The first light of dawn barely tinged the sky, and Fang Shi — always an early riser — had already washed and dressed, sitting in proper composure on the daybed.
Fu Xuanmiao, who had risen even earlier than Fang Shi and whom one might suspect had not slept all night, had been waiting outside the Snow Courtyard’s gate before daylight even broke, every bit the number-one gentleman of the realm he had once been during his days in the Prime Minister’s residence. Only after being announced did he, having stood in wait for nearly two hours, step slowly through the gates of the Snow Courtyard.
After entering the inner chamber, he bowed his head low and knelt in proper reverence before the figure seated on the daybed. Like a tide, the attendants in the room followed Fu Xuanmiao down to their knees one after another, the crisp sounds of kneeling merging into one.
“Mother, you have suffered.” Fu Xuanmiao said.
Fang Shi closed her eyes and counted the beads of a Buddhist rosary on her wrist, as though she could not hear the words spoken directly before her.
“During the five days Chanyu spent in seclusion praying for the nation’s welfare, he neglected Mother — this is an irreparable error, and if Mother wishes to punish me for it, your son would not say a single word against it.”
Fu Xuanmiao wore the most exalted yellow robes in all the world, yet his head was bowed low, his manner humble and respectful — the very picture of someone sincerely and genuinely repentant.
Only after quite some time did Fang Shi slowly open her eyes and look coldly at the person kneeling before her.
“…You are now the exalted Son of Heaven, and you were praying for the nation’s welfare besides. Under all of heaven, who would dare punish you?”
“Naturally — a mother who is the Empress Dowager of the nation.”
Fang Shi was taken aback. A flicker of thin anger crossed her face, but in an instant, the thin anger gave way to weariness.
“…You are the emperor. Whatever you say goes.” Fang Shi lowered her head and looked at him no more, silently moving a single bead on the rosary in her hand. “An emperor has his own arrangements. I am merely an ignorant woman — it is enough for me to follow those arrangements. What is more, I did not suffer while I was with the Qingfeng Army.”
Only then did Fu Xuanmiao rise. With a single glance from him, the palace attendants standing in service flowed out the door like water, leaving only Zisu to remain in the room in attendance.
“After developing the eye ailment, Mother seldom left the residence. I had not expected that this first journey out would come about for such a reason.” Fu Xuanmiao sat down on the other side of the low table beside the daybed, his expression composed. “The names of the officials who pressured Mother into leaving the city are already fixed in Chanyu’s memory — once we return to Jianzhou, they will be dealt with accordingly. I will not let Mother swallow her indignation and endure such a disruptive ordeal without redress.”
“There is no need.” Fang Shi’s expression was cold. “They only offered counsel — it was I who made the decision. Do you not have enough innocent people’s blood on your hands already?”
After Fang Shi’s words fell, the room was enveloped in a silent stillness.
Barely audible footsteps came from around the corner — it was Zisu, carrying a tea tray. She walked in and set two freshly steeped cups of tea on the low table between the two of them.
Having done so, Zisu lowered her eyes and withdrew once more from the inner chamber.
“While Mother was detained with the Qingfeng Army, did you happen to observe anything of note?”
“What does the emperor wish to ask?” A faint, cold smile touched Fang Shi’s face. “If there is something you wish to know, you might as well ask directly.”
“Mother may call me Chanyu as usual when we are together, just as she always has.” Fu Xuanmiao watched Fang Shi. “It is just the two of us now, mother and son. Why must Mother be so formal?”
Fang Shi had no desire to get entangled with him, and said coldly:
“I am only a half-blind, frail woman. Every day I was kept in a large tent and treated well — fed and housed without complaint. At most I was allowed outside in the evenings for a brief walk. What remarkable observations could I possibly have made?”
“While Mother was outside taking those walks, did you happen to notice anything out of the ordinary?”
Fang Shi showed a trace of self-deprecating coldness: “Even if there were something out of the ordinary… could my eyes have made it out?”
“Whether the enemy army’s discipline was strict, whether the soldiers’ spirits were high and eager or sluggish and despondent — these things, even with Mother’s eyes, can be observed.”
Pressed step by step, Fang Shi had no choice but to say: “…During the days I was detained, every morning and every evening I heard the sound of drills coming from outside the tent.”
“At what hour?” Fu Xuanmiao pressed further.
Fang Shi thought briefly, then said: “The third hour of the morning and the first hour of the evening.”
“Mother had a sandglass inside the tent?”
“If you’re afraid I might deceive you, why ask me at all?” Fang Shi said coldly.
“Mother misunderstands — Chanyu is only concerned that without a timepiece, Mother might have gotten the hours wrong.”
“I have always woken habitually at the beginning of the third hour of the morning. After washing and dressing, I could hear the sounds of activity from the other tents. What other hour could it have been but the third?”
Fu Xuanmiao lowered his eyes and said nothing.
“As for the evening — on the very first day of my detention, I noted that the hour they brought my evening meal was the beginning of the first hour of the evening. When the sounds of drilling reached me, it was just around the time before and after they sent my evening meal. My eyes may not be good, but I am not entirely without sight. The sounds outside the tent were perfectly clear to me. Whenever they received an envoy, there would be a particular stillness…”
“An envoy?” Fu Xuanmiao suddenly spoke, cutting off Fang Shi’s words.
“…Were they not envoys you sent to negotiate?” Fang Shi’s brow knitted, and a look of bewilderment came over her.
“What makes Mother say so?” Fu Xuanmiao said.
Fang Shi seemed suddenly to have thought of something, and her eyes shifted away from his gaze.
“…If they were not, then I must have heard wrong. The Jianzhou dialect is not uncommon.”
Fu Xuanmiao’s scrutinizing gaze lingered on her face for a long moment before he finally said: “Mother has been speaking for quite some time and must be tired. Zisu —”
Before he even finished speaking, Fang Shi cut him off with a cold laugh: “If we are speaking of confinement, then this place is the more fitting term. When I was with the Qingfeng Army, at least I could go outside every day. Here, stepping past the eaves has become a luxury —”
“Mother speaks in jest. Mother’s eye ailment was brought on by great sorrow, and whether it was the physicians at the residence or the imperial doctors at the palace, they all repeatedly urged Mother to cultivate calm and rest. Asking Mother to spend more time resting indoors before was also because the road from Jianzhou to Jinzhou is long and far — Mother endured a jolting journey of several days and needs time to properly recover.” Fu Xuanmiao’s manner as he calmly explained this was that of any devoted and filial son, beyond reproach in anyone’s eyes.
“However, since Mother wishes to go out and ease her mind,” Fu Xuanmiao said, “Chanyu will naturally accompany her.”
Not a word of it could be faulted.
After several days, Fang Shi finally got her wish and stepped out through the door.
Fang Shi had been confined indoors for years and was not strong. Even though she had said she wished to go outside for a stroll, she only walked about the nearby pavilions and terraces by the flowing water — she had not even covered a quarter of the vast Beichu Garden before exhaustion was plain on her face and she returned to the Snow Courtyard. After escorting her back to the courtyard, Fu Xuanmiao turned and made his way to his own study within Beichu Garden.
“During the days I was in seclusion at Jinping Temple, were there any unusual movements among the Jianzhou officials?”
Yan Hui was briefly taken aback and hesitated: “…What sort of unusual movements does Your Majesty mean?”
“All of them.” Fu Xuanmiao raised his eyes.
A gaze like a frozen blade made Yan Hui start with a jolt.
“Reporting to Your Majesty — the Jianzhou officials these days have been behaving the same as before: when they were not kneeling outside Beichu Garden, they were kneeling outside Jinping Temple. A portion of them also found various means to try to send messages to Jianzhou, but all of these were intercepted by the city gate guards —”
“How do you know they were sending messages to Jianzhou?”
“Where else could they…”
Yan Hui’s voice died in his throat, a flash of startled suspicion crossing his eyes.
“Sending a message to Jianzhou is as difficult as scaling the heavens — but sending a message to the rebel army outside the city walls would be remarkably easy.” A trace of scorn showed at the bottom of Fu Xuanmiao’s eyes. He said slowly: “While I was in seclusion, the carrier pigeons kept in the various residences have probably grown thin from lack of use.”
Yan Hui was struck dumb with fear at these words.
“Investigate,” Fu Xuanmiao said. “Every civil and military official detained in Jinzhou who has family members trapped in Jianzhou — not a single one is to be overlooked. Carefully examine their movements over these past few days. Do not spare the servants in their households either.”
“…Yes, sir.” Yan Hui lowered his head in trembling acknowledgment.
In the silence that followed after some time, Fu Xuanmiao’s voice sounded above Yan Hui’s bowed head.
“What has the Princess of Yue done today?”
“Reporting to Your Majesty — the Princess slept until midday before rising. After taking her midday meal, she went out for a stroll at the urging of her maidservant A’Xue.”
“Where did she go?”
“The Flowing Water Pavilion, the Hundred Flowers Garden… all places nearby. The Princess sat for a while at the Flowing Water Pavilion and had a cup of tea, then returned to the upper floor building when the sun moved westward.”
The three characters of the Flowing Water Pavilion lingered in Fu Xuanmiao’s mind for a moment, but when he recalled that Fang Shi had only lingered briefly at the Flowing Water Pavilion that morning and had shown no sign of anything unusual, he pressed that small thread of suspicion to the back of his mind.
Two days later, Yan Hui brought the results of the investigation to Fu Xuanmiao’s desk. He looked at the detailed list recorded before him, his expression unreadable, and said nothing. Yan Hui stood amid the air that seemed to have solidified around him, drenched in cold sweat, not daring to raise his head.
The sunset sky, red as blood, crept into the study and stained the hand holding the list that same deep red.
Under the same sky at dusk, Shen Zhuxi sat with her back against the side of the bed, shielded behind the bed curtains, staring without looking away at a small, two-finger-wide arrow case.
The pattern of carved pearls upon it gleamed and glittered in the brilliant evening light.
Her eyes held tears, but the corners of her mouth curved upward in a smile. One hand rose to wipe the teardrops from the corner of her eye, while the fingers that had brushed away the tears gently traced the clumsy but heartfelt carving on the arrow case.
At this very moment, until the fourth time she would don a wedding gown —
Only one night remained.
……
On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month, every door and gate in Jinzhou stood firmly shut, and the street vendors who ordinarily wove their way through the lanes and alleys had vanished without a trace.
From the first faint glimmering of light in the east, a layer of murky and indistinct dark clouds had hung persistently over Jinzhou. The closer the appointed hour of the imperial wedding at the third quarter of the hour of the rooster drew near, the darker and more lightless the sky became, until by the fifth quarter of the hour of the monkey, great flurries of snow began to fall from the heavens.
The Director of the Astronomical Bureau, who had been responsible for calculating the auspicious hour, looked ashen-faced, standing in a daze like a man whose spirit had left him, staring blankly up at the white blossoms falling from the sky.
From behind the doors and windows — some only slightly ajar, others open wider — throughout Jinzhou, pairs of worried and uneasy eyes peered out. Under every deep and long-reaching eave, anxious and furtive whispering lay hidden.
Wind and snow wove together to form the world’s veil, carrying with them an icy breath of foreboding. Eunuchs brought from Jianzhou raised their high-pitched voices, struck their brass gongs, and went through the streets and alleys with a forced and contrived joy, singing out the proclamation: “Auspicious snow has arrived.”
The jarring sound of gongs and the singing fell, like a stone cast into the surface of water. After the ripples settled, there was only the silence of a tomb.
The great snow swept through the sky in every direction, but it could not conceal the all-encompassing crimson red of Beichu Garden.
“The auspicious hour — has — arrived —”
Wave after wave of cries, each louder than the last, surged into the blinding vermilion building that blazed like sunlight.
Crimson silk ribbons snapped and crackled in the wind and snow. Cloud-patterned latticed windows enclosed a small and bounded world.
Before the window sat a woman. Her magnificent and noble bearing merged with the drifting snow behind her as a matter of course, utterly natural, as though she had always been there.
Shen Zhuxi gently closed her eyes and did not move.
Upon the cloudlike mass of dark-coiled hair rested a dragon-and-phoenix flower-and-hairpin crown — twenty-four blossoms, large and small, every single petal and leaf carved from translucent precious gemstones, every single stamen drawn from threads of pure white ivory.
“Please — receive — the Empress’s Ceremonial Gown —”
Palace attendants in full formal dress, carrying tray after tray, stepped before her one by one.
The masterfully crafted jeweled flower crown swayed gently in the wind and snow. Beneath the radiance of the precious stones, a pair of apricot-shaped eyes slowly opened.
The Princess of Yue who was profligate and self-indulgent — the Princess of Yue who acted recklessly without restraint — the Princess of Yue who was shallow and ignorant —
Once upon a time, her name had been coated in filth.
Someone had wished to possess her, and so had dragged her from the sky down into the mud.
But once this day had passed, everyone would know —
A pearl encrusted with mud and dust, one that had fallen from the sky into the mud and then been picked up by someone, carefully wiped and tended —
What brilliance it could have.
What brilliance it would have.
This was her — as she had always truly been.