Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The palace attendants pulled us both from the lake. Zhiqiu lay propped against the headboard, her face haggard, while I sat wrapped in blankets, sneezing without pause. She looked at me and smiled.

It was the first time she had smiled at me since it happened.

Then she said, “Xihe, please let me die.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I seized her icy hand. “No. Please don’t… You told me it was harder to make something than to destroy it. You’re so good, Zhiqiu, so very good. Please don’t destroy yourself. Please, Zhiqiu.”

Zhiqiu shook her head and smiled bleakly. “It is not so simple, Xihe. No secret stays hidden within palace walls. Many people know perfectly well what happened to me and how this child was conceived. Once it is born, it will inevitably bear the features of another people. His Majesty will then have me executed for defiling the harem, and the Helan clan will be implicated. A century of honor will be ruined. They may even execute my entire family. Do you want to see me become the sinner who destroys the Helans, Xihe?”

“That won’t happen. My brother would never do such a thing.”

She gave a cold laugh. “Is there anything left in this world that he would not do?”

I stumbled outside, intending to question my brother, only to find him standing at the door, his face deathly pale.

“Brother – ”

He did not look at me. He went straight into the room. At the sight of him, Zhiqiu turned her head away in disgust.

He knelt beside her bed and said softly, “Elder sister, I won’t run away anymore.”

Zhiqiu was older than he was. Before everything happened, he had called her elder sister sometimes in jest and sometimes in anger.

“Give birth to the child. Don’t ruin your health. He is my burden of sin, not yours.”

That day, my brother issued an edict naming the child in Zhiqiu’s womb crown prince. It was the first time since Southern Xu’s founding that an unborn prince had been declared heir. In this way, my brother proclaimed to the realm that his empress was blameless.

Zhiqiu showed no emotion from beginning to end.

The child neither parent had wanted was born the following June, at dusk after a violent rainstorm. Zhiqiu was utterly spent. Before losing consciousness, she gripped my hand and said, “Xihe, go see the child…”

The last light of sunset stained every cloud. An attendant brought him for my brother and me to see. The abortifacients and his mother’s despair had taken their toll. He was far frailer than other infants, a pitiful little thing no bigger than a kitten.

“Brother, look at him! He’s so good. What are you going to name him?” I asked excitedly.

“Take him away.” My brother rubbed his brow wearily.

“Wait.”

The attendant stopped. I took the child from her arms, raised my head, and smiled with renewed innocence. “I love babies, so I arranged a wet nurse and servants for him long ago. Zhiqiu is weak. Why not entrust him to me, Brother? From now on, I will personally oversee everything he eats, wears, and uses. You needn’t worry.”

My brother stared at me. I kept smiling back.

I was nine that year, and no innocence remained in me. The world had become nothing but blood-soaked truth. I knew that if I yielded a single step, my brother would kill the child. Once this crown prince died young, he could name another.

But I had to protect him.

Zhiqiu was already a walking corpse, as if half her soul had descended into the underworld. This child was the only tie that held her here. I could not let her wake to find a tiny body waiting for her.

At last, my brother sighed. “Xihe has grown up.”

Trailing the long hem of his imperial robes, he walked into the dusk. His final words to me were, “Since you like him so much, you may choose his name.”

Once again, he indulged me.

The child had been born at a summer dusk, so I named him Xia Wan. I wished for him to flourish like the green abundance of summer, and to hold fast the person I treasured.

The chief reason my brother tolerated Xia Wan’s existence was probably the child’s weakness. In those years, many infants died young. Even robust children struggled to reach adulthood, much less one born as frail as Xia Wan. Before he learned to eat food, he learned to swallow medicine.

I cared for him not only for Zhiqiu’s sake. I truly loved him, though we shared no blood. I would stay awake all night tending him. He was forever feverish, crying himself hoarse in my arms. I fed him medicine a little at a time with a tiny spoon, while his small fist clung desperately to my robe as if pleading, Aunt Xihe, don’t let me go back to heaven.

“Aunt Xihe won’t let you die. When you’re older, I’ll take you to fly kites and show you all the beauty of the realm. You must fight to live, do you hear?”

I murmured on and on until exhaustion overcame me. I had not slept for five days. I closed my eyes for what seemed a moment, and when I opened them again, daylight had come.

The child lay beside me, utterly still and silent. My whole body went cold. I leaped up to check him, only to find him wide awake, his round eyes watching me while he quietly gnawed on his little fist. When I leaned over, his face scrunched into a smile.

“You scared your aunt to death, you little menace.”

Muttering, I lifted him high into the air.

He thought it was a game. His tiny hands waved as he giggled.

Southerners had pale skin, softer features, and black eyes. Northerners had darker skin, high noses and cheekbones, and brown eyes. The difference was plain at a glance. Xia Wan had none of the northerners’ aggressive cast. He was delicate and graceful, every inch a young gentleman of the Helan clan – except for one thing.

His eyes were amber, a shade lighter than brown.
In truth, that hardly counted as a foreign trait. Not every southerner’s eyes were pure black. And yet, to those who knew the truth, his eyes were a thorn.

Once Zhiqiu recovered somewhat, she brought Xia Wan to live with her and raised him herself. She was severe with him, holding him to the harshest standards. He began reading and learning characters at three, and training in martial arts at five. He was clever, but whenever he made a mistake, Zhiqiu brought down her ruler without hesitation. He never cried. He would kneel obediently and say, “Mother, please don’t be angry. Xia Wan is useless.”

Otherwise, she lived in seclusion in the Buddhist hall and took no part in palace affairs. Northern Qian was growing restless, while the people groaned beneath crushing taxes. My brother dealt with affairs of state day and night. Before he was thirty, his temples were already streaked with white.

Neither husband nor wife would see the other. Only occasionally, when I visited Zhiqiu, would I find my brother standing outside the door, listening to the chanting within. The look on his face was painful to behold.

With the kingdom beset by crises at home and abroad, I had no choice but to take on some affairs of state and lighten my brother’s burden. Only rarely could I spare the time to sit with Zhiqiu.

One autumn afternoon, the palace persimmons ripened. I ordered a basket filled to the brim and brought it to her. She was reading. When she saw me, she smiled and said, “Hurry and make tea for the princess. Call Xia Wan as well, so he can keep Aunt Xihe company.”

Perhaps it was my imagination, but each time I saw her, she seemed thinner. The weariness with life had sunk into her bones and grew more evident by the day. Pretending not to notice, I chattered brightly about how the grand commandant had just taken his tenth concubine, then about a poet who had composed a matchless verse. I wanted to tell her every amusing thing under heaven. But she never responded. When at last I ran out of words, she would smile faintly and say, “It is late. The princess should return early.”

My smile stiffened, but I quickly pretended not to notice that either. I went over and clung to her. “If it’s late, I’ll stay and sleep beside you. I can taste the vegetarian dishes here too. Look at this belly of mine – I’m as fat as pork fried in lard.”

“Please, Zhiqiu?” I tugged at her arm.

She saw through me and sighed. “Xihe, you needn’t do this. Before Xia Wan reaches adulthood, I will not…”

A commotion suddenly broke out beyond the door.

“Your Majesty, Her Majesty is not receiving visitors…”

“Get out of my way!”

I stared at the entrance. My brother stumbled in, reeking of wine. At the sight of him, Zhiqiu frowned in disgust and turned away.

“Brother, why are you here?” I rose uneasily.

He looked at Zhiqiu and smiled drunkenly, his expression wild and cruel.

“I have come to discuss something with my empress.”

Lightning split the sky. Dull thunder rolled in the distance.

“Guards, remove Princess Xihe, then lock the door. No one enters without my command.”

“What are you going to do? Brother!”

I fought with all my strength, but they dragged me out. I threw myself against the door and heard Zhiqiu’s voice trembling with fury inside.

“What do you mean to do?”

“I have no heir of my own. I have come to ask my empress how long she intends that bastard to remain crown prince!”

“Have a child with someone else! Go have one with someone else!”

Panic had entered Zhiqiu’s voice. She tried to flee, but my brother seized her.

“Helan Zhiqiu, don’t you despise me?” he snarled through clenched teeth. “I’ve wanted to tear those clothes off you for years. Let’s see if you dare show me that arrogant face again! You want to purge yourself of worldly desire? Dream on. You are my empress. You will be damned with me for all eternity!”

“What are you doing? Let me go!”

Thunder crashed, and rain poured from the sky. I beat frantically on the door. “Brother, don’t! That will kill her! Brother, please don’t!”

The attendants tried to pull me away. I clung hysterically to the steps, leaving two trails of blood across the ground. Cloth tore inside. Zhiqiu wept. Then all went still.

At last I stopped struggling and sat numbly in the rain.

The door opened. My brother staggered out, blood streaming from his shoulder blade. He looked at me as if he wanted to speak, but in the end said nothing. He stumbled away.

I started toward the room, only to hear Zhiqiu’s hollow voice drift from within.

“Xihe, go. I am fine – ”

That night, Zhiqiu had driven a long hairpin into my brother’s shoulder blade. For her, it was an act of almost unimaginable violence.

“I despise you? Then who respects you? The late emperor? If he respected you, he would never have named you Xizhao – ‘the setting sun.’ If he respected you, he would have disciplined you instead of letting you turn yourself into a useless waste!” Fire burned in her eyes, yet her smile was colder than ice. “Yes, I despise you. But the person I despise most is myself. Xizhao, I once loved you.”

I did not go inside.

I had no right to face her.