Chapter 17: Held

By evening the house had gone quiet in a way Zhiruo had never heard before.

The servants moved on soft feet.

Nobody sang in the kitchen, and nobody dropped a pot.

Biyan had not spoken since the hall.

She had gone upstairs and taken off her robe.

She had sat down on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap.

She was still sitting there when Zhiruo came in with a tray.

Granny Mo had sent it up.

There was a bowl of rice porridge, a dish of pickled radish, and a covered cup that smelled of ginger.

It was not the third of the month.

Zhiruo set the tray on the table and sat down beside her.

"Eat something."

"I cannot."

"Then hold the cup."

She put it into Biyan's hands, and Biyan held it, and the steam rose past her face.

For a long while neither of them spoke.

"I used to count them," Biyan said at last.

"At night."

"I counted the doors, the guards, the servants."

"I knew who could be bought and who could be frightened."

"It was how I slept."

"I know."

"All that time I was counting twenty-three people who were counting me." Her voice was flat and raw.

"Every day I bowed back to them and thought, you are mine, you will not talk."

"And they were thinking, poor child."

"Poor girl in her father's hat."

"They weren't thinking pity."

"How would you know?"

"I was in the line, once."

"Not here."

"In the Lu house." Zhiruo kept her eyes on the cup.

"You can tell pity from the other thing by what people do on a bad day."

"They did not pity you."

"They hid your cloths."

Biyan's mouth shook.

"I am afraid of something else," she said.

"Tell me."

"I am afraid that I am nothing under it." The words came out in a rush.

"The hat is one thing."

"The robe is another."

"The cold face, the exact brush, the voice I use at court, I made all of it up when I was seventeen."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Cold Minister and the Substitute Bride from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.