I Was Sent as Tribute to the Prince I Shot novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Shorn Head
Jiang walked into Changhe with his hair cut to the nape, knelt to no one but the prince he shot, and told him to his face he would shoot him again.
They cut his hair at the gate of Changhe, and then they made him walk.
In Yan, a beaten general cuts off his own topknot and lays it at the victor's feet.
Jiang Zhanyuan had done that three weeks earlier at Stone Ford.
So his hair stood in black stubble to the nape, and the wind off the Long River found his neck with every step.
The first snow of the year was coming down on the road to the palace.
He wore the undyed grey robe of a tribute, and his wrists were tied in front with red silk cord.
The cord was only for show.
He could have snapped it, and everyone watching knew it, so they stood very far back.
Liang had come out to see the man who shot their prince.
Nobody threw anything.
Jiang had braced for rotten turnips, and the quiet was worse.
A woman in mourning white stood at the edge of the road, holding up a wooden tablet in both hands.
She did not shout.
She only looked at him, and she kept looking until the crowd closed behind her.
Jiang was twenty-nine years old, and he had never lost a battle he was allowed to finish.
He had lost this one, and the emperor of Yan had signed him away.
The Treaty of Stone Ford named him by title.
General Jiang Zhanyuan was given to the Crown Prince of Liang, as his tribute, to be held until the wound was answered.
His three thousand men in the Liang camps would go home on the day it was.
That was the only reason he kept walking.
The palace court was paved in white stone and lined with two thousand Liang soldiers in winter quilting.
At the far end, on the top step, stood a man.
Grand Marshal Cen Daoming wore scale armor over crimson silk and a jade ring the size of a plum.
"There he is," Cen said, and his voice filled the whole court.
"The Yan dog who put an arrow in our prince."
Nobody moved.
"Liang law is plain," Cen went on.
"A wound to the royal blood is answered in blood.
Take his head now, while the Council still has the stomach for it."
Two guards stepped in and took Jiang by the arms.
He stopped walking.
He did not shove them.
He only stood, and it took them a moment to understand they could not make him go forward or back.
"I'll kneel when I reach the man I owe," Jiang said.
"Let go, or carry me."
The guards looked at Cen.
Cen looked at the step above him, where someone had just arrived.
"Marshal," said a soft voice, "you're blocking my light."
The prince came down the steps slowly, with his left arm held stiff against his side.
For a year Jiang had pictured him as a boy in a gold helmet on a barge.
He was a man, slender and fair, in teal-green silk with gold thread.
His hair was knotted up under a jade comb, with the rest hanging to his waist.
There was a small dark mole under his lower lip.
The guards let go of Jiang.
He walked the last twenty paces by himself.
At the foot of the steps he went down on one knee, then the other.
The stone was so cold he felt it in his teeth.
Lin Jingshu stopped in front of him.
For a long moment Lin did nothing but look.
Then two of his fingers slid under Jiang's chin and tilted his face up.
It was not rough.
It was the lightest touch Jiang had known from anyone who wasn't tying a bandage.
It went through him.
Lin smiled.
"They told me you shoot well, General."
"Not well enough."
"No?"
"I was aiming at your heart."
Somebody in the line of soldiers gasped.
"I know," said Lin, almost kindly.
"I was there."
His thumb moved once along the edge of Jiang's jaw, and Jiang's pulse jumped under it, and Lin felt that.
Lin looked at the Marshal over Jiang's head.
"The treaty says held," he said, "not killed.
He is mine until the solstice rite.
Anyone who lays a hand on him, to hurt him, answers to me."
"Highness..."
"To hurt him, Marshal," Lin said, very gently.
He took the end of the red cord in his good hand.
Then he led him up the steps through two thousand silent men.
The Orchid Court was at the back of the palace, behind a moon gate and a frozen pond.
Lin's room had a lacquer screen, a brazier, a long desk piled with maps and a single bed.
He shut the door and cut the cord with a hairpin from his own hair.
Then he took Jiang's right hand and laid it flat against his left shoulder.
His collar was open.
The scar was under Jiang's palm, a hard knotted ridge as long as a finger, high on the back of the shoulder.
Jiang frowned at it.
He had shot at Lin's chest across the river.
But men turn, and Lin must have turned.
The skin was warm, and Jiang could feel him breathing under it.
"Do you know what this is?" Lin asked.
"My work."
"Are you sorry?"
Jiang's whole body had gone tight.
Lin was close enough that he smelled orchid oil and winter air on his skin.
Jiang had never touched a man like this.
He had never touched anyone like this.
He was twenty-nine, and his hand was on a prince, and every part of him was listening to it.
A clever hostage would have lied.
"No," Jiang said.
"I'd shoot you again."
Lin stared at him.
Then he laughed, a real surprised laugh that bent him over his bad shoulder, and Jiang felt it under his hand.
"Good," Lin said, when he could.
"The last man who said sorry to me wanted something."
He straightened, still smiling, and did not move Jiang's hand.
"Fifty-eight days to the winter solstice, General.
Then the Council decides whether you live."
He glanced at the bed.
"I don't trust my own guards with you, so you sleep where I can see you."
"There's one bed."
"Yes," said the Crown Prince of Liang.
"Isn't there."
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