Page 27 of The Nightblood Prince

Seasons came and seasons went.

I never wrote the letters to Siwang. When the pearly white powders ran out, I smeared rouge so the phoenix’s mark looked like any other birthmark. Sometimes, when I was short on money to buy the pigments, I simply wore a headband to cover it.

For some reason, by covering the mark I lost my abilities to glimpse the future. So I did it sparingly when I could.

I hid well in plain sight, disguised as a man traveling alone.

A year passed in the blink of an eye. Before I knew it, snow softened to water the earth and spring was upon us again. The air grew warmer and sweeter with every passing day.

I woke in the cold bunk of the only inn in Duhuan, a city to the west of the empire, closer to the Lan border than I liked. I was surrounded by the stench of men and the damp scent of mold—two things I’d rarely experienced during my time inside the palace.

Sleep was futile in places like these, where bodies were packed like livestock for winter. Especially when nights quite literally rumbled with the snores of men.

I stared at the ceiling for one heartbeat, then two, and hopped up from the bed. My eyes were still heavy, but I couldn’t stay in this pigsty a moment longer. I also didn’t want to fall back asleep and witness more bloodshed on the front lines.

My fault. That constant voice surfaced again. Everything is my fault.

Siwang had been right after all. Sometimes we got what we wanted, only to find out it wasn’t how we’d imagined it. Leaving the palace was just like that: what I’d wanted, though not how I’d imagined.

I peeked outside the papered windows and onto the dark streets. Some vendors were already setting up their carts for the morning.

The innkeeper was still asleep when I stepped outside. “One scallion pancake,” I told the old lady setting up her stall across the street.

“Three coins.”

“ Three coins?”

“We all have to make a living, young man. Flour is expensive, and the price of eggs is going up, too. It won’t be long until I have to charge you five or six coins for a scallion pancake.”

I took in the old lady’s empty eyes and wrinkled hands.

The early morning was freezing cold, yet someone her age was already out to sell food.

I couldn’t help but think of my mother and sister, who had also resorted to selling food at the market.

I wondered if they, too, were waking up at dawn just to spend the day letting hot oil splatters scald their hands for coins they’d never had to count in the capital.

It is not too late to change your mind. I heard Siwang’s voice in my ears, lulling me home.

“Three coins it is.” I gave her the money and took a seat on a low wooden stool while she mixed the batter and heated the oil.

I took out the address again. Trying to track down the stargazer was more difficult than I had anticipated.

Almost a year later, and I was still coming up on dead ends, trying to find new leads that might indicate where she was.

She hid like a woman who did not want to be found, and I wasn’t sure how I should feel about this.

For one to hide, there must be a hunter not too far behind.

Thankfully, not everyone in her life was so good at hiding their trails.

“What is a northern girl like you doing so far west?” the old lady murmured once she handed the pancake to me.

My head jerked up.

She laughed. “Relax, your disguise is good. I used to be young once, used to travel disguised as a boy because it was easier. I’m just saying it is not safe for a girl to be this far from home in times like these.”

“The war is pretty well contained to the south side of the empire,” I reminded her. “The west should be fine for a while.”

“Nowhere is safe in the times of tyrants, my dear. There are some things you will understand when you get to my age.”

“We are going to be okay,” I said out of habit, even though I didn’t believe it—even though I had seen the future and knew it to be a lie. One had to hope. “Speaking of why I’m here, can you tell me where this is?”

I handed her the piece of paper. When my original lead for finding the stargazer’s family came to the cold end of an untended grave, I bribed this from a neighbor.

The neighbor said she had not seen the stargazer, whose birth name was Yinxing, since she was a child—the younger of two daughters, sold to the palace at five years old to be trained in the art of foresight.

She had told me that six months ago, right around the time that Yinxing’s father had died, a strange woman had shown up.

She wore a long, dark veil, so the neighbor couldn’t get a good look at her face, but her stature and voice and mannerisms reminded the neighbor of Yinxing’s mother, who had run away years ago.

“You are here looking for family?” the old lady asked as she handed the piece of paper back to me.

“The mother of a friend.”

“Zhang Jing is not a friendly woman,” she whispered, voice low like it was a secret, or a warning. “She lives on the outskirts of the village and keeps to herself. She has a garden and chickens and only comes into the village for red meat during times of festivities.”

“Have you seen her recently, or do you know if she still lives by herself?”

“Like I said, she doesn’t come into the village often, and has no friends or family that I know of.”

“Her husband died six months ago. Do you know—”

“You are asking a lot of questions for someone who—”

I reached into my pouch and handed her ten more coins, and the old lady stopped midsentence. She pocketed the coins, looked around as if someone on this empty street might be listening to a random traveler and a gossiping aunty. “What do you know of her family, especially her daughter?” I pressed.

The old lady took the seat across from me and sighed.

“I know her family was poor. The butcher is kind to her, and he said that her husband is— was —a gambler and she was…well, she was a woman with few options. She had two daughters once upon a time, and had to sell both to cover her drunk husband’s gambling debts.

One to the palace to be trained as a seer, and the other… well.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, forever grateful that in some ways I was lucky the Emperor of Rong had found me first and promised me to his son, who grew up to be a good man.

If someone else had found me first, someone who was not as kind…

I shuddered to think how my life would have turned out.

“Has either of her daughters ever visited her?”

The old lady shook her head. “I know nothing. However her place isn’t far from here. West of the village. When the sun comes up, walk in the opposite direction and you will find her.”

I didn’t wait for the sun to rise. The village wasn’t very big, and I found the small cottage to the west soon enough.

The cottage was small, behind a short fence covered in vines. The door to the garden was unlocked, so I stepped inside. Everything was quiet, and the house was dark.

I looked around for the chickens the old lady had mentioned. I saw their pen though I heard nothing inside. The garden was overgrown with dead plants. Snow covered everything, with no signs of footprints coming in or out.

My stomach twisted tight. There was a familiar odor that grew stronger and stronger as I approached the door and contemplated whether it was too early to knock, only to realize…the door was already unlocked. There was a slight gap where snow had blown inside and built up.

Run, my better instincts told me. Run, and don’t look back….

I tried to push the door open, however something was blocking it from the other side. Something heavy and limp and—

I screamed.

A corpse, long dead and half rotten, fell into view.

I quickly covered my mouth. I recognized that stench now, one I had known only from my dreams.

From the state of the corpse, the stargazer’s mother had been gone for a while.

And there were words written in dried blood on the pale walls: 天命不可违 . The Will of Heaven Will Not Be Defied.

Bile burned the back of my throat. I couldn’t afford another dead end. I should go inside, look for a clue telling who had done this to her. For my last lead would require me to venture more south than I wanted to go: behind the battlefields and into Lan’s borders.

My stomach retched again, and I stumbled back. I had seen enough.

I ran back to the village just as the sky began to brighten. I should find the butcher. He knew the stargazer’s mother well. But I didn’t know where the butcher was and could find only the old lady, who sat by her now set-up stall.

“Sh-she’s…,” I stuttered. “She’s…”

The world fell away.

A flash of colors.

A vision.

Red-eyed soldiers wearing the deep blue uniform of Lan, running against a darkening twilight sky that was impossible to distinguish as morning or night.

Screams. The same earsplitting screams that filled my nightmares.

“Run!” I screamed. “They are coming tonight!”

The stray villagers on the street turned toward me. “Who?” someone asked.

“Lan’s army!” I shouted for the people in the market to hear. The sun was coming up. They were going to attack either now or tonight. “You have to run! We don’t have time. We—”

“Shut up!” someone shouted from inside the inn. “We are trying to sleep!”

“No, you have to believe me! Lan is going to attack soon. They are coming!” I grabbed the old lady. “Please, you have to believe me!”

She took me in, and her eyes lingered on my forehead, where the phoenix’s mark was barely covered by rouge.

“I am not leaving my stall.”

“We are going to die!”

“These bones are not made for running! If they want to kill me, they will! If the Lans plan on attacking, then I am going home! I will not fight! I will surrender, because I am not leaving!”

She handed me one of the scallion pancakes she had already made, and the coins I had given her earlier.

“Take this. I will make more food,” she said, her voice unsteady and her eyes misty.

“When Lan’s army comes, they will see that I am useful and make good food.

They will let me live. You go now, child. Take care.”

I watched her. She didn’t look like the sort of woman who would change her mind, and I wasn’t a saint. I couldn’t save everyone I came across. Especially those who didn’t believe me.

“Let the village know—”

“This is my home, girl. I have watched half the people in this village grow up and get married and grow old. Do you know how many flags we have seen in that time? Regardless of who rules over us, this is our home. We will not fight if the enemy comes. And if they want to kill us, then we will die where we were born. We are nobodies in this world, and when asked to choose between tyrants, we will always choose whoever is winning.”

“Lan is not winning.” Lan can’t win. Because if Lan won, what would happen to Siwang?

“I will pass the message on to those who might want to flee if Lan’s army does come. Now go, girl. Go home. It is almost the New Year; don’t you want to see your family?”

So I did as she told me.

I clutched the pancake and ran as fast as I could through the market, until I reached the end of the village and the quiet, icy forest where snow piled up to my thighs.

I ran as fast as I could. I slipped and got back up and then slipped again and still I didn’t stop.

Even as a trail of red bloomed in my wake.

And I imagine you are not the only one who wants answers for being…different? Prince Yexue had uttered in that amber-lit cave. I had looked for the stargazer when I arrived in the capital, but I never found her….

I headed east.

I headed home.