Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I wandered through the rain in a daze, stumbling with every step, until my legs gave way and I sank to the ground.

An umbrella appeared over my head. Only then did I realize that Xia Wan had been following me for some time. Dressed in a long robe of lustrous white, he watched me quietly, like a tiny bodhisattva.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m staying with Aunt Xihe.”

He was a gentle child of few words. I smiled wearily. “Your aunt is so useless.”

Again and again, people I treasured were hurt before my eyes, and there was nothing I could do.

“Don’t cry, Aunt Xihe.”

Xia Wan wiped away my tears and said softly, “When I grow up… I’ll kill everyone who makes you cry.”

After returning to my chambers that day, I fell gravely ill. Feverish and half-conscious, I dreamed one ominous dream after another. A huge white bird swept across a field at dusk, then plummeted to the earth and burst into blue-black flame. Someone in the dream kept calling, “Aunt Xihe, wake up!”

It was Xia Wan. Kneeling beside my bed, he clumsily laid a warm, damp cloth across my brow to cool my fever.

“What watch is it? Why are you here alone? Where are the attendants?”

“It is the third watch. Yesterday, Northern Qian’s army reached the capital. Many of the attendants have fled.” His voice was perfectly calm.

I shot upright.

I was sixteen that year. Southern Xu’s long, drunken dream had finally come to its end, like awakening from a brief fantasy of wealth and glory after waiting countless years.

I ran outside with Xia Wan. Palace attendants hurried through the darkness in every direction. Only one lamp burned in my brother’s main hall.

“Go find your mother. Tell her to bolt the doors. Aunt Xihe will join you soon.”

I entered the great hall. My brother sat hunched on the throne. I did not know when it had happened, but he had come to look just like Grandfather.

I had meant never to speak to him again, yet my heart still ached. I walked over and pleaded, “Brother, let us leave. General He Sulong is still holding Linnan. We can seek refuge with him.”

“The capital will fall by tomorrow at the latest. How much longer can Linnan endure?” He gazed ahead into nothing but the black autumn mist. “Northern Qian was always going to destroy Southern Xu. It is Southern Xu’s fate, and mine as well.”

He looked back at me, his voice gentle. “My only regret is that I had hoped to find a good husband for my Xihe. I never had the chance.”

Tears filled my eyes. I forced a smile so they would not fall. “Please don’t. Someone like me could never make a proper wife.”

“How could that be? My Xihe is the finest girl under heaven.”

“The finest girl under heaven is Helan Zhiqiu.”

My brother smiled and whispered, “Then perhaps it is better not to be a fine girl.”

Better not to be molded by one’s clan into the most accomplished of ladies. Better not to love a weak and faithless husband. Better not to cling to a final breath for a child’s sake, trapped in this desolate world.

“Xihe, take Zhiqiu and leave. Tell her to live the rest of her life for herself. And tell her to forget a useless man like me.”

I seized Zhiqiu and Xia Wan, and together we fled the palace where I had spent my whole life. Beneath the rising sun, it remained as majestic as ever, as though nothing could change. But the life we had known there would never return.

Before we could make it out of the city, Northern Qian’s army broke into the capital.

Then we learned what hell looked like.

They slaughtered civilians without distinction, violated women in the streets, and set fires to amuse themselves as crowds fled in terror. Our guards died one after another protecting us. We blackened our faces and hid wherever we could, never knowing whether we would survive the next moment.

On the third day, the march of slaughter finally stopped. Northern Qian soldiers drove the survivors together.

“Over here! Come, or we’ll kill you! Move!”
Several Northern Qian soldiers shoved Zhiqiu and me toward the palace gates. There I saw my brother again.

He crawled on all fours in a grotesque posture, like a dog, while a northerner dragged him by a rope around his neck. He still wore his dragon robes. His knees and elbows were smeared with blood from crawling.

Yet his expression was strangely peaceful. He wore a constant smile, as though silently humming a song. No sound could leave him. They had cut out his tongue, leaving only a dark hollow in his mouth.

“This dog is your king of Southern Xu!” the leading northerner roared in stiff Southern speech. “Disobey Danchi, King of Northern Qian, and this will be your fate!”

No one in the crowd dared raise their head. I clapped both hands over my mouth as they howled with laughter and kicked my brother in the back.

Beside me, Zhiqiu began softly singing under her breath.

“The dawn bell rings before the sky grows light. The morning frost lies untouched by travelers. Only the broken horn upon the walls can tell the whole of my life.”

When I turned to her, she smiled. “The first time I saw His Highness the crown prince, he played and sang that song at an evening banquet. It was so beautiful.”

“Zhiqiu…”

She did not look at me again. Instead, she turned to Xia Wan. “Nothing in this life has ever truly belonged to me. Only you are my own flesh and blood. Stay beside Xihe in my place. Never let her be alone. Promise your mother, will you?”

Before I could react, she rose. Amid the kneeling crowd, she stood tall and proud.

“I am the empress of Southern Xu! Do you dare kill me?”

Most of the Northern Qian soldiers did not understand the southern tongue and stared at her in confusion. Their commander hesitated. “You say you are… Helan Zhiqiu, empress of Southern Xu?”

My brother raised his head from the dust and shook it desperately.

Zhiqiu smiled and ran to him as though she were a young girl hurrying to meet her beloved.

In the next instant, the long hairpin in her hand pierced my brother’s chest. She pulled it free and drove it into her own.

They held each other tightly, as though they had returned to the beginning of everything: a young emperor embracing his empress. Everyone had thought him useless.

Everyone but her.

“This consort will always wait in the palace for Your Majesty’s return.”

“Good. Wait for me. When I return, give me a crown prince.”

She had never seen her hero return. He had lost the woman who loved him with her life.

And somehow, over the course of that life, they had lost each other.

The last king and queen of Southern Xu lay exposed before the palace gates. No one gathered their remains. Northern Qian’s horses trampled their bones to fragments and scattered them far away.

On the tenth day, the northern army finally ceased its slaughter and began clumsily building a new country atop the ruins. Xia Wan and I fled toward Linnan, which General He Sulong still defended. His troops were valiant, and Linnan was the last land Southern Xu retained.

The road was lined with bodies left behind by the rampaging northern army. Some were mothers still holding their children. Some were gaunt old men whose hands had been hacked off for the coins they clutched, their eyes still wide with fury in death. As we traveled, we gathered and buried the remains by the roadside.

“Why do we have to do this, Aunt Xihe?”

“Because we don’t know how long we will live. While we can still do one more thing, we must do it.”

My fever came and went. With every step, I felt I might collapse the next moment. But Xia Wan’s little hand held mine so tightly, the last bond tying me to this cold human world.

“Xia Wan, if Aunt Xihe dies, you needn’t force yourself to reach Linnan. You need only do your best to live. Marry and have children. Tell them there was once a place called Southern Xu, and that it was very beautiful…”

Xia Wan quietly shook his head.

“I live only if Aunt Xihe lives.”