The snow began to fall at the hour of the rat.
At first, it was merely fine, scattering sleet that tapped against the drafty, paper-paned windows of the Cold Palace, making a rustling sound like spring silkworms gnawing on mulberry leaves. Past midnight, the wind shifted, and goose-feather snowflakes swept down in a torrential blanket, wrapping this long-forgotten palace courtyard in a blinding expanse of white.
Jiang Linyue curled herself up in the corner upon a pile of moldering straw mats, covered only by a faded, old court gown. The chill crept up from the brick seams like countless fine needles stabbing into her bones. She knew she was nearing her end; every breath in her lungs carried a bloody wheeze, her vision periodically blackening and sparkling, with only the burning embers of resentment in her chest keeping this shattered shell of a body propped up.
Thirty-six years.
From the humblest-ranking sweeping maid in the Bureau of Palace Attendants, she had climbed step by step to become the highest-ranking supreme palace official at the head of the Six Bureaus and Twenty-Four Offices, taking a full nineteen years. Throughout those nineteen years, she had knelt upon countless staircases, endured countless all-nighters, and stained her hands with blood both openly and secretly, finally becoming Third Princess Xiao Qingyan’s most trusted confidante.
Then came the seven years of bloody storms over the struggle for the throne.
She won over court ministers for the Third Princess, weaving a giant web using silver, leverage, and even beauty; she helped the Third Princess eliminate dissidents, slipping slow-acting poison into imperial meals, tampering with archery grounds, and even personally strangling a concubine carrying a dragon’s heir; that woman’s wide-open eyes at the moment of death still resurfaced in Linyue’s dreams.
Finally came the enthronement ceremony. On the Nine-Dragon Steps, the Third Princess wore a bright yellow dragon robe and turned to receive the Imperial Jade Seal. Jiang Linyue knelt at the very front of the civil and military officials, listening to the roaring waves of Long live the emperor, believing she had finally won her gamble for this life.
Yet she had forgotten: when the birds are gone, the good bow is hidden; when the crafty rabbits are dead, the running dogs are boiled.
In the third month of the new emperor’s reign, the charge of plotting against the imperial heir was pinned upon her. The evidence was conclusive: witchcraft dolls were discovered in her quarters, her former confidante testified against her in open court, and even the calming incense she had blended for the Third Princess became evidence of poisoning the imperial womb.
She remembered the day she was dragged out of the Bureau of Palace Attendants; it was also a snowy day. The Third Princess, no, Empress Xiao Qingyan, stood upon the high steps, looking down at her with a gaze as calm as if she were viewing an old item meant to be thrown away.
Linyue, the Empress’s voice pierced through the wind and snow, light as a feather; you have followed Us for so many years; you should know what ‘decency’ means.
Jiang Linyue did not cry or beg. She merely raised her head, staring at that face she had assisted for half her life, and asked word by word: Why?
The Empress smiled, though that smile failed to reach the depths of her eyes. Because you know too much. Linyue, as a servant, the absolute worst thing you can do is to be cleverer than your master.
The door of the Cold Palace creaked open.
Jiang Linyue struggled to lift her eyelids. Against the snowy light outside, a slender human figure stood at the entrance, the bright yellow hem of her robe fluttering slightly in the wind.
It was Xiao Qingyan.
The Empress came entirely alone, not even bringing her personal eunuch. She walked slowly into the room, her boots crunching slightly on the dust-covered tile floor. She stopped three paces away from the straw mat, lowering her head to gaze at the huddled Jiang Linyue, her expression devoid of pity, holding only a sort of analytical calmness.
Still alive, Xiao Qingyan said indifferently.
Jiang Linyue wanted to smile, but instead coughed up a mouthful of bloody froth. Rubbing the back of her hand across the corner of her mouth, she rasped, Your Majesty, have you come to see this subject off on her final journey?
Xiao Qingyan did not answer. She drew a small porcelain bottle from her sleeve, made of white jade and carved with exquisite cloud patterns upon its body; it was the very bottle Jiang Linyue had once custom-made for her to hold calming pills.
Considering you served Us for a time, the Empress placed the porcelain bottle on a nearby broken wooden table. This medicine will let you depart more decently, suffering a bit less.
Jiang Linyue’s gaze fell upon that bottle, and suddenly she let out a low laugh. Her laughter was hoarse, mixed with phlegm, echoing through the empty palace chamber in a manner chillingly eerie.
Decency. She repeated these two words, trembling all over with laughter. Does Your Majesty still remember? Back then, the Fourth Prince’s secondary consort accused Your Majesty of illicit relations with foreign ministers; it was this subject who led men overnight to break into her maternal family, unearthing ‘treasonous letters’ and sending all seventy-three members of her clan to the execution grounds ‘decently’ And the Sixth Prince, you deemed him a stumbling block, so it was this subject who arranged a startled horse at the hunting grounds, letting him break his neck ‘decently’
With every word she spoke, she coughed up a mouthful of blood. Dark red stains blossomed across her decadent garments like decaying flowers.
Xiao Qingyan’s expression finally darkened.
Jiang Linyue, she said coldly, are you harboring resentment against Us?
Resentment? Jiang Linyue strained to prop up half her body, staring fixedly at the person before her. This subject dares not. This subject has simply suddenly understood Your Majesty has never needed a loyal dog; you have only ever needed a sharp blade. When a blade grows dull and has stained itself with too much blood, it naturally ought to be thrown away.
She drew a breath and continued: Yet has Your Majesty ever considered those souls slain by this blade, might they one day return to demand your life?
Insolent! Xiao Qingyan shouted sternly, though a flash of panic quickly crossed the depths of her eyes.
Jiang Linyue caught that trace of emotion. She parted her blood-stained lips, revealing a smile bordering on ferocious: Is Your Majesty afraid? Indeed, upon how many corpses did you crawl to attain this imperial throne? Do you not experience nightmares at night?
Xiao Qingyan slammed her sleeve downward. Turning her back to Jiang Linyue, her voice had already returned to icy coldness: We do not incline to waste words with you. The medicine is right there; whether you drink it or not is up to you. In any case, you will not survive tonight in this Cold Palace.
She stepped forward toward the door.
Xiao Qingyan.
The Empress paused in her stride.
Using her remaining strength, Jiang Linyue enunciated each word as though casting a curse: You will come to a bad end. In the netherworld, I will be waiting, waiting to watch you lose all your supporters, waiting to watch you fall from that dragon throne.
Xiao Qingyan did not look back. She strode out of the palace chamber, and the heavy wooden door slammed shut behind her, severing the world inside from the world outside.
Jiang Linyue collapsed back onto the straw mat, breathing heavily. Large patches of black began to appear before her eyes, her ears ringing incessantly, while only the fire in her chest burned more fiercely.
She was unwilling.
Her entire life spent as a servant and maid, a blade and a chess piece, yet ending up in such a plight. If ghosts and deities truly existed, if retribution truly existed,
In her dying delirium, a series of fragmented images suddenly crashed into her mind.
It was the lotus pond of the Imperial Garden. In midsummer, the lotus flowers across the entire pond bloomed in full splendor, yet she remembered that the water of that pond was terribly cold, biting to the bone.
Several palace attendants surrounded the pond, wearing the indigo uniforms of the Imperial Household Department. They were shoving a young maiden dressed in a moon-white palace gown, their laughter sharp and condescending.
Since you’re blind, stay honestly in your room instead of coming out to make a fool of yourself!
Do you really think you’re still a princess? His Majesty forgot about having a daughter like you ages ago!
The maiden was around fifteen or sixteen, her eyes tightly closed, her complexion pale. Staggering back a few steps from the push, her foot slipped, and her entire body tumbled backward into the pond,
With a splash.
Water sprayed in all directions.
The attendants on the bank burst into raucous laughter, and someone even tossed stones into the pond. The maiden struggled in the water, her hands thrashing wildly, yet not a single person reached out a hand, not a single person cried out for help.
Jiang Linyue saw herself.
She had been standing not far away behind the rockery, holding the flower pattern designs requested by the Third Princess. She had witnessed the whole process, watching the maiden sink and resurface, watching the playful, mocking gazes of those attendants.
She ought to have stepped forward to stop them. Given her status at the time, a sixth-rank scribe of the Bureau of Palace Attendants, dismissing a few eunuchs from the Household Department would have been effortless.
Yet she merely stood in place, watched for a moment, and then turned away.
She remembered her thought at the time: Seventh Princess Xiao Wangshu, a princess whose birth mother died early and who had been blind since the age of eight, lived a life of suffering in this palace anyway; rather than enduring, she might as well find early release.
No
Jiang Linyue convulsed abruptly upon the straw mat, her withered fingers clutching tightly into the rotting straw beneath her.
She remembered. That had happened in the summer of her seventeenth year in her previous life. Three days later, the Seventh Princess’s corpse finally floated up from the bottom of the lotus pond; it was said that when discovered, those blind eyes were still wide open.
And she at that time had been busy preparing for the Third Princess’s autumn hunting grand ceremony, having long since cast this matter to the back of her mind.
Why, why would she think of this at the moment of death?
The imagery continued.
The maiden in the water finally ceased struggling and slowly sank beneath the surface. The pond returned to tranquility, leaving only a few ripples slowly spreading outward. The attendants on the bank dispersed while chatting and laughing, as if they had merely discarded a piece of trash.
Then, at that very instant, the sunken maiden abruptly opened her eyes.
Through the murky pond water, across a decade, across life and death, those eyes that should have been blind stared straight through the rockery at Jiang Linyue.
There was no resentment within those pupils, no anger, only an unfathomable emptiness. Yet deep within that emptiness seemed to hide something Jiang Linyue could not comprehend, like a silent abyss, like unburned ashes.
Jiang Linyue was struck as if by lightning.
She finally understood what that gaze meant,
It was loneliness.
The bone-chilling loneliness of being abandoned by the entire world, where one was too weary even to hate.
And she, the one who could have reached out a hand to pull her up, had chosen to stand by and watch.
Ah ah
A sound like a broken bellows issued from Jiang Linyue’s throat. She curled herself tighter, her fingernails digging deep into her palms, yet she felt no pain. Only the icy regret flooded over her like that pond water.
If she had only reached out her hand back then?
If she had not focused solely on clinging to power, if she had offered even a shred of kindness to that miserable blind princess, would the ending of this life have been different?
It was too late.
Everything was far too late.
Outside the window, the snow fell heavier and heavier, the wind pouring through the broken casement, carrying snowflakes that landed upon her face, icy cold. Her body was losing its final traces of warmth, and even that rebellious flame of defiance began to flicker precariously.
Jiang Linyue laboriously turned her eyeballs, gazing toward the white jade porcelain bottle on the table.
Xiao Qingyan was right; she would not survive tonight.
Then let it be.
She slowly closed her eyes, letting the darkness swallow her consciousness. In the final fraction of a second before plunging entirely into the void, a final thought flickered like a firefly,
If there is an afterlife
If there is an afterlife, she will never serve as anyone’s blade again.
If there is an afterlife, she will go to that person’s side.
If there is an afterlife
The snowy night remained silent, and deep within the Cold Palace, the final faint breath finally returned to utter extinction.