Chapter 50

The flash flood was filthy and fast; Zhuo Siheng gripped the two children with all his might, so the three weren't torn apart by the current. The crown prince and princess both choked down several mouthfuls of water, unable even to cry for help; Zhuo Siheng shouted for them to hold tight to him, but the flood's thunderous roar rivaled a thunderclap, his ears ringing so he could hear nothing else — whether the children heard he couldn't tell; he himself had swallowed a bellyful of water, his very nose gone sour and numb.

By great luck, the ground where they'd been was neither high nor low, exactly a channel down which the flood poured; the trees all around were dense, slowing the water somewhat — though the danger too was the many trees, for one careless collision meant death or grave injury.

The slackening flood carried down several hollow, rotted logs torn up by the roots upstream; Zhuo Siheng hurriedly hooked one with his slung longbow and had the two children cling tight to him, the three as one body staking their lives on a dead tree, while now and then with his other hand he shielded the children's heads from the thick branches of the trees the water swept past.

The autumn rain was cold and the flood like just-melted snow-water; before long Liu Xu's and Liu Wan's lips had gone a faint purple, and Zhuo Siheng reckoned his own color was no better. He was truly hungry and cold, the strength in his body nearly spent; but each glance at the two children — one arm each clasping him, one hand each hooked on the drifting log — drew from deep within him a surge of brave, resolute strength, and he gritted his teeth and stayed unmoving as a mountain.

The more trees, the slower the flood; as the water spread to the sides its level dropped a good deal too. Zhuo Siheng felt his toes could already touch bottom, and the water was slow enough; with the last of the little strength left him he dragged first the princess, then the crown prince, up onto the drifting log, bidding them lie flat and low, while he himself still soaked in the icy water.

Several eddies formed among the dense trees, and Zhuo Siheng too had to hang half his body on the log to dodge the life-taking oncoming trees; being much taller than the children, he was the harder to shield, and busy dodging what was ahead, he didn't see clearly a branch jutting from his side, which, as the eddy spun the log about, swung in at him slantwise.

With the current's momentum, Zhuo Siheng's skull seemed struck a hard blow; at once there was white light and red everywhere, a droning in his ears, and after two cries from the crown prince he passed out cold.

As if he'd truly died once more, Zhuo Siheng seized his departing consciousness amid a strange agony; his body, hurting everywhere, urged him to open his eyes at once, and so he could only obey.

What he saw was the sky, and two little faces cried into smears.

"He's awake!" Princess Qingshan's voice was full of joy, but what came out was a loud wail.

The crown prince too kept wiping his tears with his mud-caked sleeve, smearing his face worse and worse...

Zhuo Siheng couldn't help finding them dear and pitiable, thinking: your own father's passing would probably be about like this. Fighting down the veto of his whole aching body, he sat up trembling and gathered the two weeping children into his arms.

They were atop a huge stone platform; the drifting log had lodged just where this great rock jutted out. The flood had already receded, all mud and tree-wreckage below the stone; the clouds drifting overhead were a paler silver-white, but the sun kept sinking westward among them.

It seemed they'd have to pass the night here.

In any case, before other preparations, the children had first to be soothed.

"How did you get me up here? Stop crying now, come tell me." Zhuo Siheng didn't need to lower his voice on purpose; he was basically rasping in a spent, feeble whisper.

The crown prince, older after all, swallowed his grief: "After the water dropped the log lodged here, my sister and I jumped onto the rock and tied you with a vine and pulled you over."

Zhuo Siheng turned over the two children's palms, soaked pale and grey, and saw them covered in red-purple rope-welts; his heart ached and was moved at once, and seeing too the many fine cuts on their faces — surely scraped by treetops the current had passed — he couldn't help holding the children tighter.

"I'm truly sorry; I said I'd protect you two, and passed out first myself." Zhuo Siheng stroked the two children's palms in encouragement: "It's thanks to you two, strong and clever, thinking of this way, or there's no knowing how we'd have gotten through tonight."

The crown prince seemed never to have heard anyone call him clever; now overwhelmed by the favor, yet hearing it he looked surprised: "Shouldn't we hurry on back to the central field-camp?"

"Unless there's no other choice, we mustn't walk the forest by night." He'd meant to say wild beasts prowling for food were dangerous, but fearing to frighten the children, changed it to a less terrible reason: "By night one can't tell one's direction — it's very dangerous."

The crown prince nodded in sudden understanding, and even Princess Qingshan stopped crying and only listened quietly.

"So we've got to get some things to see us through the night, live through tonight first, restore some strength, and look for the road tomorrow." In such special straits, there was no minding ruler-and-subject courtesy; besides, were he still to say "your servant" this and humble words that, the two children would only shrink the more — better, truly, to be bold this once and stand as their elder brother, and he ordered: "Crown prince, princess, you must help me with something."

"Attendant Zhuo, big brother, tell us." The princess, praised a moment ago, had suddenly turned brave, feeling herself much relied upon.

Zhuo Siheng thought: I'm your father's subject, and you call me big brother — our generations are all in a muddle. But now wasn't the time to fuss over it, and he only smiled and said gently: "This job can't be done well while crying."

The princess at once composed her face and sat up straight, shaking her head hard to show she wouldn't cry.

"Go gather some branches, not far off — only nearby, and only this kind." Zhuo Siheng picked up a wet, thin pine twig at hand: "I'll go find some other things; with a fire tonight we'll have nothing to fear."

"But it's so wet — can a fire really be lit?" The crown prince was doubtful.

"We've got to try." In truth Zhuo Siheng had no certainty himself; though he'd learned how to make fire with wet branches, he'd only ever watched Old Huyan do it and never yet succeeded himself.

He staggered to his feet, saying "forgive me" as he undid the princess's long hair-band, and with this pale-purple silk ribbon tied one hand of each child together, lest the two get separated, and gave a round of other cautions before he'd let go.

His own siblings needed no coaxing; they'd tasted the greatest hardships and were too sensible and obedient. So Heaven, this day, let him make up the share of the past dozen-odd years, giving him two siblings who could cry, so he might taste for once the real feel of being a big brother.

Though in fact... it felt rather nice.

Keeping the children's backs always within his sight, Zhuo Siheng rose to survey the surroundings. The hemp-backed bow still hung on the drifting log; thanks to the guards' fine weapon-craft, neither the fierce onrush of water had snapped nor broken it, and so their lives were saved. The quiver too had stayed slung tight across him, only removed when the children dragged him; now fallen into the mud below the rock, Zhuo Siheng went down to pick it up and check — nine fine-iron black-nocked arrows, not one missing, all sealed in the sheepskin quiver.

Then he walked alone up higher on the rock.

This was a small platform of several great rocks joined, the seams between them meshing jaggedly to form many crevices parallel to the ground — some too narrow for even a branch, some wide enough to lean half one's body in to look. Fierce birds of prey loved to nest in such places; by autumn most of these nests were abandoned, but the shredded wood and dry down used to build them were the softest and fluffiest, and with the water never having risen this high and the rain unable to blow in, the dry conditions deep in the crevices were well kept. Zhuo Siheng leaned his whole upper body in, groped a good while with an arm's added length, and at last felt a dry nest, tugging it out gently with two fingers — sure enough, a fine nursery a bird had readied for its own young; after so long a spell of rain outside, it was still neither damp nor collapsed. On the way he dug out a few dry pebbles from within too, and set them all carefully in a spot untouched by water for later use.

The children had by now brought back two armfuls of branches; Zhuo Siheng had them rub off the wet bark on the inner rock ledge, to raise the heat a little and evaporate the damp, then took out an arrow and struck the iron nock against the un-wetted pebbles, using the sparks to light the dry bird's-nest. Last, he set it in a ring of pine twigs whose bark he'd rubbed off to bare a little resin — not dry enough, but hot enough now...

And so the campfire caught.

This conjuring-trick of a fire-making performance utterly cemented Zhuo Siheng's status as chief in the two children's hearts; likely, were he now to usurp the throne, the two children would clap and cheer their support just as they had a moment ago.

Warmth settled, there was still hunger to settle, and that was simple for Zhuo Siheng: he had the children dry their clothes at the fire, then, alone, marked his way and went into the woods to catch a hare that had lost its burrow, startled by the flood; lest the children be frightened, he killed and skinned it before bringing it back to the makeshift camp.

Though these two children had seen a man killed, better add a little less to their trauma...

Zhuo Siheng also climbed higher to pick a handful of sour-berries, crushed and spread them evenly over the hare-meat, then roasted it, using the natural sour tartness to cut the gaminess and spare the meat, with no salt, from being flavorless and poor in texture.

The two children stared round-eyed, feeling Zhuo Siheng must be some immortal come down to earth to have such powers; and when the fresh, fragrant, glistening hare-meat went into their famished bellies, they were the more sure Zhuo Siheng was surely transcendent, possessed of uncanny skills, a legendary figure out of the storytellers' tales.

"Attendant Zhuo, big brother, does a zhuangyuan have to know this too?" Liu Wan, full at last, cast him a worshipful look.

Aloud, Zhuo Siheng said it was only a bit of skill learned back home, but thought in his heart: back then he'd believed he'd have to rely on some survival-of-the-fittest, polar-expedition heroics to feed his family, and who knew things would turn and he'd become a zhuangyuan — he'd thought these skills would never be needed again, and how was he to know two precious darlings would drop from the sky for him to lead in wilderness survival?

Fate truly wound through nine bends and eighteen turns; and in all that circling, no telling on which road the blind cat had blundered onto a dead mouse.

At this Zhuo Siheng found it funny — he'd studied his way to a zhuangyuan, and the metaphors in his mind were still so clumsy.

Having eaten the hare-meat, his spirits much improved and his aching hurts a little eased, he went again to gather pine twigs, rubbed off the bark, and fed the fire; still somewhat damp, the fire poured out black smoke — but that too might be a blessing in disguise: if a party searching for the crown prince could see this smoke, so much the better.

Ah yes — the crown prince.

As Zhuo Siheng fed the fire, the two children's filthy clothes were about dried; but the autumn night was heavy with dew, and it had just rained, and they huddled like sparrows in winter, stretching their hands gingerly toward the flames for warmth.

If not now, there'd likely never be a fit time; unwilling as he was, Zhuo Siheng had to ask these two dear, biddable children the question that had nagged at him: "Crown prince, princess, some things, if not asked now, may never be spoken of once we're back; here under high sky and far moon there are only we three — can you tell me the truth? Why did the two of you fall behind, and how did you meet the assassin?"

Princess Qingshan, hearing this, went white in the face again, but having lived through the turns of life and death, she'd grown much stronger, held back her tears and didn't cry; the crown prince thought: if I can't trust Big Brother Zhuo, who saved my sister's life and mine, whom can I trust? — and told him all of that day.

It turned out Princess Qingshan had no interest in hunting; she'd only joined that team of young maidens for the fun and to ride like her brother. The crown prince wasn't keen on riding and shooting either, only that if he took no game he'd offend his imperial father the more, whereas a good catch of game might, back home, let him plead for his mother.

The idle soldiers in the crown prince's team didn't want the toil of ranging about, and asked him to set traps to catch game and pass it off as shot; the crown prince wouldn't allow it, and those men, never close to him to begin with, grew ever more slack, forever hollering — after only a little while in the woods — that they were tired and thirsty; the scouts too were careless, and the first two days led the crown prince in circles, never far out at all; when it rained on the third day they camped and lingered by a small tributary of the Pei River, some crying they were hurt, some crying they were sick, and none willing to move a step further.

The women, meanwhile, rode out at dawn and back at dusk, day after day, hunting the next day again at the forest's edge; Princess Qingshan was no exception, and hadn't thought that riding out alone with her guards on the third day she'd actually find her brother's camp. Brother and sister met, and the crown prince's gloom lifted a good deal, and he kept her to dine in camp before going back. But before the two had finished talking, from somewhere came cold arrows, felling several of the princess's people one after another; the rest, all the crown prince's own idle-soldier attendants, actually knelt and kowtowed to the assassin who walked out of the woods, saying they'd done as told and lured the two here, and begging only for their lives.

Terrified and panicked as he was, the crown prince knew something was amiss, and while the assassin finished off those men, quick as lightning pulled his sister onto a horse and fled into the woods. The two galloped a whole night in the forest without aim, yet couldn't shake the assassin, and were at last cornered by him; the two abandoned the horse and fled again, and, not far off, were easily caught up — and just as they thought they'd die there, Zhuo Siheng dropped from the sky...

Having heard it, Zhuo Siheng pondered a long while, and asked: "Did he say anything?"

The crown prince shook his head: "From start to finish, apart from... that dying word, he said nothing."

Zhuo Siheng fell silent.

First: the assassin had so easily arranged and bribed the crown prince's hunt-attendants to lure him to the appointed place; if he had the means to arrange an assassination, and for the satisfaction of revenge, wouldn't it be handier to slip in among them himself and strike by night, then get away? Why so roundabout? The only explanation was that he acted alone, on a tightly calculated schedule, unable to be in two places at once, and had a reason to conceal the crime — the killing couldn't be too conspicuous.

Second: the assassin's chosen spot was near the channel of the Pei's tributary; Zhuo Siheng had wondered before how the flash flood came so conveniently. The channels near the royal forest were mostly diked for safety; a day and night of downpour could raise the water high and make it brim, but wouldn't necessarily form a flood-crest — unless someone blew a breach, hoping to use the flood to cover the crime. And this explained the first point: the assassin needed time to arrange his means of destroying the evidence and the bodies, and, when the rain came, to blow the channel and let the flood scour away the proof of his attempt on the crown prince.

Last: the assassin cursed the empress for "selling her master for gain," pointing straight at the storm before the emperor's accession; to make a great matter of it back home and rouse the court would mean digging up the assassination's whole motive, old grudges of years brought to light in a day — precisely the things the emperor had never once mentioned all these years. Therefore, even if the emperor knew of the attempt, he might not be willing to pursue it to the end; he'd hold his secret close, forever.

So much for that.

After the analysis, Zhuo Siheng was much disheartened, for he knew that, by the degree of the emperor's affection for the crown prince, there was nowhere near enough to support a self-exposing pursuit to the root; the empress might not be willing to raise it either. The matter ran deep — perhaps a hidden hand behind it lending secret aid, perhaps only one assassin's long, careful arrangement; with no evidence there was no knowing, only that it seemed tied to Jingzong. At that point, the truth of the matter was, by his single strength, extremely hard to learn.

Harder still, he had also to persuade the crown prince and princess, the very victims, to accept this reality.

"Crown prince, princess — may I ask, do you trust me?" This time, he didn't choose to call himself "your servant."

The crown prince Liu Xu, hearing his intimate address, nodded with all his might, worship brimming in his eyes: "Attendant Zhuo, hereafter I'll do whatever you say!"

Princess Qingshan nodded along with her brother: "Attendant Zhuo, big brother, even when you tell me not to cry, I'll obey."

The new-moon dark hid at the sky's edge; on that starless, gloomy night, Zhuo Siheng knew his somewhat rasping voice could give little comfort, but he hoped the principle he spoke might make the two children understand something very important.

"Once back, crown prince, you must tell the emperor yourself the lie I now speak: you and the princess met an assassin, who without a word killed your attendants and chased you the whole way, and at the crucial moment it was you yourself who drew a short blade and protected your sister. Later, you met me, and on the way, as I led you out, we met the flash flood... from there on, tell the plain truth."

The crown prince's eyes went wide, scarcely daring to believe: "Attendant Zhuo, you... you'd have me lie before my imperial father?"

Zhuo Siheng nodded gravely: "That's right, crown prince — for your own sake, for your sister's and your mother's, you must lie."

"But then how will we find out the killer's aim! Whether he had a hidden master! Whether their next target is my mother! These things are so important — are we just to let them slide?" The princess was so anxious she nearly cried aloud: "Attendant Zhuo, big brother — don't tell me... you won't help us anymore? Wanting justice, my brother and I, is surely not too much..."

"I am helping you; there will be no justice in this matter..." Zhuo Siheng knew his voice just then was too calm, and so seemed a little heartless, but he had to be so — gentle words can't solve every problem at every moment. "Remember: not everything under Heaven finds justice at once; wait quietly for the days to come — only so can the heart be set right."

Some justice comes later, and must be claimed with one's own hand once one has the power.

But this principle he didn't mean, just now, to spell out.

The two children stood dazed, as if striving to grasp Zhuo Siheng's meaning.

"This present compromise is for survival; you need only hide the truth, and you can let your mother escape a calamity, let your father give you more love and care, let the two of you seize a better tomorrow yourselves... to await the long days ahead." Zhuo Siheng held the two children's hands, unbearably pained within, yet the words from his mouth were cold and hard as arrowheads: "Compared with these, the truth and justice before your eyes count for nothing."

He knew the emperor's nature too well: succeeding to Jingzong's line, deeply ashamed of taking the thief for father — if the empress had indeed turned against Jingzong to help him to the throne, and he still treated her so, it only proved how hard the hatred in his heart was to quiet... and how narrow the emperor's measure. Were old grievances dug up and the past dragged in, the emperor would surely be enraged, his pity battered to nothing; in the end he'd only ever consider himself, and so the crown prince who exposed the truth and pressed for a full inquiry would surely be implicated — even the one informed party, the empress, might meet the disaster of being silenced.

The princess seemed about to press for herself again, but the crown prince lowered his lids and pressed his sister's hand: "Wanwan, we'll do as Attendant Zhuo says." Though he didn't weep, the helpless, desolate sorrow in his calm voice was no less than any wail.

Hearing her brother say so too, the princess, indignant then more forlorn, said no more; as if by great effort, she nodded through tears.

Neither child spoke again; the forest's long night was uncommonly still — after the flood's scouring, not even an insect's chirp could be heard.

Perhaps utterly worn by the day, before long the princess fell asleep against Zhuo Siheng.

The crown prince had for some while only stared at the flames, saying nothing; unwilling to see him so disheartened, Zhuo Siheng lowered his voice a good deal: "Crown prince, you and I are both elder brothers; we're fated to be unable to act on our tempers and natures as we please in many things — this is what must be done to preserve those we protect and to preserve ourselves."

"I understand the principle." The crown prince lowered his head, his fresh young face drowned in the shadow the firelight couldn't reach: "I must make my father love me before I can protect my mother and sister; the old matters he dislikes — I won't say a single word."

"Does it grieve the crown prince's heart?"

But Liu Xu shook his head: "I'm angry — that a principle so plain, I only saw it when Attendant Zhuo spelled it out so clearly. I really am... unfit to be crown prince..."

"Crown prince, this I can hear only once, and only I may hear it; before anyone else — even your mother — you must never say it again." Zhuo Siheng sat close against him, feeling him trembling faintly, and so took off his own official robe, laying half over the crown prince and, reaching across himself, the other half over the princess, gathering all three as far as he could into the thin warmth: "When the chance is given you, you must grip it fast, for many chances leave no road back. But if you press ever onward, hewing through the thorns, who's to say the end won't be your becoming the very person you most wish to be?"

At these words, when the crown prince looked up at him again, there was at last a starlike light in his eyes: "Attendant Zhuo, I want to become a person like you!"

Zhuo Siheng was taken aback, then smiled: "Crown prince, I too have my own helplessness and things I can't choose; not everything goes as I wish."

"But you always seem to have a way to solve it, and can still protect the ones you want to protect."

Zhuo Siheng's smile slowly faded, sorrow welling up in waves from his heart; after a long while he suddenly lowered his head and smiled: "Crown prince, there were two people I wanted to protect and give happiness to... who are no longer here; however I might turn the tide or lay my plans, I cannot bring them back to my side."

Liu Xu wanted to apologize, but opened his mouth and felt whatever he said would only make him seem foolish; just then a hand clapped heavily on his shoulder, and following it, the Zhuo Siheng who'd reached out was looking at him with an elder brother's gaze: "But you still have the chance; the ones you care for, in the future that is yours, may yet share the same happiness with you, pass the same days with you — so for their sake and your own, for the hope you share, grow strong, and face it all."

Liu Xu's heart quaked; no one had ever spoken to him words so heavy and yet so light, as if to dig out all the pain long buried in his heart, set it in the sun to bake, bake it to ash and scatter it across the sky — and then it would be gone, all the smallness and unwilling grievance and self-wounding sorrow, all vanished.

"Crown prince, a man lives one life; sometimes one must contend with oneself and with fate. A momentary yielding is by no means surrender — so long as the belief, the persistence, the principle in one's heart remain, what harm in a step back?" Zhuo Siheng felt this was said to the crown prince and to himself alike.

For a moment, he suddenly wondered whether his grandfather had once counseled the old treasonous heir the very same words.

Hearing it out, the crown prince at last resolved to rally, threw off his grief and languor, drew a deep breath of the cold night wind, and, like a grown man, nodded gravely, saying in a tone worth a thousand in gold: "I will do it — for my mother, for my sister, for myself."

The two talked on of idle things, but the mood was easy and pleasant now; Zhuo Siheng's slow, unhurried tone could much soothe the heart, and before he knew it weariness came over Liu Xu, wrapped in sleepiness, his words fewer and fewer. Yet dimly he recalled something he'd once heard, and asked drowsily: "Attendant Zhuo, I hear you have a youngest brother too?"

He heard that ever-gentle-seeming voice answer him: "Mm; my brother Xiheng is the same age as the crown prince."

In his haze, seeing the longing and the warm smile in Zhuo Siheng's eyes as he spoke of his brother, for a moment the crown prince wished so much that Zhuo Siheng were his own brother — but then, if so, would the crown prince's seat ever fall to him? A thousand thoughts turned in an instant, and the last before weariness dragged him into sleep was this: if he had no mother and sister and were alone in the world, being such a crown prince would be no fun at all — better go to the Zhuo family and be a little brother to Zhuo Siheng, and live happier.