Luce stepped closer, kneeling to see the object that had had such an effect on the girl. The oracle bone was nothing more than a tortoiseshell, but it was small and polished and pristine. When Luce leaned closer, she saw that someone had painted something in soft black strokes on the smooth underside of the shell:
Is Lu Xin true to me or does she love another?
Fresh tears welled in Lu Xin's eyes, a crack in the cool resolve she'd shown to Luce. He asked the ancestors, she whispered, closing her eyes. They must have told him of my deceit. I--I could not help myself.
Daniel. She must be talking about Daniel. A secret love she'd hidden from the king. But she hadn't been able to hide it well enough.
Luce's heart went out to Lu Xin. She understood with every fiber of her soul precisely what the girl was feeling. They shared a love that no king could take away, that nobody could extinguish. A love more powerful than nature.
She swept Lu Xin into a deep embrace.
And felt the floor drop away beneath them.
She hadn't meant to do this! But her stomach was already pitching, and her vision shifted uncontrollably, and she saw herself from outside, looking alien and wild and holding on for dear life to her past. Then the room stopped spinning and Luce was alone, clutching the oracle bone in her hand. It was done. She'd become Lu Xin.
I disappear for three minutes and you go three-D? Bill said, reappearing in a huff. Can't a gargoyle enjoy a nice cup of jasmine tea without coming back to find that his charge has dug her own grave? Have you even thought about what's going to happen when the guards knock on that door?
A knock sounded sharply on the great bamboo door in the main chamber.
Luce jumped.
Bill folded his arms over his chest. Speak of the devil, he said. Then, in a high, affected shriek, he cried out, Oh, Bill! Help me, Bill, what do I do now? I didn't think to ask you any questions before I put myself into a very stupid situation, Bill!
But Luce didn't have to ask Bill any questions. Knowledge was rising to the front of Lu Xin's mind: She knew that this day would be marked not just by the suicide of one crappy king, but by something even bigger, even darker, even bloodier: a huge clash between armies. That knock on the door? It was the king's council waiting to escort him to war. He was to lead the troops in battle.
But the king was dead and stuffed in a wardrobe.
And Luce was in Lu Xin's body, holed up in his private chambers. If they found her here alone ...
King Shang. Heavy knocks echoed throughout the room. We await your orders.
Luce stood very still, freezing in Lu Xin's silk robe. There was no King Shang. His suicide had left the dynasty without a king, the temples without a high priest, and the army without a general, right before a battle to maintain the dynasty.
Talk about an ill-timed regicide, Bill said.
What do I do? Luce spun back to the dragon wardrobe, wincing when she peered in at the king. His neck was bent at an unnatural angle, and the blood on his chest was drying a rusty brown. Lu Xin had hated the king when he'd been alive. Luce knew now that the tears she'd cried weren't tears of sadness, but of fear for what would become of her love, De.
Until three weeks before, Lu Xin had lived on her family's millet farm on the banks of the Huan River. Passing through her river valley on his shining chariot one afternoon, the king had glimpsed Lu Xin tending the crops. He had decided that he fancied her. The next day, two militiamen had arrived at her door. She'd had to leave her family and her home. She'd had to leave De, the handsome young fisherman from the next village.
Before the king's summons, De had shown Lu Xin how to fish using his pair of pet cormorants, by tying a bit of rope loosely around their necks so that they could catch several fish in their mouths but not swallow them. Watching De gently coax the fish from the depths of the funny birds' beaks, Lu Xin had fallen in love with him. The very next morning, she'd had to say goodbye to him. Forever.
Or so she'd thought.
It had been nineteen sunsets since Lu Xin had seen De, seven sunsets since she'd received a scroll from home with bad news: De and some other boys from the neighboring farms had run away to join the rebel army, and no sooner had he left than the king's men had ransacked the village, looking for the deserters.
With the king dead, the Shang men would show no mercy to Lu Xin, and she would never find De, never reunite with Daniel.
Unless the king's council didn't find out that their king was dead.
The wardrobe was jammed with colorful, exotic garments, but one object caught her eye: a large curved helmet. It was heavy, made mostly of thick leather straps stitched together with tight seams. At the front was a smooth bronze plate with an ornate fire-breathing dragon carved into the metal. The dragon was the zodiac animal of the king's birth year.
Bill floated toward her. What are you doing with the king's helmet?
Luce slid the helmet onto her head, tucking her black hair inside it. Then she opened the other side of the wardrobe, thrilled and nervous about what she had found.
The same thing I'm doing with the king's armor, she said, gathering a heavy tangle of goods into her arms. She donned a pair of wide leather pants, a thick leather tunic, a pair of chain-mail gloves, leather slippers that were certainly too big but that she'd have to make work, and a bronze chest guard made of overlapping metal plates. The same black, fire-breathing dragon on the helmet was embroidered on the front of the tunic. It was hard to believe that anyone could fight a war under the weight of these clothes, but Lu Xin knew that the king didn't really fight--he only led battles from the seat of his war chariot.
This is not the time to play dress-up! Bill jabbed a claw at her. You can't go out there like that.