Chapter 20: The Last Quiet

The guards stood outside the wall all night, and no one inside the house went to sleep.

The servants went to their rooms and shut their doors.

Granny Mo left a lidded pot of ginger soup outside the bedchamber and knocked once, softly, and went away.

Zhiruo carried it in with both hands and set it on the table.

Biyan stood at the window in her inner robe, looking down at the dark court where the borrowed hats had been.

"There are four hours until the bell," she said.

"Then we have four hours."

Biyan turned.

She had undone her hair, and it hung over her shoulders in the lamplight, black and straight and heavy.

Zhiruo had seen it a dozen times now.

It still stopped her breath.

"I do not want to talk," Biyan said. "I do not want to plan. I want to spend them with you and think about nothing."

"Good."

"All four."

"All four," said Zhiruo, and crossed the room.

She did not kiss her at once.

She took Biyan's hands, turned them palm up.

She kissed each of the long fingers in turn, the way she had wanted to since the first night.

Biyan watched her do it with her lips parted.

She kissed the inside of each wrist where the pulse ran, quick and light.

She kissed the crook of the elbow.

By the time she reached the shoulder, Biyan's breathing had changed, and her eyes were half closed.

"Come to bed," Zhiruo said.

They went.

The quilt was cool.

The lamp stayed lit, turned low and gold, and Zhiruo did not blow it out.

She wanted to see.

She laid Biyan back against the pillows and untied her robe.

She parted the silk slowly.

Nothing was bound.

Nothing was hidden.

The skin was pale and warm, marked faintly across the ribs with the lines of thirteen years.

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