Daiyan poured two more cups, took one to each of the other men. These were companions, trusted, they were alone. And he still felt afraid. Ziji held his cup distractedly, without drinking. Daiyan took his hand and brought the wine towards his friend’s mouth. “Drink,” he said. “Call it an order.”
“From a general of fifty thousand?”
Daiyan grimaced. He was that now, which was part of the fear—a sense the world was moving very quickly.
“To his commander of twenty-five thousand, yes.” He watched Ziji drink, then turned to the magistrate. “What do you mean ‘he knew’? He ordered Wu Tong taken to prison—”
“And the emperor ordered him executed, as soon as the facts of the tree are confirmed. This, added to Erighaya? He can’t survive. There is no way to save his life. Unless your information ... ?”
“If my information is untrue, I’m dead, and I suppose you are, too. For speaking up for me. Drink your wine.”
“It isn’t, is it? Untrue?”
Daiyan managed a shrug. “The old man has no reason to want me killed. I was unhappy about just about everything this morning, including removing my tunic and watching the emperor of Kitai step down to look at my back, but I’ll wager the story of the Shen tree is a true one.”
“Wager your life?” Fuyin said, forcing a crooked smile. He couldn’t manage more, Daiyan saw.
“Already have.”
The smile went away.
“They’ll have their confirmation by tomorrow night or the next day,” Ziji said.
Daiyan nodded. “And Wu Tong dies. What happens to the prime minister?”
The magistrate sipped his wine. “My own wager? Nothing. The emperor knows he wasn’t controlling the Flowers and Rocks any more. And Wenzong needs him. He wants this Altai alliance.” Wang Fuyin looked at him. “So do you.”
Daiyan sighed. “I want to take our lands back. I don’t care what tribe we ally with. I’m only a soldier.”
“A general now. No only about that.”
“But posted in the wrong direction.”
Ziji stirred. “You really thought they’d give you the attack on the Southern Capital? Right away? Oh, surely not, Dai.”
No one else used his childhood name. Daiyan shook his head. “No, of course I didn’t. But I’m afraid—”
“You’re afraid whatever old man they appoint will be as bad as Wu Tong,” Fuyin said. “And do you know what? He might be! We may be humiliated up there, show our weakness. Then what?”
Daiyan crossed the room and poured more wine. He carried the flask and refilled cups for the other two. Back at the brazier he set the flask down, moved some coals with the tongs so it wouldn’t overheat. He turned to the others.
“Then we have real trouble next summer. And will have to hope the prime minister is very good at negotiations. In the meantime, Ziji and I are going to try to make one army as good a force as Kitai has seen in a long time.”
“Will they accept you? The other generals?” It was a serious question.
Daiyan laughed, but heard bitterness in the sound. “Of course they will. I’ll just show them what’s written on my back.”
That is my own calligraphy! the emperor of Kitai had exclaimed. There had been wonder in his voice, and pride. Even the spirit world knows my hand! he’d said.
The magistrate shook his head. “All because of a tree,” he said. “Why did the Shen family even permit it? Surely ...”
“It wasn’t them. The old man says they sold the estate generations ago. Moved south. Those who own the land now were offered a great deal of money for the tree, and the graves weren’t their graves.”
“Even so!” said Fuyin. “It is such a crime that—”
“Money, and a strong message that they had better accept it,” Daiyan said. “We know how the Flowers and Rocks works.”
The magistrate nodded. “I know you do. And the emperor would have been so pleased to have it, if no one had told him.”
“Too many years of him not being told things,” said Ziji grimly.
Fuyin said, “We forced him to act this morning.”
“The old man did,” said Daiyan.
Fuyin sipped his wine. He was silent a few moments, and then, “Do you know, I believe I have just made a decision.”
Daiyan grinned sourly. “You will attack the Southern Capital yourself?”
No smile. It was a bad joke.
“Unlikely. No, I am going to resign my position. Withdraw south to Shantong where my family is. I think this is about to become a difficult court, and I ... I have books to write.”
“You just decided this?” Ziji asked. His expression was odd.
“Between one sip and the next.” Fuyin sat up straight.
The other two exchanged a glance. “Your wife won’t be pleased,”
Daiyan said, thoughtfully.
Fuyin winced. Finished his cup. “I will deal with my wife,” he said, with more bravado than confidence, Daiyan judged.
But he understood the magistrate. After this morning he couldn’t see a man of virtue wanting any part of the court. Which left it to the men without virtue.
And himself? A general, promoted so fast, too fast. A huge reward this morning, and the salary of his new rank, which meant more money to send home, money to build a home one day. But his thoughts seemed to be going down a different path as he filled his cup again. He intended to be drunk this evening.
You could chase a dream all your life. What happened when you caught it? He wanted to ask Shan that, hear what she said, hear her voice. She was probably with her husband, travelling this way.
Two days later, at twilight, they slit the throat of the eunuch Wu Tong. He had created the Flowers and Rocks Network for the emperor’s garden, and had commanded Kitai’s armies in several fields of battle, including the northwest, where he’d made some errors of judgment and showed what could be called a lack of leadership.
It is possible to say that no man should be judged by another for how he acts when in immediate fear of dying. It is also possible to say that those who aspire to office and power must accept the burdens that come with those, including such judgments.
The body was burned and the ashes scattered in water, as was normal practice in such matters.
The scholar-tree of the Shen family was taken back to the estate above the Wai River, with some difficulty, as it was travelling upstream now. The best gardeners of that prefecture were assigned to oversee its restoration, and men came to repair damage done to the gravestones and the graves. Prayers were offered and contributions made at nearby chapels of both the Cho Master and the Path, and in the imperial palace itself. The tree was replanted with care and tended attentively.
It did not flourish. Not long afterwards, it died. Sometimes things uprooted cannot be restored, even in the same ground.
Approaching Yenling, Qi Wai tells his wife about the girl.
Shan hasn’t asked, hasn’t really wanted to know. Perhaps once, but not now, since Xinan. But she can’t very well tell Wai not to speak to her.
And so it is, at a posting inn west of the city, that she learns over dinner one of the ways she’s been wrong about her husband.
The girl is seven years old. He had taken her from a house in the best entertainment quarter of Hanjin. She’d had her feet bound earlier on the day he saw her, though not yet with the bones broken, in preparation for a life offering the newest fashion in feminine beauty.
Wai had been there with friends that night, listening to music, drinking saffron wine, eating fish cakes. He is the sort of man who adds such details in a story. Through a curtain he’d seen the child shuffling down a corridor, heard her weeping.
He purchased her the next morning. Had her taken to Yenling, to a house his family owns. They had the permission of the imperial clan administration to have a place there, because of his own travels. He is paying for her care and upbringing. Her feet are undamaged. Her name is Lizhen.
Shan finds herself weepin
g at the table. “Why Yenling? Why not our home? Why not tell me? This is ... this is an honourable thing you have done!”
Her husband looks down at the table. He says, uncomfortably, “She is a sweet child, frightened of the world. She ... Shan, she is not capable of living or being educated as you have. It is too hard, unless someone is as strong as you are.”
As strong as she is.
She is still crying, which damages his argument, she thinks. But he’s right about the one thing ...it is hard.
“You thought, if you brought her home, I would insist that she ...”
She wipes at her eyes. Sees her husband nod. She says, trying to speak carefully, “I had heard rumours of a girl, and the binding. I thought you had a bound-foot concubine.”
His face shows horror. “I would never do that! She is seven years old, Shan!”
“I didn’t know.” But Shan is still what she is. She says, “And if she were fifteen, not seven?”
Wai shakes his head firmly. “Never. This fashion may be coming, but it is not for me.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “Will you ... will you take me to see her?”
He nods. Then hesitates. “You thought I had a concubine in Yenling?”
Wai is a clever man. Awkward, eccentric, but his intelligence is real.
“Yes. I’m sorry. Of course you could have one at home any time you want. I didn’t think you wanted one. You never spoke of it.”
“I don’t want a concubine.”
He seems about to say more, but does not. She doesn’t push him. She has learned enough for one evening.
Two nights later, in the house in Yenling, she lies in bed alone in the chamber assigned to her, having met the child—who is exquisite, and desperately shy—and she listens to the sound of lovemaking from the next room.
He is telling her this way, though the hints had been there from when they first entered the small courtyard here this afternoon.
She hears Qi Wai’s quiet voice through the wall, and then another, deeper than his—the tall steward of this house. His name is Kou Yao. He has long fingers and large eyes.
Many things have become clearer, in the dark.
ON THE ROAD EAST the next morning, escorted, she is clear-eyed and clear-headed. Her husband has remained for a few days in Yenling. He will follow with his new finds from the northwest soon.
She is trying to decide whether his behaviour the night before had been cowardly or courteous.
Cowardly, because he hadn’t the courage to speak to her and explain. Or courteous, because a man didn’t need to explain anything to his wife at all, and because he’d allowed her to be private and alone when she came to understand what might be the pattern of their lives, going forward. She decides that his conduct can be said to be both.
The child will remain in Yenling. The chaos and rivalries of the clan compound mean it is not a home for an extremely shy girl, taken (everyone would know it, little is hidden) from a pleasure house.
Shan’s conversation with Wai early this morning had taken place with no one else present. She hadn’t been especially submissive. He wouldn’t have expected it from her.
“I understand a great deal now, and I thank you. But there is something I must say.”
“Please,” her husband had said. He’d flushed, but met her eyes.
“There is a child in this house. You are responsible for her education and upbringing. Wai, you will have to be discreet. Even if it means locating your ... the steward somewhere else.”
“His name is Kou Yao,” he’d said. But eventually he nodded. “I understand.” He’d tilted his head sideways, a gesture he has. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she’d said, in turn.
THEN, FINALLY, she is home. She sees her father, embraces him. There is a letter for her. Their steward brings it to her chamber.
Daiyan has written. He is gone. He has been greatly promoted in rank, after events at court. He is going to meet his new army. His army. Fifty thousand men. Wu Tong the eunuch is dead. It appears that Kitai will be going to war in the spring, which is the season of war. Everyone knows that.
He writes, she reads. “I needed you, to be with you, hear your thoughts, the night all this happened. I am becoming aware that this will always be so, and not possible. But it eases me, to know you are in the world. My apologies for the hasty brush strokes here.”
She shakes her head. They are really very good, his brush strokes. But she is seeing them through tears. War is coming. In the north. On his back, placed there, burned there, by a creature from the spirit world, are words in the emperor’s hand. She had been the first person to see them. A room in Xinan, above a courtyard and a fountain.
There is such a strangeness to the world, Shan thinks. More than anyone could ever record or understand. She dries her eyes and goes down to see her father, whom she loves, and who loves her with no ambiguity or uncertainty at all.
Through autumn and winter, plans are made. Couriers leave Hanjin on a steady basis; others return in wind and rain. Not long before the New Year the first snow falls. The Genyue is silent and beautiful.
One army in the northwest is drilled and sharpened like a blade. The newest high-ranking general in Kitai isn’t much liked by his peers, having risen too swiftly for anyone’s comfort, but it is seen that his soldiers don’t share this feeling.
It is also noted, over time, that the men he is training become remarkably disciplined. Commander Ren Daiyan leads forty thousand of them south, assigned to deal with a bandit uprising that has become a full rebellion on both sides of the Wai River. There are many reasons for unrest. The Flowers and Rocks Network has continued to operate. Forests have been destroyed to provide timber for new palace buildings. Taxes were raised again at harvest time.
Of course they were. A war is coming. Everyone knows.
It is reported that Commander Ren himself takes the field against the rebels with a sword and a bow. A bow, of all things! His men battle in and through woods and marshlands. Some of the other high-ranking commanders, hearing of this, make jests: about how Ren Daiyan is well suited for marsh warfare, given his origins.
His engaging in combat himself is regarded as undignified and disturbing by the other leaders of the Kitan army, a bad precedent.
The bandit rebellion is suppressed, quite rapidly. There are stories, probably exaggerated, about strategies used against them in the difficult, trackless ground.
The rebel leaders are executed, but only the leaders, it is reported. It seems that about ten thousand of the rebel fighters have been accepted by the new general into his army. This is also disturbing. They come north with him to the lands above Yenling.
They are too late to participate in the spring offensive against the Xiaolu Southern Capital.
That rebellion by the Wai River—and the need to send an army to deal with it—will come to be seen as profoundly significant by those looking back on the events of that time.
Four Altai riders, led by the war-leader’s brother, arrive in Hanjin early in winter, slipping through Xiaolu patrols, apparently with ease.
They are treated respectfully enough, given that they are primitive barbarians. They have no concept of court procedure or manners and are reportedly harsh with the women sent to them. Prime Minister Kai Zhen’s intention is to take the Southern Capital of the Xiaolu, as these Altai wish—but not to give it over to them, as they also wish. Not for only four or five of the lost Fourteen.
No, Kitai is not to be dealt with in that way. Not by steppe riders, and not by ignorant northeastern tribesmen, most particularly. There are limits to generosity.
The war-leader’s brother—his name is Bai’ji—is not presented to the emperor. It is absurd to even think such a thing could happen. The Altai party meets Kai Zhen once, in circumstances and with a ceremony meant to overawe them. They are ushered past hundreds of courtiers into the prime minister’s presence.
Not evidently overawed, the war-leader’s brother as
ks through his interpreter why the walls of the city on the northeastern side, by the imperial garden, have been permitted to fall into disrepair. The prime minister declines to answer. He quotes the Cho Master. He offers modest gifts of silk and porcelain.
After the Altai have started back north, the prime minister has the man responsible for maintaining the walls decapitated, along with his principal subordinates. Their heads are spiked above a gate. The walls are ordered to be repaired.
The mood in the city is, unsurprisingly, tense. Excitement and apprehension. There is some relief when the rebellion in the south is reported to have been suppressed. The Wai River is uncomfortably close to the capital, and the rebel forces had grown large.
The prime minister accepts the emperor’s congratulations for this victory. He is rewarded with a painting of an oriole and plum blossoms rendered by the emperor’s own exquisite brush.
There is winter snow, not unusual in Hanjin. Children play in it, laughing. The emperor’s beloved songbirds of the Genyue are gathered by men and boys trained to do this, and are moved to a large, heated building—newly built, expensive—where they may fly free among trees and bushes until the cold season ends.
The emperor performs the New Year’s rites with sumptuous ceremony. The new music for the rituals is played for the first time, using intervals cleverly derived from the measured length of the fingers of the emperor’s left hand. There are fireworks, as always. Hanjin celebrates all night for three nights.
It snows again before the Lantern Festival. Red lanterns against white snow, red dragons in the dragon dance, and a full moon rising over all of Kitai, over all the world under heaven while fireworks flash again.
On the day of the Cold Food Festival the dead are mourned and graves swept clean. The emperor has already left the city in a long procession to visit the tomb of his father. He kneels there in highly visible homage. The war that is coming is being described as an act of filial devotion. It is known that the last emperor, Wenzong’s father, had always mourned the rivers and mountains lost.
Spring comes.
When the world changes greatly this can occur because of a single dramatic event, or because many small elements, each inconsequential in itself, fit together—like the pieces of a wooden puzzle box, of the sort sold in any village marketplace for a few copper coins.