The Imperial Ditch ran silent on both sides of the main street, white sunlight splintered across its surface, willows hanging low, cicadas screaming in the heat.
Summer had barely started and already the city baked. Vendors pushed carts through the lanes at dawn, calling out fruit and vegetables to neighbors who were still awake enough to care. By the time the sun climbed, the streets emptied. Even the vendors gave up and sat in the shade, too hot to move.
A horse burst through the city gate at full gallop. Hooves cracked against the stone like rapid gunfire. The rider wore a blue robe soaked black with sweat, a sealed bamboo tube strapped to his back, pheasant feathers jutting from it — the military signal for extreme urgency. He reported through gate after gate until the tube reached Yuan Changshi, the emperor's chief attendant, who received it sun-scorched and salt-stained. Inside the throne hall, court was still in session. When word spread that a military dispatch had arrived, every official in the room went rigid.
"Great victory! A great victory, Your Majesty!"
Pei Xian's voice rang with undisguised joy as he read aloud: thousands of enemy killed, more than ten thousand troops from Jie Shuo's Shenli and Fang Gong factions captured, countless chariots, horses, bows, grain and fodder seized. Baishui Pass recaptured. Jie Shuo driven north of Baishui Mountain, blocked from the border. General Cui Yi personally escorting seven tribal leaders into the capital in chains.
The emperor sat straighter with each line. This was proof, wasn't it — proof that Master Wu had been right, that heaven had chosen him, that his reign was blessed. How else to explain such a string of victories?
Pei Xian pressed the moment: "This great victory belongs entirely to Your Majesty's wisdom and moral governance. Without Your Majesty's direction and the full support of the six ministries, General Cui Yi could never have achieved this."
The emperor nodded, satisfied. "Pei Qing speaks well. The order was mine, but the victory belongs to all of you. My ministers have worked hard." He let the warmth of the moment settle, then added with a brightness that came from somewhere genuine: "Such joy deserves to be offered at the Taimiao. And a general amnesty — we shall grant clemency across the empire." He was pleased with himself, pleased with the idea, pleased with everything. He spoke quickly, riding the feeling: "Send the decree at once. Release the King of Anyang from his imprisonment. When the prisoners are presented, he shall stand with us."
Li Yi stepped forward immediately. "Your Majesty. The army's victory is Cui Yi's achievement. What part did the King of Anyang play in it?" He kept his voice level. "The King of Anyang murdered his wife and burned down a household. Dozens of lives. He has been confined only a short time. If Your Majesty pardons him now, the people will conclude that Your Majesty acts from personal feeling rather than law."
The emperor's face darkened. "That is your brother. Why must you always oppose him?"
"Princess Xin died innocent," Li Yi said simply.
The emperor pointed at him, fingers trembling. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Whatever he wanted to say would not come out cleanly, and he knew it. Pei Xian, reading the moment, stepped in smoothly: "Your Majesty, there is another matter. General Cui Yi sent a memorial along with the urgent dispatch."
The emperor exhaled. He assumed Cui Yi had submitted a separate recommendation — names of officers who deserved promotion, perhaps, or a formal account of his own contributions. He wanted to give Cui Yi the recognition. "Officer Yuan, read the memorial."
Yuan Changshi bowed, opened the document, and went still. The emperor didn't notice and waved his hand. "Read it."
Yuan Changshi felt a cold prickle across his scalp but had no choice. He read: "I, Cui Yi, Military Governor of Lulong, Protector General of Shuobei, Commander of Shuozhou Road, General of the Left Guard, submit this memorial to Your Majesty on the matter of the Eastern Palace — requesting that Prince Yi of Qin be appointed Crown Prince."
The court went silent. Then the murmuring started, uncomfortable and low.
The emperor rose from his throne. "Stop. Stop reading." His voice shook. "This Cui Yi — this Cui Yi has completely lost his mind!"
The ministers held their breath. The debate over the succession had dragged on for years without resolution. Li Jun, the emperor's eldest son, had been stripped of his title as Crown Prince and demoted to Prince of Anyang after plotting to murder his first wife — a moral failure so grave that even the emperor's favor could not quietly paper over it. The unspoken agreement among the ministers was that Li Jun was no longer a viable candidate, and that any appointment would eventually fall to Li Xuanze, the orphaned son of the late crown prince. But no one had put it in writing. No one had dared. And now Cui Yi, thousands of miles away on the northern frontier, had done exactly that — named Li Yi outright and sent it to the throne.
Gu Hu stepped forward to manage the damage: "Your Majesty, please. Your Majesty's words carry the weight of imperial decree. It would wound the hearts of the generals on the front lines if—"
"Cui Yi thinks that because he won a battle, he can lecture me about my own family?" The emperor's voice climbed. "That arrogant old fool. He has no idea how far he has overstepped."
Gu Hu remained calm. "Your Majesty, the succession is not a family matter. It is a matter of state. As a military governor, Cui Yi was within his authority to submit this memorial."
The emperor stared at him. "What? Gu Xiang is actually saying the man has a point?"
"Your Majesty is in the prime of life," Gu Hu said, his tone careful and deliberate, "yet establishing the Eastern Palace is the foundation on which the dynasty stands. It is what the realm is waiting for—"
"Don't quote books at me!" The emperor's voice broke through the hall. "Even if we are to name a crown prince, it is my decision to make! And it will not be Li Yi!"
Li Yi spoke quietly from where he stood. "Your Majesty, if I am unfit, then the crown prince should be Xuanze."
The name hit the emperor like a slap. Li Xuanze — the son of the first crown prince, that short-lived, ill-fated heir. Why should a dead man's child take precedence over his own son? He had borne Li Yi's defiance for years, watched him work against Li Jun at every turn, push his own agenda under the guise of righteousness. And now he stood there in open court invoking a child's name. The emperor raised a shaking finger. "Kneel! Kneel down and shut your mouth!"
Gu Hu braced himself, expecting Li Yi to sweep out of the hall the way he had before. But Li Yi went down on one knee without a word.
Gu Hu let out a quiet breath. Then he pressed forward while the opening was there: "Your Majesty, the north is not yet secure. Jie Shuo watches from beyond the mountain. The western tribes remain a threat. The King of Qin commands the Zhenxi Army. He recovered both capitals. Without him, none of this is possible. The dynasty needs a settled succession, and the King of Qin should be named crown prince."
It was the first time Gu Hu had stated his position openly, and its weight was felt immediately. Pei Xian followed without hesitation: "I second this. The King of Qin should be crown prince."
The emperor looked around the hall. He felt the great victory of this morning dissolving into smoke. He felt the magnificent Xuanzheng Hall itself dissolving. He was the emperor. He had sat on this throne, managed these men, held this empire together — and still, in the end, they drove him where they wished. His vision darkened. He pitched forward and fainted.
Chaos broke out immediately. Ministers and eunuchs scrambled, hands reaching from every direction. The emperor was caught, steadied, carried to the Zichen Hall on a couch. The imperial physician was summoned. It was not serious — he had passed out from fury, not illness — and after treatment he came around, pale and exhausted, with only a few senior ministers remaining at his side.
The emperor reached out and gripped Gu Hu's hand. "I am not well," he said, his voice thin. "Release the King of Anyang. Let him come and see me — one last time." His eyes filled and he wept, cursing Li Yi between sobs for his cold, unfilial heart. Gu Hu agreed to speak to the King of Qin, just to calm him for now.
The emperor looked past Gu Hu and found Li Yi still standing in the room. His expression hardened. "Why is that traitor still here? Get him out of my sight. He is trying to kill me."
No one said anything. Li Yi looked at his father once, turned, and walked out of the hall.
Cui Lin learned of Cui Yi's memorial half a day after the court did. Her father had hidden it from her deliberately. His letter arrived with the explanation: he was too embarrassed to pressure the King of Qin directly, so he had let the father do the difficult thing instead. He also admitted he had kept her in the dark because he knew she would try to stop him. He had one more thing to say, at the end, in a tone somewhere between blunt and affectionate: if the King of Qin kept refusing to commit, he was not a man worth her time, and she should reconsider.
She smiled bitterly when she finished reading. Cui Yi was being Cui Yi — using this to force Li Yi's hand, and also holding a mirror up to make her see clearly. Regardless of what she thought of the method, she already dreaded that Li Yi would believe she had been part of it. She set the letter down and sat quietly in the room for a long time.
The window creaked.
Li Yi came through it still in his court robes, not stopping to change, not stopping for anything. His eyes were red. He crossed the room in three steps and thrust out his hand. "Give it back."
"Give what back?"
"The pearl silk tape. My mother's. Give it back." He was barely holding himself together. With his other hand he pulled a hairpin from his sleeve and said, "This is yours," then, not waiting for her to take it, pressed the pin into her hair himself, threading it into her bun with force that wasn't quite gentle.
She felt something in her chest crack quietly open. She reached into her belt and drew out the pearl silk tape and held it toward him. His fingers closed around the lower end. Then her fingers tightened. She couldn't let go, and she didn't understand why. Li Yi pulled. She held on. He drew his dagger to cut it. She reached out to stop him without thinking. He thought she was grabbing for the pearl. The blade flicked upward — and her palm opened and blood poured out.
He went still.
Then he grabbed her hand, turning it over, looking at the wound.
Her hand hurt. Her chest hurt more. She pulled free and threw the tape into his arms. "It's returned. Now go."
He didn't move. She met his eyes. Hers were cold. "Go. Everything is returned. Get out."
He turned and left.
She sat down. The room felt very large. The cut was shallow — a clean slice through skin, nothing more. In ten days it would heal without a scar. She knew that. But she sat there pressing her hand against her chest and felt something inside her crumbling that she suspected would take much longer to heal. So this was what it felt like. She had always thought the phrase broken liver and intestines was an exaggeration.
The emperor stayed ill for several days. At Gu Hu's urging, Li Jun was released from confinement to attend to him — and as expected, the emperor's condition improved almost immediately once his eldest son was back in the room. He began eating. He began sitting up. He tried, once, to have Li Jun's title restored, but Gu Hu refused to record the order and the effort died there.
The emperor didn't forget. He blamed Li Yi for all of it. But with court suspended and Li Yi keeping to his residence, there was no outlet. The grievance simmered.
It was Li Xuanze's fifth birthday. His situation was awkward — the court had not formally clarified his status, and there would be no official celebration. Han Chang had planned to mark the occasion quietly. But Li Yi appeared at the door of her residence, unannounced, and took the boy to the Prince of Qin's palace himself.
He brought a small sword as a gift. Li Xuanze loved it immediately and would not put it down.
The palace garden was large, and there was a training ground at the back. Li Yi found a small bow and spent time teaching the boy to shoot. Li Xuanze learned eagerly, serious about it in the way small children are serious when they sense that an adult is actually paying attention to them, not performing patience. Han Chang watched from nearby, already half-convinced that her worrying had been unnecessary.
They played until Li Xuanze announced that he was hungry.
Li Yi smiled. "Good timing, actually." He explained: though the wet nurse who had raised him had died, he had tracked down her family and sent them money. Her son, Zheng Wulang, sometimes brought fresh produce to the palace. That very morning, Zheng Wulang had arrived with a basket of dried lettuce, saying his mother had always told him how much Li Yi loved it. Li Yi had already asked the kitchen to make steamed buns with the filling.
The buns came out hot and fragrant. Li Yi picked a lotus leaf from the pond, washed it, and laid the buns on it before handing them to the boy. "Small bites. There's soup in the filling. Don't burn yourself."
Li Xuanze nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Seventeenth Brother." He took a careful bite and his whole face changed. "It's so good. You should eat one too!"
Li Yi laughed and took one. "I will." He told Han Chang to help herself, and Han Chang reached for a bun, and Li Yi was just about to bite into his when he heard a sound — soft, dull — and looked up.
The bun had fallen from Li Xuanze's hand.
The boy collapsed.
Li Yi and Han Chang both lunged. Blood was seeping from Li Xuanze's ears, his nose, the corners of his eyes. His breathing was almost nothing. He had been poisoned.
Li Yi called for milk immediately and sent someone running for Dr. Fan. The milk came fast and Li Yi pried the boy's teeth apart and poured it in — a detoxification method he had learned at Laolan Pass. Two full bowls, which Li Xuanze vomited up almost completely. Dr. Fan arrived at a run and assessed the situation in seconds. He turned to Li Yi: "The Cui family has a medicine that works against many poisons. I know of it from when I treated Lady Cui in Changzhou. It was Taozi who told me about it — the Jiedushi's household has dealt with Jie Shuo's witch doctors and had the antidote prepared. Even if it cannot fully detoxify, it can stop the poison from reaching the heart."
Li Yi leaned toward Xie Chang'er and said one word quietly. Xie Chang'er was already moving.
Xie Chang'er ran to Pinglu Residence and barely got through the gate before Taozi nearly shut the door in his face. "You have the nerve to come here!"
He jammed his foot in the door. "Taozi, please. The Crown Prince has been poisoned. Shiqilang sent me to ask for the medicine."
"Shiqilang?" Taozi's voice went sharp with contempt. "Who is that? I don't know anyone by that name. Leave. If you don't leave I will put a poison needle in you."
Xie Chang'er was sweating through his clothes. "Taozi, someone is dying, please, just go ask Lady Cui—"
"Help you?" She laughed, cold and flat. "Why would I help you? Who are you to me?"
From inside the room, Cui Lin's voice came through the wall, quiet and final. "A life is at stake. Give him the medicine."
Taozi's eyes went dark with fury. She turned, found the medicine bottle, and hurled it at Xie Chang'er's chest hard enough to leave a mark, then slammed the door and came back into the room still seething.
"Why give it to him? We're at peace with them now so he just comes running when he needs something? Do you know how much effort went into those pills? The resources the Jiedushi spent—"
She stopped.
Cui Lin was sitting beneath the window. It was a summer day, but her face was the color of white paper. She had grown thin — too thin, the kind of thin that happens to someone who has not been eating or sleeping properly for weeks. Taozi felt the anger drain out of her and something softer, sadder take its place. "Miss," she said, more gently. "Come home. Let's go back to Yingzhou. It's hot here and the courtyard is small. This city is suffocating."
She had said this every day for a week. Cui Lin had always gone quiet.
Today she nodded. "Father is on his way back from Baishui Pass. We'll go north to meet him. Once we leave here, we won't come back."
Taozi opened her mouth and found she had nothing to say. Something in the finality of it hit her.
Cui Lin seemed to sense her distress and offered a small, deliberate smile. "I'm fine. I really am. Open sky and grasslands and cool wind — that's what I need. Beijing presses down on you after a while." She paused. "I stayed this long and he didn't come back. I think that moment just now, when I gave back the things — I think that was me settling what I owed."
"You don't owe him anything!" Taozi snapped, and Cui Lin laughed softly and told her to go pack.
Three doses of milk, a gold needle treatment from Dr. Fan, and the medicine from Xie Chang'er. Li Xuanze held on. He was still unconscious, still frighteningly pale, but he was breathing.
Li Yi moved quickly once the boy was stable. Zheng Wulang — the young man who had brought the lettuce — had been found dead in the river, silenced. Tracing backward from there, Li Yi's men found Wang Xian'er and Zhang Erlang within hours. Zhang Erlang was the son of a steward in Prince Xin's household. He had known that Zheng Wulang visited the Prince of Qin's palace regularly. He had bribed Zheng Wulang's gambling associate Wang Xian'er to convince Zheng Wulang to bring the lettuce as a gift. Zhang Erlang had poisoned the basket. Wang Xian'er wept and claimed ignorance. Zhang Erlang said nothing at all. He had the look of a man who had already decided to die and was simply waiting for it.
Li Yi understood immediately. The target had never been Li Xuanze. It had been him. He had brought the boy to his home today by chance. He had handed him a bun. He looked at Li Xuanze's face — the color of paper, barely breathing — and stood there for a moment with his sword in his hand before he walked out the door. Lao Bao and the others grabbed their weapons and followed.
Li Jun was sitting with Yang Thrush when the reports started coming in. He was unsettled. "I didn't think Li Xuanze would be at Li Yi's house that day," he said.
Yang Thrush was unmoved. "Your Highness. Whether Li Xuanze lives or dies, it is not a loss for you."
Li Jun considered that. "I suppose." He looked up. "But will the King of Qin trace this back to us?"
"He cannot. We were separated from the act by multiple people. And if he makes accusations without evidence, it only makes him look like he is trying to frame Your Highness again."
Yang Thrush had not finished the sentence when the doors exploded inward.
Li Yi came through first. He found Li Jun with his eyes, and the fury in his face was barely contained. "You kill your sister-in-law and that's not enough. Now you poison my household."
Li Jun scrambled backward. "You're lying! You're making this up—"
"Zheng Wulang is dead. You silenced him. But you didn't silence everyone." Li Yi raised his sword. "That was your poison in the lettuce. That was you who almost killed Li Xuanze."
"I would never—I don't even—" Li Jun turned and ran, and Li Yi was two steps behind him when Pei Yuan burst in through the side entrance with a group of men, threw himself at Li Yi's arm, and held on.
"Your Highness! Your Highness, stop. We have the evidence. Take it to court. Do it properly, in front of His Majesty and all the ministers—"
Li Yi didn't speak. He shook Pei Yuan off and swung. Pei Yuan lunged for his waist this time. The sword went sideways and buried itself in a side table. Li Jun was behind the table, hugging his head, shaking. Li Yi looked down at Pei Yuan. "Justice? His Majesty just pardoned him for murdering my brother's wife. What court, what justice?"
Pei Yuan held on. "Your Highness. King of Anyang tried to poison you and accidentally poisoned the Crown Prince instead. His Majesty and every minister in the court will have to respond to that. The evidence is already solid. If you kill him now with your own hand, you hand them everything they need to destroy you. Every man in the Zhenxi Army who stood with you — how do we protect them if you do this? How do I protect you?"
The last words were not argument. They were grief. Li Yi stood still for a long moment. Then he seized the sword from the table and threw it. The blade shaved Li Jun's scalp, took a handful of his hair off, and drove itself into the pillar with a sound like a bell. Li Jun reached up with shaking fingers and pulled back a hand soaked in blood, then began to scream.
Li Yi walked out.
Li Jun went directly to the emperor, crying and clutching his scalp. He said only that the King of Qin had tried to kill him. The emperor, knowing nothing yet of Li Xuanze's poisoning, soothed him — your father is here, that awful brother of yours won't touch you again. He sent a summons for Li Yi, and was told the King of Qin had left the city to seek medical care for Li Xuanze. The emperor threw things and called him a faithless son.
At the following morning's court session, Li Yi laid out everything. Witnesses. Physical evidence. The chain connecting Zhang Erlang to Wang Xian'er to Zheng Wulang to the basket of lettuce to Li Jun's household. The court heard it in full, and the silence that followed was heavy and unanimous. Even the ministers who had quietly tolerated Li Jun's past crimes could find no angle to defend this one. Attempting to poison the King of Qin was bad enough. Accidentally poisoning Li Xuanze — the only surviving grandson of the late emperor — and leaving him near death was something else entirely.
The emperor looked around the hall and found no allies. After court he kept only Pei Xian and Gu Hu, hoping they would give him some path through this. Pei Xian spoke first: strip Li Jun of his title, demote him to commoner, exile him three thousand li.
"That is my position as well," said Gu Hu.
The emperor sank back in his chair and stared at them. "That is my son," he said. "Even granting all of it — even if the evidence is true and he sent someone to poison the King of Qin — Li Yi wasn't killed. Why should my son lose his title and be sent into exile?"
Gu Hu's voice was even. "The King of Qin is also Your Majesty's son. The King of Qin recovered both capitals and saved this dynasty. Li Xuanze is the only surviving child of the late crown prince. The King of Anyang poisoned that child. How does Your Majesty explain that to the late emperor? How does Your Majesty look your predecessor in the face?"
The emperor went quiet. He had told himself that if it had been Li Yi who was poisoned, it would have been fine — Li Yi was resilient, Li Yi always survived. But it had been Li Xuanze. Li Xuanze, who had no father, no protection, no one but a few loyal retainers between him and the world. Half the court's elder ministers were openly weeping. Several had already threatened to go weep at the late emperor's tomb.
Gu Hu continued: "When the King of Anyang plotted to murder his first wife, the entire court knew, and he was not severely punished. He was released and within days committed this. Does Your Majesty wish to make it plain that the laws of this country do not apply to his household?"
The emperor began to cry. "Li Xuanze — the physician said his life is not in danger now, didn't he? Gu Xiang is making this too grave. And besides — the King of Qin also attacked the King of Anyang with a sword. They are brothers in a quarrel. Can you not let his brother go?"
Pei Xian rose from his seat and knelt. He was Grand Marshal and Grand Tutor both — by court ritual, he was exempt from formal kneeling at private audiences. That he was kneeling now was a statement. The emperor went pale. "Why does Pei Qing perform this ceremony?"
"The King of Qin led the Zhenxi Army," Pei Xian said, his voice rough with feeling. "He defended this dynasty, recovered the capitals, put down the rebellion. Today the man who tried to have him murdered walks free. If this stands, what message does it send to every soldier in the Zhenxi Army who bled for this country? I will have no answer for them. I can only follow the King of Qin out of this court."
Gu Hu stood. "If Your Majesty will not enforce the law, I can only resign."
The emperor looked at both of them and felt something he had not felt in years — true fear. Not the flaring anger that usually masked it, but the cold, still thing beneath. He had no one left. "Why must you both go this far?" he said, his voice unsteady now. "Can you not just let my son live?"
"Exile," Gu Hu said, "is already mercy. Three thousand li was the correct sentence. Your Majesty's love for his son is evident."
The emperor wept again. He tried fainting, glancing up to gauge the effect. Pei Xian and Gu Hu looked at each other and rose together. The emperor sat up. "Wait. Wait. Exile, then. But — how far? Can it be closer?"
Gu Hu shook his head.
The emperor bargained. He offered the occasion of Empress Dong's memorial ceremony — he would bring both brothers, let Li Jun apologize to Li Yi before the spirit tablet. Gu Hu pointed out that Empress Dong was not Li Yi's birth mother, that Li Yi's mother had never been properly honored, and that in any case the debt of apology ran to Li Xuanze now. The emperor winced and tried another angle — a joint pilgrimage to the late emperor's tomb, a public act of piety, a show of family unity. Gu Hu allowed this, but held firm: the title stripped, the exile set, Qiongzhou, one thousand li. No less.
"I know," the emperor finally said, his voice hollow. "I know I cannot protect him anymore."
When Li Jun heard, he came directly to the palace, threw himself at his father's feet, and wept for an hour. The emperor stroked his hair and said he knew, he believed him, this was all Li Yi's scheming, but the ministers had forced this. He would wait one or two years and find a reason to pardon him. Li Jun cried that a year or two in exile could kill him, that Li Yi would find ways to have him murdered in the south, that he was being sent to his death. The emperor sighed and said he had already arranged a reliable escort. Li Jun covered his face and stumbled out.
On the nineteenth day of the sixth month, the hottest point of the dog days, the emperor insisted on leaving the capital to make the journey to Tailing Mausoleum. He had not gone since ascending the throne — had always been too ill, or so he said — and he felt the weight of that debt now. The imperial procession moved slowly in the heat, covering thirty miles a day.
Li Jun, his title and rank stripped, was still permitted to accompany the emperor before his exile, and he was making the most of the time he had left. Each evening he knelt before the emperor and washed his feet himself, like a child performing piety. He wept quietly each night and said he supposed he would never see his father again outside of dreams.
The emperor was genuinely moved. He said to Li Rong one night, while Li Jun had gone to fetch hot water: "I am afraid that the moment he leaves, I will miss him so badly it makes me ill."
Li Rong advised him not to grieve — there would be a way to bring him back before long.
The mood was tender and intimate when a report came in: the King of Qin had arrived at the nearby provincial town of Ding.
The warmth went out of the emperor's face instantly. He kicked the washbasin aside and said a single word — "Out" — and the messenger had no choice but to go back out and bow to Li Yi and tell him His Majesty was resting and would receive him the following morning.
The valley here was not the palace. The word the emperor had used — sharp and unambiguous — had carried. Li Yi heard it clearly through the thin walls of the post station. He said nothing. He turned his horse and rode away.
He had not gone far back down the road when a rider from Pei Yuan intercepted him. Li Xuanze had vomited blood. Pei Yuan was asking him to come back.
Li Yi did not hesitate. He had only been traveling for two days and was sixty li from the city — close enough to get back quickly. He told Xie Chang'er to ride with him and left Lao Bao to manage the decoy carriage. If anyone looked inside the King of Qin's carriage at dawn when the procession departed, they would find a convincing substitute. He would be back before anyone noticed.
He and Xie Chang'er rode through the night.
At Han Chang's residence, it was well past midnight when they arrived. Li Xuanze had stopped vomiting blood and had fallen asleep, but he looked terrible. Han Chang met Li Yi at the door with an expression that mixed relief with guilt. Li Yi asked about Dr. Fan.
"He says the first antidote worked but there is still residual poison. One more dose of the same medicine should clear it completely. Then careful recovery."
Li Yi was quiet for a moment. He knew exactly what that meant — and exactly who he would have to ask. He told Xie Chang'er: "Go find Taozi. Ask for another bottle of the same medicine."
Xie Chang'er took a horse and left without a word, though his expression said everything.
Li Yi sat with Dr. Fan for a while, learning the details. The situation was dangerous but the immediate crisis had passed. As the sky began to lighten and Dr. Fan confirmed there was no reason to stay longer, Li Yi said to Xie Chang'er — and then remembered that Xie Chang'er was gone. He had said it to the empty air.
He thought about her for a moment.
He had been forcing himself not to think about her for weeks. Every time the thought surfaced he pushed it under something else, kept himself moving. But now, sitting in the stillness of the predawn room with Li Xuanze's thin breathing across from him, he let himself think it: she was probably already heading north to meet Cui Yi. She would be somewhere on the road through the mountains. There might be fireflies in the hills at night by now. He hoped she was all right.
The pearl tape had a new silk ear and was back around his waist. He had bought a gold hairpin to replace the hosta he had given back to her. The new pin was slightly longer, and sometimes when he was tying his hair in the morning the tip grazed his scalp — and every single time, he reached for something that wasn't there. He felt like something essential had been quietly removed from him and he had not yet gotten used to its absence.
He mounted Xiao Hei and rode back out to catch the imperial procession before it missed him.
Lao Bao had spent the night on a brick bed with nothing but a reed mat, in a room assigned to them by the imperial guard detachment — which had also, deliberately, put them next to the latrine. Mosquitoes, heat, the smell. None of the Zhenxi Army men had slept well.
By morning Lao Bao was stiff and squinting. Huang Youyi was already up, with Zhang Youren and Qian Youdao. Zhao Youde had barely slept — some man nearby had snored through the night, or possibly it was the mosquitoes. Zhao Youde's old injuries made poor sleep harder on him than on the others, and he was already grey-faced.
The night before there had been a dispute over mugwort. Zhang Youren had spotted a large patch growing wild along the palace wall and reached for some — cutting a few bunches would have made smudge sticks to drive away the mosquitoes. An imperial guard team leader had stopped him. Zhao Youde had pointed out, not diplomatically, that the Zhenxi Army had been fighting real battles while the Huainan garrison men were still playing in the mud. The Huainan guards had stared at him with open hostility and refused to move.
This was the shape of the tension they were living inside. The imperial guard had once been built on Zhenxi Army veterans. Since Li Rong had taken command of the Longwu Guard, the key positions had been systematically replaced with Huainan men — soldiers who had rarely seen real fighting and who relied on their proximity to the emperor for status. The Zhenxi Army looked at them the way veterans always look at men who have not been tested.
No one had started an actual fight. Xiao Pei had warned them clearly: do not hide weapons, do not provoke, do not give anyone an excuse to accuse the King of Qin of bad intentions. They had held their tempers. But the Huainan men had given them the worst rooms, and the night had been miserable.
Lao Bao climbed onto his horse when the procession assembled and settled into the slow rolling pace of the imperial carriages. Thirty miles a day felt, to a Zhenxi Army soldier, like being asked to wade through water. He squinted in the morning light and let himself half-doze in the saddle.
The road curved and descended into a valley. The paving here was poor — only a shallow layer of fresh loess over the old gravel, already breaking apart under the carriage wheels. The procession slowed further.
Lao Bao came awake.
He could not have explained it. There was nothing he could point to — no sound out of place, no movement on the ridge. Just something, the feeling that comes from years of being on the wrong end of ambushes, the reading of a space that registers before the mind does.
He caught Huang Youyi's eye. Huang Youyi had felt it too. Zhang Youren said quietly, "Elder brother, I'll go check ahead," and nudged his horse forward. The team leader from the night before was immediately in front of him: "Where do you think you're going? You were told no wandering without orders."
Zhang Youren smiled. "Stomach. Too much breakfast. Just need a moment in the brush."
The team leader started to argue. Qian Youdao rode up. "You police the whole world but you think you can police where a man squats?" The team leader raised his whip — and the mountain moved.
Logs. Enormous ones, stripped and rolled, came crashing down the slope. The sound was like collapse, like the earth dropping away. The ceremonial horses went insane, screaming, rearing. The logs hit the King of Qin's carriage first, deliberately, and turned it to splinters.
Somewhere above them a voice screamed: "The King of Qin rebels! The King of Qin rebels!"
And then the arrows came.
They came like a weather event — a dense, dark rush of them from above, blotting out sound and filling the air. Horses dropped. Men dropped. The Huainan guards, who had never been under a real arrow storm, stood and stared for a stunned and deadly moment before they began to scatter.
Lao Bao's hand went to his waist and found nothing. No blade. No knife. They had been explicitly ordered to carry no weapons before the emperor. He registered this fact and moved on. Qian Youdao was faster — he stripped the knife from the Huainan team leader's belt before the man even felt it and tossed it to Lao Bao across the chaos of rearing horses.
The team leader was still staring at the ridge, at the logs still rolling, at the arrows still falling, when another log came down. He couldn't move. Zhang Youren grabbed him by the collar and shoved him hard into the ditch at the roadside. The team leader tumbled, helmet gone, but breathing. He was still processing his own survival when an arrow passed through the air where his head had been.
Lao Bao bellowed over the chaos: "Protect the emperor! Get to the emperor!" The nearest general finally woke up and started shouting orders.
The emperor's carriage was larger and heavier than the others and had not been struck. Inside, the emperor had folded himself into a corner and gone almost entirely still. Li Rong, the King of Qi, appeared from somewhere and hauled him upright, urged him out, someone brought a horse — and then the problem became clear. The emperor's hands wouldn't close properly. He couldn't grip the reins or find the stirrup. Li Rong got up behind him and held him on.
The imperial guard finally broke from their paralysis and formed up around the emperor. The arrows kept falling. Then people came down from the ridge — not a mob but a column, fast and disciplined, cutting straight for the Zhenxi Army men near the destroyed Qin carriage.
Lao Bao saw it and understood immediately. The fallen trees had hit the King of Qin's carriage first, specifically. The arrows were concentrating on the Zhenxi Army cluster. These were not assassins. This was a trained unit targeting Li Yi.
He shouted for everyone to form up. Planks from the destroyed carriage became shields. Men grabbed weapons off the fallen. They arranged themselves with their backs to a log and held.
The voice from the ridge screamed again: "The King of Qin is in rebellion! The King of Qin murders the emperor!"
Huang Youyi looked up at Lao Bao with fury twisting his face. "These—" He ran out of words and cut down the man in front of him instead.
The enemy was too many. Their formation held at first, then shrank. A man fell. Then another. Qian Youdao took a spear through the side and barely flinched, just grabbed the shaft to stop it going deeper and kept fighting. Zhang Youren saw him buckle and got there in time to kill the spearman, then shouted across the noise: "Fourth! You all right?"
"Fine!" Blood was running into Qian Youdao's boot.
The Huainan team leader that Zhang Youren had saved appeared at his shoulder with a stone in both hands and brought it down on an enemy soldier's skull. He picked up the fallen man's sword and threw it to Zhang Youren. "We're loyal too—" he started, and a knife took him in the back before he finished the sentence. He went down. Zhang Youren killed his killer, then bent to check him — already gone. He straightened, and a sword opened his shoulder to the bone. He killed that man too, but now his sword arm was moving wrong, and more of them were coming.
Lao Bao turned and cut through three of them to reach him.
On the other side of the shrinking circle, Zhao Youde — one arm, twice the injuries he should already have survived — was being kept alive by the people around him. Qian Youdao, bleeding through his whole midsection now, shoved him clear of a blade strike and took several more in its place. He fell and did not get back up. Zhao Youde roared and dropped beside him. A knife came through Zhao Youde's chest a moment later and he fell on top of Qian Youdao.
Li Yi arrived at the mouth of the valley and heard the killing before he saw it.
He pulled a sword from the ground on his way through the gate — someone's abandoned blade — and cut his way toward the sound of Lao Bao's voice. He found him against a log, covered in blood, no longer standing straight. Lao Bao threw his remaining knife past Li Yi's ear and dropped a man who was coming up behind him. Then he looked at Li Yi and shook his head: Go get help.
Li Yi took in the valley in a sweep. Bodies everywhere. The Qin carriage in pieces. "Huang Youyi — where?"
Lao Bao raised one finger toward the left. There: Huang Youyi, bleeding from at least three places, keeping Zhao Youde's body sheltered behind his own. Still alive. Still moving. When Huang Youyi saw Li Yi, something in his face broke open, and he pushed himself off the ground and started fighting again.
Li Yi pressed his token into Zhao Liu's hand — the one man still standing with enough left to run — and said: Go to Pei Yuan. Tell him to come. Zhao Liu looked around at the others. He was not the youngest. He found Wang Jiulang, shoved the token into his chest: You. Run. Military order. Wang Jiulang was still red-eyed from the fighting but military instinct took over. He grabbed a horse and was gone.
The enemy closed in again. Li Yi fought. The emperor's carriage had already escaped, and these men were not chasing it — they were here for the Qin Palace soldiers, and for Li Yi. He saw arrows with Jie Shuo fletching among the fallen shafts on the ground. He had barely registered this when he heard Huang Youyi take a hit. He spun, and in that moment, Li Rong's voice came from somewhere behind the enemy line, casual and pleased: "Look at that. The King of Qin managed to find his way here."
Li Yi turned.
Li Rong was swaying in his saddle — or appearing to sway. Li Yi moved toward him out of instinct, and Li Rong brought his sword up as Li Yi reached him and drove it into Li Yi's side. Li Yi twisted almost fast enough. The blade opened the skin but didn't go deep. He grabbed Li Rong's wrist as the horse carried him past.
Then he felt it. Cold, wrong, spreading from the wound in a way a simple cut did not spread. He got his own blade across the wound immediately, cut through the flesh, and pried out what he could. Mercury. Li Rong had poisoned his own blade. The wound was deep and raw and wide now, but the mercury was out.
Li Rong's voice from a distance: "He'll die today. The King of Qin and the King of Anyang both conspired in rebellion — and both will die for it." So Li Jun's rebellion had been a trap, too. Li Rong had known about it the whole time, fed it, and let Li Jun do the burning while he stood ready to take the credit for putting it down — and put Li Yi in the ground at the same time.
The crossbows came down from the opposite ridge then, and everything changed.
Heavy equipment, set up before the ambush — a level of preparation that spoke of weeks, not days. The valley was suddenly full of crossbow bolts, and no amount of swordsmanship handled a steel crossbow at range. Li Yi could no longer break through. He fell back to where the last of his men were making their stand.
Zhao Youde was dead. Qian Youdao was dead. Zhang Youren was dead. He watched Huang Youyi fall. He cut through twenty men trying to get there and couldn't get there. He looked down at the blade he had taken from the ground — it had been splitting along the edge, stress fractures running up toward the tip. Every block had widened them. He blocked another crossbow bolt and the blade shattered.
Xiao Hei chose that moment to make one last jump and carry him clear of the break, but landed wrong — the knee that had taken an arrow shaft could not hold — and went down slowly, the way a great tree goes down, with terrible dignity. Li Yi landed hard and a crossbow bolt went through his shoulder. He lay in the dirt and turned his head and found Xiao Hei looking at him.
The horse's eyes were dark and enormous and full of something he could only call attachment. Pei Xian had picked this horse for him when it was a year old, and Li Yi had been barely older. They had ridden the desert together. They had ridden into battle together. Blood-colored foam gathered at Xiao Hei's lips and he made one low, exhausted sound, then went still.
Li Yi felt the grief of it like a physical wound separate from all the others. He grabbed a sword from the ground and stood.
More of them. Always more. He was bleeding from wounds he had stopped counting. His arm was shaking. He had protected Huang Youyi until he couldn't. He had tried to reach Zhao Youde and hadn't made it. Every man around him had gone silent. He stood alone in the middle of the bodies of his brothers and kept swinging.
Across the carnage, Li Rong watched him slow. He saw the sword strokes that had once dropped men in one were now taking two or three. He watched, and when Li Yi finally buckled and went to the ground, Li Rong started forward.
He waited until a spearman had placed the tip against Li Yi's back — no movement, perhaps unconscious, perhaps dead — before taking two more steps.
Li Yi threw the knife.
It was the last thing in him. The throw went slightly wide — all strength and no angle — and took Li Rong's horse in the haunch. The horse screamed and threw Li Rong, who hit the ground rolling and came up running — or started to. He rose, looked down, saw a blade tip buried in his abdomen. He had fallen on a broken spear half-buried in the valley floor. The tip was inside him. He had felt nothing.
He stood there assessing this fact while the sound of hooves came from the north.
The Dingsheng Army flag appeared at the valley's mouth like something from a dream. Li Rong's men looked at each other and the calculation happened fast. Li Rong made the decision for them — he ran for his horse, got on, and galloped. His horsemanship was excellent even panicked, but the valley floor was treacherous. The horse slipped, went down. Li Rong rolled free. He got to his feet, heard the arrows behind him, and kept running.
The blood in Li Yi's eyes was so thick he could barely distinguish light from shadow. He heard hooves. He heard shouting. He tried to determine whether these were enemies or something else and could not. His ears were ringing, his vision had narrowed to a circle of blurred grey. He knew he was dying because he started seeing things that were not there.
He saw A Ying.
She was on Xiaobai, riding toward him hard, and her face was open with something he had never quite seen on her face before. He told himself it wasn't her. A Ying never cried. This woman was crying. He had been afraid of this, afraid of dying before he could tell her — even with the hairpin back in her hair, even with her gone, he had not stopped. But now he thought: at least she has the hairpin back. At least she won't feel the weight of his feelings like an obligation.
The shadow pounced on him and he caught the warmth of it, the familiar specific warmth of her, and he tried to smile so she would not be frightened by what she was holding. There was too much blood on him for any smile to help. He tried anyway.
"Seventeen Lang. Seventeen Lang."
Cui Lin held him and saw the smile — small, blood-soaked, and genuine — and then he went limp in her arms.
He dreamed of the first day he met Lao Bao.
Laolan Pass. He was thirteen, curious about everything, restless in the way that boys are restless when they arrive somewhere new and want to touch all the things they are not supposed to touch. He reached for a long gun on the rack. Lao Bao kicked him in the backside. "You haven't fired a shot and you're already fondling the weapons?"
He said he knew how to use a spear. He had learned, more or less — had started teaching himself at six or seven, sneaking out of the palace to hang around the neighborhoods, and one day encountered a boy in fine brocade who turned out to be Pei Xian's son. He had demanded a contest immediately, which he lost badly. The next day Pei Yuan had come back and said: "My father watched me demonstrate your moves and wants to know if you'll train with him."
He had been willing. He was always willing for that. Pei Xian taught him with the totality of a man who held nothing back, and Li Yi had exceeded every expectation — exceeded even Pei Yuan, who was older. When he was old enough to enter Longwuwei he was told he couldn't. Grandsons of emperors did not join the garrison army. It would embarrass the family. He had deliberately gotten himself demoted instead — manufactured a mistake severe enough to land him in the Zhenxi Army. Pei Xian, who was the commander, had not made it easier for him. He sent him to Laolan Pass, the outermost, hardest posting.
That was where Lao Bao lived.
Lao Bao looked him up and down and made him a bet: a shooting contest. If the kid won, Lao Bao would teach him the most important thing at Laolan Pass. If Lao Bao won, the kid fetched water for a year.
He had not expected the boy's form to be actually good. He lost badly. And then the boy held the spear out and said, "All right. What's the most important thing?"
Lao Bao grinned and cleared his throat and launched into a song.
The Laolan River has eighteen bays, the first is Yinsong Beach. The fish in Yinsong Beach are fat, but not as beautiful as a girl's eyes. The second is Jiyu Beach — the yellow sheep run strong as the girl who throws open the window. The third is Goldensand Beach — you can pan for gold there, enough to buy a girl a golden hairpin. The fourth is Bright Moon Beach — the moon in the water looks just like her face as I walk past her door.
Every line circled back to a girl. Lao Bao's voice would jump up joyfully on the word girl every time, and Li Yi stood there with his spear and frowned. But the song turned. The tune shifted, and Lao Bao's voice dropped:
The fifth is Xigu Beach — the water is cold enough to cut, and the soldiers are going to war. The sixth is Cuoti Beach — the horses are lame, so I'll fight with my bow and arrow instead. The seventh is Nafin Beach — the current pulls hard, but we lean on each other and wade through together. The eighth is Fengming Beach — sand and stone in your face, hard to look at — my comrades and I covered our swords, and the cold light came off our armor like snow.
Li Yi had not yet been to battle. But standing in the dust of Laolan Pass with this gruff old soldier singing, he felt the shape of it — men crossing hard terrain together, sword-light in the cold, the specific intimacy of people who have only each other.
The song rose again:
My battle robe, my battle victories — I'll fight my way to honor and a marquis title. With sword and arrows thick as forest, I'll march thousands of miles and break the enemy chief.
He wanted to sing along. The words were the kind that filled the chest. But Lao Bao brought it down one last time, quiet and spent:
Home. White dew on the road. I wade across the water, still the same man. Sunflower soup and millet rice, gathered together for a long, long time — this is what I wished for.
The last line was full of something that had nowhere else to go. Li Yi frowned at it. "Why does a heroic song end with cooking?"
Lao Bao's answer came without the grin: "Every soldier wants to take off his armor someday. Coming home, seeing the people you grew up with, seeing the girl you loved when you were young — and then going inside and cooking a meal. That is the happiest thing there is."
Li Yi said that a man should die on the battlefield, wrapped in his horse's skin. He did not want to retire to a farm and cook.
Lao Bao tried to kick him again. "Stupid boy. You think dying in battle is glorious? I tell you — a real old soldier like me has to die before it's your turn to fight. We're all going to live to fifty-five and come home and cook. Bah bah."
The pain pulled him back. Something was wrong with his chest. He was being held, and a hand was moving in slow circles across his back. Someone was saying his name in a voice worn thin with use.
He opened his eyes. A lamp. A ceiling. He was lying down. Cui Lin was holding him. Her eyes were swollen almost shut, pink at the rims under the light, and her face had shrunk — sharp chin, hollow cheeks. When she saw him looking, two tears came down her face and landed on his hand.
He thought, confused: I must be dead. Why else is she crying like this?
He moved his mouth. It took a moment to find the shape of words. Where is Lao Bao?
Nobody answered. He already knew the answer. He had known it in the valley when he felt Lao Bao go still in his arms. He knew it now. Lao Bao was dead. Huang Youyi. Zhao Youde. Zhang Youren. Qian Youdao. Zhao Liu. Every last one, in that valley, while he stood there and swung his sword and could not save them.
He closed his eyes. Blood filled the back of his throat and came up slowly.
Cui Lin held a cloth and tried to keep up with it. There was too much. She pressed the cloth back again and again, and her voice caught: "Seventeen Lang, cry for a while. It might help."
He could not cry. He had thought about this — how all of them were brothers forged out of the hardest years of his life, and how Lao Bao had told him, categorically, that they would all live to fifty-five and retire. How could he die? How could any of them die?
He tried to sit up. Cui Lin caught him. He vomited blood onto her shoulder. She did not flinch, just held him steadier and stroked his back.
He collapsed back onto the bed, and a thought came to him in the darkness: I killed them. Every one of them. The way I was born killed my mother, and the way I have lived has killed every person who stayed close to me.
He did not say this. He had no voice left.
She wiped the blood from the corners of his mouth, slowly, again and again, and he heard her crying in the tiny catches of her breath, and each one fell on him like a coal.
Those three days and nights, Cui Lin did not sleep. She sat in the chair in front of his bed and fed him soup medicine one spoonful at a time, most of which he vomited back. Dr. Fan had to stitch several wounds closed. He came with his needle and thread soaked in wine, and everyone else turned away or was sent from the room. Cui Lin stayed and held the lamp. Her hand did not shake. Dr. Fan stopped telling her to leave.
There were hours when his breathing dropped so faint that she could not detect it. She held his hand and said his name, over and over, not as a prayer exactly but as something more stubborn than a prayer. She told him silently: You cannot go. You like me. You told me. A man who likes someone that much cannot leave her alone in this world.
He was still breathing at dawn.
On the third day he opened his eyes slightly. He was able to accept a little broth. She sat back in the chair, and she thought nothing at all for a moment. Then she thought: Thank you. Whatever you are. Thank you.
Taozi's eyelids were swollen. She had not slept either. Xie Chang'er cried several times — not silently but openly, the way children cry, face buried in his knees in a corner of the corridor. He had been like that for three days. When Taozi brought him food he didn't pick up the chopsticks.
Cui Yi arrived from the north and met them on the road before they reached the city. He had abandoned his heavy equipment at Baishui Pass when the intelligence reached him: a surrendered tribal chief from the small Heyi clan had come forward with something troubling. Jie Shuo's king, Wuluo, had sent his elite archer unit south into the Central Plains months ago, accompanying the defector Liu Chengfeng. The unit had not been seen during any of the battles. They had disappeared somewhere in Henan.
Cui Lin, when her father told her, was quiet for only a moment. "Not the emperor. If they entered the heart of the Central Plains, they came with a specific target. A hundred archers can't start a rebellion but they can kill one man very efficiently. Li Yi's campaign against Jie Shuo is only beginning. Wuluo knows that. And Liu Chengfeng will have found someone on the inside to coordinate."
Her father nodded slowly. Then his expression changed: the emperor was traveling to the Tailing Mausoleum.
"No," Cui Lin said immediately. "Not the emperor. But Li Jun is about to be exiled. Li Rong is—" She felt it click into place. "They don't care about Li Jun. And Li Rong would use Li Jun and sacrifice him if it served the purpose. We need to move now."
Cui Yi gave the order: abandon everything, double horses, go.
They met Xie Chang'er coming the other direction. He told them the procession's route and they swung south, bypassed the city, and drove through the night. They arrived outside the valley while it was still happening. Taozi heard the sounds from a hundred yards out and her heart seized. Cui Lin did not slow down.
From the ridge above the road, Taozi watched her ride straight into the carnage. Bodies. Broken carriage. Smoke still rising from burning torches dropped in the chaos. And in the middle of all of it, alone, on foot, bare-handed, covered in so much blood that his plain robe was entirely red — Li Yi. Surrounded. Still moving, but barely.
Cui Lin was off her horse before it stopped.
Xiaobai saw Xiao Hei lying on the ground. He went to him with a high, mournful sound and stood over him and would not leave. He nuzzled Xiao Hei's face and arched his neck and licked the blood and stood up and lay back down and stood up again. He stayed beside Xiao Hei for a long time.
Taozi had worked longer and harder in those three days than she ever had, and she was furious about most of it. Xie Chang'er was useless. The fool sat in corners and cried. When the bodies were brought back from the valley — what could be brought back — he cried so hard she started crying too, which made her angrier.
Xiaobai refused to eat for days. She tried everything. She coaxed, she bribed, she stood in the stall and talked to him for an hour. Finally she put her forehead against his neck and said, out loud: "Xiaobai. If you're going to be difficult about this — I can't manage it. The King of Qin is barely alive. The young lady is running on nothing. I have an idiot in the corner who won't pick up his chopsticks. Please don't make me add you to the list."
She cried through the last sentence. Xiaobai eventually ate something.
Dr. Fan pulled Taozi aside after the third day to give her the news: even if Li Yi recovered, the injuries had taken years from him. Perhaps twenty. She thought: I have to keep this from the young lady. She looked up and found Cui Lin standing in the doorway, bowl in hand, and by the color of her face she had heard every word.
She never asked about it again. She moved a bamboo couch into Li Yi's room and slept in front of his bed every night — close enough to hear him breathe, close enough to check without getting up. She woke several times every night and counted his breaths. Each time she woke she went back to sleep only when she had confirmed the number.
Li Yi was conscious in fragments. Sometimes he knew exactly where he was, could see the room and feel the particular quality of late afternoon light on the ceiling and hear her voice close by. Sometimes he was back in the valley, fighting in a fog, and no matter how hard he swung he could not reach the people he needed to reach.
He dreamed of Laolan Pass in summer. Dusk, the river running flat and copper-colored, a group of soldiers stripped down and wading in. He could hear them singing: The Laolan River has eighteen bays, the first is Yinsong Beach... The song went round and round, chorus after chorus, but it never reached the last lines. He kept waiting for it. He needed someone to sing Sunflower soup and millet rice, gathered together for a long time — this is what I wished for. If they sang it, the rule was they got to go home at fifty-five. But nobody sang it, and no matter how he tried he could not sing it himself.
He dreamed of a snow leopard at the river's edge in winter. It was drinking when it sensed him, lifted its head, found his eyes with its grey-yellow ones. They looked at each other across the cold. Then it turned, unhurried, and walked back toward the mountain. The snow fell and filled its tracks. It was as if it had never been there at all.
He woke in the dark. Lamp burning low. Insects outside the window. The room was still.
Cui Lin was asleep on the bamboo couch two or three feet from his bed, a thin blanket pulled to her chin. She had tear marks on her face even in sleep, and her face had lost so much weight that her jaw was almost delicate. She breathed evenly.
He lay there watching her and understanding: he was alive because she had refused to let go.
He began to move.
It took him half an hour to cross those two feet. He moved an inch at a time, stopping when the motion pulled a wound open and the pain turned his vision white. He sweated through his shirt. He sat on the floor several times with his back against the bed and waited for the room to stop tilting. He kept going.
He made it to the bamboo couch. He sat beside her and carefully, slowly, picked up her hand.
Her eyebrows flickered. She did not wake.
Her palms were wrapped in strips of muslin. He peeled back the edge of one bandage and looked. When she had grabbed him in the valley, the crossbow barbs had gone through both palms. She had not noticed at the time and had not mentioned it since. He held her hand and looked at the wounds for a long moment.
The first tears came quietly, dropped on the back of her hand.
She woke to sunlight on her face and went from sleep to panic in a single breath. She had slept through the night — the whole night, without waking. She looked at the bed.
Empty. The mattress cold.
She was on her feet and out the door before she had a clear thought.
Xie Chang'er had set up the mourning hall in the courtyard where Lao Bao and the others had lived. Of course he had. Li Yi had known where it would be without asking.
He did not know how he reached it. He took a rest every few steps. Sat on the ground several times. The courtyard was farther than he remembered. Venus burst across his vision once and he leaned against a wall and waited for it to clear. He kept walking.
The hall was plain and clean — white mourning banners, incense burning, candles on the altar, a row of memorial tablets in the stillness of early morning. He sat down in front of the tablets and looked at the names.
Lao Bao would not have expected a formal ceremony. They were brothers. Li Yi had nothing left to offer anyway, so he just sat.
A jar of wine had been left before the altar. He built up his strength for a while and then got up, lifted the jar, and poured the first cup.
He tipped it onto the ground for all of them — every man who had died in that valley with him, every name on those tablets and the ones that weren't there.
The second cup he poured for Xiao Hei, who had carried him through years of desert and battle and into his last fight and had never wavered. He thought: Lao Bao will find him.
Then he thought of Xiaobai.
His chest went tight. Xiaobai would be alone now. He did not know what to do with that.
He lifted the third cup and drank it himself.
Afterward, the emptiness was enormous. The kind that cannot be filled because what was in it is not replaceable. He tried to breathe and choked and coughed up blood. The cup fell from his fingers. He went down with it, landed on his side, and could not get up. He lay on the ground in the courtyard of the mourning hall and looked at the eaves of the door.
A bamboo dragonfly fell from the corner of the roof. It spun slowly as it descended.
Then another. Then more of them, coming down one by one in the still morning air, tiny and green, spiraling down from the eaves into the courtyard. An unhurried, silent rain of bamboo dragonflies.
He blinked. Looked up. They kept coming.
Cui Lin appeared and knelt beside him and lifted him and wiped the blood from his mouth without a word.
When she had settled him, she said: "You know I don't believe in gods or Buddhas. I have never made a wish in my life. But when you were unconscious and Dr. Fan said you might never wake up, I wanted to kneel before every god in existence. I remembered what the wet nurse said — that if you carve a bamboo dragonfly and let it go, the wish will reach wherever wishes go. So I carved them. Every one of them." She was trying to keep her voice steady and failing. "While you were lying there, I sat in front of your bed and carved bamboo dragonflies. Shiqilang—" Her voice broke. "For you, I will do anything foolish."
He looked at her, and she opened her arms and held him, and put her chin on his shoulder. He rested his chin on hers.
Something in him finally gave way.
She was crying already. He let himself join her. They stayed like that in the courtyard full of bamboo dragonflies, both of them weeping without any attempt to stop — for the dead, for the living, for everything that had been asked of all of them and everything that had been lost. And after a long time, she said:
"Cry for as long as you need to. And then — for them, for everyone — live."