He remembered that image as he dressed. His robe was a shimmering, textured flicker of greens, the colours of a bamboo grove in changing light. His slippers and belt and soft hat were black, with pale-yellow dragons on them. His hatpin had an emerald.
Two women had led him, silently, hands in full sleeves, eyes downcast, along corridors of marble and jade, then across a courtyard and down more corridors to the chamber where Wen Jian evidently purposed to receive certain guests.
Tai had not seen her since they’d arrived. She had told him in the sedan chair that she had a plan for this afternoon. He had no notion of what this might be, or of his own role in it.
At Kuala Nor each night, watching the stars set and rise, or the moon, he’d known his task at every moment. What he was there to do. Here, he was one of many dancers, and he didn’t know the dance.
He wished Zian were with him. Wei Song he’d released for the afternoon, to report to her own Kanlin sanctuary farther along the shore. It had crossed his mind that now that they’d arrived, her duties, her employment, could be considered over. He’d felt oddly exposed when she’d bowed and gone away.
The poet was somewhere in Ma-wai. He’d been a guest here before. They hadn’t had a chance to speak before being led in different directions. Zian was almost certainly sampling some celebrated wine. Tai wondered if the women were as proper with the Banished Immortal as they had been with him.
His two escorts had led him into this audience chamber, showed him the room screens (the paintings were by Wang Shao) and the low seat behind one of them. They’d invited him, prettily, to sit. He could have refused. But he didn’t know what he’d achieve by doing so. It seemed wisest, for the moment, to see what Jian was doing. What she was playing at—if it was a game.
He discovered he could see quite well through tiny holes in the screen. He hadn’t noticed them from the painted side. He was entirely certain the viewing holes, his ability to observe the room unseen, were not accidental. The ceiling, he saw, looking up in wonder, was of beaten gold. There were lotus flowers and cranes worked upon it. The walls were sandalwood, the floor was marble.
Jian smiled at his screen when she walked in with her steward—a different man from the one this morning. (The one this morning was probably dead by now.) It was not, Tai thought, the smile she’d offered when they were alone on the road.
He’d asked, just before getting out to ride Dynlal the rest of the way, if she’d help him here at court.
I don’t know, she had said.
This wasn’t about helping him, he decided. He might be wrong, but it didn’t feel that way. He felt cowardly sitting here. He wanted to confront Wen Zhou and his brother. He had a quick, clean image of drawing swords with them. Liu was hopeless with a blade. Zhou was likely a match for Tai, or more than that. It was an idle thought: no weapons were allowed here. He’d been made to surrender his when they arrived.
Seen through the screen, Jian looked very different: cooler, more serene, with a gravity that had not existed (could not exist) while she reclined in a perfumed sedan chair, peeling lychees, curving a bare foot against his thigh.
She was in green as well, with imperial phoenixes in the same pale yellow as his own dragons. He wondered if that meant something. Her hair was as before: the widely imitated, side-slipping style. It could do things to a man, looking at her.
There was a small, discreet door behind him. He could get up right now and walk out—if the door wasn’t barred. He wondered if it was. He wondered if there was a door behind the other painted screen, set diagonally to this one against the same wall, the two of them framing a space for Wen Jian and her friends, at Ma-wai, in springtime.
He stopped wondering about such things when Jian seated herself on a platform in the centre of the chamber, accepted a cup from the steward, and gestured for her guests to be admitted.
Tall doors opened. A number of men came in, no women. Jian was the only woman in the room. Even the servants, pouring wine into jade cups, were men. There were no musicians.
Among the arrivals was Sima Zian. A surprise. The poet was properly dressed and groomed, with a dark hat and his hair neatly pinned. His expression was alert, amused, as ever. Tai registered this, but didn’t look at him for long. His attention was pulled away. Not to the first minister, though Wen Zhou had also entered the room.
Hidden, silent, afraid, and fighting anger, Tai looked at his older brother for the first time in two years.
Liu had gained weight, it showed in his face, but he was otherwise unchanged. Smaller than Tai, softer. In a mandarin’s rich, sober black silk, with the dark-red belt of highest rank and symbolic key at his waist, he entered discreetly, bowed formally, took a place behind Wen Zhou, a little to one side.
Tai was staring at him. He couldn’t stop. Fear, and fury.
He recognized another of those who entered: the imperial heir. Another surprise, if Jian intended anything serious today. Prince Shinzu was notorious for sensuous luxury, though seldom seen in the city, and never in the North District.
Women were brought to him. He didn’t go to them. He was an even bigger man than the first minister, affecting a short beard, but wider than the mandarin fashion. He already carried a cup of wine, Tai saw. Scanning the room, from a position he took near an open window, the prince smiled at Zian, who bowed, and smiled cheerfully back.
Jian waited until her guests had wine, then spoke her first words to her cousin: inviting a poem, entertainment.
From behind his screen, Tai saw Zhou offer his confident, lazy smile. “We retain people to offer poetry, cousin. You ask the one man here whose effort would surely not amuse you.”
“But surely he will make an effort? If only to please me?” Tai could hear the sly smile in her words.
“I love you too much for that,” said Zhou. One man laughed appreciatively. Tai couldn’t see who it was. Wen Zhou added, “And we seem to have, for some reason or other, a poet among us. Let him divert you, cousin. Is he here for any other purpose?”
A fair question: the poet had left the city under one of his usual clouds and it had to do with Jian and a poem. The Banished Immortal, as in heaven so on earth. That was the way the stories ran.
Jian only smiled. She had, Tai was realizing, more than a dozen ways of smiling. This one was closer to the cat with a mouse he’d sensed in the sedan chair. It occurred to him that she wasn’t really pursuing amusement here. He wondered if Zhou knew that yet.
He shivered suddenly. Wasn’t sure why. In the tales his nursemaid used to tell, you shivered that way when someone was walking across the ground where your grave would one day lie. If you never shivered so, she used to say, you were doomed to die in water, or lie unburied.
His brother knew those same stories from the same source. Liu knew the same orchard fruits, the same tree-swing in the farthest garden, stream for fishing or swimming, paulownia leaves on the path all at once in autumn, the same teachers, sunsets, birds returning at winter’s end, the same lightning-riven summer storms of childhood in a room they’d shared, listening for thunder.
“I am afraid to have Master Sima offer any lines after the last ones he gave us in the Ta-Ming,” said the Precious Consort. “A poem about an ancient emperor and his beloved.” She looked at the poet, and did not smile.
“It is a grief to my soul, and will last all my days, if anything your servant has ever written brings you or the Son of Heaven other than pleasure,” Sima Zian said earnestly.
“Well,” said the prime minister, grinning, “a number of them have failed to bring me pleasure, I can tell you that.” Another laugh from someone, probably the same person.
Zian looked at him. He bowed again. “Some griefs,” he murmured, “we learn to expect in life.”
It was Jian who laughed this time. She clapped her hands. “Cousin, cousin,” she cried, “never play at words with a poet! Don’t you know that?”
Wen Zhou flushed. Tai was fighting an impulse to grin.
“I?
??d have thought a disgraced poet without rank or office would be the one who needed to be careful,” the first minister said coldly.
Tai looked instinctively to his brother. He had spent a good deal of his childhood looking at Liu, trying to read what he might be thinking. Liu’s face was impassive but his watchful eyes went from the woman to the poet, then quickly to the man who—unexpectedly—broke the ensuing silence.
“There are many ways of measuring rank, as the Cho Master has taught,” said Prince Shinzu quietly. “On the matter of taking care, as it happens, I have a question of my own for the first minister. Though I fear to interrupt our dear Jian’s pleasures.”
“You, of all men, need never fear doing so,” said Wen Jian, prettily.
Tai had no idea how to interpret that. Or the manner of the prince, leaning against the wall by a window, a cup held so casually it almost spilled its wine. Shinzu’s voice was more crisp than Tai had expected. He’d never actually heard the heir speak. He only knew the tales.
“I am, of course, at your service, illustrious lord.” Wen Zhou bowed.
He had to, of course. Tai didn’t think it pleased him. Already, from his place of concealment, he was exhausted trying to trace the lines of connection and tension here, read surface meaning, let alone what lay beneath.
“I am grateful,” said the prince.
He sipped his wine. Gestured to a servant, waited for the cup to be refilled. The room waited with him. When the servant had withdrawn, Shinzu leaned back again, at ease. He looked at Wen Zhou.
“What have you been doing with An Li?” he asked.
Behind his screen, Tai found himself breathing carefully.
“My lord, you invite a discussion of state policy here?” Zhou looked pointedly at the poet and then at two or three other men in the room.
“I do,” said Shinzu calmly. “Among other things, I would like to know what state policy is in this matter.”
There was another silence. Did the emperor’s heir have the right to demand this of a prime minister? Tai had no idea.
“Cousin …” began Zhou, turning to the woman in the room. “Surely a pleasant springtime gathering is not—”
“In truth,” Jian interrupted, gently enough, “I admit I should like to know, as well. About An Li. After all,” she favoured the room with an exquisite smile, “he is my adopted child! A mother always has concerns, you know. Everlastingly.”
The silence this time was almost painful. Zhou looked back over his shoulder at Liu. Tai’s brother stepped forward a little (only a little). He bowed to Jian, then to the prince.
“My lord prince, illustrious lady, it is our understanding that Governor An has left the capital.” Which was true, and Tai happened to know it, but wasn’t an answer to anything.
“He did,” said Shinzu promptly. “Three days ago, in the evening.”
“And his eldest son left before that,” added Jian. She wasn’t smiling now. “An Rong rode northeast with a small company on good horses.”
“Roshan went west, however,” said Liu. His brother was shifting them away from whatever questions the prince had, Tai realized.
Not successfully.
“We know that,” said the prince. “He met with your brother on the road to Chenyao.”
Tai stopped breathing.
“With my brother?” said Liu.
He looked shaken, and this would not be an act. Liu was skilled at hiding feelings, not simulating them.
“With Shen Tai!” said the first minister in the same moment. “Why did he do that?”
“I’d imagine it was regarding the Sardian horses,” said Shinzu carelessly. “But that isn’t what I wish to discuss.”
“It should be!” snapped the prime minister. “Roshan is obviously—”
“He is obviously interested in their disposition. He is commander of the Imperial Stables, among other offices. It is his duty to be interested, is it not?” The prince shifted himself off the wall. “No, my question is for you, first minister—and your adviser, of course, since he seems well informed. Why, pray tell me, have you been engaged in actions designed to drive him from the city, or worse?”
Tai swallowed hard, made himself breathe again, carefully.
“The Son of Heaven did invite him here, cousin. We all know that.” Jian shook her head. “I even asked for him myself, he amuses me so whenever he comes to court.”
It was only in that moment that Tai realized that she and the prince were working together, and it was not spontaneous at all.
“Drive him from the city?” Wen Zhou repeated. “How could I do that?”
The prince sipped his wine. “By planting stories in the Ta-Ming and the mandarin courtyards as to his intentions. And doing so while he was in Xinan, away from his soldiers, and feeling vulnerable because of it.”
There was nothing idle about the room now.
Tai saw two or three of those present begin to back away, as if removing themselves from a combat. Sima Zian’s wide-set eyes went from one speaker to another, avidly, absorbing it all, like light.
“Sometimes,” said Tai’s brother softly, “my lord prince, sometimes the stories being told can be true.”
Shinzu looked at him. “They can. But there are ways of dealing with a man as powerful as An Li. These do not include making him feel as if his back is to a stone wall, or that he faces ruin at the hands of a first minister.”
“Ruin? Not from me,” said Zhou, regaining his composure. “I am no more than a servant of the empire. It would be our glorious emperor, may he live forever, who decreed anything at all!”
“In that case,” said the prince in a voice delicate as silk, “might it not have been wisest to advise the glorious emperor, and others perhaps, as to your intentions? This is,” he added, “a game so deeply perilous, Minister Wen, it beggars description.”
“Hardly a game, my lord!” said Wen Zhou.
“I believe I will disagree with you,” said the prince.
There was nothing remotely indolent or drunken about him, Tai thought. What was this moment? What was happening here?
He saw the prince set down his wine on a lacquered table. Shinzu added, “This feels, I am sorry to say, to be about two men and power, not the empire, or the emperor, may he rule another thousand years.”
“I am distressed to hear you say so,” Zhou murmured.
“I’m certain you are,” agreed the prince. “My father was, as well.” He said it quietly.
“You … you spoke of this with the emperor?” Zhou had flushed again.
“Yesterday morning. In the Pagoda Tree Garden here.”
“My lord prince, if I may?” It was Tai’s brother. “We are confused. Please enlighten us all. You say there are ways of dealing with Roshan. That suggests you agree he needs to be dealt with, if your servant may be so bold. The first minister and all of us who labour, unworthily, to assist him in his heavy tasks will be grateful for guidance. How does one address the danger General An represents for Kitai and this dynasty?”
There was nothing, nothing, Tai thought, of the amusing here now.
The prince, Taizu’s heir, said, speaking as quietly as Liu, “By giving him honour and power. By summoning him here to be given more honours and more power—which is what the Precious Consort and my exalted father have been doing. Offering him banquet after banquet in the Ta-Ming or here at Ma-wai—and then watching him die of the sugar sickness, which he is doing in any case.”
Wen Zhou opened his mouth.
Shinzu held up a hand. “And, after the great and glorious An Li has lamentably gone to join his ancestors, by giving him the most sumptuous funeral any barbarian military leader has ever had in the long history of Kitai.”
He paused. The room was riveted. “And then, by bringing his eldest son into the palace, to whatever forms and variations of luxury appeal to him most. Making that son a supreme officer of the Palace Army, or leader of the Hundred Horsemen, or both! And doing the same thing for the young
er sons. Keeping them all here for life. Giving them every woman in Xinan their fancy might turn towards. Every horse they wish to ride. Giving mansions and jade and country homes, endless wine and finer clothing than they have ever worn—while three new governors take control of the armies and districts in the northeast.”
He looked at Zhou. “That is what you do, First Minister Wen, if you are thinking about the empire and not a private war between two men who hate and fear each other. Private wars, Wen Zhou, can become more than that.”
A silence. No man rushed to fill it.
“Every woman?” said Jian, a hand to her breast. “Oh, dear!”
Prince Shinzu laughed aloud.
Tai realized he’d been forgetting to breathe again. He resumed, as silently as he could.
“It is not, my lord prince, so simple as that!” said Wen Zhou strongly. “Not when the man in question, ill as he might or might not be, remains ambitious beyond words.”
“Nothing at court is simple,” said Jian, before the prince could speak. “You are tasked, cousin, with guiding an empire. An Li is one of those charged with expanding and defending it. If you spend your days and nights circling each other like fighting cocks with metal claws, what happens to Kitai? Do we just watch and place wagers?”
From his place of hiding, Tai could not help but ask in the silence of his mind: And where is the emperor in all of this? Is it not his task to resolve such matters, for his people, under heaven?
Then something occurred to him and he caught his breath, again.
“Fighting cocks?” Wen Zhou repeated, head high.
Shinzu nodded. “A good description. Who shall be lord of the battle ring, vanquish the other, whatever the cost. Minister Wen, with the burdens that lie upon you, great privileges also come. This was true of Chin Hai before you. He was—we all know it—a potent, fearsome man. Roshan has chosen to test you in your first year. Can anyone be surprised? Military leaders exploring the strength and will of the Ta-Ming Palace? How do you think you have responded, first minister of my father?”