The military commander must ensure that the piece they bring to him fits, in shape and number, one he carries.
If it does match, he must accept those orders, or death and shame (and ruinous dispossession) will invariably follow, as wolves follow sheep through summer grass.
Of the two men who met on a summer morning at the eastern end of Teng Pass, one arrived on horseback, as a general in the field always should, in his own view. He needed help dismounting, however, and used a walking stick to make his way forward, swinging a stiff leg.
The other man approached the shadows of the pass from the open ground east, carried in an enormous sedan chair by eight large men. The number is a concession to the circumstances; normally there are twelve.
Behind this, two other soldiers could be seen bearing a western-style chair, very wide, cushioned and backed in yellow cloth. It was, when viewed closely, a throne, or meant to be seen as one. The colour indicated as much.
They placed this on level ground, not far inside the pass. The sedan chair was also set down. The curtains were drawn back. With assistance, a fabulously large figure emerged and made his way to the throne-chair and subsided into it.
The other man waited, leaning upon his stick. He wore a battle sword (not a decorative one). He smiled thinly throughout all of this, watching with interest. Birds circled in the updrafts overhead. It was windless below. A hot day, though cooler in the shade of Teng Pass.
Each of the two men had five others accompanying him (aside from those allowed by agreement to carry the sedan and the throne, and to handle the general’s horse). None but the general was armed. His sword was, in truth, a transgression, as symbolic in its way as the throne and the kingfisher feathers on the sedan chair.
There were, in addition, fifty Kanlin Warriors in the pass, supervising this parley—as Kanlins had done during such encounters for hundreds of years.
Five of these were sitting cross-legged before writing tables with brushes and paper and black ink. They had arrived before anyone else. These would record, with precision, to be checked against each other, everything said this morning.
One scroll would be presented to each party attending, after the gathering was over. Three would be kept and archived by the Kanlins, as evidence of any agreement emerging here.
There was no great expectation on anyone’s part that an agreement would emerge from Teng Pass today.
The other black-robed ones were spread out around the canyon, and these men and women bristled with weapons. Two dozen of them held bows where they were posted some distance up the slopes on either side of the pass. They were here to monitor—or to preserve—the peace of this meeting and the safety of all who came to it.
The Kanlins, even the ones preparing to write, were hooded. Their identities meant nothing here. They were emblematic of their order and its history. No more than that, but certainly no less.
General Xu Bihai, commanding the imperial armies of Kitai in Teng Pass, waited until the other man had settled himself in the large chair. It took some time. Xu Bihai’s thin smile never wavered, but one would have been deceived in thinking there was anything but ice in his eyes.
It was, in most instances of this sort, customary for one of the figures behind the principals to speak first, addressing the Kanlins, formally requesting them to begin transcribing. This did not happen.
Instead, General Xu said, “I have a personal proposal for you, An Li.” No title. Of course, no title.
“I await it with eagerness!” said the other man.
His voice was unexpectedly high if you were hearing it for the first time. A slight accent, even after so many years.
“Why don’t you and I settle this conflict with a single combat right here, after the fashion of ancient days?” said Xu Bihai.
All those gathered, where sunlight did not penetrate, seemed to grow still, to breathe more shallowly. Roshan stared at the other man. His creased eyes widened, and then he began to shake—his prodigious belly, his shoulders, the folds of face and chin. High-pitched laughter, wheezy and urgent, echoed in the narrow pass. A startled bird flew up and away.
Xu Bihai, eyes still hard, allowed his own smile to grow wider. One is always pleased when a jest, however barbed, encounters an enthusiastic response.
Gasping, quivering, Roshan lifted an unsteady hand, as if pleading for mercy. Eventually he regained control of himself. He wiped at his small, streaming eyes with a sleeve of his liao silk robe. He coughed. He wiped his face again. He said, “A fight for poets that would be! You’d kick me to death with one leg or I’d sit on you! Crush the life out of you!”
“Right out of me,” agreed the other man. His thinness, the lean, austere appearance, seemed shaped by a mocking deity to provide as vivid a contrast as possible to An Li. His smile faded. “I could fight your son?” The son, bulky and fit, stood beside his father’s chair.
The man in the chair was no longer laughing. His eyes, nearly lost in the folds of his moon-face, became as cold as Xu Bihai’s.
“He would kill you,” he said. “You know it. The Ta-Ming would not allow it, or honour it. We are not children. These are not the ancient days. You asked for a meeting. The black-robes are writing. Say what you have come to say and then leave my presence.”
Blunt, heavy, harsh. All of these things, and deliberately so.
The standing man’s turn to be amused, or pretend to be. “Ah, well. You would have to leave my presence, wouldn’t you? Since it is my army that holds this pass. Why don’t you attack, Roshan? Or do you like camping on the hot plain out there? Is it soothing for your afflictions?”
“I hold the Grand Canal,” An Li said, grimly.
“You hold the northern ports of it. But have you not heard? The weather has been glorious in the southwest. We have great hopes for that harvest. And have you not also heard? The Twelfth Army is on its way here even as we enjoy a morning together. And the Five Families are restless behind you, or so our tidings tell.”
Roshan smiled. “Ah. The Five Families. Do your tidings also tell of the fate of Cao Chin and his family … behind me, as you say? Or has that news not yet reached the Ta-Ming? Be the first to know! His castle has been burned down. His wives and daughters taken by my soldiers. Granddaughters too, I believe. The men did need some diversion, after all. Cao Chin hangs naked, castrated, meat for carrion birds, from a hook on a pillar outside the ruins of his home.”
When it grew quiet, as it did now, you became more aware there was no wind. It was clear to anyone watching that Xu Bihai had not known this, and equally clear that he believed what he was being told.
“That was a great name,” he said softly. “It brings even more shame upon you.”
Roshan shrugged vast shoulders. “He was a traitor to the Tenth Dynasty. The Families needed to learn there are consequences to the elegant exchanges of missives, and musings over wine discussing which way to turn, when an army is among them. I doubt the northeast is as restless now as you might think.”
Xu Bihai stared. “Time and the winter will tell, whether you can feed the army that keeps them quiet. You are trapped here and you know it. Perhaps you would prefer to withdraw to Yenling? I enjoy siege warfare, myself. When autumn comes without an eastern harvest, you are done, Roshan.”
Birds calling. No breeze in the pass.
“May I tell you something?” the man in the chair said. “I don’t like you. I never have. I will enjoy killing you. I will begin by hacking off your crippled leg and showing it to you, then dripping your own blood in your open mouth.”
It was, even for such a setting as this, savage enough to elicit another silence.
“I tremble,” said Xu Bihai finally. “Before I commence to babble like a terrified child, hear the words of the emperor of Kitai. You are declared accursed of men and the gods. Your life is forfeit, and your sons’—”
“He killed my son,” said An Li.
“One of them. A hostage to your own conduct. He was executed when tha
t conduct became treacherous. Wherein lies your grievance? Tell me!”
There was something magnificent about the lean, thin-bearded man standing there with his heavy stick.
“He was no hostage! Do not shape lies that are being written down. He was an officer in the Flying Dragon Army, and a member of the court. He was killed by a fool in an act of fear. Will you pretend you approved?”
“I was in Chenyao,” said Xu Bihai.
It was an admission of sorts.
“Nothing near to an answer! But I know your answer. However much you hate me, Governor Xu, I will wager the lives of my remaining sons against your daughters’ that you despise Wen Zhou as much!”
There was no reply.
Roshan went on, his voice a hammer now, “You were afraid to challenge him, all this time! You stayed west and let a vain polo player, whose only claim to rank was a cousin in the emperor’s bed, turn Kitai into his own fiefdom, while Taizu drank potions to straighten his male member and drank others to live forever!”
He glared at the other man. “Was yours, Governor Xu, the conduct of someone mindful of his duty to the state? Do you accept the fool whose cause you are serving here? I require Wen Zhou at my feet, blinded, and begging for death.”
“Why? Are you the first man to lose a battle for power?”
“He is worth nothing!”
“Then neither are you the first to lose to a lesser man! Will you kill so many, destroy an empire, for it?”
“Why not?” said An Li.
The words, unadorned, hung in the air.
“Because you cannot blame Wen Zhou for this. You rose against the throne, your son died for it. You had to know it could happen. And sons die every day in the world.”
“So,” said Roshan, “do daughters.”
Xu Bihai shook his head. Gravely now, he said, “Ministers of the empire come and are gone, leaving memories, or only tracks in sand. The Phoenix Throne is more than the man who sits it, or those who serve him, well or badly. I have my views on the first minister. I have no inclination to share them with a foul and accursed rebel.”
“I am neither, if I win,” said Roshan.
“You are both, now and until you die, and the words will cling to your name forever, wherever your body lies.” Xu Bihai stopped, then he said, “Hear my offer.”
“I am listening,” said An Li.
“You and your eldest son have forfeited your lives. You will be graciously permitted to commit suicide and be buried, though not with monuments. I have the names of five of your commanders who must also accept their deaths. All others in your army, here or in the northeast or in Yenling, are offered pardon in the name of the Glorious Emperor Taizu, an offer to be recorded now by the Kanlins, and with my own name and honour behind it.”
His voice grew quiet. “You are dying. You know it. All men who look at you know it. With your life, already ending, and six others, you can save all those who follow you, and Kitai, from this.”
He ended. Five Kanlin scribes, their hands dipping brushes, shaped words. Otherwise, there was a stillness in the pass.
“Why would I do that?” Roshan said.
He sounded genuinely puzzled. He scratched at the back of one hand. “He drove me to this. Wen Zhou was stripping me of choices, poisoning the emperor against me, erasing anything I might offer my sons. What should a man with any pride in what he leaves behind do in the face of that?”
“Is that it?” said Xu Bihai. “Legacy?”
“It is different for you,” said Roshan, dismissively. “You have only daughters.” He shifted in his chair. “If this is all you came to say, we have wasted a morning. Unless it is of importance to you to understand that I do know of your daughters, and I will find them, to their very great regret. You may trust me in this.”
The thin man appeared undisturbed. “I thank you,” he said. “You turn the duty of destroying you into a pleasure, rare and delicate.”
That last word, delicate, lifted into the air and was recorded, strange as it sounded in that place, on pale silk paper by five brushes moving swiftly, dipping and stroking—delicately, in fact.
The yellow-backed throne was carried out of Teng Pass. Roshan waited in the kingfisher-feathered sedan chair, curtains drawn, respecting—perhaps surprisingly—formalities. It may have been the case that, having named himself an emperor, these mattered more to him than they might once have done.
Eventually, three hooded Kanlins walked over, two escorting the one carrying a scroll that preserved the record of what had been said. The Kanlin extended the scroll. A hand reached through the curtain and took it.
The sedan chair was lifted and carried away into sunlight.
LI-MEI IS DEEPLY DISTURBED, not even close to working through all the reasons for this. One of them, however, is surely the savage intensity of what has just happened in Teng Pass, the words spoken, violence embedded—and with more to come. Surely, now, to come?
Another reason, on an infinitely smaller scale, shameful, almost unworthy of acknowledging, is that she’s still recovering from the effect of the heavy, too-sweet smell that had come from An Li’s sedan chair when she’d accompanied the Kanlin carrying the scroll to him. She’d been next in line when he was given the completed record. They’d motioned for her, and one other, to go forward.
A sweetness of perfume overlaying, thickly, an odour much darker, something corrupt. She feels ill in the aftermath of it, and the air in Teng Pass is too still, too dense, when she tries to breathe deeply. It will be very hot outside the pass, where the rebels are camped in the sun.
She remains shaken by a thought that came to her, walking towards Roshan, standing by, watching the scroll being extended to him.
She isn’t remotely capable with a sword or knife, but there was surely a chance that, armed as she was—as a Kanlin for today—she could have stabbed him, ending this.
Ending all safety and tradition and respect for the Kanlin Warriors, too, mind you.
Hundreds of years of being judged worthy of trust, destroyed in a moment by Shen Li-Mei, only daughter of General Shen Gao—after they’d welcomed her on Stone Drum Mountain, given her shelter and guidance and even a way to make her way home through civil war.
Not to be thought of. Or, if thoughts cannot be barred, not to be permitted to be more than that.
Roshan is dying, in any case. That was the odour she smelled. The thin-bearded man who’d faced him down (she knew who he was, remembered her father speaking of him) had said it in blunt words. Words she’d watched being recorded in swift calligraphy by the scribes.
Killing him, she thinks, wouldn’t have ended anything, necessarily. The sons—the one standing here, and there are two others alive (she believes)—and, probably, the five men whose names are carried on a second scroll, the ones whose deaths are required: these would carry on, even if An Li died.
Rebellion might not always be tied to one man’s will and life. Perhaps it took on its own force, after a given point was reached and passed. You could turn back, and turn back, and then you couldn’t.
Has that happened here?
She’d like to ask someone, but can’t. She is disguised as a Kanlin, no one is to know who she is, and a Warrior would not be asking questions like that, of anyone.
They’d made her carry twin swords on her back during the ride south so she wouldn’t look awkward and inept, moving with them when the time came. They’d been heavy at first, the swords, painful against her spine in their back-scabbards. She’s more accustomed to them now.
A person—a woman—can adapt to more than she might have thought she could. What she’s unsure about is when that stops being a virtue and turns to something else, leaving you too much changed, undefined, unanchored, like a fisherman’s empty boat drifting on a river, with no way to be returned to where it belongs.
Thinking so, ashamed to be dealing with thoughts of her own life at such a time, Li-Mei sees three riders racing towards them up the pass from the western end. br />
The leading one carries a banner, the imperial insignia. These are couriers, she’d seen them often enough in her days with the empress. The second rider is a Kanlin. He is the one who dismounts from his lathered horse before the stallion has even entirely halted. He approaches General Xu, bows. He is perspiring from the heat. The black robes are soaked with sweat. He extends a small object. It is a seal, broken in half. Li-Mei knows what this signifies, though she’s never actually seen one. The courier also extends a scroll to the general.
Xu Bihai accepts both. He hands the half-seal to one of his officers. This man reaches into a leather satchel he carries and extracts a similar object, rejects it, pulls out another. No one speaks. The man holds this second piece to the one the courier has brought. He looks at the fit, examines the back, nods his head.
Only then does Xu Bihai untie the scroll and read.
Li-Mei sees him grow older before her eyes. He leans on his stick for a moment. Then he straightens. “When was this given to you?” he asks the couriers. His voice is thin. Li-Mei is suddenly frightened, hearing it.
The courier bows before speaking. He is clearly exhausted. “Three nights ago, my lord. We left in the middle of the night.”
“And it came from?”
“From the first minister himself, my lord general. His hand to my own, the scroll and the half-seal.”
Rage appears in Xu Bihai’s features; it is impossible to miss. He breathes in and out, slowly.
He says, very clearly, “He is afraid. He has decided that the longer we are here holding them back, the more likely it is that someone might decide this can be ended by delivering him to An Li.”
No one says a word in Teng Pass. Li-Mei is remembering someone else this morning: I need Wen Zhou at my feet, blinded, and begging for death.
After a moment, General Xu says, quietly this time, as if to the stillness of the air, not to anyone beside him, “If I were a different man, and Roshan were, I might even have done it.”
What Li-Mei feels, hearing this, standing so near, is fear. It chases away, as wind chases fallen leaves, all thoughts of her own destiny. There is too much more here now.