Chapter 3

Chapter 3

To everyone’s surprise, my brother – who had always loathed military affairs – decided to lead the campaign in person and restore his army’s failing morale. On the day of his departure, dressed in armor and mounted on a black charger, he turned beneath the city walls to look back. For once, he seemed almost heroic. Zhiqiu stood atop the walls in the elaborate ceremonial robes of an empress, seeing the royal army off.

In that moment, the rest of heaven and earth ceased to exist. There was only the emperor and his empress, gazing at each other from afar.

For an instant, I seemed to see my father and mother: the valiant crown prince Grandfather had described riding off to war, and his pregnant crown princess. Surely they, too, had shared such a look – full of aching tenderness and tragic resolve.

After my brother left, Zhiqiu managed every affair inside and outside the palace alone. The strain was too great for a woman of her slight frame. Every lamp across the imperial city would go dark, while those in the great hall continued to burn. When I visited her in the mornings, I often found her asleep across her desk from exhaustion. She would wake, rub her eyes when she saw me, and ask, “Xihe, have you practiced your characters today?”

I would nod, sit down beside her, and ask, “Zhiqiu, when do you think Brother will return?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed wearily, then lowered her eyes. “Whenever it may be, I will wait for him.”

Only belatedly did I realize that Zhiqiu, for all her plain dress and cool reserve, truly loved the brother everyone else saw as debauched and witless. Perhaps it was simply a wife’s instinct to love her husband. Perhaps it was because my brother was handsome, and in some private moment he had stirred her heart. Whatever the reason, she loved him – a man who had never treated her with kindness – as every woman loves the one who has captured her heart.

When the first spring rain came, my brother returned.

And he brought news of victory!

I raced through the spring rain so fast the attendants could not keep up. I flung myself into my brother’s arms and looked up at him. “What took you so long? If you’d stayed away any longer, I would have forgotten your face!”

He lifted me, his smile strained. “Xihe has grown taller. A little more, and I won’t be able to carry you at all.”

Only then did I notice the man in black beside him. He looked peculiar, with brown eyes and a nose so high it was almost frightening. He studied me with open interest.

“So this is the famous Princess Xihe?”

For some reason, he frightened me. I buried my face in my brother’s chest and heard his heart pounding, frantic and wild.

My brother held a magnificent banquet to celebrate his return, yet Zhiqiu showed no sign of joy. Seated beside her, I kept trying to make her laugh. “Zhiqiu, look at that man sitting in Brother’s place. Doesn’t he look like an eagle with a human face?”

Zhiqiu gently covered my mouth. “Xihe, don’t speak nonsense.”

The man rose. Many years later, I would learn that his name was Danchi. Wine had flushed his face as he carried a cup toward us.

“At such a joyous feast, why does the empress look so melancholy?”

Zhiqiu lowered her eyes as though the man before her did not exist. At some point, the entire hall had fallen silent.

Danchi tipped his head and studied her. Then he slowly poured a cup of wine.

“Allow me to offer Her Majesty a drink.”

He did not drink it himself. Instead, he raised the cup to Zhiqiu’s lips. Her face went white, and her whole body began to tremble. She had always been so dignified, so composed. It was the first time I had ever seen her lose herself before a crowd.

“If the empress will not drink, then let the princess drink in her place!”

Danchi smiled lazily and turned to me. Bewildered, I reached for the cup.

“I’ll drink it! Just stop bullying Zhiqiu!”

“Zhiqiu!”

My brother, who had sat as silent as death, suddenly surged to his feet and shouted her name.

Zhiqiu looked at him, then at Danchi standing before her. She took the cup and tipped back her head to drink. Two trails of tears slipped down her face.

Danchi laughed. He laughed as though he had seen something wonderfully amusing, laughed until he could no longer stand straight. A sudden terror seized me. I reached for Zhiqiu’s hand and found it cold as ice.

That night, Zhiqiu vanished from the palace. For three whole days, I ran weeping through every hall and chamber, but I could not find her anywhere.

“Where is Zhiqiu?” I screamed at my brother through my tears. His face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot, and his cheeks covered in stubble.
He reached out and held me tight, like a man at the end of his road clutching his final treasure.

“Xihe, don’t cry.”

On the third day, Zhiqiu returned. Overjoyed, I rushed to see her.

She lay on the bed with her hair undone, dark bruises covering her face. Her eyes were closed, as if she were asleep.

“Zhiqiu – ” Terrified, I reached for her hand. She gently drew it away and gave me the smile of someone exhausted beyond endurance.

“Don’t touch me. I’m filthy.”

I stared at her blankly. I knew nothing. I did not know that Northern Qian had sent troops to put down the rebellion for us, at the price of doubling our tribute.

Nor did I know that the man named Danchi was Northern Qian’s cruelest king.

He had united every northern tribe and built the mightiest Northern Qian state in history. Wherever his armies passed, they left a hell of slaughter behind them.

All I knew was that my Zhiqiu had vanished.

I would never find her again.

At the time, I did not truly understand what had happened to her. I had learned early enough of relations between men and women, but poets and scholars – and the beauties who played with my brother – had made me believe it was something joyous and elegant. It was not supposed to be like that…

When she forced herself to rise and bathe, blood trickled slowly down her legs and wound across the floor. Bruises covered her body; not an inch of flesh remained unhurt. Two of her teeth were gone. For an entire month she burned with fever, screaming hysterically even in her sleep.

I stayed awake beside her through every night, feeding her medicine and wiping down her body. Weeping, I begged her in a whisper, “Zhiqiu, please don’t die. Please, I’m begging you.”

In her rare lucid moments, her eyes would stray unconsciously toward the door and she would murmur deliriously, “His Majesty has gone to war… I must wait for him to return.”

My brother did not come once. For that whole month, music and revelry spilled from the great hall day and night. They drank until dawn, drowning themselves in pleasure.

And my Zhiqiu hovered between life and death.

I do not know which god heard my prayers, but she survived. The Zhiqiu I had known, however – the clever, gentle girl – was dead forever.

Her gaze became permanently numb and distant, holding everyone at arm’s length. Nothing in the world seemed to interest her anymore. Each day she sat in her room without moving, often until deep into the night.

Then the imperial physician announced that she was pregnant.

Only later did I learn that among Northern Qian it was customary for a man and woman who wanted a child to seclude themselves together for three days in spring. They believed it made conception more likely.

Danchi had done it deliberately. As a victor grinds the defeated beneath his heel, he had violated the empress of Southern Xu to emasculate its king in spirit.

But Zhiqiu – what had Zhiqiu ever done to deserve it?

“Get rid of it.”

“But… Your Majesty is too weak. I fear your body cannot withstand medicine of that strength.”

“Get rid of it.”

There was not a spark of light in Zhiqiu’s eyes as she repeated the words.

I stood to one side, not daring to speak.

Zhiqiu drank bowl after bowl of abortifacient medicine. In the middle of the night, I heard her muffled sobs and discovered her curled around her belly, racked with pain. She had bitten her knuckles raw, leaving them covered in blood.

There was nothing I could do but hold her and choke out in a whisper, “Zhiqiu, if it hurts, bite me instead. Please?”

A month later, the imperial physician examined her pulse again. The child was still there.

Trembling with fear, he told me that Zhiqiu was weak and he had already used the strongest medicine he dared. Mother and child shared one breath and one blood. A heavier dose might destroy them both.

“Zhiqiu, why not give birth to him?” I asked carefully. “If you don’t want the child, I’ll raise him. Would that be all right?”

Zhiqiu said nothing. She only stared into empty space. Then, without warning, she sprang up and ran. I had never known a pregnant woman could move so fast.

It was deep at night. Across the water, a lavish banquet blazed with color, while on our side a solitary moon lay reflected in the lake. Zhiqiu flung herself into its bottomless depths.

Without hesitating, I jumped after her.

I had to pull my moon from the water. Even shattered, she was still my moon.