The days after that were a numbing daze.

  Perhaps for some twisted sense of humour, the emperor would summon the imperial heirs to court every single day. Three, naturally, would have to go, and that meant seeing more of Four and One.

  By the second day, the heat of the hall invited rot and flies came in droves.

  By the third day, the body’s skin had been smoked into wrinkled strips.

  By the fourth day, the spot under the creaking corpse had been stained brown and chunks of hair were sthered on the floor.

  Three spent all her nights drunk on poison, until she finally ran into Six te at night on an evening patrol.

  ‘Hey,’ said Six. His hair, wiry and burnt short, tossed in the wind. His short legs swung over the edge of the rooftop eaves. ‘You can’t talk, right? Don’t worry, Four already told me. Before, I mean.’

  Three sat down beside him.

  ‘I’m sorry, girl.’ He took a swig of his jug, ‘How’s your master?’ Then, he reminded himself, ‘Right, you can’t answer.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Hey, don’t look at me like that.’ Six sighed, his raspy voice shaking the burn scars on his throat. ‘I’m curious, you know? My little master’s quite the handful, so I was hoping his sister might’ve been a bit better.’

  Three tilted her head up to the moonlight. The giant grey circle in the sky was bright, bright like the sun, but somehow when that light fell to the earth everything was dark and dull.

  She could only see the specks of light dancing in Six’s wrinkled brown eyes, in the shivering reflection on the icy ke.

  It would freeze over soon, and the koi trapped inside would die.

  ‘…Hey, Xiao Gua.’ He took a drink then said, ‘If you see Two, please don’t be scared of him. Or of Seven ter, alright?’

  A pause.

  Another sip of wine. A burnt neck’s flex, the twitching stump of a severed ear. A rumbling, wetly hoarse voice.

  ‘They’re scared enough of themselves as it is.’

  Then, Three got up from the rooftop and went back down to find the Third Princess.

  She didn’t sleep, and just stared at the other woman all night.

  She was even spped with a pillow after frightening her master ‘half to death’.

  *

  ‘You broke an order.’

  Three crossed her arms. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Then what was that?!’ The princess scowled, ‘Holding a candle while standing over me, in the dead of night? If that wasn’t one of your pranks, then what is?’

  ‘Well, Your Highness,’ she drawled, ‘perhaps you have an affliction called “cowardice”. I was merely ensuring your safety.’ Then, she dodged a swat to her head, tutting, ‘Your Highness, you are truly petty.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  Her boots scraped through the gravel, a crunching and sandy hiss rising from the path with each swing. Little white marks, powdery and faint, gently filled out along the sides of her soles. ‘Your Highness, you haven’t told me where we’re going yet.’

  The princess turned back to give her a gre. Then the woman said, ‘The Seventh Princess has invited us to her estate.’

  A few birds flew by. ‘Oh, I see.’

  They walked for a while longer. The bare plum blossom trees turned into jasmine, then into apricot and haitang trees.

  The path let out a soft crunch with each of her rolling steps. On the river of gravel floated a few dry, orange leaves; the spring-blooming trees’ branches had long been stripped of green.

  A pce of peeling paint and old, forgotten splendour, the Pace of Spring Blossoms had the feeling of a tattered, dried orchid. It was as if the wooden pilrs that held the grand but decrepit pagodas together was a living yet dying tree, some flowering bush that had been left discarded to slowly wither.

  The Seventh Princess was one such withering flower.

  ‘Welcome,’ said the woman. She stood at the gate of the pace, silky hair pooling by her cvicles. As delicate as peonies, the Seventh Princess bent gently at the waist to greet them with a bow, her pink robes swaying at her feet. The dust of the gravel lingered on her; in the callused tips of her fingers, in the bony chest that fabric couldn’t quite hide, in the nibbling of burn scars that trailed up the wrist, in the limp that a straightened back couldn’t conceal.

  Three knew.

  This woman was a tenacious one.

  ‘Seventh Sister, I thank you for the invitation.’ The Third Princess gave a simir bow back. ‘I wonder, has Fifth already arrived?’

  ‘He has.’ The woman cast a light gnce at Three as she ushered them in. ‘Might I presume this to be your shadow guard?’

  ‘Yes.’ The princess gave a dismissing wave. ‘That’s her. Girl, come along.’

  Three nodded and followed, her eyes trailing up and down.

  The pace was much cleaner on the inside, but only for a few select rooms. Others were boarded up, the occasional spider of dust crawling out from underneath.

  The Seventh Princess took them down a series of corridors, right down to the heart of the pace, where no draft could reach. The ceiling beams were clear of oddly shaped shadows, and the windows had no lingering fog; it would be unlikely that another guard was secretly listening in.

  Then, a door was pushed open.

  Inside the study was the Fifth Prince and two other shadow guards.

  The prince’s face had lost its old arrogance. Now, only a thin veil of his past demeanour y across the folds in his eyes, in his curly horse-brown hair.

  His arms crossed over the front of his green robes, the prince sat with his guard standing tall behind him.

  Five looked no different from when Three had st met her. She still had that icy look about her, as though something integral to her passion and emotion had been frozen and shattered to shards of frost. By her belt was an array of grey bottles, but the ash-bck and snow-white were gone.

  Then, Three’s eyes fell on the other guard.

  Seven.

  He…

  If Three could speak, if they were alone by the river, if she could bring him to the mirror kes of the Gentle Snow’s estate, she would have asked him, Do you want me to hold you down?

  But perhaps she wouldn’t need to ask.

  Seven seemed to have lost something. It was a small thing, but that small, missing part of him was like a stolen cornerstone — the man’s slender bones could no longer support his weight, and that led to cracks crawling across his skin. Those invisible lines, as breathtaking as pond ice shattering underneath one’s feet, slid across the fragile curves of his lips, the broken pupils of his eyes. This lost piece of him had too taken away his flesh; now, his form was skeletal in shape, to such an extent that his cheekbones now had bold shadows.

  It took Three a while to pce a name to what he had lost.

  He had lost the mocking sarcasm that had once always lived in his smile.

  ‘Please, sit,’ said the Seventh Princess. ‘I have brought you two here for a discussion.’

  The Third Princess slid into her seat only after Three gave her a nod — the chair was safe.

  She stood behind her master, silently watching the tea and refreshments on the table. Her eyes couldn’t help but flicker — from the biscuits to Five to Seven to her master and finally back to Seven’s emaciated eyes.

  ‘Currently in the court,’ the Seventh Princess began, ‘the First Prince is the most powerful among the heirs. Not only does he have his mother’s support, the secretariat is also under his control — he has a direct say as to what decrees and memorials are presented to the emperor.’

  Three blinked.

  How impressive.

  ‘And what else, Seventh?’ The Third Princess gave the other a short, sharp gnce. ‘I would hardly believe you invited Fifth and I here for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Well,’ said the pink-cd woman, ‘I propose that rather than fighting amongst ourselves or going after the little prey, we… band together and kill the teething tiger.’

  ‘What about the Second Prince?’ The Third Princess leaned back, ‘The Head Chancellor is one of his men.’

  ‘He won’t be a problem,’ the Fifth Prince said. ‘My sister has already bsted off his legs. That’s why he doesn’t yet dare to show his face in court.’ He sighed and rubbed his temples, ‘I have not an inkling of why she wanted to kill Second. So suddenly, too.’

  ‘I heard the First Prince had the woman’s entire estate, servants and all, locked up and burned to death for it. We won’t know why she and Second suddenly went head-to-head.’ The Seventh Princess crossed her legs in a clean swoop, ‘But that doesn’t matter. Only the results do.’ She looked up with snake-like eyes. ‘At tomorrow’s morning court, I intend to pce one of Fifth’s men into the vacancy left by the Northern General.’