“That is to be expected, for your first time,” he said. “It would be a wonder if you could play it well right away.”
For a moment I wondered if he’d sensed my tension, and sought to comfort me. But his voice was too matter-of-fact for that. I gave myself a small shake. I needed to stop scrabbling for sentimentality where there was none to be found.
“Adjust your finger positions here.” He moved my wrist forward, his fingers cool through the thin fabric of my sleeves. “And do not pluck it with such blunt force. These strings are sensitive. A slight change in pressure can change the sound also. Listen.”
All morning we stayed out by the pond, practicing with the instrument. I played again and again until my skin had been rubbed raw, but uttered no sound of complaint. It was Fanli who saw the fresh blood smeared over the hair-thin strings, and came to an abrupt stop.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, frowning. “We could have taken a break.”
“No.” I didn’t lift my fingers off the guqin. “I think I’m starting to get it. Let me try a little longer.”
“You will ruin your hands this way.”
I ignored him. I had always hated leaving things unfinished. But it was more than that: I needed to prove to someone, if only myself, that Icoulddo this. That I was equipped not just with the pretty features I had been born into. That I would be just as good, if not better, than the sheltered girls who were instructed in dance and song and classical instruments from childhood.
When both my hands were slick with my own blood, I found that I was able to play a simple tune on the guqin from beginning to end. The heady rush of satisfaction instantly swept all the pain aside. I turned around, grinning, to Fanli.See?I wished to gloat.I can do it after all.
“Good” was all he said.
But he was staring at my hands.
We quickly settled into a routine. The mornings were dedicated to learning the guqin, among other instruments, singing, and all styles of dance. Some of them I had never even heard of before—they involved the swishing of brightly colored fans that flared out at the edges, while others required spinning around in rapid circles on the same spot. The first few times I attempted this, I ended up falling on all fours, the world swaying before me so violently I thought I would be sick.
“Watch the movement of the swans,” Fanli would tell Zhengdan and me, pointing at the creatures’ slender necks, the way they glided over the waters. “Dancing is an expression of beauty, and what is beautiful is always derived from nature itself.”
“He only says such things to avoid demonstrating the dance for us himself,” Zhengdan muttered into my ear one session. I had tofight so hard to control my laughter that I almost lost my balance on the second spin.
Lunchtimes were just as rigorous. There seemed no end to the number of rules that came with a single meal. Eating was no longer just a means of nourishing the body, of appeasing the empty stomach and ensuring one had the energy to work another day, but a highly complex ritual. It was considered a great offense to have the head of a fish dish turned toward the king; an offense to make audible noises while chewing in the king’s presence. It seemed to me that the problem lay more with the king; who else would have the energy to be offended by nearly everything? Of course, I kept these thoughts to myself. I had not forgotten what Fanli told us the first day about the beheaded official.
But despite all this, what I looked forward to most were the afternoons. Here the focus shifted to classics, poetry, politics, and history. The stories Fanli told us—and to me, they felt exactly like stories, these romantic, dramatic, and tragic tales that did not happen to ordinary people—were wildly fascinating, made even more engaging by the fact that he himself was acquainted with many of the characters.
“What do you know about Wu Zixu?” Fanli asked, stepping around his desk.
We were sitting in his study, a closed-off room on the other end of the courtyard from our bedchambers. The late orange sunlight moved in filtered patches over Fanli’s desk. A map of the fractured empire lay across it, marking the borders between the Wu and the Yue, and places beyond our two kingdoms, places so far away they felt to me like they belonged to another world entirely: the Chu to the west, the steppes to the higher north, the Yellow Sea stretched along the coast. From afar, the fragments of land looked like shattered porcelain.
Beside the map was a dense diagram of various figures, their relationships drawn out in a series of dotted ink lines and Fanli’s tiny annotations.
“Wu Zixu…” The name was familiar, but I could not quite place where I’d heard it. Then I remembered the common saying, passed from villager to villager. Out loud, I recalled, “Wu Zixu is to King Fuchai what Fanli is to King Goujian.”
Fanli’s brows rose a fraction. “You are correct, in some sense. Though I’d argue he was more valued as an advisor by Fuchai’s father, King Helü. Wu Zixu was the one who helped Helü assassinate his cousin and ascend the throne. From the inside reports I’ve received, Fuchai does not trust Wu Zixu quite as much as his father did. Which is good for us. Why do you think?”
I rummaged through what little I knew for an answer. The Wu’s and the Yue’s interests were forever at odds. What was good for us had to be terrible for them. “Because… Wu Zixu’s advice could make the Wu stronger before we have a chance to attack. Because a king who doesn’t trust his own advisor is easier to deceive. Or because… Wu Zixu is most likely to suspect King Goujian’s plan for revenge?”
Zhengdan nodded beside me. “That makes sense. It takes like to know like, and Wu Zixu has always wanted revenge himself, hasn’t he?”
I turned to her. Zhengdan spent more time in the village center than I did, and gossip sometimes proved a surprisingly reliable source of information. “Revenge for what?”
“For his father,” Fanli explained, returning to his position behind the desk. He pointed an ink brush at another name on the cluttered diagram and traced it back to Wu Zixu. “Wu Zixu originally came from the State of Chu; his father was grand tutor to their crown prince. But this official”—he drew his brush farther down to a name written in red—“spread the rumor that his fatherand the prince were plotting a rebellion. While awaiting his execution, the grand tutor was forced to write a letter to his sons, asking that they come to the capital. Wu Zixu recognized it was a trap, and fled to the Wu Kingdom instead.”
My stomach turned cold.
Treason. Traps. Treachery. The more I learned about these men and their methods of obtaining power, the more I dreaded entering the court myself. I was just one person. Could I really stand to outwit them all, to seduce their king right under their noses? How did any of them even manage to fall asleep at night, knowing that one wrong move could rip everything away from them?
As if I had spoken my thoughts aloud, Fanli fixed his gaze on me. “Zhengdan is right. Wu Zixu is a naturally suspicious man, who cannot tolerate the slightest speck of sand in his eye. Watch out for him. If my predictions are correct, he will be the first to suspect you, and will do everything he can to make your life in the palace difficult.” His eyes darkened with urgency. “You must find a way to remove him from King Fuchai’s side as soon as possible.”
“Or else?” I could barely breathe, dreading the answer.
“Or else he will remove you.”
