Chapter 6: The Roof

At the eleventh hour, a guard in violet brought a cup of warm milk to the Emperor's bedside.

Linyuan took it from him with both hands, thanked him, and poured it down the brass basin.

The guard watched it go.

He bowed and left, and for a long moment Linyuan stood listening to the Hall breathe.

It was the first night in two years the boy had gone to sleep on nothing but his own tiredness.

Linyuan lay down on his pallet in the antechamber, between the brazier and the screen, and stayed awake until the sky turned grey.

He must have slept an hour at most.

When he opened his eyes, the screen had been pushed aside and the Emperor's bed was empty.

The blankets were thrown back.

The shutter on the east window swung open, and a cold wind came in off the roofs.

Linyuan was on his feet and through that window before he had time to think.

He came from the docks of the outer city, and he had climbed worse than a palace.

The roof of the Hall of Everlasting Spring is a long slope of green glazed tile.

A stone dragon crouches at each corner, and the ridge is wide enough to sit on.

On the ridge, in his nightrobe, with his bare feet braced against a dragon's tail, sat the Emperor of Great Liang.

He had a cloth bundle in his lap, and he was eating a steamed bun.

"You took a long time," Zhao Yunhe said with his mouth full. "I thought you were a better climber."

"You're sixteen and you've been half asleep for two years."

"Yes, and this morning I woke up and thought, I should see the sun."

He pointed at the horizon with the bun.

"I haven't watched it rise since I was fourteen."

Linyuan scrambled up beside him and sat, because there was nothing else to do.

Below them the whole palace was just starting to move, with chimneys smoking.

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