The autumn rain fell in steady, upright sheets. It struck the dark stone flags of the palace square with a flat, nonstop hiss. Pei Jing stood in the downpour outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony. He watched the royal court dismantle itself.
Ministers picked themselves up from the mud with slow, stiff movements, their stitched sleeves sodden, their jade hairpins askew. No one spoke. The court eunuchs scurried along the vermilion rows of stone pillars like scared mice, collecting dropped tablets, silk umbrellas. The shattered pieces of Emperor Yan’s tea bowl. Whenever a courtier caught Pei Jing’s eye, their gaze flicked instantly away. They didn’t look at him with hatred, nor with admiration. They looked at him with the pity one reserved for an unsafe criminal whose throat had already been measured for the garrote.
To them, a mortal who had resisted an immortal had already committed suicide. His ghost simply had not finished walking out of his boots.
Pei Jing didn’t return their glances. He pressed his left palm firmly against the linen bandage wound around his right forearm. He felt the rhythmic, heavy throb of the wrist blood vessel beneath the tightly packed muscle. The bleeding had slowed from an active blood leak to a steady tiny blood vessel slow leak.
