Batu also jumped down from the wall, hoisted his shepherding stick onto his shoulder, gave Halbala’s rump a kick, and drove the flock back.
Que Zhi rose from the low wall and walked over to him.
Batu had already gone ahead, still loudly humming an off-key pastoral song, his shepherding stick swaying back and forth in the dusk.
Que Zhi walked shoulder to shoulder with him out of the market. After a few steps, he suddenly felt the sleeve of his robe gently hooked by someone’s fingers—looking down, he saw Xiyu’s index finger caught on the leather cord at the edge of his wrist guard,
pulling him a step to the side to avoid a puddle of urine on the ground, whether from a camel or a horse he couldn’t tell.
The step was neither too big nor too small, the same distance as every time they walked side by side across the Gobi—except this time, his fingers didn’t let go.
He was still hooked onto his wrist guard, as if leading a horse that needed no reins.
Que Zhi’s voice was low and muffled: “Where do you want to go after this?”
“I already said I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Then take your time. No matter where—”
“You’ll follow. I know. Batu already said that. You two are quite in sync.”
Xiyu turned his head to look at Que Zhi and suddenly smiled.
“The market here in the royal city is way bigger than Liangzhou’s. Next time it opens, let’s come early. I’m going to buy out that whole dried-apricot stall.”
“You can’t eat that much by yourself.”
“Who said by myself? You’re eating too. That bag today was mostly snatched by Batu—next time we’re not bringing him.”
Xiyu walked forward a few steps, his fingers slipping off Que Zhi’s wrist guard, but not entirely pulling away—just hanging by his side,
the back of his hand brushing against Que Zhi’s, knuckles less than a finger’s width apart, like two leaves blown together by the same wind, neither leaving before the other.
In the distance, Batu’s pastoral song was still going, its crooked melody drifting over, mingling with the camel bells of the market packing up.
The two walked slowly into the royal city’s gathering dusk, behind them the market growing quiet, ahead the road back to the palace.
—
Xiyu hadn’t properly looked at himself in a mirror for a long time.
The last time was at the inn lobby—a palm-sized bronze mirror hung behind the counter, everything in it veiled in a yellowish haze.
Before that, it was the cold palace, that one mirror left by his mother.
Every time he bent down to scoop water, he deliberately avoided seeing himself clearly—that face was too beautiful, so beautiful that in the cold palace it was a crime.
Old Zhou said, Hide that face of yours well. Don’t let anyone see it.
He took it to heart, deliberately smearing his face with dirt so no one could make out his features, hiding for eighteen years.
After leaving the palace, crossing the Gobi under wind and sun, frozen by snowmelt in the mountains, scorched by sunlight on the grasslands, he only ever caught glimpses of his own reflection by the water.
The streams were too rippled, the wells too deep, the bronze basins too dim.
It had been a long time since he’d seriously looked at what he actually looked like.
So when Que Zhi brought back a new bronze mirror from the market and set it on the wooden table beside the low couch,
Xiyu saw on his own face a “Xiyu” that didn’t quite match the blurry image in his memory—one that had crossed an entire Gobi and snow-capped mountains.
The mirror wasn’t large, round, its surface polished to a brilliant shine, the frame plain silver without ornamentation—simple and understated, the kind of style he would like.
He pulled the mirror closer, tilted it toward the afternoon light slipping through the window lattice, and studied the face in it.
The bronze mirror cast a warm tone in the afternoon light, enveloping that face in a soft, pale golden glow.
Still those peach-blossom eyes, with their naturally upturned outer corners, carrying a hint of a half-smile even when not smiling.
His eyes still held that natural flush at the outer corners—that faint, natural flush, thinner than rouge when lit through by daylight, like the water-pink along the edge of a peach blossom petal, blown translucent by the spring breeze.
It spread from the corners of his eyes toward his temples, fading the closer it got to his hairline; where it was deepest, it was no more than the first layer of color left by a peach blossom pressing onto rice paper.
The tear mole beneath the corner of his right eye still hung at the edge of that thin red, like a single grain of black sand blown onto a petal.
His lashes were still that long and curled, casting faint shadows across his cheekbones.
His hair was unbound, cascading from his shoulders down to his waist; the deep, dark strands made the pale skin of his neck and ears look nearly translucent, his earlobes tinted pale pink by the warm afternoon light, like porcelain glaze faintly blushing during firing.
He tucked his hair behind his ears, revealing his entire face.
It seemed to have matured somewhat since he left the palace—the line of his jaw still tapered perfectly, but now carried a broader, more open quality, as if carved by the Gobi’s wind and snow.
His skin was no longer that sickly pallor from the cold palace, but had been kissed by the northwestern sun into a faint, healthy flush. His lips, too, held more color than before—no longer that worrying, pale lavender that made people think he might faint at any moment.
Xiyu leaned closer to the bronze mirror, pressing his fingertip against the thin red at the corner of his eye. Under the gentle pressure, it faded into a pale pink close to his skin tone; after he released it, the color slowly seeped back, as if a tiny, unquenchable flame lay hidden just beneath his skin.
Xiyu turned his head slightly, watching the lines of his profile shift slowly in the mirror—from forehead to nose bridge, from nose bridge to lips, from lips to chin—every curve landing with perfect precision, as though someone had traced a meticulous beauty portrait on rice paper with the finest brush tip.
It hovered there, half-revealed in the depths of the bronze mirror, and for the first time, he felt that this face was not a burden, but a part of himself.
When he’d been locked away in the cold palace, he never knew what his mother looked like; he could only piece together an image from Old Zhou’s descriptions.
Old Zhou said his features resembled his mother’s, but he was even more beautiful than her—but Xiyu had never seen her, only the worn-out quilt and the leaky tiled roof of the cold palace.
Later, he learned to walk with his eyes lowered, using the brim of his hat to shade the vividness at the corners of his eyes.
Too many people saw only “weakness” in that face and dared not come near.
It wasn’t until he walked out of that palace, into the Gobi, and for the first time got sand in his eyes with no one to care, that he slowly began to examine this face.
This tear mole at the corner of his eye, this thin red that had never faded—they weren’t ugly. They just hadn’t yet had the chance to become beautiful before he met Que Zhi.
Que Zhi walked in from the courtyard, carrying freshly washed grapes in his hands.
He saw Xiyu sitting on the low couch, staring blankly at the bronze mirror.
Daylight streamed through the window lattice, gilding the contours of that face in a soft, pale golden light.
Xiyu saw him come in, set down the mirror, and stood up to run over barefoot—
but Que Zhi caught him around the waist with one arm and set him back on the low couch. “Careful, the floor is cold.”
Xiyu took the bowl of grapes and set it on the table.
Que Zhi didn’t speak. He just placed something else beside the grape bowl—rouge.
A small porcelain jar of rouge, its body plain white glaze, the lid painted with a tiny blue flower.
It was the same variety as that blue flower he had once knelt beside by the stream, watering it in the name of someone from his past.
Xiyu looked down at the jar of rouge, then looked up at him, his eyes curving into a smile. “Last time you slipped me dried apricots, and now rouge. Que Zhi, I don’t wear makeup.”
“It’s not for wearing. I just thought the color matched the shade at the corners of your eyes. You never look at yourself in the mirror. I wasn’t sure if you knew.”
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