Under Heaven (33 page)

"I ... I am not part of this," he said, thinking hard. He wondered now about the scent, that too-sweet perfume. Was it covering something else?
"I'm afraid that is not true. Everyone will be part, if this happens. That includes you, unless you go back to Kuala Nor, and the dead. And maybe even there. I told you, the princess in Rygyal has seized hold of your life." He gestured, his hands outspread. "I would be very cautious with those horses. You may find yourself between cliffs and tigers, as we say in the northeast." He dropped one hand in his lap, motioned with the other. "You may go, son of Shen Gao. I have my own road to take now. Remain guarded in Xinan."
"You are not going back?"
The other man shook his head. "It was a mistake to go to court this spring. My oldest son said as much, tried to stop me. I sent him back north four days ago. To our own ground." That cold smile. "He knows how to read, my son. Even writes poetry. I don't understand it."
Another piece seemed to be trying to slide into place, like one of the puzzle toys his sister used to love. Tai tried to remember what he knew about the sons.
"But you came this way yourself to--"
"To meet you, and decide if you might give your horses to Wen Zhou. I have satisfied myself you will not."
Tai felt a calmness descend. "And if you had satisfied yourself otherwise?"
"There would have been a fight here. A small, first battle. Your cavalry would have been killed, and probably the poet. But certainly you, first of all. I would have had no choice."
"Why?"
A reckless question but he never received an answer to it. Not in words. Only another mirthless smile.
It was then, looking at that expression, that a feeling overtook Tai unlike any he'd ever known.
He said, before an instinct for caution could stop the words, "Governor An, honoured general, you do not have to shape your son's legacy. You have your own to devise yet, my lord. We who follow great fathers, we must make our own paths and choices. This empire has been defended by you all these years. Surely you can allow yourself some rest now? Some easing of ... of painful burdens?"
Too close, too much said. The look he received was as bleak and frightening as anything he'd ever experienced. He thought of wolves, of teeth and claws in his own flesh. Coming directly after the earlier, inward sensation, an impulse sharp as a thorn, it almost made him ill. An Li did not speak again. Tai said nothing more.
The carriage door was opened for him by the governor, leaning over to do so. A gesture of courtesy from someone of such rank. Tai bowed where he sat, then stepped out and down into the late-day light and what looked, surprisingly, to be the ordinary world.
HE WAS IRRITABLY AWARE that Wei Song was watching them from the far side of the room, near the doorway to the courtyard. He was in a recessed alcove with the poet, drinking good wine too quickly. Quiet music was playing.
There was food. He wasn't hungry. He'd felt a need to become drunk, wasn't there yet. He didn't want to be dealing with the thoughts he was carrying.
A river too deep
, as a friend had written once.
Not a very good line, in truth, though it lodged in the mind.
It didn't matter how deep a river was, what mattered was how swiftly the water flowed, how cold it was, if there were dangerous creatures in it, if it had rapids or falls.
Tai drained another cup of saffron wine. Looked around the room, saw his Kanlin watching him, some distance away.
He didn't like the set of her too-wide mouth, or that intense, alert scrutiny. The mixture of concern and disapproval in it.
So, I'm drinking,
he wanted to say.
There a reason I shouldn't be?
It wasn't as if she'd ever cast that sort of glance at Sima Zian, though the man spent every single night and most of the days doing exactly this.
It occurred to him, gazing across the crowded room, that he'd never seen her in anything but the black tunic and leggings or robe of a Kanlin, and he never would. Her hair had been unbound, that first sunrise, at Iron Gate. He'd thought she was another assassin. She wasn't. Rain had sent her. Rain was sleeping now a little more than a day's ride from here. In Wen Zhou's home. In his bed, perhaps. Or maybe she was in his bed and not asleep.
She had tried to tell him this might happen.
It came to him to be irritated again by the too obviously professional appraisal his Kanlin was still giving him. His Kanlin. That was why the poet never got this look. Zian hadn't hired her. He just ... enjoyed her presence.
The poet was an easy companion. He could talk if that was your mood, or sit as quietly as you needed. Tai shook his head. Found himself returning, against his will, to the end of the encounter in Roshan's carriage.
The reason he was drinking.
The
pipa
subsided, a flute took up the melody. Across the small platform the poet was, as best Tai could tell, a few drinks behind him for the first time ever. No judgment in those eyes. No amusement either. You could say that was a judgment of sorts.
Tai didn't feel like saying it, or thinking it, or having his mind working on anything at all tonight. He gestured vaguely and a sleek figure in pale-blue silk was beside them, filling his cup. He was vaguely aware of perfume, the cut of her gown. Xinan fashion for this season, he imagined. They were almost there. He'd been away two years. They were almost there.
"A woman is generally better than wine for pushing thoughts away. And almost always better for your head." Zian smiled gently.
Tai stared at the other man.
The poet added, quietly,
"In the depths of the wood I hear only birds.
You need not say anything, but I am listening.
"
Tai shrugged. "I'm here. We're all alive. My brother's name wasn't in that letter. I'd say it was a
good
encounter. Respectful. Illuminating."
"Would you?"
It was, more than the words, the calm, forest-deep gaze that brought him up short in his striving for irony.
In the depths of the wood ...
His reply had been unworthy: of this man, of what had just happened, of what Tai was dealing with. The
pipa
resumed, joining the flute. The players were very good.
"I'm sorry," he said. He lowered his head. Looked up. "You told me earlier today that it felt as if something was approaching. You called it chaos."
"I did."
"I think you are right. I think it is almost certain."
"And you want to do something? That is what troubles you? Shen Tai, we need to remember what we are, our limitations."
And so Tai did end up saying, after all, what he'd been thinking (or trying not to think). "I could have killed him. In the carriage. He is not young. He is in great pain, all the time. I had my knife. Do you understand? I was
there
, and I listened to him speak and I thought: this is what I must do! For the empire. For all of us." He looked away. "I have never had such a feeling in my life."
"Well, you spoke of killing someone, while we rode."
He had. He'd meant Xin Lun. "That was about Yan's death. A response. This was different. It felt as if I
owed
Roshan's death, and my own, to ... to everyone else. That it was required of me. Before it is too late."
He saw that he'd disturbed the other man, finally.
"What does he intend?"
"He's left Xinan, going back northeast. His son has already gone. He feared remaining in the city. Says Wen Zhou was forcing him. He has Xin Lun's letter. It shows the first minister tried to kill me."
"Will anyone believe it?"
"I think so. Roshan has people, including the Gold Bird Guards, who saw that Zhou had Lun killed. Because he knew too much."
He had never seen the poet look like this. "He went northeast to do what?"
Tai just looked at him.
"You'd have been killed immediately," Zian said, finally. "Surely, you know it."
"Of course I do! Sometimes you have to accept that, don't you? Isn't that what courage is? In a soldier? I think I was a coward, today."
Tai drained his cup again.
The poet shook his head. "No. Ending a life, two lives that way? And other people on that road. You weren't ready to pretend to be a god."
"Perhaps. Or I wasn't ready to accept my own death. Offer it. It might have been that."
The poet stared at him. Then said:
Full moon is falling through the sky.
Cranes fly through clouds.
Wolves howl. I cannot find rest
Because I am powerless
To amend a broken world.
Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much
burden
in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is."
Tai looked at him and then away, across the room.
Wei Song had gone. He didn't know where. The music continued. It was very beautiful.

PART THREE

CHAPTER XV

H
e woke from another dream that escaped him, slipping away like a salmon from his childhood grasp in a cold river. Awareness of morning came.
It was not a dream of a fox-woman, not this time. No desire, no sense of desire spent. Instead, wistfulness, loss, as if something, someone, was leaving, was already gone, like the dream itself. A path in life, a person, a shape to the world? All of these?
I am powerless to amend a broken world.
It occurred to him, still half asleep, that the way Chan Du had phrased that celebrated grief, it suggested other worlds than this. Others that might need mending--or amending. The two words were not the same, Tai thought, though they glided into each other, in the way the best poetry did.
Then that thought, too, fled from him as a rapping came at his door, and Tai understood that he had heard it already, asleep, that it was the knocking that had awakened him, sending the dream away down the river of night with the moon.
He glanced over. The second bed was empty, had not been occupied--as usual, although the poet's manner had been sombre when Tai had left him after their talk last night.
Wei Song and two of the soldiers had been in the courtyard when he'd crossed it to go to bed. They'd walked him to the door of his room. It was clear they were going to stay outside. Three guards now. Roshan had warned him to be cautious. Tai hadn't told that to Song but she'd made changes anyhow. He'd said nothing, not even a good night.
Another knocking. Not imperative or demanding. But it was also--he knew this from the courtesy of that sound--not his Kanlin summoning him.
From outside came a voice, carefully pitched, exquisitely cultured: "Honourable Shen Tai, be so gracious as to acknowledge a humble servant's presence and request."
Tai sat up in bed. "You haven't made any request, and I don't know whose presence I am acknowledging."
"I bow twice in shame. Forgive me, noble sir. My name is too unworthy to be offered. But I am entrusted with the office of second steward in the household of the Shining and Exalted Companion. You are invited to present your honourable self."
"She is here?"
The steward said, with the faintest hint of asperity, "No, no, she is at Ma-wai. We are sent to bring you there, with all courtesy."
Tai began dressing very quickly.
It was beginning. You could say it had begun by Kuala Nor, when Bytsan sri Nespo had brought him a letter. Or at Chenyao, when the governor of the Second and Third Military Districts had sought to claim him and his horses, had even sent a daughter to him at night. A sign, in silk, of what might come.
You could say there never was a clear beginning to anything in life, unless it was the moment you drew your first breath in the world.
Or you could say it was beginning now.
Because the Shining and Exalted Companion was also called Precious Consort and Beloved Companion, and her name was Wen Jian. The court hadn't waited for him to get to Xinan. It had come for him.
He splashed water on his face at the basin. Tied his hair hastily and then did it again to marginally better effect. Rubbed his teeth with a finger. Used the chamber pot. Put his swords on, his boots.
He went to the door. Just before opening it, a thought occurred.
"Wei Song, please report."
Silence. Tai drew a breath. He truly didn't want a confrontation here, but ...
"Steward, where is my Kanlin guard?"
On the other side of the door, the steward cleared his throat. His voice was as smooth as before, however. "The Shining and Exalted Companion is not always enamoured of Kanlin Warriors, my lord."
"Not everyone is. What does that have to do with the present circumstance?"
"Your guard was assertive in trying to prevent us from knocking at your door."
"As was her duty, since I was asleep. Once more: where is she?"
A hesitation. "She is here, of course."
"Then why is she not answering me?"
"I ... do not know, my lord."
Tai knew. "Steward, unless Wei Song is released by those holding her, and until she speaks to me, I am not opening my door to you. I have no doubt you can break it down, but you did speak of respect, and of courtesy. I expect both."
This was not the mildest way to begin a day. He heard quick, low speech outside. He waited.
"Master Shen," he heard her say, finally. "I am shamed. I could not prevent them from disturbing your rest." They would have been holding her. She would have refused to speak until she was free.
He opened the door.
He took in the scene before him. The steward was bowing. There were a dozen soldiers in the courtyard's morning light. Two of them had wounds: one was on the ground, being attended to, another was upright but holding a hand to a bleeding side. Both, he saw with relief, looked as if they would be all right. Song stood among them with her own swords removed from her. They lay beside her. Her head was lowered.
She had, evidently, fought imperial soldiers for him. He saw his other two guards of the night. They were kneeling to one side, unharmed.
Tai's soldiers, far outnumbering these new arrivals, were standing in the middle of the courtyard. But the difference in numbers was meaningless. This steward was leading men of the imperial guard of the Emperor Taizu, might he rule a thousand years in joy upon the Phoenix Throne. These were elite soldiers of the Ta-Ming Palace. You didn't fight them, or deny them anything, unless you were keen to have your head on a spear at the city gates.
Tai saw the poet among his own soldiers. Zian didn't seem amused or curious this morning. He looked concerned and alert, though rumpled as ever: hair untied, belt askew.
There was a crowd in the courtyard beyond all of these. Gathered, early of a morning to see what was happening, why a company from the court was here. Who it was they had come to seize, or summon, or honour.
The second son of General Shen Gao, once Left Side Commander of the Pacified West, said, carefully, "Steward, you do me too much honour."
The man straightened from his bow, a practised movement. He was older than Tai, had little hair, just fringes at the sides. He affected a thin moustache, likely a fashion. No sword. The black robe of a civil servant, red belt of rank, key of office dangling at his waist.
The steward bowed again, fist in palm this time, in response to Tai's words. They were doing this very formally, Tai thought. It made him nervous.
He had a sudden image in his mind, vivid as a master-painting, of the mountains ringing Kuala Nor in springtime, rising up, and up. No men to be seen, just birds, mountain goats and sheep on the slopes, and the lake below.
He shook his head. He looked to his left, and saw a sedan chair waiting for him. He blinked. It was dazzling. It gleamed in the sunlight. It made Roshan's carriage yesterday look like a farmer's market cart.
There was gold adorning the four pillars. The rods the bearers would hold were banded in ivory and onyx, and he was fairly certain, even from here, that the wood was sandalwood. The curtains were heavy, worked silk, with the phoenix symbol, and they were yellow, which only the emperor's household could use. Kingfisher feathers were everywhere, iridescent, shimmering. Too many of them; an opulence that was almost an assault if you knew how rare they were, brought from how far, what they would have cost.
He saw jade decorations at the cross pieces, top and bottom, of the curtained cabin on the rods. White jade and pale-green and dark-green. The rods were long enough for eight bearers, not four, or six, and there were eight men standing by, expressionless, to carry him to Ma-wai.
He had tried, vainly in the event, to keep some control, some distance yesterday when An Li had summoned him beside the road. He tried again.
"Wei Song, reclaim your weapons and make arrangements for Dynlal to be saddled." He glanced at the steward. "I prefer to ride. I will be grateful for your escort, however."
The steward looked utterly composed, his expression formally regretful. "I fear your Kanlin cannot be permitted arms. She drew upon the imperial household guard. She must, of course, be punished."
Tai shook his head. "That is not acceptable. She was under orders that my night not be disturbed. There have been--I imagine your mistress knows this--attempts upon my life. If I die, the empire suffers a great loss. And I am
not
referring to my own unworthy life."
The slightest hint of unease in the man's smooth face, adjustments being made. "Even so, my lord, it remains that she--"
"She did exactly what she was ordered to do in the interests of Kitai and her current master. I am curious, second steward, did your soldiers explain their purpose? Did they invite her to knock at the door and address me?"
A silence. He turned to Song.
"Wei Song, report: were these things done?"
Her head was high now. "I regret it was not so, my lord. They came up on the portico, ignored requests to stop. Ignored requests for an explanation. This one, the steward, went straight to your door."
"Surely you saw their imperial livery?"
"My lord, livery can be a disguise. It is a known device. Men have been slain through that artifice. And the sedan chair did not arrive until after I had engaged the soldiers. I am shamed and sorry to have caused you distress. I will, of course, accept any punishment due to me."
"None is due," Tai said flatly. "Steward, I will make answer to your mistress for my servant, but I will not accompany you willingly if she is in any way harmed, or impeded from guarding me."
"Soldiers have been injured," the steward repeated.
"So was she," Tai said.
It was true. He saw blood on Song's shoulder, a rip in her tunic. She would be, he thought, more distressed at being defeated (by a dozen of the best-trained soldiers in the Ta-Ming) than anything else. He let his voice grow cold. "If there is anyone who can confirm the report she has offered, I daresay the fault--and the punishment--does not lie with my guard, and I will say as much at Ma-wai." He lifted his voice. "Sima Zian, will you be good enough to assist?"
It was useful sometimes to have a celebrated name to bring into a conversation, and see what ensued. In a different time and place, he might have been amused.
The steward wheeled, stumbling, as if caught in a swirl of wind. He spied the poet, who had obligingly stepped forward to be spied. The steward achieved two bows with speed, but his composure was clearly shaken.
Zian smiled genially. "I do not believe, to my great distress, that the Lady Wen Jian is fond of me this spring. I would be honoured and grateful to have the chance to express my respect for her, should the opportunity arise."
He'd hinted to this effect, Tai remembered, in their first conversation. A reason he'd left Xinan.
"Master Sima," the steward spluttered. "This is unexpected! To find you in the ... in the company of Master Shen Gao, er, Shen Tai."
"Poets turn up in strange places. I was here this morning to see your soldiers refuse a request to explain themselves at Master Shen's doorway. I believe a Kanlin must respond to that refusal, by the code of their order. Han Chung of the Seventh Dynasty has a verse on the subject, praising their dedication. The poem was a favourite of the glorious emperor's illustrious father, now with the gods and his ancestors. Perhaps he is even listening to Han Chung recite in one of the nine heavens." Zian lifted a hand piously. "We can only hope, amid the dust and noise of the world, that it might be so."
Tai felt an impulse to laugh, so befuddled did the steward look.
He schooled his features. He said, as gravely as he could, "Steward, I am accompanied by the illustrious Master Sima, by a Kanlin guard, and by a company of soldiers personally assigned to my command by Governor Xu Bihai. I will ride among them. I am humbled by your mistress's invitation to attend upon her and will make my way to Ma-wai immediately. Would you do me the honour of riding with us?"
He said it loudly, he wanted people to hear.
From this point forward, he thought, a great deal of what happened would be for display--positions, and posturing. He knew that much about the court.
The steward of Wen Jian knew more, of course. But the man seemed acutely uncomfortable now. He cleared his throat again, shifted his feet. An awkward silence descended. He seemed to be waiting. For what, Tai didn't know.
"Ride with me," Tai repeated. "There has been a minor embarrassment here, nothing of consequence. I will happily tell your mistress that you were properly zealous in her cause."
"Master Shen, your entirely unworthy servant begs forgiveness. It was not considered that you might decline the sedan chair. It is known that you are attached to your horse and we wished to ensure it came safely with us. Some of our soldiers took it already this morning, from the stables here. They are to meet us at Ma-wai. Of course no harm will come to--"
"You took my horse?"
Tai felt a hard pulsing at his temples. He was aware that Wei Song had reclaimed her weapons, just below him in the courtyard. The imperial soldiers made no movement to stop her. Zian stepped forward to stand beside her. The poet's face was cold now, the wide eyes watchful.
Tai said, to Song, "Dynlal was guarded?"
"As always, my lord," she replied.
The steward cleared his throat again. This morning's encounter had not, quite evidently, unfolded as he had expected it to. "Two of the three men by the horse, I understand, were prompt to stand aside, as was proper, given who we are."
"And the third?" said Tai.
"The third, I greatly regret, also elected to draw blade upon officers of the imperial palace guard."
"Defending my Sardian horse--a gift from the Princess Cheng-wan! As he'd been instructed to do. Steward,
where is he
?"
Another silence.
"I am informed that he unfortunately succumbed to wounds incurred, my lord. May I offer my regrets? And the hope that the passing of a nameless soldier will not--"
Tai threw up both hands, fingers spread, palms outward, compelling silence. It was a gesture of force, arrogance, a superior stilling an underling--in public. Even as he did it he was trying to sort through if he
did
carry rank against this man. Tai was a middle-level, purely symbolic military officer, but also an honoured general's son and--importantly--younger brother to the prime minister's principal adviser.
But this steward, in the red-belted black robe of a mandarin of the eighth degree, high in the household of the Beloved Companion, outranked him by any and all possible--
No. He didn't. And
that
was why the man bowed yet again, instead of snarling in outrage at Tai's gesture. The steward knew.