An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The armies of Da Yu are the first to leave, crossing the Acheron and finding their way to the fields beyond. Xie Yu’s soldiers follow shortly afterwards. The Chiyan army remains. The hall is packed and uncomfortable, clearly not meant to hold so many for so long, but neither soldiers nor ministers show any inclination to depart. Time is not measured in the underworld, with no sun to mark the days and no real reason to partition eternity. For those who wait in these halls, though, a sickening clock is formed by the arrival of new souls, fresh from the executions that are apparently happening daily.
Weeks pass and the stream of new arrivals continues unabated. They all tell the same story, of the crown prince imprisoned and their own desperate protests silenced by the executioner’s sword. Marshal and young marshal hear them all. It’s a frustrating process. Each new day of unchanged conditions is a sign of increasingly dire prospects, but the individual tales carry less and less useful information. Neither Lin Shu nor his father mention this, even in private. If the futility of hearing the same story echoed in a hundred mouths is frustrating, the greater futility of gathering the news at all is beyond consideration.
With the army camp overcrowded and glutted with despair, Lin Shu finds himself returning to the garden, seeking the relief of solitude and the warmth of brighter colors. Fei Liu is often there and observes him from the treetops with cautious curiosity. He will not speak, and keeps a suspicious distance, but he accepts the oranges that Lin Shu leaves for him in the clearing. Even now, the orange tree seems more willing to offer its fruits to him than to the flying child.
Today finds him stretched on the ground among the trees roots. There is no sun, and thus no shade, but the space beneath the stretching branches offers shelter nonetheless. The news is growing progressively worse, the ministers more panicked. Prince Qi remains imprisoned and demoted, and no one speaks of exile anymore. Lin Shu watches as leaves and blossoms sway in an unfelt breeze and waits in the silence. Eventually he closes his eyes.
He does not know how long he has lain there, when something else enters the garden. He opens his eyes, expecting to see Fei Liu in the branches above him, and instead finds a man leaning against the trunk of the orange tree, staring down at him.
He scrambles to his feet, nearly getting caught in the man’s wide, white sleeves. The man does not move. His eyes are a fathomless, penetrating black. His gaze is unwavering.
“How did you get in here?” the man’s voice is an indifferent drawl, and utterly at odds with his gaze. He is also unnervingly close, now that they are both standing. Lin Shu resists the urge to step back, and meets his eyes with the best of his confidence.
“I walked. It’s not as though this place is walled off.” The man’s mouth twitches, the beginning of a smirk. “Who are you to question me in any case?”
The man blinks, and something in his gaze shifts. Above them, the orange tree rustles its own surprise. Lin Shu waits. Finally, a slow smile spreads across the man’s face.
“My name is out of general use, by custom. I suppose you may call me Lin Chen. This is my garden you’re haunting.”
Those black eyes are endless, bottomless, and Lin Shu is falling. He is colder than he has ever been. That gaze peels back his flesh, is sharper than the wind on the cliffs of Meiling. He stands on the edge of the abyss with an unspoken name on his tongue.
He swallows it back. He meets that gaze. “Then I suppose you might call me Mei Changsu.”
The lord of death throws back his head and laughs. His body sways with it, and all throughout the garden leaves and petals shake in counterpart to his mirth. Lin Shu finds himself released. With those eyes no longer on him, his own eyes fall to the long line of the other man’s throat, the easy set of his shoulders. He is still far too close.
“That’s really terrible.” Lin Chen is grinning at him. “You know, the garden is meant to be closed to my guests, particularly without invitation. There is no path that leads here from the entry halls.”
“Fei Liu doesn’t seem to have any trouble.”
“Mmmm, yes. Well, he goes where he likes. He mentioned someone new had been feeding him. I thought he had finally befriended the trees.”
“He seemed hungry.”
“No one here is hungry. Where do you think you are?”
“In an orchard. Will the plums be kinder to Fei Liu when they come in?”
“When the days grow longer and warmer, I’m sure they will. Until then he’ll have to content himself with persuading the orange tree.”
A perfect, gem-bright orange falls from the branches above them, and lands in Lin Chen’s waiting palm. He tucks it into a sleeve with an air of soft satisfaction. “You’re not taking one?” He nods towards the branches above them, hanging near and richly adorned.
“I’m not hungry.” He has been here for longer than he can measure, but still the taste of blood lies thick on the young marshal’s tongue. Without the goad of hunger, even the most perfect orange on the tree turns his stomach.
Lin Chen nods, slow and grave. His eyes are knowing. For a moment Lin Shu feels every bitten back thought, his anger, his questions, his helplessness. They fill his mouth and crowd his throat, pressed hard against his teeth.
He clenches his jaw, swallowing them back, and Lin Chen turns his head, eyes going distant. “You should go back now. There are more of your ministers coming. If you hurry you can meet them when they arrive.”
“I will leave first, then.” His voice is still choked. He can feel those eyes on him as he bows, as he walks away, but quickly finds himself out of the garden, and then back in his own camp just as four new ministers stumble in. He hears their gasping, trembling testimony, swallowing against the blood in his mouth.
