Page 60 of The Cinders

He stepped over the ruined seeds and continued on.A lucky thing he was not too bothered by small spaces, because this one had his arms grazing the stonework.

But what did he care about a tear or two in his jacket, if this path led him to the prince?Clothing could be mended or replaced.

Finally, Lim reached a low wall of stacked stone; reaching barely to his waist, it would take no effort to surmount.There, spilling before him like a sea of sunshine, lay the inner courtyard of Mandarin Feng’s residence.Lim set down the bucket atop the wall, its wide flat surface as good as any table.

He peered out into the opulence and precision of a nobleman’s residence, and thought how much closer it was to a palace than the Governor’s manor in Kunming.

The courtyard was empty, save for a couple of women, whose rushed pace suggested they were attendants needed elsewhere and soon.

Lim should hardly have been surprised not to find the prince there in plain view, but disappointment dug her claws into his belly.

Mandarin Feng’s rooms would be those that occupied the northern wing; a grand and noteworthy structure with a roof of bright red tiles and black capping that curled up at the lip like ocean waves.Yinglongwere carved in stone and sat at each corner of the rooftop; the winged dragons showing a vicious set of pointed teeth.Below, granite tigers guarded the entranceway at the top of a short flight of wide stone steps.Opposite where Lim stood in the cool shadows, the bright sun touched at the eastern wing, a building of double storey with flower-boxes at each window; filled with white and pink daphnes.The flowers were a favourite of Lim’s.He’d crafted replicas of their clusters to set atop the toes of a pair of flat-soled slippers.But seeing the blooms here bothered him.Like the lotus at Master Ren’s farm, this was hardly the time of year for such flowers.He knew of techniques that were enabling unseasonal growth, but these daphnes were not growing beneath glass boxes; they were out in the elements, petals bright and healthy despite the hug of winter on the air.Truly, Manhao was a curious place.

Lim laid his freed hands on the pouch, assuring himself that he’d not had the slipper snatched away by an erstwhile thief in the crowd, and considered his options from here.

The lady with the eels had mentioned the delivery of meals from the kitchen, which Lim had been toying over in his mind since.Seeking an audience with Feng did not sit well with Lim; an unaccountable resistance formed in his mind every time he thought on it.

Dangerous, his instinct seemed to whisper.

So what if he could find a place among the attendants going into the palace, instead?Catch Xian’s eye, and hope the prince did not point a finger and order him thrown out at once.What if Xian ate alone in his rooms?Lim brightened at that.Perhaps he could pretend Master Ren intended the lotus seeds for the prince alone, to aid his melancholy?If the guards had let Lim enter so easily at the gates, might they allow him into the palace itself?

With his head bursting with devious ideas, and his heart lifting eagerly at the possibilities, Lim picked up the bucket, and turned from the splendid gardens with their perfectly raked pebbled pathways.

The pouch snagged against the rock, jolting him back.More lotus seeds made their way down to the muddy ground.

But Lim’s eye was drawn upwards; a shadow, a bird perhaps, rising from the gardens.It swooped up to where a curtain fluttered out from its frame on the upper floor of the east wing.

A hand slipped around the edge of the sand-coloured linen that shielded the occupants of the rooms from the brightness of the sun and pulled the fabric back; revealing a sliver of a face.

‘Xian,’ he breathed, his hips digging into the unyielding stone.

The prince’s hair, remarkable strands deep black as squid ink, fell loosened over his shoulders as he reached out to touch the blooms in the flower-box.

Lim sucked in his breath.Xian wore no veil.A strange absence?Or perhaps he did not bother with such a covering when in his own rooms?Lim chased away more fearful thoughts; that the prince still relied too heavily on the tincture, and did not realise — or care — that he stood uncovered.

‘My father warned Xian not to use it too long,’ Daiyu had said.‘but the poor man was beside himself with grief.I doubt he even knew he had left Kunming, let alone remembered our instructions.’

Lim’s thoughts grew darker; what might be done to a man whose mind was addled by the tincture?He pressed against the stone, peering up at the room where Xian stood gazing down at the flowers, his hair falling forward to shadow most of his face, running his fingers back and forth through the petals with a troubling monotony.He didn’t glance up when a peacock let loose with its harsh cry from somewhere in the garden below; locked upon his flowers as though in a trance.

‘I will break his neck if he touched you,’ Lim whispered fiercely.He’d kept his thoughts from imagining that long journey Xian had endured in the captain’s company, and others of Feng’s court; isolated, vulnerable and numbed by grief and drugs combined.

Lim shifted on his toes, considering jumping over the wall and marching across the courtyard until he caught the prince’s attention.

Would happiness flash across his bare face?Or confusion…and disdain?What if there was nothing to be seen in his expression at all, the man emptied by all he’d endured?

Lim pressed a hand to his chest, covering the ache that rose with imagining such things.

‘Get a hold of yourself, stupid egg.’He’d never known himself to be so addled over a man.And one he barely knew at that.Lim ground his knuckles into the stone.‘He’s well, and happy enough to remove his veil.Stop conjuring drama where there is none,’ he remonstrated to himself.‘He’ll think you idiotic for coming all this way to bring him a blasted slipper he could not care less about.Left it behind, because he’s not thinking of you, like you’re thinking of him.You’re a fool, a mindless fool.’

‘Are you speaking to me, good sir?’The low voice was startlingly close, and Lim nearly knocked the bucket off the wall in surprise.

‘No, no, no.’He bowed to the svelte young man who stood nearby, twirling a darkly painted parasol.The stranger, a foreigner, had appeared as though from nowhere.His face was fine and shapely as a woman’s, with eyes as green as polished jade, hair of rich brown, and lips as pink as a baby’s cheeks.His clothing was that of his homeland, whose garish style and tight fit Lim knew many in the Middle Kingdom frowned upon.In his opinion though, the gold brocade of the man’s peach-coloured jacket, the white ruffles at the base of his slender neck and satin gleam of tight black pants made him rather difficult to look away from.

‘My apologies, I was speaking to myself.’

‘Is that because you are friendless, or simply mad?’Came the reply, spoken expertly in Lim’s native tongue with a twist of full pink lips and a hint of a mischievous smile.

Lim eyed the man more intently.‘I am not mad, sir.But as I am not from this town, I cannot claim any friends here.’