The Calamity of the Blue Luan

Prologue

In the twentieth year of Emperor Yanwu of the Qianchen calendar, the occultist Xuan Yue studied the heavens by night and declared that the Blue Luan star had stirred. A girl born with jade in her mouth, he said, would one day overturn the dynasty.

The Son of Heaven sent men out in secret with lavish rewards, determined to find the child and strangle fate in its cradle, so that the Wuyuan Dynasty might endure.

Above the imperial city of the Kingdom of Chaoyun, a line of wild geese cried as it flew north.

Second Prince Yongzhen stood beneath the colonnade of his elder brother's manor and stared in a daze.

Across the corridor, a woman in a lake-blue dress came toward him. There was one touch of goose-yellow on her clothes, as vivid as the first tender green by a riverside in early spring. It slipped quietly into his eyes and rooted itself there.

"Your Highness."

He started. By then she was already before him, fragrant and graceful among the drifting lamplight and shadow, offering him a cup of clear wine with one hand.

He took it and drained it in a single swallow. He had only looked at her once, but he knew at once that it was her.

After Yongzhen returned in triumph from a campaign he had fought in his brother Yongcheng's place, Yongcheng had offered him ten dancers as a reward. Yongzhen had asked for only one.

The famed dancer of the capital.

In a hidden chamber, silver candles burned low.

Three figures faced one another in the stillness. Yongcheng lowered his gaze and said, "Kui Ning, your task is to turn Yongzhen against Chancellor Wu. Once they break, I can reap the profit."

"Yes," Kui Ning said with a bow.

To the outside world she was merely a favored dancer in the First Prince's manor. No one knew that she had studied under the occultist Liu Guang and had been hired by Yongcheng to eliminate his enemies. Yet one question had always troubled her.

"The emperor has always been suspicious," she said. "Why has he trusted Wu Shiguan for eighteen years and done nothing even as the Wu clan grew stronger?"

The black-clad young woman beside them, Jin Ye, answered quietly, "Because eighteen years ago Xuan Yue foretold that a jade-bearing girl would destroy the realm. Chancellor Wu's eldest daughter was born with jade in her mouth. The emperor ordered her drowned, and Chancellor Wu obeyed. From then on the emperor believed him all the more. More than ten years later he even granted Wu's second daughter, Wu Ningyan, the title of princess."

Kui Ning was still wondering how her junior sister knew so much when Yongcheng suddenly flung a sword toward her.

"Jin Ye," he said coldly, "you have said too much."

The blade rose and fell. Jin Ye slumped against her chair as though merely asleep, blood threading from the corner of her mouth. For a moment Kui Ning seemed to fall back into the distant day when her sect had been destroyed and only two disciples had escaped alive. But the hand holding the sword did not tremble.

Her gaze drifted to the portrait on the wall. "May I have that painting?"

Yongcheng looked surprised, but he did not refuse. The man in the portrait was himself more than ten years earlier, spirited and handsome, still in the full blaze of youth.

"Do you know why I went so far to find you?" he asked.

Kui Ning glanced at Jin Ye's cooling body and thought, because I have been loyal enough to kill even my own fellow disciple for you.

But Yongcheng only smiled without answering.

Yongzhen had never before fallen asleep to a woman's zither.

Dragon-camphor incense calmed the air around him. In the dream that followed, a woman kept crying for help. The voice struck his chest like a fish trapped in a freezing pool. Yet he could not see her face clearly. At times it seemed to be Kui Ning's, at times Ningyan's, and at times someone else entirely.

Then an old memory flashed through his mind.

Ningyan had once sneaked out on the fiercest horse in the chancellor's stables. He had chased after her in alarm and found the animal throwing her hard to the ground.

"See? I told you not to be reckless," he had scolded, though his hands were gentle as he checked whether she was hurt.

"Brother An," she had asked, cheeks burning, eyes bright as flame, "will you always be this good to me?"

He had smiled, about to answer, when masked men burst out and seized her instead.

"Brother An, save me! Save me!"

"Ningyan! Ningyan..."

"Your Highness." A servant's urgent voice sounded outside the door. "The princess is ill. The chancellor asks you to come at once."

Yongzhen jolted awake. He had time only to tell Kui Ning that he was going to the chancellor's residence before he mounted and rode off, never noticing the satisfaction that rose in her eyes.

Rumor in the capital said the emperor would soon choose an auspicious day to marry the princess to the Second Prince. That was why Yongcheng had placed Kui Ning beside Yongzhen. He wanted her to cast a sickness curse on the princess, to make room for herself in Yongzhen's heart while the girl suffered, while Yongcheng himself comforted the beauty afterward and joined hands with Chancellor Wu to seize the throne.

But Kui Ning had seen the princess's face.

Willow brows. Apricot eyes. A beauty mark at the brow. Seven or eight parts of ten resembled her own.

Only then had she understood why Yongcheng had spoken so vaguely before. And in Yongzhen's dream she had seen the woman he could not forget, heard the name he called in panic.

Why did it have to be this woman?

Why did it have to be her, of all people, to win the devotion of both imperial brothers?

Since Liu Guang had rescued her from the cold lake, Kui Ning had never cared for any man so deeply. She remembered her master once sighing beside the water that the most fearsome occult art in the world was neither poison nor curse. It was love.

Then better to cut the weed out by the root, she thought, and stop all this torment.

And it was not only to sever Yongzhen's longing that she turned the sickness curse into a death curse.

With a sharp crack, a zither string snapped.

In the bedchamber, lotus-petal glass burners sent up pale coils of smoke. The unconscious girl lay there with breath as thin as silk. As soon as Yongzhen entered, he heard the chancellor's wife weeping in low sobs, while the imperial physician stroked his beard and said grimly, "This is no ordinary illness. She has been cursed. She only seemed to fall asleep on her way home from an outing, but inside her blood burns like molten fire. In the end, her heart will fail."

Chancellor Wu had seen enough of the world to understand the physician's expression. "Does Heaven mean to destroy my daughter?" he cried. For no reason at all he remembered the eldest child he had drowned by imperial command more than ten years ago, and all the years in which, despite wives and concubines, only this one beloved daughter had remained beside him. "Does Heaven mean to destroy me as well?"

"Chancellor, do not despair."

The speaker was Yongcheng, stepping into the noon light. "I know of a treasure in Fengwei Hall. It can ward off poison, repel baleful influence, and break curses."

Before he could say more, Yongzhen stepped forward. "Let me go."

"Your Highness, your body is worth a thousand gold..."

"Do not worry," Yongzhen said. "I have always treated Ningyan as a younger sister. What danger would I fear for her sake?"

And before anyone could stop him, he was gone.

Kui Ning's heart tightened when she heard by chance that he meant to force his way alone into Fengwei Hall. She knew how perilous that place was, layered with mechanisms and hidden wards.

Yet Yongzhen only smiled.

He did not know the curse on Ningyan could be undone only by the caster herself. He only knew that after the day Ningyan had been abducted and returned to him frightened and altered, he had sworn that whatever happened, he would keep her safe, even if he had to cross a mountain of blades or a sea of fire.

Still, before he left, he turned back to Kui Ning and said with unguarded sincerity, "You need only know this: the only woman I love is you. As for Ningyan, I have never seen her as anything but a younger sister. Wait for me. Once I have brought the treasure back and saved her, I will return to you at once."

For a moment Kui Ning could only stare. She had never known her weight in his heart was so great.

And how could she tell him that she herself had laid the curse, and that only she could lift it?

"Fool," Yongcheng said from behind her after Yongzhen had gone. "You really thought you were the one he loved?"

He drew her into his arms and laughed softly. "Don't worry. Yongzhen has chosen his own death. Even if he somehow survives Fengwei Hall, the men I sent afterward will cut him to pieces."

Kui Ning's voice stayed calm. "All Your Highness wants is the throne. Why must you kill him as well?"

Yongcheng's face darkened. He had always been proud, and Yongzhen had humiliated him again and again merely by existing. Once Yongcheng had secretly arranged for the enemy to kill his younger brother on campaign, only for Yongzhen to return in triumph with the enemy commander in chains, winning their father's greater favor.

So Yongcheng told her everything.

Years ago, when a daughter was born in the Wu household, he had bribed Xuan Yue to forge the prophecy about the jade-bearing girl and pit the chancellor against the emperor. He had hoped Chancellor Wu would rebel out of love for his child. Instead the man had steeled himself and obeyed the order to drown her. Later Yongcheng had kidnapped Wu's younger daughter and replaced her with someone loyal to him. He had waited patiently ever since, letting the false Ningyan remain close to Yongzhen until the moment was ripe. Now, knowing that Chancellor Wu had accumulated enough power and doted above all on that daughter, Yongcheng had told Kui Ning to cast a sickness curse.

"But you," he said, contempt curling his mouth, "grew jealous and turned it into a killing curse. You thought I loved her. To me she was only a chess piece. No matter. If Yongzhen dies tonight, the throne will be mine, and you will be first among the women of the inner palace."

Kui Ning stepped out of his embrace.

"A chess piece?" she said softly. "Your Highness, I have been one since the day I was born."

Blue fire flickered at her fingertips.

"I drifted in a freezing lake and was saved by Liu Guang. I learned the occult arts. When you slaughtered the Molian sect to which Xuan Yue belonged, I came to your side only to wait. Since then, this game has no longer belonged to you."

She smiled, though there was no warmth in it.

"Yes, I did curse the girl out of jealousy. But the man I love is not you. It is your younger brother. And the portrait I asked for was never to console lovesickness. It was needed to cast the death curse."

Only then did Yongcheng understand.

He had once saved a wounded girl because she resembled the Wu princess and seemed frighteningly gifted in forbidden arts. He had thought she might one day prove useful.

He had never imagined that the girl was in fact the chancellor's drowned eldest daughter, Wu Ningnuo.

He did not even have time to cry out.

Blue fire flared. His body turned to a wisp of green smoke and vanished into the night.

Kui Ning looked at the empty air for only an instant before fleeing toward Fengwei Hall.

Red lanterns burned all along the corridors there, roaring like hidden jaws.

With a crash, they all burst at once into darkness. Crimson powder drifted through the air. A narcotic fragrance stirred.

Yongzhen, hand still raised from the strike that had shattered the trap, did not lower his guard.

"As expected of a true young hero."

The mistress of Fengwei Hall emerged beneath a breaking moon, face veiled, eyes dark and lucid.

"You flatter me," Yongzhen said. "People say Fengwei Hall is all illusion, like wandering through a sea of clouds. Who would have guessed the trick lay in the lanterns, mixed with powders from poisonous flowers that cloud the mind?"

The woman laughed softly. "It is not that I refuse to lend the treasure. But it is the inheritance of my sect, precious beyond compare. Before I hand it over, Your Highness must answer a few questions truthfully."

Yongzhen nodded.

"Who is it you have come to save?"

"The chancellor's daughter, Ningyan," he said. He paused, looking into those glass-bright eyes. "And one more person. Kui Ning."

"Oh?"

"She is the dancer my elder brother gave me, and the occultist he brought into my life. Before I came here, I saw enough to know what she is. She had many chances to kill me, and she never did. So I will not expose her, either."

"And if you obtain the treasure, what then?"

"It will save Ningyan. It will also keep Kui Ning from being condemned for poisoning the chancellor's daughter. Once Ningyan is safe, I will take Kui Ning far away."

"Then the woman who has made you risk your life, your rank, perhaps even the throne itself, must be very dearly loved."

Yongzhen only smiled.

"And Chancellor Wu's daughter?" the veiled woman pressed. "What is she to you?"

"I cherish her," he said. "But as a younger sister. Nothing more."

Something shifted in the woman's gaze, as if a knot long drawn tight had loosened by half.

"Very well," she said. "The treasure is not in this hall. It lies in the thousand-foot cold pool beyond the bamboo grove. Come with me."

Two pale horses answered her whistle. She mounted one without another glance, and Yongzhen followed.

The night was cool and smelled of bamboo leaves. As he watched her ride, Yongzhen felt a sudden daze. Many years before, in the late spring dusk, a girl had once laughed over her shoulder, "Brother An, come catch me!" The memory had only just opened inside him when her horse startled and nearly threw her.

"Ningyan!"

The name escaped him before he could stop it. He leapt onto her mount behind her and seized the reins.

"I'm fine," she answered instinctively. Only afterward did she realize he had not meant to call her by her own name. She fell silent.

Soon they reached the cold pool, dark and smooth as a mirror.

The woman dismounted, closed her eyes, and broke the ward over the water. A bead of blue ice rolled slowly up from the depths, shining with pale jade light. When her lashes lifted again, a translucent jade pendant with cloud patterns lay in Yongzhen's palm.

"Take it," she said. "Go save her."

He had not even finished speaking his thanks when a strip of white silk lashed through the air and knocked the pendant back toward the pool.

"Careful. It may be a trap!"

The newcomer was Kui Ning.

She stared at the veiled woman with a strange, unplaceable sense of familiarity and felt only greater alarm. "What treasure? Yongzhen, come with me. She must have been sent by your brother."

She caught his hand and pulled him away, speaking in a low voice as they fled. "I have already saved the girl. You need not worry."

Then, even more softly: "I'm sorry. I actually..."

But no matter what blame she expected, Yongzhen gave her none. He only pulled her tighter into his arms.

Sweetness rose sharp and painful in her chest.

At that moment a black shadow flashed through the bamboo.

Kui Ning's expression changed. "Wait for me at the secret pavilion five li outside the city," she said. "I will join you once I finish one last thing."

Though puzzled, Yongzhen heard the firmness in her voice and only answered, "Be careful."

Kui Ning turned and pursued the black-clad figure through the bamboo until she finally caught up.

The figure stopped and turned back.

"Junior Sister. So it really is you."

But in the next instant the woman tore a face-mask from her skin, and Kui Ning froze.

"Master!"

Liu Guang.

The very master she had believed slain years ago in the destruction of their sect.

Liu Guang sighed. "You were always suspicious. You should have gone away with the man you love instead of chasing after me."

Then she told Kui Ning the truth.

Back when she foresaw the ruin of their sect, Liu Guang had disguised herself as a new junior disciple and fled with Kui Ning. By chance she later rescued the real Wu Ningyan after Yongcheng abducted her, took her in as a disciple as well, and built Fengwei Hall into a new refuge.

As for the cursed girl in the chancellor's residence, she was only a counterfeit.

When Kui Ning had used Ningyan's birth data to cast the death curse, Liu Guang had secretly set a barrier with the cloud-pattern jade and kept the real Ningyan from harm. But what even Liu Guang had not expected was that Ningyan, unwilling to let Yongzhen suffer for her sake, had offered the life-preserving jade to him without hesitation.

Liu Guang lifted the pendant in her hand.

"Did you look closely at this just now?" she asked. "This so-called treasure that wards off evil is the very object wrapped around you when you were cast into the lake."

It was because of that jade that the chancellor's daughter Wu Ningnuo had survived to become the wandering occultist Kui Ning.

"But the prophecy was false, wasn't it?" Kui Ning whispered.

"Not entirely," Liu Guang said. "This jade never came from your birth. It is the Molian sect's sacred treasure. Xuan Yue helped Yongcheng forge the prophecy, yes, but he regretted it. He placed the jade on you to preserve your life. That is why he was wounded and could not escape unharmed. I could not undo what he had done, so I chose to protect both you sisters in his stead."

Kui Ning stood stunned.

Hatred had sustained her for so many years: hatred for the parents who had drowned her, hatred for the sister who had been allowed to live the life stolen from her.

But now Liu Guang pointed toward the pale, exhausted girl nearby, the one who resembled her so closely.

"The real Ningyan was taken away at ten," Liu Guang said. "Her life has been no easier than yours. Can you still go on hating her?"

Kui Ning looked at the girl before her. Something inside her cracked open.

"Ningyan," she said hoarsely. "It's me. I am your elder sister."

Their fingers clasped together, blood calling to blood at last.

Then came the sound of wind, hooves, and men.

Whether it was the forces trailing Kui Ning for killing Yongcheng or the troops Yongcheng had stationed in advance, battle was coming fast.

"Back to Fengwei Hall," Kui Ning said immediately.

But Ningyan's face filled with guilt. "To keep Brother Yongzhen from getting hurt, I already shut down all the hall's traps and wards today. Why don't we go out and expose Yongcheng's plot? Father is trusted by the emperor now. He can protect us."

Liu Guang shook her head. "The emperor has lost a son. However monstrous that son was, grief will blind him. And Kui Ning herself is living proof of the old deception. Which powerful man would ruin his own future for our sake? Even if you escape today, what about tomorrow?"

She was already turning over plans in her mind when Ningyan suddenly pulled free of Kui Ning's hand.

"I'll go," she said. "Sister, I will die in your place."

People packed the execution ground.

They had come to watch the once-celebrated dancer Kui Ning die for murdering the First Prince and cursing the chancellor's daughter.

The condemned woman stood on the scaffold with her face covered in black cloth. The emperor himself had come to supervise the execution, heartbroken and furious at the woman who had killed his son. Chancellor Wu, remembering how close his daughter had come to death, had come as well to witness the culprit beheaded.

Below the scaffold, two women and a man rode by as if merely drawn by the spectacle.

Then the cloth was torn away.

Light flashed from the woman's neck. The cloud-pattern jade pierced Chancellor Wu's eyes like a blade.

Those who had once seen the princess gasped aloud, for the dancer from Yongcheng's manor resembled her by seven or eight parts of ten. But Chancellor Wu saw more than that. He saw the jade. He saw the daughter he had believed drowned nearly twenty years before.

He leapt onto the scaffold without another thought, shielding her behind him.

"Undo her shackles!" he roared. "This is my daughter. Who dares kill her?"

The emperor stood frozen.

All the forbearance Chancellor Wu had buried for twenty years erupted at last. With a sweep of his arm he turned the imperial guards against the throne itself.

The First Prince was dead. The Second Prince had vanished. The old order was broken. There would never be a better moment.

Yet even then what moved him most was not ambition but the daughter returned to him from the water and the grave.

From afar, Yongzhen saw the upheaval and almost wheeled his horse around to save his father. But then he remembered Kui Ning, remembered the promise to leave with her, and let the capital and the whole fallen dynasty slip from his heart. He did not even notice the woman being escorted away under the chancellor's protection looking back at him once, long and deep.

The next spring, Wu Shiguan proclaimed himself emperor of a new dynasty, Fushen, under the era name Yunchun. He named his eldest daughter Princess Weishou.

In the third month he issued an edict forbidding every form of occult practice, divination, and star-reading. Anyone who studied such things would be executed.

That same day, Xuan Yue, the occultist who had foretold twenty years before that the imperial princess would bring down a kingdom, was dragged into the throne hall to await judgment.

"Daughter," the new emperor said, "this man is yours to punish. I searched high and low to find him so you might avenge yourself."

But Princess Weishou only looked at the old man kneeling there, humble beneath the weight of time, and said calmly, "Spare him, Father. The dynasty is newly founded. We should not begin it by killing too many."

She rose before Xuan Yue could answer and left the hall.

Years passed.

On a clear Qixi night in the twelfth year of Yunchun, Princess Weishou dozed upon her embroidered couch. When she woke, she found her maids in the courtyard below, secretly laying out fruit and flowers to pray for skill and marriage luck, though such rites had long been forbidden under the ban on hidden arts.

She almost smiled.

She had once set out ready to die so that lovers might live. By a turn of fate, she had become instead the treasured long-lost daughter of a new emperor.

Elsewhere in the palace, where the ban had not extinguished every last secret art, Liu Guang thought of how strange fate was. An emperor might outlaw sorcery, yet the deepest currents of power still flowed through those who understood it best.

More than ten years had passed. Were they well, those two who had gone away? And Xuan Yue, the one she could never stop thinking of?

Against the old rule that a seer must never divine for herself, Liu Guang had once cast the forbidden calculation and only then learned the truth: the heavenly sign had indeed pointed to the girl with the jade as the one who would destroy the Wuyuan Dynasty. It had not been coercion alone that made Xuan Yue utter that prophecy. It had also been his way of shielding her.

She rubbed the cloud-pattern jade between her fingers and divined that he now lived in seclusion on Tiancheng Mountain.

Perhaps he still believed she hated him. Yet if her body were ever to perish and only a wandering soul remain, she knew where she would go to find him.

The punishment for a seer who reads her own fate should have been Heaven's wrath.

What fell upon her instead was neither death nor oblivion, but endless life.

So she closed her eyes.

Time had gone by.

And time went on.