“I’m not a prisoner. I’m a maidservant, here to serve Your Highness. After all, His Highness is the Emperor’s son. If anything happens to him, you and your men will have a hard time explaining yourselves, won’t you?”
The soldier hesitated.
Achou hurried to press her advantage. “I’m only going to the town pharmacy. I’ll buy the medicine and come right back. It’s already dark. Where could a girl like me possibly run off to?”
The soldier gave her a once-over.
“Go and come back quickly,” he finally relented. “Don’t try anything.”
“Thank you, big brother!”
With the piece of silver tucked into her clothing, Achou took off running.
A dirt road ran past the relay station. Two li to the south lay a small town she’d glimpsed as they passed through during the day. She had a rough idea of the direction and jogged all the way there.
Night fell quickly.
By the time she reached the town, most of the shops had already closed.
She went from door to door, pounding on them, until she finally found the old man minding the back entrance of a pharmacy.
“I need medicine for a fever, and something for external injuries. Ready-made, please.”
After asking what had happened, the old man gave her fever-reducing pills, herbs for the injury, and bandages.
Achou tucked them into her clothes and turned to run.
As she ran, she suddenly slowed.
There was a fork in the road.
She looked down at the medicine in her arms, then glanced back the way she had come.
The town lights were already far behind her.
No one was chasing her, and no one knew which way she’d gone.
If she turned off now, no one would ever find her.
She was just a maidservant. When the Marquis’s Residence had shoved her into the bridal sedan, no one had asked whether she was willing.
Now she was in an unfamiliar place, beside a paralyzed man she didn’t know, with three thousand li of exile ahead of her. Why shouldn’t she run?
She could run, hide in some village, and who would know who she was?
She took a step forward.
Then stopped.
No. She was a maidservant of the Marquis’s Residence, bound by a death contract.
Under Great Yong’s laws, a bondservant who ran away without permission was a fugitive slave. If caught, she would be beaten, branded, and sent into exile even farther away.
Exiled?
She froze for a moment, then gave a bitter laugh.
Wasn’t she already being exiled? She was already on this road. What was the point of running?
If she ran and got caught, she’d still be exiled—and might even get a few dozen extra strokes of the cane.
What would be the point?
That was one reason.
And the second…
Achou lowered her head and looked at the packet of herbs in her arms.
The old man at the pharmacy had said the fever pills would take effect within an hour.
But pills alone wouldn’t be enough for the wound on the Crown Prince’s leg. The herbs had to be applied externally, and the dead flesh needed to be cleaned away. She’d seen the wound before she left. The flesh around it had already turned black. If it wasn’t treated soon, he really would lose the leg.
If she ran, who would treat him?
The man, delirious with fever, couldn’t even manage to drink water properly. How could she expect him to boil medicine and change his own bandages?
The soldiers escorting them wouldn’t care whether he lived or died.
In their eyes, the Deposed Crown Prince was already a dead man. Whether he died sooner or later made no difference.
Achou bit her lip.
She wasn’t capable of much, but she had a soft heart.
When she was little, in the countryside, the neighbor’s puppy broke a leg and no one wanted it. She brought it home, wrapped it in strips of cloth for half a month, and somehow managed to heal it.
Later, after she was sold into the Marquis’s Residence, a stray cat in the back courtyard had kittens and no one looked after them. She secretly saved some of her own food to feed them.
She couldn’t bear to see living creatures suffer.
Especially a person.
Such a handsome face, such a noble man—and now he’d fallen into such a state.
If she left too, he really would have nothing at all.
Achou took a deep breath and pushed the thought of running out of her mind.
“Enough,” she whispered to herself. “What’s the point of running? I’d still be a fugitive slave. I might as well treat this man. Maybe I can at least earn a meal by sticking with him.”
She hugged the medicine close and turned, jogging back toward the relay station.
The moon shone on her small, slender figure, stretching her shadow far behind her.
She didn’t look back again.
She reached the relay station.
The young soldier was still keeping watch at the entrance. When he saw her run back, his expression looked partly relieved and partly surprised.
“You really came back?” he muttered.
Achou forced a smile. “Thank you for letting me go, big brother!”
The Crown Prince was still in the same position as when she’d left.
“Your Highness,” Achou said as she took out the pills, “I bought the medicine. Take these for the fever first. I’ll mash the herbs and put them on your wound.”
She tipped two pills into her palm and brought them to his lips.
He opened his eyes.
His dark eyes fixed on her.
“You came back,” he said.
Under his gaze, Achou felt a little awkward. She grinned. “Of course I did. I used your money to buy the medicine. If I didn’t come back, you’d be out of pocket, wouldn’t you? Come on, open your mouth.”
He parted his lips slightly. Achou put the pills into his mouth, then handed him the waterskin.
He swallowed them.
Then he closed his eyes again. His breathing seemed a little steadier than before.
“Your Highness, I need to look at your leg now. I’ll have to… have to take your trousers off…”
The Crown Prince frowned slightly.
When he didn’t object, Achou paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and reached for his waistband.
Her hands were shaking.
She’d spent six years in the Marquis’s Residence. She’d seen men’s clothes—the Master’s, the steward’s, the coachman’s—but she’d never personally taken off any man’s trousers.
She’d never even imagined doing it.
The waistband came undone.
She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth, and pulled the trouser leg down. Where the fabric clung to his skin, it made a faint tearing sound.
The Crown Prince let out a muffled groan, his body tensing for an instant, but he didn’t cry out.
Achou opened her eyes.
Her face flushed.
She’d never seen a man’s body before. The Crown Prince’s legs were long and slender. Though he was so thin his skin seemed stretched over his bones, his build was well-proportioned, his lines taut and strong.
Below the knee, the flesh was a bloody mess.
A deep gash ran along his shin, the flesh turned inside out. His knee was swollen like a steamed bun, mottled with purple and blue, as if he’d been tortured.
Achou’s nose stung, and she nearly burst into tears.
“How did you get hurt this badly…?”
The Crown Prince didn’t answer.
He turned his head aside, his jaw set tight.
Achou asked the man in charge of the relay station for hot water. She took the handkerchief she kept in her clothes, worn pale from washing, soaked it in the hot water, and wrung it out. Then she carefully wiped the wounds on the Crown Prince’s leg.
His body jerked violently when the cloth touched the wound.
“Bear with it, Your Highness,” Achou said softly. “I have to clean off the dirt, or it’ll get worse.”
Scabs, grit, and scraps of cloth were stuck together over the wound; in some places, pus had already crusted over.
She softened it little by little with hot water, then wiped it away bit by bit.
The handkerchief quickly turned dark red.
After changing the water three times, the wound was finally exposed.
Achou gently held the Crown Prince’s knee and tried moving it.
Caught off guard, he drew in a sharp breath from the pain.
She immediately let go.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she apologized over and over. Beads of sweat fell from her forehead onto the straw. “I need to see how the bone is.”
She had once saved a cat in the Marquis’s back courtyard after a horse had stepped on and broken its leg.
The cat’s broken leg had hung limp and soft, much like the Crown Prince’s.
She’d also saved a dog whose paw had been caught in a door. Its ligament had been injured, but the bone was fine, and after half a month it could run again.
Relying on those small scraps of experience, she carefully examined the Crown Prince’s knee and ankle again.
The bone was probably broken.
Below the knee, she could feel an unnatural shift when she pressed the leg, but the ankle could still move slightly. The ligaments probably weren’t completely torn.
“Your Highness, your bone is broken, but the ligaments are all right. They can still heal. I need to brace your leg with something hard so the bone can gradually grow back together on its own.”
The Crown Prince said nothing, only giving a slight nod.
Achou walked around the relay station.
A pile of firewood was stacked in the courtyard. She picked out two relatively flat boards, then went inside and borrowed a hatchet.
Crouching in the courtyard by moonlight, she used the hatchet to shave off the splinters, then scraped the surfaces smooth with the back of the blade. Only when they were smooth and no longer rough to the touch did she take them back inside.
“Your Highness, I’m going to apply the medicine and set your leg now. It’ll hurt a little, so please bear with it.”
She applied the mashed herbs to the wound and bandaged it.
Then she held the Crown Prince’s lower leg between the two boards and wrapped it tightly, one turn of the bandage after another.
She worked carefully, stopping after each turn to check the tension. If it was too loose, it wouldn’t hold the leg in place; if it was too tight, it would hurt.
As she wrapped the final turn, she looked up at the Crown Prince.