"Wei Song, sheathe weapons, please," Tai called. He didn't look back. He heard, with relief, the doubled
snick
as she obeyed.
"Thank you," he said again, to her this time. She was Kanlin. They weren't servants, to be ordered about as such.
Neither was he. He said, "I am honoured, of course, beyond my worth, that the governor has taken himself abroad in the night to hold converse with me. I had been greatly looking forward to your counsel and tidings in the morning. I still am. What hour would be convenient?"
"This one," said Xu Bihai. "You weren't listening. I said I was disinclined to see you after the prefect."
"I was listening, sir. I do not decree the protocols of our glorious Ninth Dynasty, governor. And I am disinclined to have my appointments for a day--or a night--decided by others, however greatly I honour them."
The white-bearded governor appeared to be considering this. Distant sounds drifted, music and laughter, one voice briefly lifted in anger, but they were alone in this square with the soldiers and Wei Song.
"I don't see that you have a choice," Xu Bihai said, at length, "though I note your disinclination. I will not apologize for protecting the interests of this military district, but I can offer you mare's teat grape wine at my residence and an escort to the entertainment district afterwards."
Tai drew a breath. He needed to decide, swiftly, how far he would take this--and how far the governor would.
He was still angry. His father had liked this man. Elements to be balanced. Inwardly, he shrugged. A princess in Rygyal had changed his life. A moment such as this was part of that change. It was unlikely to be the last.
"I have not tasted mare's teat wine in more than two years," he said. "I should be honoured to be your guest. Shall we invite the prefect to join us?"
For a moment, the governor's lean face betrayed astonishment, then he threw back his head and laughed. Tai allowed himself to smile.
"I think not," said Xu Bihai.
IN THE EVENT, Tai came to understand, the governor wished to say only one thing to him, but he wanted quite urgently to say it. And to do so before anyone else spoke to the young man who now controlled enough Sardian horses to play a role in the balance of power towards the end of a long reign.
The wine was luxuriously good. It was spiced with saffron. Tai honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd tasted that.
The two young women who served them were Xu's daughters, unmarried. Each wore flawless silk, one in pale green, the other in blue, low-cut in a fashion that had evidently emerged, so to speak, since Tai had left Xinan.
Their perfume was intoxicating, each different from the other's. They both had painted moth-eyebrows, tinted blue-green, and a side-falling hairstyle with extravagant hairpins. They wore jewelled, closed-toe slippers, gold rings and jade earrings, and had amused, confident eyes.
It was, he thought, unfair.
The governor, cross-legged on a platform couch opposite, clad in doubled black robes, with a black hat and a red belt, seemed oblivious to the effect his daughters were having on his guest, but Tai was entirely certain that the wine and lamplit room, and the two exquisite, scented women had been carefully orchestrated.
Wei Song was in the courtyard with the soldiers. The two men Tai had wounded were expected to live. He'd asked, on arrival here. This was good, of course, but reminded him that his skills were not what they'd once been: he had been trying to kill.
They ate five-spice dried river-fish in three sauces, and early fruits served in ivory bowls by the daughters, not servants. They drank the saffron wine, cups steadily refilled. Talked of spring crops outside the city walls and along the river, of thunderstorms and a tail-star apparently seen in the east earlier that month, what it might presage. The two women brought water and hand cloths for them to wash and dry their fingers as they ate. Curving towards Tai, offering a lacquered bowl of scented water, the one in green allowed her hair (in strategic disarray to one side) to brush his hands. This was the "waterfall" hairstyle made popular by the Precious Consort, Wen Jian herself, in Xinan.
It
was
unfair.
Xu's daughter smiled very slightly as she straightened, as if sensing, and enjoying, his response. Her father said, briskly, "Commander Lin writes that he proposed to you a position of high rank in the cavalry of the Second Army, a number of the Sardian horses to remain as yours, and your selection of officers to serve under you."
So much for polite discussion of stars, or millet and its ripening time and best-suited soil.
Tai set down his cup. "Fortress Commander Lin was generous beyond my merits, and behaved with impeccable courtesy to his guest, on behalf of his military district."
"He's ambitious, and clever enough. He would," said Xu Bihai. "I imagine he will serve the district well if promoted." Tai thought he owed the commander that much.
"Perhaps," said Xu indifferently. "He isn't well liked and he isn't feared. Makes it harder for him to rise. Your father would have agreed."
"Indeed," said Tai noncommittally.
He received a glance from the other couch. The two daughters had withdrawn to the door, either side of it, decorative beyond words. He very much liked the one in green. Her eyes, that knowing half-smile.
"Perhaps further persuasion from me will be of use in causing you to reconsider his offer?"
"I am honoured you would even consider me worthy of persuading," murmured Tai. "But I told Commander Lin--a man I liked, incidentally--that it would be folly for me to contemplate a course of action before I consult with those at court."
"First Minister Wen Zhou?"
"Indeed," Tai repeated.
"Your elder brother, advising him?"
Tai nodded, uneasy suddenly.
"Two men I understand you have reason to dislike."
"I should regret if you continued in such an understanding," Tai said carefully. His pulse had quickened. "My duty to the Son of Heaven, may he rule a thousand years, surely requires that I take counsel in Xinan with his advisers."
There was a silence. It was not a statement that could be challenged, and both men knew it. Governor Xu lifted his cup, sipped thoughtfully. He put it down. Looking at Tai, his expression changed. "I can almost pity you," he said.
"I should regret that, as well," Tai said.
"You do know what I mean?"
Tai met his gaze. "I might have chosen a simpler life, had it been my own decision, but if we accept the teachings of the Sacred Path, then we also accept--"
"Do you? Do you follow those teachings?"
The discussion had become uncomfortably intimate. Tai said, "I try. The balancing. Male and female, hot and cold, awareness of all five directions. Stillness and motion, polarities. The flow between such things suits my nature more than the Cho Master's certainties, however wise he was."
"You learned this on Stone Drum Mountain?"
It was curious how many people seemed to know of his time there. He remembered Rain telling him that--and what else she'd said. How it might be useful. Shaping a mystery about him ...
He shook his head. "From before. My own readings. It was a reason I went there." He saw no reason not to be honest, to a point. It
had
been one reason.
Xu Bihai nodded, as if a thought had been confirmed.
He stared at Tai another long moment, then, as if speaking only of cultivated fields again, or early-summer rainfall, said quietly, "I understand you must consult at the palace before acting, but I would sooner kill you tonight and lose all the horses for the empire and be exiled to the pestilent south, or ordered to commit suicide, than have you give them to Roshan. This, Master Shen Tai, you need to know."
THE PROMISED ESCORT took him in the governor's sedan chair to the entertainment district. He hadn't been in one of those for a long time. The cushions were soft, there was a scent of aloeswood. He was slightly drunk, he realized.
The bearers stopped. Tai opened the curtains to reveal the quite handsome entrance of the White Phoenix Pleasure Pavilion, which had a new roof, a covered portico, lanterns hanging by the entrance, wide steps going up, and doors open to the mild night.
The leader of Tai's escort went up and spoke to an older woman at the entrance. Tai knew--and there was nothing he could, in courtesy, do about it--that he was not going to be permitted to pay for anything here tonight.
The soldiers indicated that they would wait for him. He wanted to dismiss them, but that wasn't possible if they had orders from the governor, and he knew they did. They would take him back to the inn eventually. If he spent the night here they'd remain outside until morning with the sedan chair. This was the way things were going to be now. Men were investing in him. He could try to find it amusing, but it was difficult.
I would sooner kill you tonight
.
This, you need to know.
Murder as an alternative to investment, he thought wryly. And given consequences so sure and so severe, even for a governor--since word had gone ahead to Xinan and they would know about the horses very soon--Governor Xu's statement carried its own uncompromising message.
Roshan was not to be allowed to claim these.
Roshan
was a nickname, given by soldiers long ago, adopted by the court. The man's real name was An Li. He was a one-time barbarian cavalryman, then an officer, a general, now a military governor himself commanding the Seventh, the Eighth, and most recently also the Ninth District armies. A man everyone watched. And feared.
Tai had been away too long. There were elements--balances--he needed to learn, and he didn't have a great deal of time.
I can almost pity you
was the other thing Xu Bihai had said. And at Kuala Nor among the ghosts a blue-tattooed Taguran had said nearly the same thing.
He had seen Roshan only once, in Long Lake Park, watching princes and aristocrats at a polo game. The general, visiting from his base in the northeast, in Xinan to receive yet another honour (and the gift of a city palace), had sat with the imperial party. He had been unmistakable in his colossal bulk, clad in brilliant, overwhelming red, his laughter ringing across the meadow.
He hadn't always been so fat, but one needed to be older than Tai to remember An Li's fighting days. He would destroy a horse under him today.
It was said that he laughed all the time, even when killing people, that he had never learned to read, that he was advised by a steppe demon, and had given the emperor certain potions for the delights of darkness in that time when Taizu first turned his aging eyes--and heart--to the youthful glory of Wen Jian.
It was also said that the only man Roshan had ever feared--and he had very greatly feared him, as everyone did--was the infinitely subtle, calculating, now-deceased first minister, Chin Hai.
With Chin gone, there was a new prime minister, and though Wen Zhou might be a favoured cousin of the Precious Consort, and owe his appointment to that as much as anything else, Roshan was also beloved of the emperor and had long been said to be equally close to the exquisite Jian--and perhaps more than merely
close
, depending on which rumour you heard and believed.
In the night street before a courtesan house in Chenyao's pleasure district, remembering a summer day in the park, Tai recalled looking across at the corpulent figure of the military governor from a distance and flinching inwardly at the image of such a figure embracing, crushing, the most beautiful woman of the age.
Jian was already named by then in poems, and had been painted, as one of the Four Great Beauties of Kitai, going back to the First Dynasty and the Empress Jade Pearl, among the immortals now.
To Xu Bihai tonight, Tai had simply said that he would seek counsel from as many people as he could before deciding what he would do, and expressed a willingness to come back west and meet the governor here, drink and dine again--perhaps in the presence of his charming daughters.
One of them had giggled at that from by the door, not the one in green. That one had simply looked across at Tai, her expression suddenly difficult to read.
Thoughts of the two of them drew his mind back to the house in front of him. He wasn't in the best condition, after so much saffron wine, to deal with matters of court and rival governors. Such issues could surely be deferred for a night? His first in a city after two years?
The doors of the house were wide open. He saw lights within. The attendant woman smiled from under two red lanterns. Of course she'd smile a welcome. It was her assignment here, and she would have just been informed that anything--anything--the young man wanted was to be offered to him, and charged to the governor.
The young man wanted more wine to start with, he decided.
The sage in the cup
, the poets said. The rest could follow as the spring night deepened and the late moon rose.
He heard a voice inside, speaking poetry.
He went up the wide, handsome steps, between lanterns, and entered the White Phoenix, giving a coin to the woman at the door.
CHAPTER VIII
T
he ridiculous Kitan adoration--and that feels like the right word!--of poetry and of declaiming, drunken poets is an endless mystery to Amber, and deeply annoying. Amber is from Sardia, has honey-gold hair, therefore her name. Not particularly inventive, but courtesan names never are.
She is beautiful (green eyes!). She's long-legged, has perfect skin, is very young. Beauty has been enough to ensure her a stream of clients since arriving here, even infatuated ones, though she can't sing or play one of their instruments, and poetry puts her to sleep.
Not every silk merchant or off-duty officer in need of a woman for a wintry afternoon or summer night wants the girl to discourse upon philosophy, or pluck "The Bandits of the Gorge" on a
pipa
before he takes her upstairs and throws her across a bed.
Amber makes a point of giggling when they do this to her. Men tend to be excited by that. She may not be educated, but she understands certain things.
In bed (or on the floor beside it) she knows exactly what she's doing, has a talent, especially if the man is young and not offensive in manner or appearance.
A few of the women who have been here longer are constantly urging her to listen more carefully to the poetry, even memorize some of it, to practise harder at her music. They are always pointing out that the men with real money, the ones who leave additional sums for the girl (they are allowed to keep half of this), will usually be those with some worldliness. That's just the way of things here in Kitai, even in a western market town.
Bright Amber (she
likes
the name they gave her, as it happens) doesn't entirely disagree, but she also knows that a merchant just off the long road will be generous to a pretty girl with smooth legs and an easy laugh and green eyes, and that many of those men will be indifferent to (or
bored
by, as she is) obsessive distinctions between eight-line regulated verse and any other of the hopelessly contrived forms poetry takes here.
Poetry! In the name of the bull-god! You even need to be a poet to rise in the civil service here. Can there be a clearer sign of a culture that has lost its way? Amber doesn't think there is, when she thinks about it at all, though she does concede the point Jade Flower makes: if Kitai has lost its way, why does it control so much of the world?
Maybe it would be different in a pleasure house in Xinan or Yenling, where the aristocrats are. Maybe she'd accept that it was worth her while to work on other skills. But Amber is happy in Chenyao, has thoughts already about one or two merchants and one extremely handsome officer of the Second District cavalry.
She's perfectly content to spend a year or two in the White Phoenix and then cajole or induce the right man to buy her as his concubine. It is as good a life plan as any for a girl.
She is from a hard world, after all. Orphaned in a plague summer, sold at twelve by her oldest sister to a brothel-keeper, noticed there by a merchant heading east, bought by him to sell. Her good fortune, that, no doubting it. She is distinctive in Kitai, and the White Phoenix is the best house in Chenyao. She has food and a bed of her own, firesides in winter, two days a month to herself, and half the festival holidays. Life has not dealt badly with her.
Chenyao is as far into Kitai as Amber feels any desire to go. They recite more poetry in pleasure houses east, among other things. She's been told that often enough. You need to pretend to listen and admire and
understand
it, strum accompaniment on your
pipa
, or else the men in fine silks of their own will laugh the wrong way, or ignore you entirely. A waste of a pretty girl, as far as Amber is concerned.
Let the older women, who need to spend time each day painting away lines, struggle to find ways to keep the attention of clients: clapping and smiling at drunken, mumbled verses, placing a
pipa
strategically in front of fallen breasts. Amber tends to find that standing a certain way, then just looking across the room at a man is enough.
At this particular moment of an almost-summer night, however, in the large, subtly lit reception room of the White Phoenix, crowded with a variety of men and a number of perfumed women, circumstances are otherwise.
No one is looking at Amber, though she's positioned herself by her favourite lamp near an archway and knows her hair is beautiful tonight.
Even one of her regular clients, the cavalry officer she has thoughts about, is among those crowding the central platform. On that platform, a soft-bellied, badly groomed, considerably intoxicated man well past his middle years is reciting a verse about--as best Amber can tell--a wife and her absent husband.
It is, she feels strongly, insulting.
The poet is proceeding slowly--in part, because he stops to take a drink every few lines. This poem is not (alas!) one of their brief, formal things. This one, he declared (his voice is not deep but it carries), is a ballad, whatever that is.
Well, Amber knows one cursed thing it is:
long
.
She makes herself smile with that. No one notices. One of the other girls, looking as if she was on the cresting edge of extreme desire, had breathed the word
immortal
when the poet came in some little time ago.
The Banished Immortal.
It is laughable. Amber
wants
to laugh but knows she'd be in trouble if she did. Where she comes from, an immortal, exiled from heaven for whatever reason, would have to look a great deal more as if he knew how to use the sword that lies beside the poet now, and would surely have the dignity to not be so obviously unable to stop himself from drinking cup after cup of their best grape wine.
It hasn't happened yet, but she expects his voice to start slurring soon--if he even manages to remain upright. This one isn't going to be much use to himself or the girl he takes upstairs, Amber thinks. Sometimes, if the man is too drunk to use you properly he leaves a larger sum, to have a girl keep quiet about his embarrassment.
She doesn't think this one, this
immortal
in his dusty, wine-stained clothing, is likely to care.
He is still reciting to an unnaturally silent room, and still drinking another cup every few lines. He's impressive in that, at least, Amber concedes. Two of the girls, hovering by the platform, visibly excited, hasten to refill his cup, taking turns. Amber wonders if their nipples are hard. She is tempted to have a coughing fit or cause a lamp to topple, so annoyed is she by this spectacle. No one is looking at her, no one is talking or even whispering to anyone else, no one is taking
any
of the women to another room, and the owner doesn't look as if she cares in the least.
Incredulously, Amber realizes that some of the girls--and many of the men--have tears in their eyes.
Tears!
Bright Amber is from a land famed for horses and women, and for men who fight bare-chested with knives, priding themselves on their scars.
She is seventeen and a half years old, has been in the White Phoenix for a little more than two years now. But honestly, she thinks, she could live among these Kitan till she was dried up like an end-of-autumn grape, bent like an ox-cart wheel, and she'd never understand them, or how the Celestial Empire dominates the world they know.
She is thinking this, outraged and aggrieved, when another man steps quietly into the room, following Lotus through the open doorway. Lotus just watches at the entrance now, greets arrivals, too old to ever be asked to go to a room with a man any more. Her hands are twisted, painful in rain and wind, she can't even play the
pipa
properly. Apparently she was the best of all of them, once.
Amber sees Lotus bow to this man, as low as she can, twice, as she backs out to the portico. That--of course--is the usual sign to all of them: this one is important, has money.
No one but Amber is even looking.
She runs a quick hand to her bright hair, checking the pins that hold it in place. Prepares her smile for when his gaze finds her beside the lamp.
It doesn't. He stops where he stands. His mouth opens. He stares--it is
too
upsetting--at the poet on his raised platform. The new arrival's expression is awed, disbelieving.
He has money to spend, Lotus has signalled it. He's young, presentable. You might even call this one handsome (unusual, deep-set eyes). Amber wants him to look at
her
with that dazzled expression, as she unbinds her golden hair and slowly, teasingly, discards silken clothing in a private room and kneels gracefully to attend to him.
She swears, not quietly enough. Two of the older women turn back to glare at her. Amber offers the response that makes the most sense at this particular moment: she sticks out her tongue.