Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Helan Zhiqiu would go down in history as a wise and virtuous empress. Gifted at poetry, frugal and benevolent, she governed the inner palace with both discipline and mercy. Everyone sang her praises.

Everyone except my brother.

His reason for disliking her was simple. He adored beauties, while she was too plain for his taste and lacked the meek, yielding disposition he expected. She was forever subjecting him to stern restraint, and Grandfather – who usually indulged our every whim – always took her side. Naturally, my brother came to regard her as a thorn in his flesh.

Almost every time I visited her in the Eastern Palace, I found them quarreling.

My brother would hurl things until jade and agate lay shattered across the floor and the palace attendants stood silent with fear. Zhiqiu, her expression still as deep water, refused to yield.

“Five Minerals Powder clouds the mind. It is no wholesome medicine. Your Highness must give it up.”

“Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to control me?”

“I am Your Highness’s wife – and also one of your subjects.”

My brother tucked a pillow under his arm and stormed out. Yet though she had won, Zhiqiu did not look pleased. She sat motionless for a while, then forced herself to smile at me. “Xihe, have you practiced your characters today?”

Even Confucius reborn could not have been so diligent!

I brought over the characters I had written and cocked my head at her. “I’ve been good, haven’t I?”

“Acceptable.”

“Then where are you taking me to play?”

I liked her very much. For all that she governed me with the same inflexible rules, she was my first friend. She taught me to read and write, to weave and embroider. She took me out among the people to seek unusual crafts and gifted artisans. Before I met her, I had thought a little lion lived inside my chest, forever baring its teeth and roaring in a temper. Now she had smoothed its fur until it became a contented kitten.

“If only I were a man,” I sighed worriedly. “I would marry you in Brother’s place, and I would treat you very well.”

She was watching a kiln being fired. Just when I thought she would ignore me, she answered, “If you were a man, you would surely detest me too.”

“Why?”

“They’re opening the kiln.”

I forgot everything at once and rushed to the front, peppering the master kilnman with questions. “Well? Did my little rabbit turn out?”

People said that porcelain had to pass through seventy-two hands before it became a finished vessel. One mistake in any of those seventy-two stages, and all the work was lost. Zhiqiu had been bringing me there for months. I had painted dozens of little rabbits, but not one had survived the firing intact.

The master searched for a while, then beamed as he brought out a vase of sweet white porcelain. On its side, a charming little rabbit slept curled beneath a laurel tree.

“Princess, it came out perfectly!”

I was so delighted I hardly knew what to do. I wanted to take it, yet feared I might break it, so all I could do was hop around it in joy.

Then Zhiqiu took the vase. “I hear white porcelain shatters with a clear note, like jade breaking. Why don’t we smash it and listen?”

“No!” All the color drained from my face. I sprang up to snatch it from her. “It’s mine! It took me forever to make my little rabbit!”

She ignored me, evaded my reaching hands, turned, and dashed it down –

I covered my eyes in terror. But no crash came. After a long moment, I peeked through my fingers and found her crouching before me, holding out the vase.

“It is easy to destroy something and very hard to make it. So you mustn’t treat the destruction of things as a game anymore, Xihe. They are the fruit of someone else’s labor. Do you understand?”

I nodded as hard as I could, hugged my little rabbit close, and refused to let it go.

On the way back to the palace that day, I held my beloved rabbit in one hand and my beloved Zhiqiu’s hand in the other. When I happened to look up, I saw orange-red sunset clouds melting into a sapphire sky, so beautiful it seemed a dream.

In my memories of Southern Xu’s dream, that was its loveliest – and its last – glimmer of light.

The eunuchs were waiting anxiously at the palace gates. Without even pausing to bow, one shouted, “Princess, His Majesty has collapsed! You must come at once!”

Northern Qian had found our tribute insufficient and demanded another staggering sum. Grandfather could not pay it. After his envoys had tried repeatedly to negotiate, Northern Qian lost patience and sent back a box.

Inside was the envoy’s blood-soaked head.

Grandfather fainted on the spot.

By the time he woke, it was already the third watch of the night. My brother and Zhiqiu had both fallen asleep beside him. I alone was awake. Grandfather looked surprisingly alert. His drooping brows quivered as he smiled at me.

“Xihe, are you cold?”
“I am.”

He moved the covers aside. “Come, then. Let Grandfather warm you.”

Clutching my little rabbit, I burrowed into his arms. His withered hand patted me again and again, just as it had when I was small.

I thought he had recovered. “Grandfather, when morning comes, I’ll take you to the place where they fire porcelain. It’s such fun. They can turn clay into little rabbits…”

He smiled and murmured, “Grandfather isn’t going. Grandfather is going to find your grandmother and your father… I’ve forgotten what your grandmother looked like, except when she was young. She would turn in the saddle beneath the persimmon trees, riding that chestnut mare. She was so beautiful. And the day your father went to war – he looked so handsome and imposing in his armor. I was so proud. I wanted to proclaim to the whole world, That is my crown prince! Mine and Mingzhu’s son! But I kept my face stern. If only I had looked at him a little longer…”

The blankets were warm, and sleep crept over me. Nestled against him, I slowly drifted off. Somewhere between waking and dreams, I heard his old voice.

“I am sorry, Xihe. Live. Promise Grandfather you will do everything you can to stay alive.”

All night, I dreamed a beautiful dream. Grandfather was there, and my brother and Zhiqiu, and Father and Mother with their indistinct faces. We rode horses together, flew kites together, and rolled through a meadow filled with little rabbits…

When I woke, I was bundled snugly in the soft covers. Grandfather was gone.

Zhiqiu was beside me.

“Where is Grandfather?”

Dressed all in mourning white, Zhiqiu reached out and gathered me into her arms.

Strictly speaking, Grandfather had not been a capable ruler. He had been too gentle and too weak. Under him, the delicate balance between Southern Xu and Northern Qian had broken, and Southern Xu had become entirely dependent on Northern Qian. Yet it must be said that he had devoted every scrap of talent he possessed to governing. Though confined to one corner of the realm and burdened for thirty years by Northern Qian’s extortionate tribute demands, Southern Xu under his rule still kept a full treasury and a peaceful, prosperous people.

For my brother, however, the task was far too difficult.

For the first sixteen years of his life, he had devoted himself to becoming the perfect wastrel. He had no gift for ruling. He did not even possess the competence to conduct Grandfather’s funeral properly. After his hasty accession, the ministers’ challenges and the tangle of state affairs left him overwhelmed. Even with the Helan clan supporting him, he was often laughed at for asking foolishly naive questions in court.

As for me, I seemed to grow up overnight. No one had taught me, but suddenly I understood: Father and Mother were not in the heavens, and Grandfather would not be there either. Death was simply death. No matter how many kites I flew, no one was watching me from the clouds. The dream Grandfather had so carefully made for my brother and me had been ripped apart. We had fallen onto cracked, scorched earth, with the fires of hell blazing everywhere we looked.

Night after night, nightmares tormented me. They were filled with horrors, but always ended with Grandfather’s gaunt, pale face. Xihe, he would say, live. Promise Grandfather. Live…

I would bolt upright and run outside in tears. I had to find my brother.

There were no attendants guarding his palace doors. Through the half-open panels came the sound of stifled weeping.

It was my brother.

He was the most exalted man in all Southern Xu, the invincible god of my childhood. Yet at midnight he was curled in Zhiqiu’s arms, crying like a child who had suffered every injustice in the world.

The winter’s first snow had just fallen. Moonlight and snow gleamed with the same coldness. I stood frozen as Zhiqiu held him fiercely, like a young mother comforting her child.

“Your Majesty, I am here. I will always be here.”

The attendants caught up to me with a cloak. I turned and led them away. At the time, I did not know that everyone had made my brother a laughingstock. Worse still, a powerful rebel army had risen among the people. Sweeping aside every force in its path, it was marching straight for the capital. The realm of our ancestors was on the verge of destruction in my brother’s hands.

I understood only one thing: the look in Grandfather’s eyes during his final moments, and why he had apologized to me. My brother could not reverse Southern Xu’s decline. We were destined to be buried with this ruined dynasty. That was my brother’s fate as sovereign.

But it was also mine.