Dust and Saddle

In Chang’an in the third year of the Qianfu era, Liu Xingche, the legitimate heir of the Qinghe Liu clan, sells the last ancestral jade pendant at his waist.

He needs the money to bribe a salt merchant’s son and secure a ticket to sit the imperial examinations.

Yunxiu straightens his collar, her fingertips trembling. “Young Master, did you really sell your poems?”

Lao Tie brings over Sulu. The saddle is covered in a peony-patterned felt pad, its design blending the styles of the northern frontier and the Tang, now soaked with blood.

The smuggling documents from the frontier still smell of fresh ink. Liu Xingche turns and steps into the glittering abyss of the Qujiang banquet.

Three years later, a plague ravages the land. Yunxiu prints a life-saving prescription on a battered woodblock.

The aristocrats curse her for her low birth and presumption, never knowing that the writing on her headscarf came from the poems Liu Xingche sold all those years ago.

Sulu returns at death’s door, carrying a rare medicine from beyond the frontier on its back.

Lao Tie runs a hand over the saddle and tack. “It’s time to go, Young Master.”

Liu Xingche gazes toward the horizon, where beacon fires rise on every side. The jade pendant has long since been exchanged for bloodstained saddle gear.

Behind them, Chang’an’s vermilion gates crash to the ground.