Liu said, looking at no one, measuring stresses:No one ever rests in Xinan.
Under a full moon, or the hook moon of tonight
As springtime turns a pale face to summer.
A place for winning renown, if deserved,
And gems and trappings of great worth.
The city is alive all night and even more
From the drumming-open of the great gates
As the white sun rises dispelling mist.
Here the Son of Heaven
Shines forth his Jade Countenance
Upon his beloved people, and so
Here the world is all the world may be.
There was a kind of pain in Tai’s chest, shaped by and entangled with memory. This was his brother, they were at the heart of the court, the heart of empire, and Liu could do this, effortlessly. All the world may be.
But what else had he done, what else could he do, as easily?
Everyone in the room seemed to be looking at Tai. There had been no response at all to Liu’s exquisite offering: that, too, was proper. When two or more people had been set a verse challenge you waited until the last one was done. They did these in the North District, often very drunk, often very late.
Tai sipped his wine. He was impossibly sober. He thought of Yan, of his sister. He looked across at Liu.
“If deserved,” he murmured. “I like that.”
His brother’s mouth tightened. Tai hadn’t expected a reaction. Nor had he expected to have to compose a poem in this setting. This was the court, not a pleasure house among fellow students. He took another drink. He had only one thing to bring to this room, he realized, that these elegant dancers would not have.
He looked at Zian. The poet’s face was attentive. It would be, Tai thought, when poetry was concerned. This was his life, air and water.
Tai thought of a first phrase, and then—quite suddenly—of a conclusion, a contrast to his brother’s, and he began, speaking slowly, picking his way, as through a moonlit wood. And as the words came, so, too, did images he’d lived with:South of us Xinan lies under a sickle moon.
Lanterns will soon be bright in the spring night.
Laughter and music and rich wine poured.
Far to the west where all roads end
Cold stars shine on white bones
Beside the stone shores of a lake.
Thousands of li stretch empty from there
To east and west and mountains rise.
Birds wheel when the sun goes down
And grieving ghosts are heard in the dark.
How may we live a proper life?
Where is the balance the soul must find?
He looked at Liu first, in the silence that came when he was done, a stillness coming into the room like the breeze from outside. He’d spent so much of his childhood looking to his brother for approval. Liu turned away, reflexively, and then—it must have been difficult, Tai thought—back to his younger brother.
“A bright loom,” he said. Old phrase. Poetry and silk.
“It is more than that,” said Sima Zian, softly.
Laughter was heard. “Well. That didn’t take long, did it?” said Wen Zhou, caustically. “Only a few moments out from hiding, and Shen Tai hastens to remind us of his so-heroic time in the west.”
Tai looked across at him. And he realized two things in that moment. That he could do this, could dance to at least some of the music here if he chose—and that someone else in the room had even more anger than he did.
He stared at the handsome figure of the prime minister. This was the man who had taken Rain. Had killed Yan.
Tai took his time. They would wait for him, he realized. He said, “There were past a hundred thousand unburied there. Half of them were ours. I wouldn’t have thought you’d need reminding, first minister of Kitai.”
He saw his brother wince, which meant he knew how deeply Tai had thrust—and couldn’t hide it.
“You will spoil my pleasure if you quarrel,” said Jian. She let her voice sound petulant. Tai looked at her: the exaggerated downward curve of that lovely, painted mouth. She was toying with them again, he thought—but with a purpose.
He bowed. “My apologies again, illustrious lady. If I am to spend time at this court, I shall need to show restraint, even when others do not.”
He saw her suppress a smile. “We have little intention of letting you leave us, Shen Tai. I imagine the emperor will wish to receive you formally very soon. Where are you staying in Xinan?”
He hadn’t given it a thought. You could find that amusing. “I have no residence there any more, gracious lady. I will take rooms somewhere and I will—”
She seemed genuinely astonished. “Take rooms?”
Prince Shinzu stepped forward. “The Precious Consort is right, as ever. It would be a shocking lapse on the part of the court if you were allowed to do that. Will you accept one of my homes in Xinan for the present? Until my father and his advisers have had time to consider the proper ways to honour you.”
“I have … I have no need for honours, my lord prince. I did what I did at Kuala Nor only—”
“—only out of respect for your father. I understand. The world is permitted to honour this, is it not?” The prince grinned. He drained his cup. “And there are those horses. One of my men will call upon you this evening, to make arrangements.”
There were, indeed, those horses, Tai thought. He wondered—yet again—if Princess Cheng-wan in Rygyal on its far plateau had had any idea what she was doing to him when she decreed that gift.
The other woman who seemed to be entering and shaping his life now, the one who seemed to know precisely what she was doing, declared an end to her gathering.
Guests bowed to her and began filing out the doors. Shinzu remained in the room. Tai looked at the screen he’d hidden behind. The viewing holes were invisible.
He looked at the other screen.
He went out, last to leave. The steward closed the door. Tai’s exquisitely delicate escorts were there, hands demurely in sleeves. He saw Zhou and Liu striding away together. He’d wondered if his brother would linger to speak. He wasn’t certain if he was ready for that.
Sima Zian had waited.
“Can you spend a few moments with me?” Tai asked.
“I would be honoured,” the poet said gravely, no hint of irony.
They started down the first long hallway together with the two women. Sunlight came from the west through tinted, silk-paper windows, casting a mild afternoon light at intervals. They walked through it as they went. Light and shade, then light and shade.
CHAPTER XVIII
The sun is low, reddened, there is a murky tint to the air. It has been cooler today, windy. Li-Mei wears a Bogü shirt over her tunic and a camel hair vest over that. She has no idea where Meshag found these for her in this emptiness. She has seen no signs of human life, not even smoke on the wind.
In the luxurious hot springs retreat of Ma-wai to the south and west across grasslands, the Wall, the wide, dangerous river, her older brothers are reciting poems for members of the Kitan court in a room of sandalwood and gold. Their listeners drink spiced pepper wine, and a sweet breeze softens the spring air.
Li-Mei keeps looking over her shoulder. She’s been doing that, nervously, from the time the sun rose, offering light enough to see. They’d begun riding under stars, the thin moon down, the wolves invisible. Night noises. Some small animal had died in the dark, she’d heard a short scream.
Meshag never looks back. He allowed only two brief halts in a very long day. He told her during the first rest that they would not be caught that day, or the next. “They will have had to wait, to learn which way we go. They know now, but there is a dust storm. It will cost them some of a day.”
“And us?”
He shook his head. “The storm? Not this far. Only wind.”
Only wind, and endless grass, and a sky so much farther away than any she’s known. It is difficult to feel that your
life means anything under this sky. Are the heavens more removed from humankind here?
Do prayers and souls have a greater distance to travel?
Meshag signals another halt towards sunset. She’s anticipated this one. Sunset is the other time he hunts. She dismounts. He nods curtly, his awkward motion, and rides off, east this time, along the way they’ve been going.
She has no idea how he chooses his direction. If she understood him yesterday, these are lands where his people rarely travel. The Shuoki here are enemies, and have also been restive, unsettled in their submission to Kitan authority. She doesn’t know much about the Shuoki. Remembers a story about General An Li suppressing a rebellion, a heroic ride, something of the sort.
They haven’t seen anyone. She has a sense it would be bad if they did, if they were found here. The grasslands are vast, however, beyond belief. That may be what saves them, she thinks.
No water this time, where he’s decreed their evening rest. She was hoping for a pond. She badly wants to be clean again. It is a part of how she understands herself. This begrimed, lank-haired creature on a Bogü horse in Bogü clothes (the shirt is much too large and smells of animal fat) is not who, or what, Li-Mei considers herself to be.
She’s aware that this is more and more inadequate as a way of thinking with every day that passes, every li she travels. The person she was has already been altered, destroyed, by the decision to name her a princess and send her north.
If she were really strong-minded, she thinks, she’d declare the girl who’d been raised by a stream near the Wai River, the woman who’d served the empress at court and in exile, to be dead.
She’d leave her behind with memories, like a ghost.
It is hard to do. Harder than she expected. Perhaps it ought not to surprise her. Who can so easily lay down habits and images of a life, ways of thinking, an understanding of the world?
But it is more than that, Li-Mei decides, stretching out her aching back. She is living—and riding—in a fragile but undeniable condition of hope, and that changes things.
Meshag, son of Hurok, is strange beyond words, barely human at times, but he is helping her, because of Tai. And his dead eyes do not undermine or refute steadiness and experience. He killed a swan with a single arrow. And he has the wolves.
He returns to her before night has completely fallen.
She is sitting in the tall grass, looking west. The wind has died. The hook moon has set. She sees the star of the Weaver Maid. There is a song about how the moon swings past her, then under the world through the night, and comes back up carrying a message to her love on the far side of the sky.
Meshag has water in the flasks and a saddlebag full of red and yellow berries. Nothing else. She takes the water, uses some to wash her face and hands. She wants to ask about rabbits, other meat. Does not.
He crouches beside her, places the leather bag between them. He takes a fistful of berries. He says, as if she’s spoken aloud, “Would you eat marmot not cooked?”
Li-Mei stares at him. “Not … not yet. Why …?”
“No fires. Shuoki. More swans, maybe at night.”
Searching for them. He has said she asks too many questions. She is not ready to let this part of her be dead or lost. She takes some of the berries. The yellow ones are bitter. She says, “Is it … am I allowed to ask where we are going?”
His mouth twitches. “You did ask,” he says.
She wants to laugh, but it is too difficult. She runs a hand through her limp, tied-back hair. Her father used to do that when he was trying to think. So do both her older brothers. She can’t remember (a sorrow) if her little brother does.
She says, “I am afraid. I don’t like feeling that way.”
“Sometimes fear is proper. It is what we do that matters.”
She’d not have expected a Bogü rider to admit the idea. She says, “It helps me when I know what is to come.”
“Who can know this?”
Li-Mei makes a face. It occurs to her that they are having an actual conversation. “I only mean our intention. Where we are riding.”
He is already harder to see. It has grown dark quickly. She hears the lead wolf in the grass, not far from them. She looks at the sky. She is looking for a swan.
Meshag says, “There is Kitan garrison not far. We sleep now, ride tonight. See it in morning.”
She had forgotten about the garrison. The soldiers posted beyond the borders—here in the north, in the southwest, or west along the Silk Roads beyond Jade Gate—these seldom enter the thoughts of the Kitan. And many of them are recruited barbarians, she knows, moved from their own homelands to serve the emperor in a far place.
But that is not what she is thinking about now.
A hand goes to her hair again. She says, “But I cannot go to them! When they learn who I am they will take me back to your brother. You must understand.” She hears her voice rising, tries to control it. “The emperor is dishonoured if they don’t. I was … I was given as a bride. The garrison commander will be terrified if I arrive! He will … he will hold me and send for instructions and they will tell him to escort me back! This is not—”
She stops, because he has held up a hand in the darkness. When she falls silent, the night is very still around them, the only sound the wind in grass.
Meshag shakes his head. “Do Kitan women all speak so much, not listen?”
She bites her lip. Resolutely says nothing.
He says, quietly, “I said we see garrison. Not go there. I know they take you back west. I know they must do this. We see walls and turn south. Kitan fortress is protection for us from Shuoki, they not go near it.”
“Oh,” Li-Mei says.
“I take you …” He pauses, shakes his head. “Difficult tongue. I am taking you to Long Wall, is only three days if we ride quickly.”
But the Wall, she thinks, the Wall’s soldiers will do exactly the same thing, whichever watchtower they come to. She remains silent, waiting.
He says, “Soldiers there also send you back. I know. We go through Long Wall into Kitai.”
“But how?” She cannot help herself.
She sees him shrug with one shoulder. “Not difficult for two people. You then see. No. You … will see.”
She is heroically silent. Then she hears a strange sound, and realizes he is laughing.
He says, “You are try so hard not to ask more.”
“I am!” Li-Mei says. “You shouldn’t laugh at me.”
He stops. Then says, “I take you through your Wall, sister of Shendai. Near to it is flat mountain. Drum Mountain, you call it? We go … we are going there.”
Her eyes widen. “Stone Drum Mountain,” she whispers.
He is taking her to the Kanlin Warriors.
The two women bowed at the tall doorway to Tai’s chamber. One of them opened the door. Tai let Sima Zian enter first. The women waited in the corridor. They didn’t lower their eyes now. It was clear that they would come in if he invited them. It was equally clear that there was little he or the poet might think to request that would not be granted. Zian smiled at the smaller, prettier one. Tai cleared his throat.
“I thank you both. I must speak now with my friend. How may I summon you if needed?”
They looked perplexed. It was Zian who said, “They’ll be right here, Shen Tai. They are yours until you leave Ma-wai.”
“Oh,” said Tai. He managed a smile. Both women smiled back. He closed the door, gently. The two large windows were open, screens rolled up. It was still light outside. He didn’t imagine any real privacy existed here, but he didn’t think anyone would be spying on him.
There was wine warming over a brazier on a small, lacquered table. He saw that the cups set beside it were gold. He felt overwhelmed. Zian crossed to the table, poured two cups. He handed one to Tai. He lifted his own in salute and drained it, then poured himself another.
“What just happened?” Tai asked.
He set his own wine down. He wa
s afraid to drink any more. The intensity of the gathering they’d just left was washing over him. This happened in wartime, too, he knew.
This afternoon had been a battle. He’d been placed as an ambush, had engaged in single combat. Not necessarily with his true enemy. Enemy. That word again.
Zian raised his eyebrows. “What happened? You created a very fine poem, so did your brother. I will make copies of both.”
“No, I mean …”
“I know what you mean. I can judge the poems. I can’t answer the other question.”
Zian crossed to the window, looking out. From where he stood Tai could see that the gardens were glorious. This was Ma-wai. They would be. A little way north of here were the Ninth Dynasty tombs.
Tai said, “I think the emperor was behind the other screen.”
“What?” Zian turned quickly. “Why? How do you …?”
“I don’t know for certain. I think. Two painted screens, and what Lady Jian and the prince did together in there … it felt like it was meant for an audience, and it wouldn’t be me.”
“It might have been.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of Prince Shinzu behaving in such a … talking so …”
They were both fumbling for words.
“So strongly?”
“Yes.”
“Neither have I,” said Sima Zian, almost reluctantly.
“He was challenging Zhou. And he couldn’t have done it without knowing—surely!—that his father would learn of it. So it seems to me …”
“That he might have been doing it for the emperor?”
“Yes.”
Zian’s last word hung in the room, with all its obvious implications, and all those they could not see. The breeze at the window was mild, scented with flowers.
“Could you see us? From where you were?”
Tai nodded. “She’d arranged for that. So what happened there? I need help.”
The poet sighed. He refilled his cup again. He gestured, and Tai reluctantly drained his own. Zian crossed the room and poured for him. He said, “I have spent my life between cities and mountains, rivers and roads. You know it. I have never had a place at court. Never sat the examinations. Shen Tai, I am not the man to tell you what is unfolding.”