over pastries, and then staying up to talk through the night.

She and Luowei had always been of one spirit. In those days, when her parents both died, had it not been for Luowei and the late Crown Prince’s one glance of recognition and their patronage thereafter, how would Buyun have made her smooth way as the finest embroiderer in the Silk Brocade Bureau—and eventually entered the palace and arrived where she was today?

Yet this person who had saved her life no longer bore even a trace of the carefree, innocent girl she had once been. Now she was sobbing brokenhearted in her arms.

She was honored as Empress—even in grief this deep, she could not let the people outside the door hear it. She could only endure with the utmost effort.

Heartbreaking, and utterly silent.

Buyun gathered her courage and as she had always done stroked the Empress’s long hair in comfort, but her gaze wandered, and she caught sight of the small box in her arms.

A box of golden silk nanmu wood, carved with a profusion of flowers—the craftsman who made it had put his heart into engraving spring itself upon it, so that it bloomed and flourished, lush and dense.

Yet nanmu was such an ancient and earthy color; it had turned even the height of spring into something tinged with sorrow.

What astonished Buyun, however, was not this spring dampened by grief.

It was that she realized she had seen this box before.

She had seen it, dimly, not long before the Thorn-棠 Case—on some ordinary evening, when Lu Heng had come back later than usual on a day he was not on duty. She happened to catch a glimpse of it at his outer residence, thinking at the time it was a gift meant for her—but she never saw it again after that.

Inside the box was a jade pendant carved in the shape of a crabapple blossom.

At the moment the lid of that box was opened, Buyun clearly heard somewhere in the void the sound of a thread of silk, drawn taut to its very limit—and then suddenly snapping.

Something she had not understood at the time flowed out along the edge of the lid, bringing to an absolute end the life she could once have seen through to its end in a single glance.

From the moment she insisted that the Empress open the box, there was no going back.

Buyun was the Empress’s Mistress of the Wardrobe—how could she not recognize the significance of this jade pendant? It was the personal keepsake that the Crown Prince himself had carved and given to his betrothed.

Before the Thorn-棠 Case, Luowei had lost this jade pendant.

Upon discovering this, Luowei had been so distressed that she immediately mobilized all her family servants to go out and find it. Buyun, too, had helped her search every corner of the bustling markets—without success.

But how could it have appeared here—here inside this wooden box?

And how had this wooden box come to be in Lu Heng’s possession?

Luowei said in her ear, word by word, that she had never expected to see this jade pendant again.

—Only to find it in Song Lan’s old box.

Buyun left hastily, her words unclear. Taking advantage of the fact that Lu Heng had not yet returned, she went and searched his quarters within the palace carefully—and found nothing.

Still uneasy, Buyun looked for another opportunity to search his outer residence. This time, at last, she found a thick stack of letters.

To call them letters was not quite accurate—they were sheets of paper on which Lu Heng had painstakingly practiced imitating someone else’s handwriting. He had copied it with great care, as though reluctant to waste even a single sheet—practicing only one character per page.

The handwriting was unmistakably familiar. Buyun’s heart beat with increasing alarm as she turned the pages one by one.

“See—letter—do not—miss…”

This stack of papers had been hidden beneath the mattress of his bed, the most concealed place possible. The corners of a few of the sheets were singed as though by fire—as though he had originally intended to burn them, then been interrupted by something and afterward forgotten.

‘Upon seeing this letter, do not long for me’—’Upon seeing this letter, do not long for me’?

Buyun repeated this to herself over and over in a daze, her hands trembling more and more. Certain old memories pressed in upon her, and she dimly recalled—this seemed to be a phrase from a letter Luowei had once written casually to her.

At the time, she had accompanied the imperial family on a spring tour south of the river, and had written to tell her what new fabrics and embroidery techniques she had seen, and to ask her to sew some garments on her behalf.

Just this one letter—only this one letter.

Why was this letter in Lu Heng’s hands? He had copied Luowei’s handwriting with such painstaking care—what was he scheming?

She slid along the bed and sank to the floor, ice-cold sweat flowing freely.

After winter had passed—on a dull, yellowish evening—Buyun arranged to meet Lu Heng at the Western Garden, the place where the two of them had most often held their secret trysts.

He was not late. He came in through the door at a hurried pace, untying his qilin bracer as he walked: “A’Yun, we only just met yesterday—why do you want to meet here? In just a few more days you will be leaving the palace, and by then…”

Buyun turned to face him. She looked at that all-too-familiar face and asked in a trembling voice: “Why did you betray His Highness the Crown Prince?”

She had endured these past days and thought the matter over again and again, growing more and more alarmed the more she thought. It seemed that long before all of this, she had caught a fleeting glimpse of him once before the Emperor’s palace; at his outer residence one day, the favorite tea of Chief Minister Yu Qiushi—Guzhu Zisun—had been brewing; after the Thorn-棠 Case, he had brought the entire Jintian Guard over to serve the new Emperor; when the Jintian Guard spent three days offering their swords in mourning for their fallen lord, he had not shed a single tear.

Lu Heng had refused to admit it at first, but finding himself unable to answer her many questions, he finally lowered his eyes and out of nowhere asked her: “Whom I am loyal to, whom I serve—what does that have to do with the wealth and glory, the free and easy life, of you and me?”

Buyun took an incredulous step backward.

But Lu Heng pressed relentlessly forward, drawing closer step by step, and finally spoke the words in his heart plainly: “Buyun, I have no father and no mother. I grew up in the Changfeng Hall of the Jintian Guard—do you know what kind of days I lived? The blades were blind, and I was covered in wounds; yet I did not dare slacken even for a moment, for fear of being cast aside, of becoming a nameless soul with not even a name to be remembered by!”

Buyun grabbed his arm and cried with anguish: “His Highness trusted you so deeply and cultivated you with such care—a future of going on military campaigns, being named a general, receiving a marshal’s rank—all of this was within reach. In this world, who does not suffer? Have you ever thought that without His Highness, without Her Highness, you and I might already be nameless souls—where would we find any future to speak of?”

Lu Heng gave a disdainful laugh: “Yes—His Highness’s kindness to me was as weighty as a mountain. But what you do not know—and what His Highness did not know—was that titles of rank and glory, a general’s name, I wanted none of it! I suffered in my youth and grew up aching terribly to live as I pleased, without restraint. Reckless gambling, carousing—lending money at ruinous rates—I have done it all. If the present Emperor had not helped me conceal it, your precious Crown Prince would probably have had my head long ago! Rather than live in constant dread—trembling with fear of the day he would find out—it was better to strike first!”

The evening rain had just begun to fall. Through tear-blurred eyes, Buyun watched the person who in the span of a breath had become someone completely unrecognizable slowly draw the short blade at his side.

After years as his beloved, he had not truly intended to kill her. His voice even softened: “Buyun—you are about to leave the palace. What do the life-and-death struggles of these great personages have to do with the two of us? I have turned over a new leaf. I did not dare speak of what came before—I feared it would frighten you. From now on, just pretend you know nothing. Is that not good?”

She looked at him, and could not help laughing aloud.

He had thought she had come around to his view, and meant to offer her an embrace as he had in the old days—but unexpectedly she gripped his arm tightly, and threw herself against the blade he had not yet withdrawn.

The blade lay slanted across his chest. Lu Heng drew it back with great speed—it was not a fatal wound. He held her by the shoulders and asked through gritted teeth: “Why go to such lengths—and for whose sake!”

Buyun did not speak. Her blood, mixed with the rain, spread across the ground of the Western Garden.

He let go. Wanting to find a physician for her, he started toward the gate of the Western Garden—but before he had gone far, he was jolted awake with a start. This place had been sealed for years, and no one ever came. One more body might not be discovered for many years.

But if he brought a physician—could his resolute beloved, in order to protect his life, keep her silence before the Empress?

Lu Heng made up his mind. He stood alone in the curtain of rain for a long time, and finally turned and walked back, wanting to take one last look.

But when he arrived, the old palace room was already empty. At the edge of the square mouth of the well, there was a long, trailing smear of blood—after he had left, she had, in utter despair, thrown herself into the well of her own accord.

Perhaps this was better—he would not need to do it himself.

The spring rain that night washed all traces of blood completely away.

He relocked that palace room, retrieved all the keys, and it was as though nothing had ever happened.

For several consecutive days, Lu Heng felt himself in a daze.

Zhang Buyun was a palace official about to be released from service. She had no duties to fulfill, no orders to obey, and no one who cared about her. Those few who had been on friendly terms with her would assume she had already left the palace.

The Empress she had thought of so dearly—had she asked a single question about her disappearance?

Lu Heng thought with a touch of contempt, then raised his hand and drank the tea newly delivered by the Office of Palace Attendants. Today was the Shangsi Festival, and the grand banquet at the Crimson Platform was about to begin. The Office of Palace Attendants had changed to new tea—it tasted somewhat different from what he usually drank.

For reasons he could not explain, after drinking that cup of tea he felt unusually drowsy and mentally unfocused. And in these past few days, already weighed down by anxiety over the death, he had even failed to react when an unarmed civil official right beside him seized his blade.

Luowei gathered up all the girlish dresses that Buyun had once sewn for her, washed them clean and let them dry, and hung them one by one throughout the garden where the crabapple trees were just beginning to bloom.

Yan Luo stood by her side and murmured: “Your Highness—this servant has already sent someone to deliver the tea to Guard Lu.”

Luowei tilted her head back. The gauze-thin ribbon ties and the faint breeze brushed against her cheek.

Yan Luo continued: “Your Highness moved too hastily this time and had not yet decided on the right person to stage the discovery. If something goes wrong…”

Luowei only said: “It is almost time. Help me change my clothes first.”

After she had changed, a senior eunuch from the Emperor’s side came personally to escort her. Yan Luo followed behind the Empress’s palanquin, head bowed as she walked—and near the entrance to the Western Garden, she encountered a young civil official dressed in the green robes of a junior official.

“This humble official pays his respects to Her Highness the Empress—and begs Her Highness to forgive this servant’s lack of proper courtesy.”

After the palanquin passed that young official, she looked up—and saw the Empress’s eyes, laden with meaning.

The choice of person had, in all likelihood, been settled.

“The weather looks as though it may turn. Go back inside once—tell the palace maids to take in the dresses from the garden.”

“Yes.”

* * *

Yan Luo turned these old memories over in her mind, kneeling on the meditation cushion of the inner chamber, bowing three times and prostrating herself three times, as she watched the Empress take out the handwritten letter that Buyun had entrusted to someone to send to her a few days before the grand banquet at the Crimson Platform.

Enclosed within the letter was a copper key and a jade ring—both stolen from Lu Heng’s hands the day before she resolved to end her life.

In her letter, Buyun set everything out in full—the handwritten letter, their meetings, her suspicions—holding nothing back, writing down for Luowei every one of her own deductions. For her, the betrayal of her beloved and the guilt that had gnawed at her day and night were simply too much to sustain. She could no longer go on.

Luowei read through that letter once more, thinking: the pillow beside each of us holds its serpents and scorpions—whether clever or not, it is difficult to see through them quickly, precisely because it is a person we love dearly, and so when the truth finally comes to light the despair is all the greater.

But you, ah…

Good people do not live long in this world—that is probably always because they hold too tightly to the principles in their own hearts. Even when that path has been trampled to powder by those with malice, there are still those who press forward in succession.

There had been a thousand and ten thousand ways for Luowei to see to it that Buyun need not die, and still see Lu Heng dealt with—but before she could devise any of her plans, Buyun had already made the choice on her behalf.

“I carry within me a guilty heart. I offer my life without regret. This humble plan, I present to Your Highness as a gift—hoping that with this one life, old hatred may be repaid. In the life to come, may we meet again. With an open heart, a spirit unsullied by dust.”

“Yun, in her final words, offers her respects.”

Yun—the word for bamboo—standing tall in the wood with dignity and grace. Even among the finest of the world’s flowers and plants, none could match this spirit.

Yan Luo looked and saw that on the flower-patterned notepaper by the window, the Empress had left a reply.

“…It is the height of spring, and new flowers are falling. Kindness is not to be forgotten; feeling is not to be cast aside. The eight sufferings of this world—I hold them all in my heart, together with this grief.”

Luowei placed that letter—containing Buyun’s detailed account of all she had witnessed and known—together with the flower-patterned notepaper she herself had written, and dropped them both into the incense burner. She watched as the two merged and burned into a single quiet expanse of ash.

“The Western Garden has long been desolate—and now there has been a violent death there as well. This is truly inauspicious. Let this Palace’s order be conveyed: have the gardeners clear away all the old withered weeds and plant green bamboo throughout.”