Tai shook his head. He hadn’t, but it made sense.
The governor sighed, fluttered a hand. His fingers were unexpectedly long. He wore a sweet, floral scent, it filled the carriage. He said, “Spring Rain? Is that the charming creature’s name? It will puzzle me until I draw my last breath how men can be so undone by women.” He paused, then added, thoughtfully, “Not even the highest among us are immune to the folly of that.”
Nothing he says is unplanned, Tai told himself. And that last remark was treason, since the highest among us could only mean the emperor.
Tai said, possibly making a mistake, “I might risk such a course myself for a woman.”
“Indeed? I had thought you might be different. This Lin Chang—that is her name now?—is she so very appealing? I confess I grow curious.”
“I never knew that name. We called her Rain. But I am not speaking of her, my lord. You have mentioned two women.”
Roshan’s eyes were slits. Tai wondered how well the man could even see. The governor waited. He shifted in his seat again.
Tai said, “If you can bring my sister back from the Bogü lands before she is married there, I will claim and then assign all of my Sardian horses to the armies of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts.”
He hadn’t known he was going to say that.
An Li made a small, involuntary movement of one hand. Tai realized he’d startled the other man. The general said as much: “You are more direct than your brother, aren’t you?”
“We have little in common,” Tai said.
“A sister?” the other man murmured.
“And a father of distinction, as you were gracious enough to mention. But we see different paths to extending the family honour. I have made you a formal proposal, Governor An.”
“You would do this, you would give them to me, all of them, for a girl?”
“For my sister.”
From outside Tai heard sounds again: traffic on the roadway had resumed, creaking cartwheels, laughter, shouts. Life moving, on a spring day. He kept his gaze on the man opposite.
At length, Roshan shook his head. “I would do it. For two hundred and fifty Sardian horses? Of course I would. I am thinking now, right here, of how to do it. But it is impossible. I believe you know that. I might even accuse you of toying with me.”
“It would be untrue,” Tai said quietly.
The man across from him shifted yet again, stretching a massive leg to one side, with a grunt. He said, “Five horses would have been generous as a gift. Princess Cheng-wan has shaken your life, hasn’t she?”
Tai said nothing.
“She has,” the governor went on. “Like a storm shakes a tree, or even uproots it. You have to choose what to do now. You might be killed to stop you from choosing. I could do it here.”
“Only if it did not get back to the Ta-Ming, to the first minister, whose action cost the empire those horses.”
An Li stared at him with those slitted eyes.
“You all want them too much,” Tai said.
“Not if they go to an enemy, Shen Tai.”
Tai noted the word. He said, “I just offered them to you.”
“I heard you. But I cannot do it, since it cannot be done. Your sister is gone, son of Shen Gao. She is north of the Wall by now. She is with the Bogü.”
He grinned suddenly. A malicious smile. No sense of any genial, amusing figure of the court, the one who’d allowed himself to be swaddled like a baby by all the women. “She may be with child to the kaghan’s son as we speak. At the least she will know his inclinations. I have heard stories. I wonder if your brother knew them, before he proposed her as wife to the kaghan’s heir.”
The sweetness of the perfume was almost sickening suddenly. “Why be uncivilized?” Tai said before he could stop himself.
He was fighting anger. Reminded himself again that the other man was not saying these things—was not saying anything—without purpose.
Roshan seemed amused. “Why uncivilized? Because I am! I am a soldier all my life. And my father’s tribe warred with the Bogü. Shen Tai, you are not the only one to be direct by inclination.”
“Let me see the letter,” Tai said. Being direct.
It was handed across without a word. He read, quickly. It was a copy, the calligraphy was too regular. No mention of Liu, as Roshan had indicated. But …
Tai said, “He is clear, Xin Lun. Says he expects to be killed that night. Begs you to guard him. Why did you not send men to bring him to you?”
The expression on the other man’s face made him feel, again, out of his depth. Childlike.
An Li shrugged, turned his neck one way and then the other, stretching it. “I suppose I could have. He did ask for protection, didn’t he? Perhaps you are right.”
“Perhaps?” Tai was struggling, heard it in his voice.
The general betrayed impatience. “Shen Tai, it is important in any battle to know your own strengths and weaknesses and to understand your enemy’s. Your father must have taught you this.”
“What does that have to do—?”
“Wen Zhou would have learned of your horses and your survival as soon as word reached the palace. As soon as anyone learned it that night. That is why Xin Lun knew he was in danger. The first minister could not let him live, knowing what he knew, and with what he’d done. Zhou is a fool, but dangerous.”
“So why not send your soldiers for Lun?”
The general shook his massive head, as if sorrowing for the ignorance of the world. “Where was this happening, Shen Tai? Where were we all?”
“Xinan. But I don’t—”
“Think! I don’t have an army there. It is not permitted to me, to anyone. I am on my enemy’s ground without my forces. If I shelter Lun in the capital, I am declaring war on the first minister that very night, where he has the weapons he needs and I do not!”
“You … you are the favourite of the emperor, of the Precious Consort.”
“No. We are both favoured. It was a policy. But our so-glorious emperor is unpredictable now, too distracted, and Jian is young, and a woman, which means unpredictable. They are not, son of Shen Gao, reliable. I could not bring Lun into my home and be halfway certain of leaving Xinan alive.”
Tai looked down at the letter in his hand. Read it again, mostly to give himself time. He was beginning to see.
“So … you let Lun believe you would. You offered him sanctuary. That led him to start down through the city.”
“Good,” said An Li. “You are not a fool. Are you as dangerous as your brother?”
Tai blinked. “I may be dangerous to him.”
The general smiled, shifted again. “A good answer. It amuses me. But come, work it through. What did I do that night?”
Tai said, slowly, “You did send men, didn’t you? But not to escort Xin Lun. Only to observe.”
“Good, again. And why?”
Tai swallowed. “To see when he was killed.”
An Li smiled. “When, and by whom.”
“The killer was seen?”
“Of course he was. And by the Gold Bird Guards, as well. My men made certain of it. The Guard were persuaded not to do anything yet, but have recorded what they saw that night.”
Tai looked at him, the small eyes, florid face. “One of Wen Zhou’s retainers killed Lun?”
“Of course.”
As simple as that.
“But if Lun is dead …?”
“The honourable Xin Lun is as useful to me murdered as alive. Especially if the city guards know who did it. The letter is what I needed, along with the observed killing of the letter-writer by a known person. The first minister has generously obliged me. Xin Lun in my home might have had me arrested. Xinan was the wrong place for me to begin a battle.”
Tai let that last sink into awareness, stone in a pond.
“Are you beginning a battle?”
There was a silence. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted an answer. Sounds from outside ag
ain. The customary back and forth of the road. An irritated outcry, an oath, more laughter. A day moving towards a usual end, sunset and the stars.
“Tell me,” the man opposite said, “were you really burying dead soldiers at Kuala Nor for two years?”
“Yes,” Tai said.
“Were there ghosts?”
“Yes.”
“That was bravely done, then. As a soldier I honour it. I could kill you here, if I decided your horses would somehow determine the course of events.”
“You don’t think they will?”
“They might. I have decided to act as if it is not so, and to spare you.” He shifted position yet again.
“You’d have lost—”
“Rank, title, all granted lands. Possibly my life. And so, Shen Tai, what does that tell you, by way of answering the question you asked?”
Are you beginning a battle? he’d asked.
Tai cleared his throat, managed a half-smile. “It tells me I need to be grateful you’ve decided the horses might not matter as much as some others seem to think.”
A moment of stillness, then the carriage rocked to Roshan’s laughter. It lasted a long time.
When he finally subsided, coughing, the governor said, “You can’t see it, can you? You have been too long away. I am being pushed towards my destruction or to resisting it. Wen Zhou is rolling dice. That is his nature. But I cannot, I will not linger in Xinan to see what the emperor does, whether Jian chooses her cousin or … her adopted child.”
Tai had never seen a smile so lacking in mirth.
He shivered. The governor saw it, of course. The narrow eyes in the folds of flesh. Roshan said, “You may keep that copy, it might be of use to you. And perhaps to me, if you choose to remember who gave it to you, eventually.” He shifted his outstretched leg one more time.
Eventually. Everything he said had layers of meaning.
And so, Tai abruptly realized, with a sudden hard shock of understanding, did his movements. They had nothing to do with restlessness. The man was in pain. Once you saw it, it was obvious.
Tai looked away, an instinct to hide what he’d realized. He wasn’t at all sure how he’d intuited this, but he was certain he was right. And that An Li would not be pleased to have it noted.
“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?”