Yan Luo retrieved a thin silk cloth and draped it over her shoulders. Seeing that Luowei’s brow remained knitted even in sleep, she went into the inner chamber and brought out a celadon lotus-shaped incense burner, lit a wisp of drifting smoke with a blend of jasmine tea leaves and sandalwood, and set it before the window.

As she left the inner chamber, she glanced quickly inside: the second branch had already been pruned from the sickly plum tree in the corner, and the scar left by the first pruning had already taken on the color of the trunk — nearly impossible to see.

It sat in the shadows, looking as if it were on the verge of dying, yet who would have known that within it there was still the strength of new life.

After she had looked, she too felt a lift of happiness. She carried a lacquered red chair to the window where Luowei lay drunk and, leaning against the carved woodwork of the frame, gazed at the moon.

Luowei had sobered a little and seemed to sense her movement, but had no desire to sit up, only lying lazily by the window. Seeing Yan Luo’s long silence, she suddenly asked: “Do you think Buyun hated me when she left?”

Yan Luo smiled and asked in return: “If you had known nothing at all back then, and I had told you everything — would you have hated me?”

Luowei murmured: “How could that be the same — if I had known nothing… how could there have been that time past or this present…”

Yan Luo tilted her head back: “I also want to ask you — there are so many things in this world worth lingering over. You back then, and Buyun now — why were you both able to resolve to let go?”

Luowei reached out and fumbled about on the small table, picked up an empty wine cup, and held it out toward her as a toast: “Let me ask you something — on the day your family was destroyed, what were you thinking?”

Yan Luo saw that she was holding the cup upside down, and reached over to right it: “I must live. I will seek revenge for everyone.”

Luowei pressed the cup into her hand instead: “Well said. I, back then… was not as you are.”

She let her hand fall and the heaviness of drowsiness grew: “When I was young, my elder brother secretly went to Beiyou, and I took my brother’s name and went with Ling Ye to study at Master Zhengshuo’s academy in Xuzhou. Xuzhou had been afflicted by locusts that year, and after only a few days of study, he began overseeing disaster relief. We lived there for more than three months. When all had finally settled, it was again a night of the full moon, and he took me up to Jindian on the mountain above Xuzhou to make a vow…”

Yan Luo listened in silence — this story had never been told to her before.

“He said that in this life, his wish was to burn himself for the sake of my country and my people.”

“Having grown up in Biandu, I had heard so many of the sages’ teachings, and yet all of it had seemed so remote and formless — until we walked along the roads of Xuzhou. The leaves on the roadside trees dripped with morning dew; passersby came and went in a hurry, shouldering very heavy hoes, yet humming folk tunes as they went; the locusts had been brought under control, and the crops in the fields were just beginning to put out grain. An old woman brushed past me, and I heard her say — heaven be thanked, this year the officials have been willing to actually do things; come the harvest at the end of autumn, even my little daughter would be able to have a new set of clothes. In that moment I suddenly felt such joy and such peace in my heart. I raised my eyes, and through the haze, layer upon layer of blue mountain ridges stretched into the distance; [1] the sun was about to rise, the great road stretched ahead like the sky, and he held my hand. We walked slowly like that through heaven and earth, and I thought — so this is what the rivers and mountains in the books look like; this is our country and our people.”

At these words, Yan Luo blinked, and found that without knowing when, a line of tears had traced down the side of her face.

A smile rose on Luowei’s face as well: “He and I made a vow together, saying that one life in this world is a gift from heaven, and having been given to us with all our splendor and opportunity, we must hold such an ideal… the vow from Jindian lingered and would not leave, and it is thanks to that vow that when I held the sword that night, I hesitated for a moment.”

A cloud drifted past and the moon dimmed for an instant. Yan Luo waited for her to continue, but no sound came for a long while. She turned her head and found that Luowei had this time truly fallen asleep.

She herself had no desire to sleep, and sat by the window continuing to watch the moon. When she tired of watching, she thought to reach for a cup of wine on the small table — only to find that every flask had been drunk completely dry, and those not finished had all been knocked over.

Yan Luo was caught between tears and laughter. She tugged the thin silk cloth higher on Luowei’s shoulders, smoothed the spilled cups back into place.

She lay awake the whole night. She heard her repeat that phrase — ‘may the Lantern Festival bring you peace and prosperity’ — several times through her dreams.

Yan Luo thought: whether asleep or awake, she must deeply regret not having called out those words alongside the crowd that year.

* * *

Luowei dreamed again and again of that dark Lantern Festival night. Clearly the streets had been lit bright as day by countless festival lanterns, yet what she remembered most vividly was — through the sea of people, through the faint and drifting incense mist — the one glance she and Song Ling exchanged across the distance.

If only she had known it was the last —

But she had not even managed to understand what the last words he spoke were.

That year on the Lantern Festival night, after the Crown Prince was assassinated, she had been carried in a daze back to the mansion by Lu Heng. After coming to her senses, she refused to believe it and, clutching the Chang Feng order token of the Jintian Guard, personally led men to search the Bianhe River — searching from the second hour of the night until dawn, finding nothing.

From the churning current of the Bianhe they retrieved only a tattered ceremonial crown.

The funeral bells rang out, heavy and prolonged. The Jintian Guards who had accompanied her in the search heard the sound and fell to their knees one after another, facing the direction of the imperial city, crying out long live the Emperor and weeping bitterly.

The world went dark as heaven and earth collapsed. The first month was not yet over, and the streets were still piercingly cold. High above in the far sky, snow that had not yet fallen continued to swirl; daylight was like night.

Luowei walked step by step along the sealed imperial thoroughfare.

Everywhere lay the traces of the Lantern Festival — crushed festival lanterns, hairpins jostled loose in the crowd, men’s headwear, goods left behind by vendors who had hastily packed up their stalls, and the tracks of fast-galloping carriages.

What had this place looked like the night before? What had it looked like before all this? Such a magnificent and dreamlike evening — how had it been reduced to this wreckage on the ground?

Luowei heard someone urgently calling ‘young lady, young lady,’ and others calling ‘Luowei.’ She wanted to answer, but found she had lost even the strength to part her lips. She looked up toward the imperial city emerging from the morning mist and wanted to call ‘Father,’ ‘Mother’ — she also wanted to call ‘Uncle’ and ‘Second Brother.’

But now none of them were here anymore.

She thought of the day her father had departed — that too was in the early morning, and she had knelt at the bedside. Su Zhoudu held her hand, stroking it for a long time, yet could not speak. His gaze moved toward the Emperor at his side.

Her elder brother Su Shiyu knelt before her in tears, saying: “Father, rest easy — your son will never bring disgrace to our family.”

Su Zhoudu made the effort to pat his shoulder.

And Emperor Gao made a solemn promise: “Ling and I will look after Luowei well for you.”

A faint smile appeared on Su Zhoudu’s face. He gave a light nod, and looking toward the spirit tablet of his late wife on the other side, slowly closed his eyes.

All around was the sound of weeping — only Luowei and the Emperor did not shed tears.

Luowei numbly recalled that when her father had first fallen ill, he held her hand in the study and wrote ‘Long since the immortal has ridden the crane away’ [2] — she asked him what ‘life and death’ meant, and he said only: ‘As long as you remember this person — remember what he loved and what he hated, remember his aspirations and his ideals — even if he rides the crane and goes, the Yellow Crane Tower will stand forever. The crane is long gone, yet the great tower has not fallen; when those who come after mourn the ancient and grieve the present, that is the finest remembrance of those who once were.’

She bowed deeply to the ground. The images before her were like a spinning lantern, dizzying, making the world spin. Just before she fainted, she heard the Emperor at the bedside say quietly: ‘The ideals left unfulfilled at Jindian — they will certainly be realized.’

Now he too had gone. Those ideals of that time… would anyone still remember them?

Luowei raised her eyes toward the imperial thoroughfare — vast and empty, leading straight to heaven’s gate — and gave a soft laugh. Then, beneath that spinning lantern turning faster and faster in her heart, she lost consciousness.

She was carried back to the mansion by Su Shiyu. She lay insensible for two full days. On the second day she came to, struggled to her feet, and went to the family shrine.

Su Shiyu could not bear to tell her the news from outside. Yet when she saw the blood-stained tattered ceremonial crown retrieved from the water, she had understood in her heart — he would most likely never return.

Luowei stood before her father’s spirit tablet and the flickering candles of the family shrine, and with perfect calm drew the short sword from her sleeve.

This short sword had been a gift from Song Ling on a spring tour long ago. The hilt was exquisitely carved with patterns of Chinese crabapple and violet-star flowers, with a few gemstones inlaid. She cherished it enormously, and once she had learned to use it, carried it with her at all times, cleaning it diligently — she even begrudged letting others have more than a glance at it.

She held the sword and thought in a daze — it was now deep into winter; the surface of the Bianhe would have a thin layer of ice, so cold, so dark. He had been injured in the fall from Tinghua Terrace into the water — would he have been very cold? So many imperial guards — why had none of them been able to save him, and let him die alone in the cold water of that winter night, his very remains lost and unrecovered?

And there were his ideals and aspirations.

Would anyone remember them?

“…In this present crisis in Biandu — the great clans, the powerful ministers, all under heaven’s gate, one spark from ignition — if this sets off a palace coup, how could blood not flow out of the forbidden city? The northern border threat remains unsettled; Biandu cannot fall into chaos again.”

“You are the Crown Consort formally invested by our father. Only you can take up that sword of the Son of Heaven. Elder brother Shiyu is an adopted son of Minister Su — whatever happens, he cannot command the allegiance of the people.”

“Luowei…”

While the two of them were speaking in the family shrine, they suddenly heard the main gate thrown open and the sound of urgent footsteps approaching. The disheveled Song Lan stumbled over the high threshold upon entering, and fell headlong before the two of them.

He scrambled to his feet, too distracted to say much, and simply dropped to his knees and kowtowed, then looked up with tears streaming down his face.

“…Elder Sister, I beg Elder Sister to save me!”

“Elder Sister, I — what should we do? When I left the palace today I even encountered the forbidden guards, who said the Bianhe current was too swift, and I’m afraid not even the body of the Imperial Brother can be recovered… what do we do, who in the end killed the Imperial Brother?”

Song Yaofeng helped him up and asked in alarm about the situation in the imperial city. Luowei’s gaze passed over the short sword that had fallen to the ground, her heart aching beyond measure — and finally, in the midst of that sharp pain, she woke.

These were his loved ones, the younger siblings he had always cherished the most — imperial children in mortal danger.

This was his country, the people he had vowed from childhood to protect.

His posthumous name, his ideals, the great tower he had not yet built — along with the hatred that had been momentarily forgotten — all came surging toward her at once.

She could not relinquish it; she could not abandon it.

Luowei took the sword of the Son of Heaven that had been sealed at the top of the Su family shrine and, holding Song Lan by the sleeve, pushed open the doors of the family shrine.

Yan, the young Shizi — the young heir of the Yan family, Yan Lang — stood in the center of the courtyard, holding his sword. Seeing her emerge, he let out a deep sigh, then lifted aside his great scarlet cloak and knelt down.

The soldiers behind him followed his gesture and knelt in turn. All around came the crashing sound of armor.

Today was the seventeenth. Luowei looked up, and from beyond the clouds emerged a full moon.

On this seventeenth night, it was still so perfect and round, still so bright and luminous.