The Bian River Chronicles
In the spring of the first year of the Zhenghe era, an imperial decree from Emperor Huizong thrusts Zhang Zeduan, a twenty-eight-year-old court painter, into the heart of a storm.
“Depict all the splendor of Bianjing in a five-zhang scroll. You have three years.”
On the day he picks up his brush, he sees military grain being swapped for smuggled salt beneath Rainbow Bridge. Behind golden masks, Tong Guan’s spies have filled the Painting Academy. On the imperial Chengxintang paper, every stroke of ink becomes evidence of a crime.
Three years painting, three years fleeing for his life.
From Imperial Street to the entertainment quarter, from grain ships to the execution grounds. He watches a giant Huashi Gang vessel ram a civilian boat, drowning twenty-eight people, while the inspector on shore raises his cup as if nothing had happened. He slips into the refugee slums of Chidi Hill, where three thousand people huddle in grass huts and children are sold for five hundred coins. Liangshan messengers cross the river at midnight, Fang La’s followers hold secret meetings in the tea hills, and the Jiangnan exemption levy drives a bride to be seized as a hostage.
In the end, all of it must be painted into Along the River During the Qingming Festival, the work he is making for the emperor.
“Paint one stroke, and I’ll spare one person.” Tong Guan holds seventy-three hostages at the execution grounds and unfurls the blank scroll with a smile. “I want a picture of a prosperous age, with all the people supporting the throne. Will you give me one?”
Zhang Zeduan lifts his bloodstained brush.
From then on, the Bian River carries not only grain ships but blood that has yet to dry. Behind every smile on Rainbow Bridge lies a trace of tears, and beneath every scene of prosperity lie buried bones. This masterpiece, destined to become famous for all time, becomes a public secret letter that lasts for nine hundred years, until today, when an infrared scanner illuminates a hidden layer and reveals a line of writing in blood:
“Third month of the first year of the Jingkang era: Roll of the thirty-eight martyrs of Rainbow Bridge. Painter Zhang Zeduan, final work.”
It turns out he was never painting a prosperous age.
He was painting the final ornament on a coffin.
