Chapter 7: The Lantern Banquet

The palace garden had been hung with a thousand paper lanterns shaped like carp, and every one of them seemed to be looking at Wenxuan.

He sat at the emperor's left hand in his best green robe, with his back straight and his wine untouched.

Across from him, the general sat in black and silver, enormous and silent, with the whole court leaning away from him.

He had not slept either.

His boots were on the wrong feet, and Wenxuan had not told him.

Five days of breakfasts had taught Wenxuan to read that silence now.

It meant he had not eaten, and was trying not to look at Wenxuan, and was failing.

"Champion Jing!" called the emperor. "Your poem!"

Wenxuan stood.

"I have it, Your Majesty. But the Marshal is to read it."

A murmur ran along the tables, half laughter, half dread.

Minister Hong lifted his cup behind his sleeve.

Wenxuan took the folded paper from his sleeve.

He walked it down the length of the garden himself, past two hundred courtiers, and put it in the general's hand.

"You don't have to," he said, low.

"I will."

The general rose.

The whole garden fell silent, because the Butcher of Hanlu Pass had stood up with a piece of paper.

He did not look at it once.

He looked straight at Wenxuan.

In the plain low voice that did not know how to be anything else, he said the poem to the lanterns.

A man in the snow.

A road with no end.

A lamp left lit in a window.

Wenxuan had heard it once before, in the dark, in the same voice.

Out loud, before two hundred people, it sounded like the truth.

When the last line was done, no one spoke.

The emperor had stopped smiling.

Somewhere at the back, a young poet put down his cup and began, quite helplessly, to clap.

Then they were all clapping, and a few of the older ministers were wiping their eyes.

Minister Hong clapped last, slowly, and his eyes went from the poem to the general, and then, very sharply, to Wenxuan.

The general sat down.

He was the color of the lanterns.

Wenxuan returned to his own place and found his hands were shaking in his lap.

It took an hour for the first insult.

It came from a red-faced lord of the Board of Works, who had been into the plum wine since noon.

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