Page 90 of The Cinders
Lim’s vision tinged with gold, but he saw well enough.The row of scales — those unique marks of the golden carp — was nowhere to be found.
‘She is gone,’ Xian said quietly.‘Truly this time.’
‘But never really so.’
‘Never really so.’A smile curved Xian’s lips only to fade in the next blink of an eye.‘Oh…the flowers…’ He planted his hand over his mouth and nose, face crinkling with repulsion.‘Their scent is overwhelming.’
Lim sniffed.‘I smell nothing.’
‘You are lucky in that.They are almost too rich to bear.’
Xian dashed to the other side of the pavilion, where the narcissus blooms teetered back and forth, their yellow centres like tiny waving suns.He must have moved on his toes, for the slippers made barely a sound against the floorboards.
‘What is going on?’Lim stared out at the sea of yellow and white and green; the flowers shuddered on their stalks.Violent shifts back and forth, as though something foraged beneath the long strips of their leaves.Not so strange an occurrence, normally.Except this was not just one flower, but all of them at once.‘Xian?Unless the earth is being shaken by a tremor I am numb to, that does not look natural to me.’
‘Because it is not.’Xian turned to him, clearly harried.‘I think they are telling me to leave.’
‘The flowers?’
‘Or Mai, through them, somehow.Her light is around them…but, I don’t know.I’m new to floral conversation, Lim, to all of this,’ he said, a familiar tinge of panic in his voice.‘There is so much to take on at once, the sounds and the scents and…I feel so strange…’
Lim decided against his normal caution, and took hold of Xian’s shoulders, urging him gently.‘Turn about…look at me, Xian.Never mind those flowers.’He waited until he held the prince’s troubled gaze and prayed he’d choose the right words; the man looked ready to sink into the same panic that had taken him in Kunming.‘I will not pretend to know what it must be like for you, nor what it means to be a huli jing, but I know a thing or two about the fox.He is stealthy and cunning, and a cleverer animal I’ve not met.’When Xian seemed unconvinced, he pushed on.‘Instinct drives him to walk through a creek to throw off a hunter.He walks in such a way, his back feet land in the print left by the front, making him harder to trace—’
‘Lim, I don’t have four legs.How does this help me?’Violet eyes darted back towards the flowers.‘I have so much to learn, and none to teach me.I shall make mistakes, ones that might endanger you.I should never have told—’
‘Hey!’Lim’s curt cry had Xian’s mouth rounding with surprise.‘Do you think me so feeble I cannot handle myself?’
‘No, of course not.But this is such a—’
‘I have a talent forbajiquanthat would leave you speechless.’
Xian’s lips twitched, and Lim felt his shoulders slacken beneath his palms.‘You know the martial art of the emperor’s bodyguards?’
Lim gave him a lop-sided grin.‘One day I will show you.But for now, Xian, do not worry about me.Focus on yourself.Listen to your instincts.Those incredible instincts, born of the fox spirit you hold.’
Xian’s tensions melted beneath Lim’s hands.His shoulders lifted with a deep intake of breath.‘I must return to my rooms.’He nodded at his own words.‘Yes.That is it.But I hate to leave you here—’
Lim took his hands from Xian’s shoulders with regret and hunched into a stance he imagined an emperor’s bodyguard might make, if he had a clue what he was doing.‘Go on now.We shall see in the New Year together.Chen is overworked enough, he’ll keep me busy, and the hours will pass quickly I hope.’
Xian’s eyes drifted over Lim’s body; cruel of the prince, really, for how it stirred a weary shoemaker.‘I think you are a better shoemaker than a bajiquan master, Song Lim.’
‘Get on with you, your highness.Before I’m forced to teach you otherwise.’The thought of man-handling Xian had Lim abandoning his posturing, shifting away before unsightly protrusions could mortify them both.‘How shall I find you, when the time comes?’
‘I will find you.’He touched his nose and grinned with charming impertinence.
Lim stared at him, appalled.‘Idostink.’
Xian bent down to remove the slippers, tucking them both into the folds of his sleeve, and setting his feet into his plainer shoes.
‘I also know exactly where you are, Lim.That too is helpful.Until midnight?’
‘Until midnight.’He watched Xian move through the flowers — leaving no hint of his passing — and disappear down the side of the workshop where a path led back out to the thoroughfare.
He stood for a long while, taking in all that had just happened, his hand running over the dampness of Xian’s tears on his jacket.Lim was dirty and road-weary, his clothes thick with the dust and grime of his travels, but Xian had clung to him, regardless.Lim would never get the sound of the prince’s sorrow out of his mind, but he was awash with the most spectacular happiness.
‘You have utterly ruined me,’ he whispered to the empty garden.‘I’m done for.And yours entirely.’
A bang nearby had him almost jumping out of his skin.He spun about, his pulse maddened.The noise had come from a door or a gate, he suspected, but the door at the back of the workshop was wide open as he’d left it, and the only gate he could see on the far side of the garden, a simple structure of wooden panels, was closed.