They spent the last ten days like people spending the last coins in a purse.

It was a good ten days. She would remember that afterward, in the long grey months, and hold on to it with both hands. They did not speak of the blossoms. They did not speak of the cold. They did what she had asked, and walked in the orchard, and ate bad congee, and sat on the quay with their feet over the water, and for a little while the world held its breath and let them be.

He taught her to fly a kite. She had never done it as a child. He had learned it from the girl on the bridge, and he stood in the green meadow behind the town with the string wound round his fist and the carp straining at the end of it, and he laughed, and she thought: I would give a great deal to keep that sound.

She taught him to throw a knife. He was dreadful. He hit the barn door three times out of ten, and the other seven times the blade went into the dirt, and each time he turned to her with an expression of such earnest and humble delight that she had to bite her cheek.

They went to the market and bought a ribbon. It was a pale silk one, the blue of the sky before rain, and she did not say why, and he did not ask. She tied it round her wrist, under the guard, where he could not see. She did not know what she meant by it.

She hid everything.

She hid it with the dedication of a soldier holding a pass. When the cold came, she put her hands in her sleeves and clenched her jaw until it passed. When the tremor took her, she sat down and pretended to be tying a boot. She rose before him, and trained in the grey hours, in the yard, until the shaking left her. She ate twice what she wanted. She drank hot tea until her stomach ached. And each time he looked at her, with that quiet dark watchful gaze, she smiled and said, I'm fine, and he said, I know, and neither of them believed a word of it.

He did not push. He had promised. And he kept the promise as he kept all his promises, absolutely, to the letter, with a sort of fierce and aching tenderness that she could hardly bear.

On the ninety-ninth night, Mei wept.

She did it in the kitchen, over the dishes, with her back turned and her shoulders shaking. She said she had a cold. She said it was the onions. Then she turned and put her wet face against Zheyu's chest and held him around the ribs, hard, for a long time, and he stood with his arms awkwardly lifted and then, slowly, folded them round her.

"You will come back," said Mei. "Next spring."

"I will."

"You'll come to the door. You'll knock. I'll be waiting."

"I know you will."

"I'm not crying."

"No."

"I'm making a fool of myself."

"You are being a friend," said Zheyu. "It is not the same."

She lifted her head and glared at him through her tears. Then she turned and flung her arms around Qinghe, who stood stiffly in the doorway, and whispered fiercely in her ear, "Take care of him. And take care of yourself, you stupid, stubborn girl. I mean it. I'll come after you with the cleaver."

Qinghe held her. She did not know how to do it. She patted her back, awkwardly, twice. She said nothing at all, because her throat had closed.

* * *

They left before dawn.

It was a long walk to Taohua, a day and a half on foot, and they did it slowly. She had thought of riding, and then thought better. She wanted every mile. They went up through the green lowlands, past rice fields and tea terraces and the stone gates of small villages, with the road unrolling pale ahead of them and the sky going slowly from grey to rose. At noon they stopped to rest in a roadside shrine, and he fell asleep for an hour with his head against the wall. She sat and looked at him.

Ninety-nine, she thought. And a half.

The day was clear. The air was thin and sweet. It smelled of dust and cut grass and, faintly, as they climbed into the foothills, of peach.

They reached the valley at dusk.

She had not known she would feel it so strongly. They came over the lip of the ridge, onto the high path, and the whole of Taohua lay open before her. The great slope, falling away in terraces of pink and gold. The ancient trees, black and gnarled, with their canopies like clouds. The thin bright thread of the stream, winding silver between the boulders. It was exactly as it had been, a hundred days ago, when she had walked this road with a merchant and three mules and a sealed letter in her pack.

It was a different valley. She was a different woman.

"There," said Zheyu.

He pointed. Below them, on the upper terrace, a single great tree stood alone in a clearing of short grass. It was older than the rest. Its trunk was as thick as a temple pillar and split by lightning into two huge arching limbs, and its blossoms were the darkest she had seen, a deep warm rose, heavy as silk. Its roots were gnarled like old knuckles. A few petals lay on the earth around them.

"That's where I was standing," said Qinghe, "when you looked at me."

"Yes."

"I felt it."

"I know." He smiled. "I am sorry. I did not mean to frighten you."

"You didn't."

"You nearly cut my head off."

"That was later."

He laughed, softly. They went down together through the long grass.

* * *

They sat beneath the tree.

It was the last of the light. The sun lay low and red on the rim of the western ridge, and the whole valley swam in a warm rose glow. A few early stars had come out. The air was cool and very still. High overhead, the branches arched in a vast dim vault, and the blossoms hung down through the dusk like lamps.

She had expected something. A ceremony, perhaps. A sign. She had spent the long walk bracing for it, as one braces for a blow. But nothing came. There was only the quiet, and the smell of the earth, and the slow rise and fall of his breathing beside her.

"It is a hundred days tonight," he said.

"I know."

"At midnight, I think. Perhaps a little before. I do not feel it yet." He turned his head. "I wish to say something. I have been trying all day. I cannot seem to find the words."

"Then don't say them."

"I think I must."

"Zheyu."

"Please let me." His voice was very low, and unsteady. "I have spent three hundred years in silence, and I have never once said what I meant. Not to anyone. I think that if I do not say it now, I will be sorry for the rest of my sleep."

She drew a breath. "All right."

He turned to face her fully. He took his time, and arranged himself on the grass, cross-legged, with his hands on his knees and his back straight, as a man sits who has made up his mind to something. He looked at her. The last red light lay along the edge of his jaw. His eyes were dark and clear and full of a terrible gentleness.

"There are a great many things I wish to tell you," he said. "I do not know where to begin. I have arranged them in a hundred orders. I have said them in my head, in the dark, until they wore smooth as river stones." A faint smile. "And now that you are here, in front of me, I find that I cannot choose. So I shall say only the smallest. The one that will fit."

She waited.

He took a breath. She saw his lips part, and his throat move. She saw the words gather behind his teeth, and she felt, in the pit of her stomach, the great slow lurch of an enormous thing about to be said.

"Qinghe," he said. "I would like you to,"

He stopped.

She watched it happen. She watched the words go out of his face. His mouth stayed half open, as if the rest of the sentence had fallen somewhere and he could not reach it. His eyes flickered. She saw the fear come into them, a quick small bright flare, and the sudden, hard, deliberate closing of a door.

He is choosing. She understood it in the same instant. He is choosing what to leave out.

"Remember me," said Zheyu.

It was not what he had been going to say. She knew it. She knew it as one knows the weight of a sword in the dark. But it came out of him so soft, and so naked, and so entirely without defence, that something inside her gave way.

"That's all?" she said. Her voice cracked.

"That is all."

"You're sure."

"I am sure." He looked down at his hands. "It is enough. It is the smallest thing, and the largest. I would like," he swallowed, "I would like to be remembered. Not as a blade. Not as a burden. As a man who sat under a tree and was glad."

That wasn't it. She wanted to say it. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, and tell him that she had heard what he had not said, and that she knew. She wanted to cry out: Say the rest.

She did not. She was a coward, too.

She reached out instead and took his hand.

* * *

It was cold.

It startled her, for an instant. She had not thought about it. His palm lay in hers, long and slim and finely made, and it was warm, but a different kind of warmth. A thin, high, drifting warmth, like sun on water. She looked at it. She could see the faint pale lines of his veins. And through them, very dimly, as through a sheet of glass, she could see the fine grass of the ground.

He is going.

She tightened her grip. It did no good. It was like holding a handful of light.

"Mid-summer," she said. Her voice was not her own. "That's what you said. You wake in the spring, and you sleep when the petals fall. It's only a few months. You'll be back before the leaves turn."

"No. It is a year."

"Nine months, then. Ten. I can count." She drew a ragged breath. "I'll be here."

"Qinghe."

"I will. I promise. Next spring. When the first blossom opens, I'll be standing right here, under this tree, with the sword in my hand. I'll say your name. I'll wait as long as it takes."

"Do not make a promise you cannot keep."

"I can keep it."

"It is a long time."

"I don't care." She held on to his hand with both of hers. "I've kept worse. I've waited in the cold for a dead man to wake up. I'm good at waiting. It's the only thing I'm good at, besides the sword." She was crying. She had not known it. The tears slid down her face, warm and quick. "Listen to me. I will be here. Whatever happens. Whatever it costs. You hear me? Next season, I will be here."

He looked at her.

His face, in the dying light, was luminous. It seemed to her that she could see through it, to the dark trunk behind, and the blossoms moving in the evening air. He was smiling. It was the loveliest smile she had ever seen, a slow, shining, infinitely tender smile, as if she had given him the whole bright world in her two cupped hands.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't thank me."

"I must."

"Idiot."

"Yes."

He lifted his free hand, slowly, and laid it against her cheek. It was weightless. It was a draught of warm air. She turned her face into it and shut her eyes, and the tears ran over his fingers and fell and made no mark.

"Do you know," said Zheyu, very softly, "that I have never been so happy?"

"Stop it."

"It is true. It is the truest thing I have ever said." His voice was growing faint. "It is a very strange thing, to be so happy and so frightened at once. I think that is what it is, to be alive. I think I did not know."

"Zheyu."

"I am here."

"I know you are."

"I am here," he said again, and she felt the hand on her cheek begin to thin.

* * *

The petals fell.

It began in a moment, without warning. A single blossom came loose from the tree above, and drifted down, turning in the red dusk. Then another. Then ten, a hundred, a soft pink flood. They came down in a long, slow, silent rain, drifting across the grass, gathering in the folds of her sleeves, settling on her hair. She felt them on her face. She felt them on her lashes, light and cool as breath.

All around them, the valley was sighing.

She had never heard it before. It was a vast, low, tender sound, like the exhalation of a sleeper, like the drawing of a curtain. It ran through the trees from the highest bough to the lowest, and every tree in Taohua let go of its bloom at once. They fell by the thousand. They fell in drifts. The whole slope was a slow pink avalanche, sweet and soft and endless, and the evening air was thick with them.

"Zheyu," she whispered.

He did not answer.

He was still beside her. She could see him. But the outline of him had begun to blur. It was gentle, as light is gentle at the edge of a cloud. The folds of his robe went pale. His hair dissolved into the dusk. She could see the shape of his smile, and the shine of his eyes, and nothing more. His hand lay across her cheek like a held breath.

She did not let go.

"Remember me," said a voice, so faint that she might have imagined it. It seemed to come from inside the petals. It seemed to come from the tree, and the grass, and the great hushed dark.

"I will," said Qinghe.

"I will remember you."

"I know."

"Always."

"Yes."

Something brushed her lips. It was the lightest thing she had ever felt. It was not a kiss. It was less than a kiss, a warm breath, a half-formed wish, a place where something might have been. It was there and gone. She opened her eyes. The petals fell. The dusk was empty.

Something heavy dropped into her lap.

* * *

It was the sword.

She had not seen it fall. She looked down, and there it lay, in the pale drift of blossom, across her knees. The black scabbard. The gold-threaded hilt. It lay quite still. It was cold.

It was so cold.

She touched it, with the tips of her fingers, and drew them back. She touched it again. It was the cold of stone in a cellar, of a well in winter, of a thing that had never been warm. It gave off nothing. It said nothing. It lay there in her lap like a weight of lead, and she knew, with a slow sick shock that went all the way down, that nobody was in it. Not asleep. Not waiting. Gone. The way a house is gone when the family has moved away and left the shutters closed.

"Zheyu," she said.

The sword did not answer.

"Zheyu. Please."

Nothing.

She sat under the tree, in the falling blossoms, with the blade across her knees, and listened to the silence. It was enormous. It was the silence of a room after a death. She had heard it before. She had heard it through a wall, in the grey hour before dawn, when a breath had not ended. I should have gone in. The thought came back to her, cold and clear. I should have held his hand.

She had held it. She had held it until it was gone.

It was not any easier.

She drew the sword up against her chest. She wrapped both arms around it, and bent her head over the hilt, and held it as one holds a sleeping child. The steel was hard against her ribs. She pressed her cheek to the cold black cord. She rocked a little, back and forth, without knowing, and said into the dark, in a voice so small that she could hardly hear it: I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

She cried for a long time.

It was not like the pavilion. It was quieter, and drier, and much more terrible. It had no sound. It simply went on and on, as a river goes on, wearing a groove in her. The petals piled up in her lap. The stars came out above the black rim of the ridge, thick and cold. The cold crept in, from the ground, from the sword, from her own blood, and the tips of her fingers went white.

Nine months, she thought. Ten.

It's nothing. It's a season. I've waited longer for less.

But the hollow in her chest was very large. And she had not known, until it opened, how much of her had been standing on the other side.

* * *

She did not know how long she sat there.

At some point the moon rose. It was a thin curved blade, silver and clear, and it threw long blue shadows across the grass. The petals had stopped falling. The valley was still. The branches overhead hung bare, and black, and strangely small, with a few last blossoms clinging to the twigs like scraps of silk.

Her hands had begun to ache.

She loosened her grip on the sword. It hurt to open her fingers. They had stiffened round the hilt, and she had to peel them away one by one, and when she did she saw that her thumb had been moving all the time, rubbing back and forth over the black cord below the guard, in the old absent rhythm. She had been doing it for hours. She had been doing it, she realised, since the moment the sword fell.

She looked at the place.

The cord was worn there. It was something she had never noticed, in all those months, because she had never looked. The black thread had been rubbed thin by years of her thumb, and by the thumbs of others before her, until a small bare patch showed through, no larger than a coin. And beneath the thread, in the moonlight, something glinted.

She frowned.

She bent her head. She turned the hilt toward the light. The cord had frayed at the edge of the patch, and a loose end of it hung down, curling, and when she brushed it with her finger it came away, and a longer strip lifted, and slipped aside. She worked it gently. It was old. It was brittle. It parted like a cobweb.

Under it was metal.

It was a dull brown bronze, scarcely tarnished, wrapped snugly round the core of the hilt, where the cord had hidden it. It was smooth to the touch. She tilted it toward the moon. There was something cut into it, a row of fine straight lines, shallow, neat, as if they had been scratched with a needle. She ran her thumb over them. They were cold.

Writing.

She picked at the cord, with a hand that was not quite steady, and the strip peeled back farther, and farther, until a whole hand's breadth of bronze lay bare. Three columns, running down the grip, each cut in a different hand. The first was neat and old and square. The second was cramped and spidery, as if written by a trembling man. The third was a clumsy scrawl, round and careless, and a little crooked, like a child's.

She leaned in. The moonlight fell on the lines. Her breath misted the metal.

They were names.

Three of them. She read the first, and did not know it. She read the second, and did not know that either. She read the third, which was shorter than the others, and scratched very deep, as though the hand that made it had pressed hard, and wanted it to last.

She did not recognise a single one.

They were not Ye. They were not from the sect. They were not names Master Ye had ever spoken, in all the years of cold courtyards and early mornings and long, silent suppers. They were strangers' names. Three people she had never heard of.

Previous owners, she thought dully. Of course. A list of the ones who held it before.

She ran her thumb down the column. Beside each name, in a smaller hand, a number had been cut. Eleven. Nine. Four. Years, perhaps. The length of the holding. She understood it. It was a record. A ledger. A way of marking time.

And at the bottom of each column, below the number, there was one more mark. The same mark, in each hand. Three short cuts, deep and clean, set one beside the other like the strokes of a tally. She did not understand them. She traced them with her fingertip.

They felt, under the pad of her thumb, like a row of tiny graves.

She sat very still in the moonlight, with the sword in her hands and the naked bronze gleaming, and the whole valley silent around her. A cold finger touched the nape of her neck. She did not know why.

Forgive an old man for what he did not do.

She held the names to the light.

Three people. Three hands. Three strangers who had carried this sword, and loved it, and kept it close. And somewhere in the dark, beneath the cold steel, a man who had watched them all, and could not remember how it ended.

Where did they go?

The question rose in her mind, quiet and clear. It did not feel like her own. It felt like something that had been waiting in the grass, under the tree, for a hundred days, for her to find it.

Where did they all go?