Chapter 7: Peach Ford

Peach Ford smelled of rain and frying dough.

Wuhen had not smelled anything so ordinary in a hundred years.

Chenjue had walked them out of the palace through a doorway of black fire.

They had come out on a muddy road under a wet blue sky.

The horns were gone, and the red eyes had gone a plain dark brown.

He wore a traveling coat of undyed cloth and carried Wuhen in his arms.

"Put me down," Wuhen said. "People are looking."

"People are looking at a man carrying his sick brother."

"I'm not your brother."

"You're sick." Chenjue shifted his grip. "And you're not walking."

"I'd like to try."

"Try on the bridge."

On the stone bridge over the river Wuhen stood for a count of forty.

His legs shook.

Chenjue stood close behind him with one palm flat in the small of his back, not holding, only there.

Below them the water was pink with fallen blossoms.

The peach trees on both banks stood in full flower, cloud after cloud of them.

Children ran under them with paper kites.

A petal landed in Wuhen's hair.

Chenjue plucked it out, and then his fingers stayed, brushing the hair back from Wuhen's ear.

His thumb slid down the edge of it, slow, and stopped at the lobe.

Nobody had ever touched him there.

A shiver went down Wuhen's whole spine.

"Wind," Chenjue said, a little too evenly.

"There isn't any wind."

"There was."

Under Wuhen's palm on the stone rail, his own pulse was racing.

Behind him he could feel Chenjue's chest rising and falling too fast.

He carries a man twice a day, Wuhen told himself. He's hot-blooded. It's nothing.

"You're staring at the water," Chenjue said.

"It's a nice river."

"We swam in it once," Chenjue said.

"We nearly got arrested."

"By a very small magistrate." Chenjue's mouth turned up. "You said I looked like a drowned dog."

"You did."

"You were the one who pulled me out."

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