Lu Chen, a shrewd, experienced man, had moved up for a time among the cavalry escort. Then the Kanlin drifted back towards Tai, where he and Zian and Song had kept to the rear of the party.
Chen had spoken to Song first, then brought his quick Bogü horse over beside Dynlal. “My lord,” he said, “I am not certain how it is, but the soldiers know what they should not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone has spoken to them about Teng Pass. Word is spreading as we ride. The Second Army was in the pass, my lord. These men will be grieving, and angry.”
Zian moved up. Song shifted her mount to let him. The road was wide; they rode four abreast in the night.
“They know who gave Xu Bihai that order?” the poet asked.
“I believe that is so, my lord.” Lu Chen was invariably courteous to the poet.
“Do you think it was intentional? That they know this?” Zian’s voice was grim. Tai looked quickly over at him.
“I do not know, my lord. But I believe it would be wise to be cautious at the posting station.” He glanced at Tai. “My lord, I have determined that your honourable brother is in the other carriage. I thought you might wish to know.”
Never much of a horseman, Tai’s honourable brother, to their father’s regret. Even less so now, undoubtedly. Clever in the extreme, however, hard-working, ambitious, precise, with foresight and discipline.
He would never have let Wen Zhou send that order to Teng Pass.
Tai knew it with certainty. As surely as he understood how Liu could send their sister to the barbarians, he knew he would not have ordered Xu Bihai out of that pass into battle.
His Kanlins were gathered tightly around him now. Someone had obviously given instructions. He looked ahead at the carriage nearest to them. The emperor of Kitai was in there, rolling through the night, fleeing in the night. Could the world really come to encompass such a thing?
Tai knew it could, that it had before. He’d studied a thousand years of history, hadn’t he, preparing for the examinations? He knew the legacy of his people, the dark and the brightly shimmering. He knew of civil wars, palace assassinations, slaughter on battlefields, cities sacked and burned. He had not thought to live through any of these.
It suddenly occurred to him, belatedly, how almost all of the court and imperial family—children, grandchildren, advisers, concubines—had been left behind tonight, to get away as best they could, or face Roshan when he came.
And there were two million people in Xinan, undefended.
His heart twisted. Be very alert, he’d written to Rain. So helpful, that. What would she do? What was possible? Would she even get his message, from that twisted figure in the street? He’d left two Kanlins behind for her—at least he’d done that.
His mouth was dry again. He spat into the dust beside the road. Zian handed over a wine flask. Wordlessly, Tai drank. Only a little. He needed to be clear-headed, surely, above all else.
He glanced ahead. Wen Zhou was still among those up front. Lit by torches, he was easy to see, on a splendid black horse, a riding posture to be envied. Born to ride, they said about him.
The light grew as they went on. All but a handful of the brightest stars disappeared, then these, too, were gone. Individual trees took shape on their right, and fields on the other side of the road, ripe with summer grain. Torches were extinguished and discarded.
End of night. Morning, soft and clear. Tai looked back. Thin clouds east, underlit, pale pink, pale yellow. He caught a flash of blue, bright between trees, then he saw it again: the lake, ahead and to the right.
They came to the branching road that would lead around its shore to the extravagant luxury of the hot springs at Ma-wai. Jade and gold there, alabaster and ivory from the Silk Roads, porcelain, flawless silk, marble floors and columns, sandalwood walls, room screens painted with mastery, rare dishes from far lands, exquisitely prepared. Music.
Not today. They carried on along the road straight past that lakeside cut-off so often taken by this court, and not long after they came to the postal station inn and yard and stables, instead.
Riders had galloped ahead. They were awaited. The officers and attendants of the station were assembled in the courtyard, some bowing three times, some already prostrate in the dust, all visibly terrified to have their emperor suddenly among them like this.
There was a clatter of coach wheels and horses and orders shouted, then an odd, intense near-silence as they came to a halt. Birds were singing, Tai would remember. It was a summer morning.
The imperial carriage stopped directly in front of the station’s doors. It was a handsome posting inn, Ma-wai’s, so near Xinan, so very near the hot springs and aristocrats’ country estates, and the tombs of the imperial family.
The carriage door was opened and they saw the emperor step down.
The Exalted and Glorious Emperor Taizu wore white, unadorned, with a black belt and hat. Alighting behind him, in a vivid blue travelling robe, with small gold flowers for decoration, came Jian.
The two of them went up the three steps to the station’s porch. It was deeply disturbing to see the emperor walking. He was carried, always. His feet seldom touched the ground—not in the palace, and certainly not here in the dust of an inn yard. Tai looked around, and saw that he wasn’t the only one unsettled by the sight. Wei Song was biting her lip.
Too much had changed too swiftly in a night. The world was a different place, he thought, than it had been when they went to bed.
On the porch, the emperor turned—Tai hadn’t thought he would—and looked gravely out at those in the courtyard. He lifted a hand, briefly, then turned and went inside. He held himself very straight, Tai saw, leaning on no one. He didn’t look like a fleeing man who’d lost the guidance of heaven.
Jian went in behind him. The prime minister and the prince followed, handing their horses to servants, going quickly up the steps. They didn’t look at each other. The other carriage door was opened by a servant. Tai saw his brother step down and walk into the station as well. Three other mandarins alighted and followed.
The posting station doors were closed.
There followed an interlude of disquiet in the courtyard.
No one seemed to have any idea what to do. Tai gave Dynlal’s reins to a stable boy, with orders to feed and water the horse and rub it down. Uncertainly, he went up on the covered porch, standing to one side. Zian came with him, and then Song and five of the Kanlins, staying close. Song was carrying her bow, had her arrow-quiver at one hip. So did the other five.
On the western side of the yard Tai saw a company of soldiers, fifty of them, a dui, such as he had commanded once. They appeared to have just arrived.
Their banners and colours marked them as also being of the Second Army. A mixed unit: forty archers, ten cavalry escorting them. Their presence was not unusual. When the main east-west road was congested troops would routinely be diverted this way. The posting stations were used by soldiers in transit throughout the empire, to change horses, eat and rest, receive new orders. These men would be coming from the west, assigned to the capital very likely, or they might even have been heading all the way to Teng Pass, to join their fellows there.
Not any more, Tai thought.
Some of the soldiers who had escorted their party here could be seen making their way across the inn yard to talk to the others. They were all of the Second Army. And there were tidings to share.
“This is not good,” said Sima Zian quietly.
The two companies of soldiers were intermingled now, talking with increasing intensity in small clusters. Tai looked for their officers, wondering if they’d assert control. That didn’t seem to be happening.
“The dui commander just drew his sword,” said Song.
Tai had seen it, too. He looked at her.
“I have sent two of our people for sixty riders from the sanctuary,” Lu Chen said. “They cannot be here before end of day.” He said it as if apologizing.
“Of course not,” said Tai.
“They will not be in time to help,” said Chen. He had stepped in front of Tai and the poet, holding his bow. They were towards one end of the porch, away from the doors.
“We are not the target of their anger,” said Tai.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sima Zian murmured. “This mood finds targets as it goes.”
And with that, Tai thought of a cabin in the north, long ago, when anger had turned into flames, and worse. He shook his head, as if to shake off memory.
He said, “Keep together. No aggression. There are more than seventy of them. This cannot become violent. The emperor is here.”
The emperor is here. He’d actually said that, he would recall later. Invoked the imperial presence like a talisman, a ward, something magical. Perhaps once it would have been, but too much had changed by the time that day’s sun had risen.
An arrow flew in morning light.
It struck one of the doors of the posting station straight on, burying itself, vibrating there. Tai winced as if he’d been hit himself, so shocking was the sight, and the sound it made hitting the wood.
Three more arrows, and then ten, rapidly. The archers of the Second Army were widely known for their skill, and they were shooting only at doors, and not from far away. This was solidarity, the dui acting together. None of them would leave any others to face consequences alone. Tai looked for the dui commander again, hoping he could stop this.
A vain hope, entirely awry. The commander, not a young man, grey in his short beard, cold anger in his eyes, strode to the foot of the steps leading up to the porch and shouted, “Where is the first minister? We demand to speak with Wen Zhou!”
Demand to speak. Demand.
Knowing this might end his own days, aware of what men in such a state as this could do (they would be thinking about their fellows at Teng Pass), Tai stepped forward.
“Do not!” he heard Song say, a low, strained voice.
He didn’t feel as if he had a choice.
“Dui commander,” he said, as calmly as he could. “This is unseemly. Please hear me. My name is Shen Tai, I am the son of General Shen Gao, a name of honour among soldiers, and you might know it.”
“I know who you are,” said the man. Only that. But he did sketch a bow. “I was in Chenyao when the governor assigned you an escort and gave you rank in the Second Army.”
“We share that army, then,” said Tai.
“In that case,” said the commander, “you should be standing with us. Have you not heard what happened?”
“I have,” said Tai. “Why else are we here? Our glorious emperor is consulting even now with his advisers and the prince. We must stand ready to serve Kitai when they emerge with orders for us!”
“No,” said the officer below him. “Not so. Not until Wen Zhou comes out to us. Stand aside, son of Shen Gao, if you will not come down. We have no quarrel with the man who went to Kuala Nor, but you must not be in our way.”
Had this been a younger man, Tai would later think, what followed might have been different. But the officer, however low-ranking, had clearly been a soldier for a long time. He’d have had companions, friends, at Teng Pass, and he would have, just this moment, learned what happened there.
The dui commander gestured towards the door.
More arrows struck, all together, loudly. They had to sound like a hammer blow inside, Tai thought. A hammering from the changed world. He thought of Jian, more than any of the others in there, even the emperor. He wasn’t sure why.
“Come out to us, or we will come for you,” the officer shouted. “First Minister Wen, commander of the armies of Kitai, your soldiers are waiting! We have questions that must be answered.”
Must be. From an officer of fifty men to the first minister of Kitai. Tai wondered how the sun was climbing in the sky, how birdsong sounded as it always did.
The door to the posting station opened.
Wen Zhou, whom he hated, came out.
LONG YEARS AFTER, when that rebellion was another part of the past—a devastating part, but over with, and receding—the historians charged with examining records (such as remained from a disjointed time) and shaping the story of those days were almost unanimous in their savage writings as they vied to recount the corrupt character (from earliest childhood!) and the foul treachery of accursed An Li, more commonly known as Roshan.
Virtually without exception, for hundreds of years, Roshan was painted in text after text as the grossest possible figure, pustulent, oozing with depraved appetite and ambition.
In these records, it was generally the view that only the heroic and wise first minister, Wen Zhou, had seen through the vile barbarian’s dark designs—almost from the first—and done all he could to forestall them.
There were variations in the writings, complicated by certain aspects of the records, and by the need (until later dynasties) not to be at all critical of the Great and Glorious Emperor Taizu himself.
Accordingly, the most common explanation of the events at the outset of the An Li Rebellion involved incompetence and fear among the generals and officers assigned with defending Teng Pass—and Xinan, behind it. A certain General Xu Bihai, an otherwise inconsequential figure, was routinely described with contempt as physically infirm and a coward.
This solution to the problem of explaining what happened was obvious, given that official historians are civil servants and serve at the court of any dynasty—and can readily be dismissed, or worse.
It would have been deeply unwise to imply, let alone assert, any error or failing on the part of heaven’s emperor, or his duly appointed ministers. Easier, and safer, to turn one’s gaze and calligraphy to the soldiers.
The handsome, aristocratic, preternaturally wise first minister was also, of course, part of a legendary tragedy, one embraced by both the common people and the artists of Kitai—and this, too, surely played a role in the shaping of official records.
When the desire of the court and the tales of the people meld with the vision of great artists, how should any prudent chronicler of the past set himself to resist?
THE FIRST MINISTER, showing no sign of unease, stopped at the front of the porch, above the three steps leading to the yard.
It left him, Tai thought, looking disdainfully down on the dui commander and the soldiers. Wen Zhou had had no real choice but to come out, but this encounter needed care, and part of that, surely, was to make clear the gulf, wider than the Great River in flood, between himself and those below.
Tall and magnificent, Zhou looked out into the sunlight of the yard. He was dressed for riding: no court silk, but perfectly fitted cloth and leather. Boots. No hat. He often disdained a hat, Tai remembered, from days in Long Lake Park, seeing him at a distance.
A much greater distance than this.
Zhou extended an arm and swept it, one finger extended, in a slow, wide arc across the inn yard. He said, his voice imperious, “Each man here has forfeited his life for what has just been done. The officers must be executed first.”
“No,” murmured Sima Zian, under his breath. “Not that way.”
Wen Zhou went on, “But our infinitely merciful emperor, mindful that these are difficult times for ordinary men to understand, has elected to let this moment pass, as if it were the troublesome behaviour of small children. Put away your weapons, form ranks. No punishment will be visited upon any of you. Await orders when we come out. You will be needed in defending Kitai.”
And he turned, amazingly, to go back inside without waiting to see what they did, as if it were inconceivable that anything other than immediate compliance could take place.
“No,” said the dui commander.
Tai could see that it cost him a great deal to say that single word. The man was perspiring in the sunlight, though the morning was mild.
Wen Zhou turned. “What did you say?” he asked. His voice and manner, Tai thought, could freeze a soul.
“I think you heard me,” the o
fficer said. Two others came to stand with him. An archer and one of his officers of ten.
“I heard treason,” said Wen Zhou.
“No,” said one of the archers. “We have learned of treason just now!”
“Why was the army ordered out of Teng Pass?” cried the grey-bearded commander, and Tai heard pain in his voice.
“What?” snapped Zhou. “Will the heavens crack above us? The sun fall? Are common soldiers asking questions of the Ta-Ming now?”
“They didn’t have to fight!” cried the dui commander. “Everyone knows it!”
“And you are fleeing from Xinan, leaving it to Roshan!” shouted the archer, a small, fierce figure. “Why was any of this done?”
“They say you gave those orders directly!” the officer of ten said.
First hesitation in Wen Zhou, Tai saw. His mouth was dry again. He didn’t move. He couldn’t move.
Zhou drew himself up. “Who says such a thing?”
“Those who rode with you have told us!” cried the archer. “Your own guards heard it on the ride!”
Tai turned to Sima Zian. The poet’s face was stricken. Tai wondered how he looked himself. He heard Wen Zhou again. “This encounter is over. Soldiers! Take custody of these three men. Your dui commander is relieved of his post. Bind them and hold them for execution when we come out. Kitai will fall if such chaos is permitted! Soldiers of the Second Army, do as you are ordered.”
No man moved in the inn yard.
A flurry of wind stirring the dust. Birdsong again, and always.
“No. You must answer us,” said the archer. His voice had altered. Tai heard Song draw a breath behind him. He saw Wen Zhou look down into the inn yard with the withering, lifelong contempt a man such as he would have for those below. He turned, to go back inside.
And so the arrow that killed him struck from behind.
Sima Zian, the Banished Immortal, master poet of the age, who was there that day at the Ma-wai posting inn, never wrote a word about that morning.