Chapter 8: Red Blood

Mingjue pulled the sheet over the red spot before Liyan could speak.

"It is a scratch," he said. "Nothing."

He was smiling, shy and dazed and happy.

His hair was wild around his shoulders, and there was a mark on his neck where Liyan's mouth had been.

Liyan smiled back, because he could not help it.

Then he looked at the finger again.

It had stopped bleeding.

The cut was small, and very ordinary, and it was the same color as his own.

"Go and have breakfast," Mingjue said. "Bo will complain if I keep you."

Liyan went.

Bo was in the kitchen, scolding a row of tiny silver carp about a pot of congee.

He saw Liyan come in and began at once to look busy.

"Bo."

"Young master. Egg? I've drawn you a smile."

"Is he ill?"

"Ill?" A ladle clattered into the soup. "Dragons are never ill. It's in the nature of the thing."

"His blood is red."

Bo dropped the ladle.

It rang on the stone floor, and he bent for it with enormous concentration and came up very slowly with his whiskers shaking.

"Candlelight," he said. "It's the candlelight. Everything looks red in candlelight."

"Bo."

"I am a carp, young master."

His round eyes shone with misery.

"I have been told I may not lie to you. I have not been told I must remember."

"So you remember."

"I remember nothing. I am very old. Try the egg."

Liyan did not touch the egg.

He went to the east wing and sat down at the table.

The messenger carp had fetched his water-mark ledger from the schoolhouse, and he opened it to a clean page.

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