Chapter 5

She stroked her translucent arm, studying the blue veins beneath her skin. Even without my title as princess, the blood flowing through my body still comes from Gaozu and Taizong. Empress Zetian Dasheng was once trapped in Ganye Temple too, alone and without support, yet she persevered and rose again. Now I'm trapped in Green Micro Temple, but at least I still have a head of black hair-more than Empress Wu had.

Her blood came from the noblest imperial house of Li Tang, and from the most indomitable bloodline of Wu Zhou. How could she simply fold her hands and wait for death at the first setback?

Thinking it over more carefully, perhaps this affair had been aimed at Prince Shao. Although the question of succession had been shelved for now, and her elder brother had been demoted and sent to Youzhou, several highly influential ministers at court still supported him in secret. The position of crown prince remained unsettled; a reversal was not necessarily impossible.

She took a jade-backed comb from her bundle of jewelry and combed through her hair. She had always been proud of its thickness. No matter how towering or elaborate the hairstyle, she had never needed a false hairpiece to fill it out.

Now, without a maid at her side, she could not even gather it all together. When she caught the left side, the right scattered; when she gathered the right, the left fell into disarray. In the end, she could only twist a simple bun on each side and braid the great mass remaining at the back of her head, letting it hang down her back.

An Imperial Guard had kicked her hard yesterday. At the time, she had been so enraged and desperate to die that she had felt nothing. Today, as she combed her hair, a burning pain flared beneath her ribs. She quietly loosened her silk skirt to inspect it and found a broad patch of purple bruising. The lightest touch made her gasp in pain.

Thirteenth Son poked his head through the doorway and said happily, "You're finally awake! I checked on you several times last night. I was afraid you'd do something desperate and turn cold."

"Children really have no filter," the princess scolded, disregarding the fact that yesterday she herself had sought death and cried out to heaven and earth.

"Here. Eldest Senior Brother went into the city last night and bought you a medicinal plaster. I've heated a stone. Warm the plaster until it softens, then put it on yourself." With that, he brought over a stone scorched charcoal-black, gripping it with iron tongs, and handed her a medicinal preparation spread on oiled paper.

Princess Wanshou had been lively and active since childhood. It was not as though she had never been injured while playing polo or enjoying a hunt. Back then, however, crowds of imperial physicians and attendants had tended her carefully, and her parents and brothers had all come to visit. When had she ever needed to soften a plaster and apply medicine herself?

Things were different now. Having medicine at all was already good fortune. Her nose stung and her eyes grew hot. She hurriedly cast those thoughts aside, accepted the plaster, and carefully warmed it over the stone until it softened. As she did, she thought that the young fellow named Wei had a cold face but a warm heart-and sharp eyes too. She herself had not noticed that kick, yet he had seen it through a crowd of people.

After applying the plaster and putting her silk skirt back on, the princess noticed Wei Xun's dagger still embedded in the pillar and pulled it out.

The dagger was about eight inches long, with a rhinoceros-horn hilt, and looked quite old. She could not tell what material its blade had been forged from. It was an unusual gray-black, dull and unremarkable at first glance. Examining it in the sunlight, she saw faint, winding patterns like flowing water, fused into the metal itself, though the surface felt perfectly smooth. It possessed a distinct air of antiquity.

Two characters in bronze script were engraved near the hilt. Though she was skilled in calligraphy, she knew little of ancient inscriptions on metal and stone, and could only vaguely recognize the character for "fish."

Yesterday, Wei Xun had seemed to drive the dagger into the pillar without the slightest effort. The princess tried swinging it. Before she could cut anything, Thirteenth Son hurriedly called out, "Careful! That dagger is incredibly sharp. Pieces of you will fall off before you even notice."

"Surely it isn't that exaggerated." Thinking Thirteenth Son simply did not want her touching his senior brother's belongings, the princess put some force into thrusting the dagger back into the pillar as it had been before. To her surprise, it sank silently all the way to the hilt. Only then did she realize he had spoken the truth: this unassuming dagger was indeed a keen weapon.

Thirteenth Son was in no hurry to leave. He sat in the veranda outside the doorway and chatted with her.

"Does your senior brother have a horse? How did he make another trip to Chang'an so quickly?"

Thirteenth Son snorted with laughter. "Poor folk like us don't even have a roof tile to shelter our heads. How could we possibly have a horse? Eldest Senior Brother has exceptionally strong legs. When he says he'll go, he goes; when he says he'll return, he returns."

The princess recalled the humiliation she had suffered outside Anhua Gate yesterday. The more she thought about it now, the stranger it seemed, and suspicions sprang up thick and fast.

She demanded, "He calls himself an unregistered wanderer. Where did he get the official travel papers to pass the checkpoint and enter the city? Besides, the capital has a curfew. After the evening drums, both the city gates and ward gates close, and the Imperial Guards patrol the streets. Where could he have bought the plaster?"

"Well, cats have their paths, and rats have theirs." The boy mumbled, trying to muddle his way past the question.

The princess would not let him off. She seized his monk's robe and snapped, "Go fetch your senior brother!"

"I'm here. What are your orders, Princess?"

Wei Xun appeared silently behind her. The girl's heart skipped a beat in fright. Steadying herself, she demanded, "You clearly knew a way to enter the city without travel papers, yet you stood there watching that gate official make things difficult for me. Why?"

Wei Xun looked utterly innocent. "I can manage those ways of entering the city, but you can't, Princess."

The princess refused to accept that. "What can you possibly do that I can't?"

"At midnight, after the guards on the gate tower have completed their second change of watch, climb over the city wall barehanded and slip straight in. Or, for a little more trouble, strip naked, hold your breath, and swim underwater into the city through the Yong'an Canal."

Princess Wanshou's almond-shaped eyes widened. She pressed her lips together, speechless. Both routes sounded utterly preposterous, yet his tone was perfectly sincere.

Still angry, she turned to interrogate Thirteenth Son. "Can you climb walls and hold your breath too?"

Thirteenth Son hurriedly waved his hands. "This humble monk cannot. My Dharma name is Shanyuan. I am registered as a monk and lodge at Baotai Temple in the city. I ordinarily wander and beg for alms, and my travel pass states that I may move freely through all twenty counties of Jingzhao Prefecture." He then pressed his palms together and invoked the Buddha, performing the entire sequence as smoothly as drifting clouds and flowing water.

Princess Wanshou understood at once. So this was what "cats have their paths, and rats have theirs" meant! No wonder a layman and a little novice monk called each other senior and junior brother. That novice's identity was a lawful cover for a thief.

Seeing how thoroughly he had angered her, Wei Xun dropped his teasing and said, "I truly didn't know you couldn't get through the gate. I wasn't deliberately standing by with folded arms. If there is someone in the palace you trust, I can deliver a message for you."

The princess's gaze sharpened, and she sank into thought.

Did she have anyone she could trust? Naturally.

The most reliable was her full elder brother, Prince Shao, Li Yuanying. He had left Chang'an a few days earlier, obeying the decree to serve as prefect of Youzhou. Next was her full younger brother, Li Yuanyi. He had been a newborn when their mother passed away and had always lived with his sister in Phoenix-Resting Hall. They were extremely close. But he had only just turned seven. Although he had been granted the title Prince of Anping, he could hardly shoulder such a burden.

Her maternal uncle, Xue Wenyao, had once risen to chancellor, but he was both greedy and cowardly. After the Noble Consort's death, he had feared meeting the same fate as Yang Guozhong and had spent years pleading illness and living in retirement, ignoring affairs of state. Her cousins were all high-ranking wastrels. Feasting and making merry together, cockfighting and coursing hounds-that was one thing. Entrusting them with her life was something she truly dared not do.

After considering every possibility, the two trusted female officials at her side seemed the safest choice.

So she told Wei Xun, "I have two reliable female officials in the palace: Xianyu Jing, the ornament officer, and Xia Fangchun, the discipline officer. But they are both in the inner court and difficult to contact. Please take a letter to Officer Xia's home in Yonghe Ward in Chang'an and ask her family to pass it on. Oh, do you have paper and a brush here? Once she sees my handwriting, she'll understand immediately."

Wei Xun neither moved nor answered. He merely looked at her with a complicated expression, a trace of pity in his eyes.

The princess grew uneasy. Had he changed his mind and decided not to help?

Wei Xun asked, "Did those two female officials attend you personally? Did they have any distinguishing features?"

The princess paused. Even if you know what they look like, you can't possibly deliver a letter directly into the palace. Still, she described them truthfully. "They are both quite pretty. Xianyu Jing is two years older than me, with very fair skin and a red tear mole beneath her eye. She likes green silk skirts and wears her hair in a drooping horse bun. Officer Xia is in her thirties and has a full figure. There's a coin-shaped burn scar on the back of her neck."

Wei Xun lowered his eyes and considered for a moment, apparently searching his memory. Then he said gloomily, "I'm afraid that letter can't be delivered. I can't visit the underworld just yet."

Hearing this, the princess sprang to her feet in shock. "What do you mean?!"

Wei Xun had not wanted to tell her that everyone in the tomb had been executed and buried as sacrificial attendants. But now that the conversation had reached this point, he had no choice but to tell the truth.

"You were the only living person in the underground tomb, but there were forty-two dead. Judging by their clothes, they were your maids and eunuchs. The woman with the tear mole and the woman with the scar on the back of her neck were both among them."

The princess opened her mouth, trying to cry out in grief, but something blocked her throat. Dizzy and weak-kneed, she slowly crumpled to the floor.

Dead? All of them dead?

The registers of palace maids and eunuchs assigned to Phoenix-Resting Hall listed more than three hundred people in total. Yet fewer than fifty were permitted inside to attend her and Li Yuanyi personally. All the others were lowly servants forbidden to enter. In other words, everyone close to her had been slaughtered to the last.

She had read histories and occasionally heard of disasters in which grave crimes brought collective punishment and the extermination of entire clans. This time, however, she experienced for herself the chilling despair of being driven into a dead end. Those people had spent more time at her side than her own blood relations. Their voices, faces, and smiles still seemed to hover before her eyes, yet in a single night, life and death had divided them. Every moment of these past few days, she had dreamed of returning to the palace and immediately resuming her former, ordinary life. Now that fantasy proved to be nothing but a fool's dream.

Tears brimmed on the girl's lashes, then spilled from her eyes in crystal beads. When they died, did they bleed dry like Mother too?

Wei Xun stood and beckoned to his junior brother, intending to leave her alone to cry for a while.

But the girl forcefully wiped away her tears and called through her sobs, "Don't go! I'm not returning to the palace!"

Wei Xun turned back, surprised. "What?"

After turning it over in her mind, the princess made a painful decision. With the resolve of a warrior severing his own wrist, she told them, "I want to go to Youzhou and seek refuge with my elder brother. Escort me there, and once it is done, I guarantee you both a lifetime of wealth and honor."

Wei Xun asked gravely, "Chang'an is two thousand li from Youzhou. The world is no longer at peace as it was before the An Lushan Rebellion. Bandits run rampant everywhere, and the journey will be full of hardship and upheaval. Do you truly want to go?"

With tears in her eyes and an unyielding expression, the girl nodded.

"I still have a younger brother by the same mother in the palace. He turned seven just a few days ago. The plot behind the attempt on my life runs deep. I absolutely cannot drag him into it."

Thinking of Li Yuanyi, she said sadly, "Mother died in childbirth. My little brother's birthday is the anniversary of her death. He has never had a happy birthday. He grew up at my side, and in past years I always spent his birthday with him. Now that I'm gone too, he must be terribly sad, all alone."

Wei Xun suddenly asked, "Then a few days ago was the anniversary of the Noble Consort's death?"

The princess nodded. "The nineteenth day of the fifth month."

"Oh," Wei Xun said.

"Come to think of it, this Twelve-Branch Flower-Tree Hairpin belonged to my mother when she was alive. I don't know why it was put on my head for the burial. That's another strange thing." The princess took the magnificent piece of jewelry from her bundle and cradled it in her hands, stroking it gently.

The hairpin had a golden lotus for its base. Its twelve pin-shaped branches were densely covered with countless flowers hammered from thin sheets of gold, with pearls and gemstones as their centers and gold wire for stems. Some were shy, tightly closed buds; others were poised to blossom. Most were large flowers unfurled in full bloom. At the slightest breeze, the gold wires trembled, like a tree of golden flowers swaying and gleaming in an age of prosperity.

It was both a peerless treasure painstakingly fashioned by skilled craftsmen and a token proclaiming a titled woman's status and rank. In those days, when the Noble Consort had worn that flowering tree at palace banquets, her matchless splendor had fired the inspiration of every poet in Chang'an, making their brushes move as though guided by the gods.

Thirteenth Son asked curiously, "Is burying a mother's belongings with her daughter a palace custom?"

The girl shook her head. "Of course not. According to rank, only an empress may wear twelve flower ornaments. I can wear nine at most. Mother received the honors of an empress during her lifetime and was posthumously made empress, so naturally she could wear it. For me, wearing it exceeds my rank."

Although seven years had passed, the scene of her mother's death remained vivid before her eyes.

The newborn wailed. The Noble Consort lay in a pool of blood, her cloud-black hair and pearl-lustrous nails soaked with her own blood. She wanted to touch her child's cheek but was too weak to lift her hand. Sobs filled the room. The emperor wept hardest of all. Sitting on the bed, he asked for her final wishes, but she could no longer utter a word.

Li Yuanyi-his name commemorated the woman the emperor had loved most.

As Letian's verse said, "Nowhere is more heartless than the imperial house." After her mother's death, she had fallen to such depths. Could even love that profound be forgotten?

Thirteenth Son pressed his palms together and recited several lines of the Blood Bowl Repentance, chanted especially for women in childbirth, to comfort her.

The girl forced herself to rally, wiped away her tears, and said, "This hairpin must not fall into anyone else's hands. Take the rest into the city and sell them for money to cover our travel expenses."

The girl carefully set her mother's flower-tree hairpin aside, then took a jade-backed comb from the bundle for daily use. She wrapped up the remaining hairpins, jeweled necklaces, bracelets, and armlets and handed them all to Wei Xun.