She moves before them now in a high room, beginning to dance as the blind man lightly plays. There is a sound among those watching, a collective intake of breath, as from mortals glimpsing the ninth heaven from a distance, a hint given of what existence might be like among the gods.
The emperor is silent, watching her. Jian’s eyes are on his. They are almost always on his when he is in a room. Flute music, that soft breath of anticipation as her dance begins, and then one voice cries out, shockingly, an assault: “Oh, very good! You will dance for us now! Good!”
He laughs happily. A voice oddly high-pitched in a stupefyingly massive body. A man so large his buttocks and thighs overspill the mat set out for him next to the throne. He has been permitted to sit, leaning upon cushions, an acknowledgement of necessity and a sign of honour. No one else is seated other than the emperor and the blind musician, not even Taizu’s heir. Shinzu stands near his father, drinking wine, carefully silent.
It is usually wise for a prince in Kitai to be cautious.
The very large man, not careful at all, had been born a barbarian in the northwest. He was arrested, young, for stealing sheep, but permitted to join the Kitan army instead of being executed.
He is now so powerful it terrifies most of those in this room. He is the military governor of three districts in the northeast, an enormous territory. A very large army.
This has never happened before, one governor for three districts, it has never been permitted to happen.
The man’s thick legs are thrust straight out before him; there is no possible way he could cross them. His eyes are almost-hidden slits in the creases of a smooth-shaven face. His hair, under a black hat, is thinning; there isn’t enough left to tie into a knot. When he comes to Xinan, or when he leaves the imperial city, returning to his northern districts, twelve men bear his sedan chair. Gone are the days when a horse could carry him, into battle or anywhere else.
His name is An Li, but he has been known for a long time as Roshan.
He is hated by a great many, but there are those who adore him, as passionately, as intensely.
The emperor is one who loves him, and Jian, the Precious Consort, has even adopted him as her son—though he is past twice her age—in a child’s game, a mockery of ceremony, seen by some as an abomination.
Earlier this spring the women of her entourage, thirty or forty of them, giggling amid clouds of incense and the scent of mingled perfume, had stripped him of his garments as he lay upon the floor in the women’s quarters, and then they had powdered and swaddled and pinned him like a newborn in vast cloths. Jian, entering, laughing and clapping with delight, had fed him milk, pretending—with exposed breasts some said—it was her own.
The emperor, it was whispered, had come into the room that day in the women’s quarters, where the gross man who had been—and in many ways still was—the most formidable general in the empire was wailing and crying like a newborn babe, lying on his back, fisting small eyes with his hands, while sleek, scented women of the Ta-Ming Palace laughed themselves into raptures of amusement to see Jian and Roshan so merrily at play at the centre of the world.
Everyone in Xinan knew that story. Other tales were whispered about the two of them which were unspeakably dangerous to say aloud in the wrong company. In any company, really.
To speak out, as Roshan does this evening, just as Wen Jian’s dance begins, is a violent breach of protocol. For those who understand such things it is also a ferociously aggressive display of confidence.
He is uncouth and illiterate—proudly declares it himself—born into a tribe bordering desert dunes, among a people who had learned to survive raising sheep and horses, and then robbing merchants on the Silk Roads.
His father had served in the Kitan army on the frontier, one of many barbarian horsemen filling that role as the imperial army evolved. They had stopped the raiding, made the long roads safe for commerce and the growth of Xinan and the empire. The father had risen to middling rank—preparing the way for a son who had not always been so vast.
An Li, in turn, had been a soldier and an officer, then a senior one, whose soldiers left mounds of enemy skulls on his battlefields for the wolves and carrion birds, subduing swaths of territory for Kitai. Following upon these conquests he’d been made a general and then, not long after, a military governor in the northeast, with honours beyond any of the other governors.
He assumes a licence, accordingly, to behave in ways no other man would dare, not even the heir. Perhaps especially the heir. He amuses Taizu. In the view of some in this room, he acts this way deliberately, interrupts crudely, to show others that he can. That only he can.
Among those with this opinion is the first minister, the new one: Wen Zhou, the Precious Consort’s favoured cousin, holding office because of her intercession.
The last prime minister, the gaunt, unsleeping one who died in the autumn—to the relief of many and the fear and grief of others—was the only man alive Roshan had visibly feared.
Chin Hai, who had steadily promoted the gross barbarian, and kept him in check, has gone to his ancestors, and the Ta-Ming Palace is a different place, which means the empire is.
Eunuchs and mandarins, princes and military leaders, aristocrats, disciples of both the Sacred Path and the Cho Master—all of them watch the first minister and the strongest of the military governors, and no one moves too quickly, or calls attention to himself. It is not always a good thing to be noticed.
Among those observing Jian’s first slow, sensuous motions—her cream-and-gold silk skirt sweeping the floor, then beginning to rise and float as her movements grow swifter, wider—the most suspicious view of Roshan is shared by the prime minister’s principal adviser.
This figure stands behind Zhou in the black robes (red belt, gold key hanging from the belt) of a mandarin of the highest, ninth degree.
His name is Shen Liu, and his sister, his only sister, is a great distance north by now, beyond the Long Wall, serving his needs extremely well.
He has a cultured appreciation for dancing such as this, for poetry, good wine and food, painting and calligraphy, gems and brocaded liao silk, even architecture and the subtle orientation of city gardens. More, in all these cases, than the first minister does.
There is also a sensual side to his nature, carefully masked. But watching this particular woman, Liu struggles to resist private imaginings. He frightens himself. The very fact that he cannot help but picture her in a room alone with him, those slender hands upraised, wide sleeves falling back to show long, smooth arms as she unpins night-black hair, makes him tremble, as if an enemy might somehow peer into the recesses of his thought and expose him on a precipice of danger.
Impassive, outwardly composed, Liu stands behind First Minister Wen, beside the chief of the palace eunuchs, watching a woman dance. A casual observer might think him bored.
He is not. He is hiding desire, and frightened by Roshan, perplexed as to what the man’s precise ambitions might be. Liu hates being unsure of anything, always has.
The first minister is also afraid, and they believe they have reason to fear. They have discussed a number of actions, including provoking Roshan into doing something reckless, then arresting him for treason—but the man controls three armies, has the emperor’s love, and Jian, who matters in this, is ambivalently positioned.
One of Roshan’s sons is here in the palace, a courtier, but also a hostage of sorts, if it comes to that. Liu is privately of the opinion that Roshan will not let that deter him from anything he decides to do. Two of the governor’s advisers were arrested in the city three weeks ago at the first minister’s instigation: charged with consulting astrologers after dark, a serious crime. They have denied the accusations. They remain incarcerated. Roshan has appeared serenely indifferent to the matter.
The discussions will continue.
There is a rustling sound. A lean cleric of the Path, an alchemist, appears beside the throne bearing a jade and jewelled cup upon a
round golden tray. The emperor, his eyes never leaving the dancer, whose eyes never leave his, drinks the elixir prescribed him for this hour. She will take hers later.
He might never need his tomb. He might live with her forever, eating golden peaches in pavilions of sandalwood, surrounded by tended lacquer trees and bamboo groves, gardens of chrysanthemums beside ponds with lilies and lotus flowers floating in them, drifting amid lanterns and fireflies like memories of mortality.
Tai looked across the raised platform at the poet, and then away towards a lamp and its shadow on the wall. His eyes were open, but seeing nothing more than shapes.
Sima Zian had finished the tale, what he knew. What was, he’d said, beginning to be known among people with links to court or civil service.
It was a story that could easily have reached the scholars-in-waiting, come to the ears of Tai’s friends: two princesses to be sent as wives to the Bogü in exchange for urgently needed horses for stock breeding and the cavalry, and increased numbers of the nomads to serve for pay in the Kitan army. One of the princesses a true daughter of the imperial family, the other, in the old, sly trick …
It is about your sister, the poet had said.
A great deal had become clear in this softly lit reception chamber of a courtesan house, late at night in a provincial town far from the centre of power. From where Tai’s older brother, trusted confidant and principal adviser to First Minister Wen Zhou, had achieved … what people would regard as something brilliant, spectacular, a gift to their entire family, not just himself.
Tai, looking towards shadow, had a sudden image of a little girl sitting on his shoulders, reaching up to pick apricots in the—
No. He pushed that away. He could not let himself be so cheaply sentimental. Such maudlin thoughts were for slack poets improvising at a rural prefect’s banquet, for students struggling with an assigned verse on an examination.
He would conjure, instead, mornings when General Shen Gao had been home from campaigning, images of the wilful girl who had listened at a doorway—letting herself be seen or heard, so they could dismiss her if they chose—when Tai spoke of the world with their father.
Or, later, after the general had retired to his estate, to fishing in the stream, and sorrow, when Tai had been the one coming home: from the far north, from Stone Drum Mountain, or visiting at festivals from studying in Xinan.
Li-Mei was not some earnest, round-faced little girl. She had been away from home, serving the empress at court for three years, had been readying herself to be married before their father died.
Another image: northern lake, cabin aflame, fires burning. Smell of charred flesh, men doing unspeakable things to the dead, and to those not yet dead.
Memories he would have liked to have left behind by now.
He became aware that he was clenching his fists. He forced himself to stop. He hated being obvious, transparent, it rendered a man vulnerable. It was, in fact, Eldest Brother Liu who had taught him that.
He saw Sima Zian looking at him, at his hands, compassion in the other man’s face.
“I want to kill someone,” Tai said.
A pause to consider this. “I am familiar with the desire. It is sometimes effective. Not invariably.”
“My brother, her brother, did this,” Tai said.
The women had withdrawn, they were alone on the platform.
The poet nodded. “This seems obvious. Will he expect you to praise him for it?”
Tai stared. “No,” he said.
“Really? He might have done so. Considering what this does for your family.”
“No,” Tai said again. He looked away. “He will have done this through the first minister. He’ll have had to.”
Sima Zian nodded. “Of course.” He poured himself more wine, gestured towards Tai’s cup.
Tai shook his head. He said, the words rushing out, “I have also learned that First Minister Wen has claimed for himself the woman I … my own favoured courtesan in the North District.”
The other man smiled. “As tightly spun as a regulated verse! He’d be another man you’ll want to kill?”
Tai flushed, aware of how banal this must seem to someone as worldly as the poet. Fighting over a courtesan now. A student and a high government official! To the death! They performed this sort of shallow tale with puppets for gaping farmers in market squares.
He was too angry, and he knew it.
He reached over and poured another cup after all. He looked around the room again. Only a dozen or so people still awake. It was very late. He’d been riding since daybreak this morning.
His sister was gone. Yan was dead by the lake. His father was dead. His brother … his brother …
“There are,” said Sima Zian gravely, “a number of people in Xinan, and elsewhere, who might wish the prime minister … to be no longer among the living. He will be taking precautions. The imperial city is murderously dangerous right now, Shen Tai.”
“I’ll fit in well then, won’t I?”
The poet didn’t smile. “I don’t think so. I think you’ll disturb people, shift balances. Someone doesn’t want you arriving, obviously.”
Obviously.
It was difficult, despite everything, to picture his brother selecting an assassin. It was painful as a blow. It was a crack, a crevasse, in the world.
Tai shook his head slowly.
“It might not have been your brother,” said the poet, as if reading his thoughts. The Kanlin woman, Wei Song, had done the same thing a few nights ago. Tai didn’t like it.
“Of course it was him!” he said harshly. There was a dark place beneath the words. “He would know how I’d feel about what he did to Li-Mei.”
“Would he expect you to kill him for it?”
Tai slowed the black drumming of his thoughts. The poet held his gaze with those wide-set eyes.
At length, Tai shrugged his shoulders. “No. He wouldn’t.”
Sima Zian smiled. “So I thought. Incidentally, there’s someone on the portico, keeps crossing back and forth, looking in at us. Small person. Wearing black. It may be another Kanlin sent after you …”
Tai didn’t bother to look. “No. That one is mine. Kanlin, yes. I hired a guard at Iron Gate. A Warrior who’d been sent by someone in Xinan to stop the assassin.”
“You trust him?”
He thought of Wei Song in the laneway tonight, when the governor’s men had come for him. He did trust her, he realized.
Once it would have irritated him, to have someone post herself so visibly on guard: the loss of privacy, the assumption that he couldn’t take care of himself. Now, with what he’d learned, it was different. He was going to need to think that through, as well.
Not tonight. He was too tired, and he couldn’t stop his thoughts from going to Li-Mei. And then to Liu. First Son, elder brother. They had shared a room for years.
He pushed that away, too. More sentimentality. They were not children any more.
“It is a woman,” he said. “The Kanlin. She’ll have seen the governor’s soldiers leave with their prisoners, decided someone needed to be on watch. She can be difficult.”
“They all can. Women, Kanlin Warriors. Put them in one …” The poet laughed. Then asked, as Tai had half expected, “Who is the someone in Xinan who sent her?”
He had decided to trust this man, too, hadn’t he?
“The courtesan I mentioned. Wen Zhou’s concubine.”
This time the poet blinked. After a moment, he said, “She risked that? For someone who’s been away two years? Shen Tai, you are …” He left the thought unfinished. “But if it is the first minister who wants you dead, even costing the empire your horses might not change his mind.”
Tai shook his head. “Killing me now, after word of the horses has arrived, Zhou or my brother runs the risk of someone—you, Xu Bihai, even the commander at Iron Gate—linking it to him. The loss of so many Sardian horses would make my death important. His enemies could bring him down wit
h that.”
The poet considered it. “Then what is this about? There was nothing you could do for your sister from Kuala Nor, was there? You were much too far, it was already too late, but an assassin was sent. Was this about eliminating a new enemy before he returned?” He hesitated. “Perhaps a rival?”
There was that.
Her hair by lamplight.
And if someone should take me from here when you are gone?
He said, “It might be.”
“You are going on to Xinan?”
Tai smiled, first time since coming back down the stairs. Mirthlessly, he said, “I must, surely? I have sent word. I will be anxiously awaited!”
No answering smile, not this time. “Awaited on the road, it might also be. Shen Tai, you will accept an unworthy friend and companion?”
Tai swallowed. He hadn’t expected this. “Why? It would be foolishly dangerous for you to put yourself …”
“You helped me remember a poem,” said the one called the Banished Immortal.
“That’s no reason to—”
“And you buried the dead at Kuala Nor for two years.”
Another silence. This man was, Tai thought, all about pauses, the spaces between words as much as the words themselves.
Across the room someone had begun plucking quietly at a pipa, the notes drifting through lamplight and shadow, leaves on a moonlit stream.
“Xinan is changed. You will need someone who knows the city as it has become since you left. Knows it better than some Kanlin pacing back and forth.” Sima Zian grinned, and then he laughed, amusing himself with a thought he elected not to share.
The poet’s hand, Tai saw, reached out to touch his sword.
Friend was the word he had used.
A journey does not end when it ends.
The well-worn thought comes to her in the chill of night as she waits in her yurt alone. Li-Mei is not asleep, nor under the sheepskin blankets they lay out for her at night. It can grow cold on the steppe under stars. It is black as a tomb inside, with the flap closed. She cannot even see her hands. She is sitting on the pallet, fully clothed, holding a small knife.