The day after they made camp at the river bend, Que Zhi went off to gather firewood, while Xi Yu stayed by the river to do laundry.
The blue robe soaked in the river water, the gray-green surface rippling and blurring his reflection.
Xi Yu crouched on a half-submerged stone, spread the garment flat, lathered it with soapberry, and rubbed it with his palms, stroke after stroke. The crooked stitches Que Zhi had sewn on the cuff grew fuzzy from the scrubbing, but the threads still held fast to the fabric—they hadn’t come loose. He stopped his hands and watched the water slip through his fingers, when a thought suddenly struck him.
Today marked the forty-ninth day since he’d left the imperial palace.
When Old Zhou had passed, Xi Yu had burned paper offerings for him in the cold palace—no incense, no tributes, just a few sheets of scrap paper he’d secretly cut into ghost money. The ashes had scattered in the wind, leaving no trace behind.
He had told himself that the living must keep moving forward.
But now, crouching by this nameless river, the gray-green snowmelt running ice-cold between his fingers, he realized he still remembered the wrinkles on the back of Old Zhou’s hand—each one like a crack in the cold palace’s stone floor.
He lifted the blue robe from the water, wrung it dry, shook it open, and held it up to the daylight.
It was very clean.
He draped the garment over a tamarisk branch by the bank to dry, then straightened up and pushed the damp strands of hair from his eyes with wet hands, revealing his full face.
He didn’t know what expression he wore, but he suddenly wanted to know—how were things now, in the place he’d escaped from?
The capital. The Great Liang Imperial Palace.
More than a month had passed since the fire in the cold palace, and no one paid it any mind.
A prince who had been confined to the cold palace for years—unremembered in life, unlamented in death. The memorial submitted by the Imperial Household Bureau was only a few lines: the cold palace had caught fire; Prince Shen Du had tragically perished; he had been interred according to protocol.
The Emperor had been at his morning meal at the time. He casually approved it in red ink, said “Noted,” and continued eating. Over the years, he had lost too many children. This son, born in the cold palace, who had never even had a full-month celebration—he could scarcely remember having such a son.
But the Third Prince remembered. To be precise, the Third Prince had been scared into remembering.
After the cold palace burned, the Imperial Household Bureau had searched his residence and found a jade pendant and a secret letter.
The jade pendant was his. But the secret letter was not written by him.
He had knelt before the throne and pleaded his case for a full hour—said he’d been framed, that someone had planted the evidence, that the handwriting on the letter did resemble his but he had never written such words.
The Emperor sat on the dragon throne, watching him with eyes as cold as winter glazed tiles. After listening to it all, he said only: “The jade pendant is yours. The handwriting is also yours. You say you’re framed—then someone must have been able to enter your bedchamber, steal your pendant, mimic your handwriting, and plant it all in the cold palace. Is your bedchamber a marketplace?”
The Third Prince was speechless.
The whole affair reeked of something inexplicably strange. A useless waste of a prince waiting to die in the cold palace—who would go to such lengths to kill him? And why frame him? He didn’t believe that waste had the ability to orchestrate such a scheme, but aside from the waste himself, he could think of no one else who would benefit. The thought sent a chill down his spine.
The Emperor stripped him of his duties and confined him to his own residence for three months—a punishment neither harsh nor lenient.
But for the Third Prince, what unsettled him most was not the confinement—it was that ever since, he had felt as though someone was watching him. Waking in the middle of the night, he always felt something lurking in the darkness outside his window.
When walking past the ruins of the cold palace on his way to pay respects to his mother, he unconsciously quickened his pace, not daring to turn his head toward those fire-blackened walls and broken beams.
He didn’t know what he was afraid of—it was only a dead man. But faintly, he suspected that the person who had never shown his face might not be dead at all.
Meanwhile, news of the cold palace fire spread through the six palaces.
The consorts mentioned it in passing during their idle chatter—some with pity, but mostly with indifference.
Virtuous Consort said the child’s mother had died early, and he himself had always been frail and sickly—death was a release. Gracious Consort, fanning herself with a round silk fan, added that the place had been steeped in gloomy energy; it was high time it burned.
Only a few old eunuchs gossiped over their tea, saying that the one in the cold palace had actually been exceptionally good-looking—just unlucky in life. When asked how they knew, they hemmed and hawed, unable to give a straight answer, only saying they’d heard it from Old Zhou, who used to deliver meals there. After Old Zhou died, no one had ever seen him again.
The other palace staff simply assumed he’d been burned to death in the fire—after all, a prince who never left his room, who never showed his face, could disappear without anyone recognizing him.
When word reached the Imperial Household Bureau, the clerk in charge of the imperial genealogy unfurled a thin register by lamplight and turned to the last page, where Xi Yu’s name was written. Beside it, only a single line of small text: Mother: palace maid Xi, died in childbirth the same day. Prince kept in seclusion at the cold palace. No title conferred.
The clerk dipped his brush, smoothed the tip against the inkstone, and added another line beside the name: Winter of the twenty-first year of Daliang Chengkang, perished in a fire at the cold palace. He set down his brush and warmed his fingers over the candle flame.
This register recorded too many princes and princesses who had died young. Some didn’t even have names—only a date of birth and a date of death, one line for an entire lifetime.
This young prince at least occupied a full page.
He closed the register, returned it to the shelf, blew out the candle, and locked the door. The dust-covered book rested quietly against the wall—never to be opened again.
In the Great Liang Imperial Palace, all records of the young prince Shen Du ended here.
The same day. The Western Regions Royal Court, the King’s City.
Que Zhi’s departure was no secret. He was the heir to the royal court, yet he was rarely there—the courtiers had grown accustomed to it.
During council sessions, the old Khan sat on his leopard-skin throne, listening to the tribal chiefs bicker over that year’s pasture allocations. Occasionally, he would open his eyes and glance at the empty seat beside him—the one reserved for Que Zhi. If he wasn’t there, it stayed empty. No one dared sit in it.
After the council ended, the chiefs filed out of the great tent. Old Minister Amur lingered behind, a white-haired elder who had fought alongside the young Khan in his youth and later become prime minister, his words carrying more weight than most.
Leaning on his staff, he approached the throne and looked at the old Khan. “My Khan, the young master has been in the Central Plains for quite some time now.”
The old Khan kept his eyes closed, his voice hoarse and indifferent. “He knows his limits.”
Amur did not argue.
But in his mind, he thought: Limits? The last time he said he knew his limits, he single-handedly wiped out a bandit stronghold and brought back eighteen heads. The time before that, he said he knew his limits, rode alone across the Gobi to negotiate pasture boundaries, and came back with a shoulder wound festering with pus—burning with fever for three days, then mounted his horse again as soon as it broke.
The word “limits” meant one thing when applied to others, and another entirely when applied to Que Zhi. For others, it meant knowing when to stop. For him, it meant coming back alive.
“I am merely concerned,” Amur said, “that the situation in the Central Plains is complicated. If the young master is out there alone and something happens—”
“He’s not going to war,” the old Khan opened his eyes, a flash of shrewdness in them before they drooped again. “If he can settle on a marriage, I’d be relieved.”
Amur sighed. He knew exactly what the Khan meant.
The chief of the Tatar tribe had proposed a marriage alliance three times already, and Que Zhi had turned him down each time with various excuses. The last time, he’d said, “I’ll go take a look in the Central Plains.” Take a look? At what? To see if the Central Plains had anyone worth fighting? Or to see if they had anyone worth marrying?
Amur didn’t ask. He knew it would be useless. Que Zhi, like his father, could not be stopped once he’d made up his mind.
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