Under Heaven (30 page)

be
here.
And in that moment she hears a sound that makes her halt her spinning. She stands motionless suddenly, silent. She listens. The drip of water. Not that. She is almost certain she heard a horse. Fear comes with that.
Then another sound: someone coming into this inner cave from the first one. Instead of frightening her, this reassures. Meshag went to get horses. He knows where she is. The sound she's heard--faintly--is from outside. A real horse, not the supernatural neighing of a spirit stallion on these walls.
She sees him come through. He straightens. She is about to speak when he holds up a hand, three fingers to his lips. Fear returns. Why silence? Who is out there?
He gestures for her to follow, turns to lead her through the short tunnel to the wider, brighter cave, the first one. She takes a last look at the horses all around, at the king-horse with the human hands upon him, and then she makes her way out.
In the larger cave, with the high openings lending light, Meshag turns again, once more with fingers to his lips urging silence. He is wearing a long, dark tunic now, a leather vest over it. She wonders what clothing he has found for her. She opens her mouth to whisper a question (surely they can whisper?) but his gesture, seeing that, is imperative. His eyes gleam, flashing angrily in the thin light from above.
She registers this, says nothing. She draws a slow breath.
He gestures again for her to follow, turns to take them back towards daylight.
She approaches closely, behind him. And at the edge of the tunnel that will lead them out, in the moment when he bends low to enter it, Li-Mei stabs him in the throat from one side with the knife she's carried in her sleeve all this way.
She drives the blade in then rips it towards her with all her strength, knowing she'll have only this one chance,
not
knowing how to kill a man, where the knife must go. She tears it out and stabs him again, and a third time, sobbing. He grunts only once, a queer chest sound.
He falls with a clattering noise, right at the entrance to the tunnel.
Still weeping (and she is
not
a woman who weeps), Li-Mei strikes again with the knife, into his back. It hits metal, twists in her hand. She is frantic, terrified, but he lies where he's fallen, and now she sees how much blood there is.
She scrabbles away, clutching the marred blade. She backs up against the cave wall, eyes never leaving him. If he gets up, if he even
moves
, she knows she will begin to scream and not be able to stop.
Nothing, no movement. Her rapid, ragged breathing is loud in her ears. The light in this chamber falls as before. It is the light that saved her, that told her.
If
she is right in this. Her hands are still shaking, spasms she cannot stop. She puts the knife down beside her. She has killed a man. She is quite certain she has killed a man.
It is not Meshag. It is not him. She says that last aloud, shocking herself with the sound, the harshness of her voice. It cannot be him, must not be.
She needs to know. Can only do that if she looks. That means going back to where he lies, face down, before the tunnel. It requires courage. She has more, in fact, than she knows.
Holding hard to inner control, she does crawl back, bent knife in hand. There are stones on the cave floor, they hurt her knees. Her wrist hurts, from when the knife twisted. Why did it twist? She thinks she might know. Needs to touch him to be sure.
She does that, too. Drags him by his legs from the tunnel's entrance. More light where he lies now. With an effort, grunting, she pushes him onto his back. Into her mind there flashes a horrifying image of this man rising up as she does so. Rising to ...
He is dead. He will not rise. And he is not Meshag.
An older man, lean face, thin grey hair. He looks nothing at all like Meshag, son of Hurok. Now. But he
had
before. Had looked exactly like him, in all but one respect. Which tells her what this man is. What he was, she corrects herself. He is dead. She killed him.
She rips through his tunic, chest to belly, with her reddened, twisted blade. Tears it open with both hands. Metallic mirrors appear, strapped around his body, glinting in the pale light from above.

It is a truth about the nature of human beings that we seek--even demand--order and pattern in our lives, in the flow and flux of history and our own times.
Philosophers have noted this and mused upon it. Those advising princes, emperors, kings have sometimes proposed that this desire, this need, be
used
, exploited, shaped. That a narrative, a story,
the
story of a time, a war, a dynasty be devised to steer the understanding of a people to where the prince desires it to go.
Without pattern, absent that sense of order, a feeling of randomness, of being lost in a world without purpose or direction can undermine even the strongest man or woman.
Given this, it would certainly have been noted as significant by any such philosopher or adviser that the second son and the only daughter of General Shen Gao, honoured in his day as Left Side Commander of the Pacified West, each killed a man on the same morning, a long way from each other.
The son had done this before. The daughter had not, had never expected to.
As to the meaning to be attached to such a conjunction, a pattern discovered embedded in the tale ...
Who can number, under nine heavens, the jewel-bright observations to be extracted from moments such as these? Who will dare say he knows with certainty which single gem is to be held up to whatever light there is for us, in our journeying, and proclaimed as true?

Eventually Li-Mei begins to think about the horse sound she'd heard: she fears an animal will give her away, reveal the cave, if it is still out there.
It might not be. The wolves might have driven it away. Or killed it. It leaves her feeling oddly passive, after the hideous spasm of action before: someone is lying not far away, blood thickening on stone. It is as if she's exhausted her reserves of force, her ability to play any further role, help herself, can only wait to see what will follow. It is an unexpectedly peaceful state.
You sat, leaning against a wall, legs extended, in the midst of stones and animal bones and the smell of wolf and the sometimes flutter of a bat or bird overhead, and you waited to see who--or what--would come for you. You didn't have to do anything, there didn't seem to be anything left to do.
There is no point going outside to be seen. Where will she walk from here, or even ride, alone? She has no adequate clothing, no food, and the wolves are out there.
So there is a curious measure of tranquility in her when she hears the sound of someone else coming into the cave through the tunnel. She looks over, but she doesn't stand up, or try to hide. She holds her bent knife in her hand.
Meshag enters and straightens and looks around.
She can see him absorb what has happened. She looks at him closely, of course, though she is very sure the deception isn't happening again.
He kneels beside the fallen man. She sees that he avoids the blood on the cave floor. He stands and comes towards her. She looks at his eyes.
"He was a shaman?" she asks, though she knows the answer.
He gives his short nod.
"He made himself look exactly, almost exactly like you. He never spoke. He was taking me outside when I ..." She doesn't finish.
"What was not me?"
She stands before answering. Brushes at her leggings and tunic to remove some of the rock dust. There is blood, too, she sees. That isn't going to disappear so easily.
"His eyes," she says. "His ... yours couldn't have been so bright." She wonders if this will be wounding, for what it implies.
But it looks as if he smiles. She is almost sure she sees it before the expression goes away. He says, "I know. I have seen my eyes in water. In ... pools? That word?"
"Yes, pools. This is since what happened to you?"
A stupid question but he only nods again. "Yes, since. My eyes are dead."
"No, they aren't!" she says with sudden force. He looks surprised. She
feels
surprised. "Your eyes are black, but they aren't ... you aren't dead!"
No smile this time. "No. But too nearly something else," he says. "Before Shan ... before Shendai came. That day."
That day. "And it was your brother who ...?"
"Yes."
"You
know
this?"
"I know this."
"And this one?" She gestures at the body. "He was sent by him?"
Unexpectedly, he shakes his head. She had thought she was beginning to understand. "No. Too soon. I think he sees me when I leave to find horse. Or before, as we came here."
"He just saw a chance to take me?"
"For himself, or for reward, might be. He sees me to know me. Who I am. Watching the wolves might have told him. Then it takes time to make a spell to shape-change."
Li-Mei is thinking hard.
"He could have just come in and seized me when you left? No?"
He considers that. "Yes. So must have meant to take you to them. Maybe afraid you kill yourself, so he changed."
She clears her throat. Her hand is hurting.
"Must go now," he says.
"What about him?"
He looks surprised. He gestures at the bones around them. "Leave to wolves. It is what we do." He pauses, looks a little awkward. Then he says, "Was good, killing this one. Was very bravery? Is the word?"
She sighs. "Brave. I suppose it is the word."
Again he hesitates. He motions with a stiff hand. "You see what is next cave?"
"The horses? I saw. I didn't go farther. I felt ... not brave."
"No," he shakes his head. "Was right. Not to go. For priests, spirit-walkers. Very old. But you see last horse? Above?"
"I saw it."
He looks at her, seems to make a decision. "Come. One thing we do, then go."
She has exhausted her reserves for resisting. She lets him lead her back into the dimness of the horse-cave with those animals on the wall, laid upon each other long ago. And she watches as he does go into the last cave, the one she would not enter.
Very old.
He comes out with a shallow earthen bowl, and mixes into it water from a second flask he's carrying, and he stirs with a wooden stick, his motions stiff as they always are. There is no grace to him, how he moves. She is surprisingly certain there was, once.
He signals her nearer. She goes. He takes her right hand--the first time he's ever touched her--and lays it flat in the bowl. There is a paint of sorts, white, or very nearly.
At that point she realizes what is happening.
He leads her over by the wrist and he lays her hand on the flank of the king-horse above the tunnel leading to the third cave, so that a fresh imprint is made there among all the others, which means that her existence, her presence, her
life
having been here has now been recorded, registered. And perhaps (she will never know) that does play a role in what follows.
It is so hard to see the patterns, to be sure that they are there.
They leave that cave and then the other one, go back out into sunlight. She blinks in the day's brightness.
He has found one horse only, but the dead shaman's is still tethered here, unmenaced by the wolves, though lathered with fear--and so they have two mounts, after all, along with the food and the clothing Meshag has taken from who knows where.
He helps her on the smaller horse, and then he mounts and gentles the shaman's, and they ride a path out of that valley and go east with the sun overhead and the wolves beside them.
Li-Mei has no notion, no least idea where he is taking her, but she is alive, and not going placidly into the fate devised for her against her will and desire, and, for now, for this moment under heaven, that is enough.

CHAPTER XIV

W
ujen Ning, of the Second District cavalry, had been the first to see Master Shen Tai and his horse appear like ghosts out of a grey dawn west of Iron Gate Fortress.
Now, not many days after, he was dimly aware that his life might be changed--or might have already been changed--by them.
It was not normal for peasant labourers or soldiers without rank to undergo such alterations in the flowing of their lives. You worked your fields, dealt with flood or famine, married, had children born, had them die (and wives). Events far away rolled on, vaguely apprehended, perhaps heard about over rice wine in a tavern, if you went to taverns.
Or you joined the army, were posted where they posted you--usually far from home these days. You dug ditches and latrines, built and rebuilt garrison walls and buildings, patrolled for bandits or wild animals, caught fevers, lived or died, marched,
did
go to taverns and brothels on leave in market towns. Sometimes you fought, some of you died in battle, some lost an eye or an arm and wished they'd died. The sweep of distant events among the great might come more often to your ears in the way of army talk, but it tended to have just as little impact, short of a major campaign, or perhaps a rebellion.
Change
wasn't a part of life as Wujen Ning had understood or experienced it. This truth was currently ... undergoing change.
For one thing, he was shockingly close to Xinan, to seeing the capital for the first time in his life. Only a night or two away now, they told him.
The countryside had been altering as they'd ridden east from Chenyao. Wheat and barley fields, the occasional mulberry grove (silk farms set back behind them, away from the noise of the road) had given way to village after village, and larger towns, so frequent now you could say they were continuous. People and more people. Temple bells ringing not in haunting isolation but barely audible amid loud populations. Small farms--potatoes, broad beans--were tucked in between the villages, squeezed.
There was an endless line of market carts or wood-cutters' wagons going both ways along the imperial road, clogging it, slowing them. This was the outermost sprawl of Xinan, he was told. They were getting close now.
It was not something Ning had ever thought about, or wanted. The capital had been as remote to his grasp of the world as the sea. It terrified him, to be honest: so
many
people. Already. He tried not to let that show, and since no one in their company was really looking at him and he talked little, he thought he'd kept his secret. He did catch himself whistling nervously sometimes.
He wondered, as they travelled, how the other soldiers felt about coming to the capital. There were thirty riders now, not just the five that had set out from Iron Gate to escort Master Shen. Governor Xu had insisted that Shen Tai, as an honorary officer of the Second District army, carrying tidings (and riding a horse) of greatest importance, be accompanied--and protected.
There was some anger and some amusement among the Iron Gate soldiers (Ning didn't see the humour, but he wasn't good at that, he knew) arising from the belief that it was carelessness among the governor's guards that had come near to having Master Shen killed in Chenyao.
One of Ning's fellows from Iron Gate, a man with no shortage of opinions or wine-soaked breath to voice them with, said he didn't think any of those soldiers who had been on guard outside their inn that night were still alive.
Governor Xu might no longer be in the prime of youth, he said, but he wasn't showing any inclination to retire to fruit orchards and trout ponds. He was wealthy, aristocratic, known to have rivalries with other military governors. One big one in particular, he'd said with a knowing look, as if everyone at their table would realize the one he meant. Ning didn't. It didn't bother him.
Had Shen Tai been killed (or the horse, Wujen Ning thought, with genuine horror) it would, apparently, have reflected very badly on the governor. Ning didn't understand or think much about this either, but from the time they'd left Chenyao he had made it his task to stay as close as he could to Master Shen and Dynlal. He honoured Shen Tai; he loved the horse. How could anyone, Wujen Ning thought, not love the horse?
The Kanlin woman, who frightened all of them a little (and elicited some crude talk at night), appeared to have decided Ning was all right. After an amused expression or two, she had accepted him as having a place close to them while they rode, or when they settled for the night.
(Ning didn't understand her glances. He didn't know what anyone could find amusing in any of this, but he had learned to accept that what made others smile could be a source of perplexity for him.)
They were stopping at large inns now at sundown, imperial posting stations. Good meals, a change of horses. They had documents, signed by the governor.
Ning was always entrusted with Dynlal at the end of a day's ride. He tried not to let his pride show, but it probably did. He talked to the horse at night, waking and walking out from whatever space he shared with the other soldiers, bringing apples to the stable. Sometimes he'd sleep there.
Master Shen didn't look at him much as they rode, or at any of them. He spoke occasionally with his Kanlin guard, more often with the poet who had joined them (another mystery). His preoccupation was with speed. None of the soldiers knew why, not even the one who acted as if he knew everything.
If Wei Song and the poet knew the reason, they weren't telling. The poet's name was Master Sima. The others said he was famous. Immortal, one of them declared. Ning knew nothing about that but he didn't think anyone was immortal. Maybe the emperor.
What he did know was that Shen Tai was in a great hurry to get to Xinan.
Ning wasn't, at all, but his own wishes and desires were as those of the silkworm that spins in subdued light amid a hush, and lives only to do that.
ON THE FIFTH DAY out of Chenyao, just before crossing an arched river bridge Tai had always loved, they'd come to a road branching south, running alongside the stream.
He had known it was coming, of course.
He'd been careful not to look down that road as they reached the junction, or to speed up his horse in feigned indifference as they went across the bridge above bright water. There were plum blossoms in the stream, he saw.
It was difficult. He knew that southern road as surely as he knew his own face in a bronze mirror. Every turn, every fall and rise. Knew the towns and hamlets you would pass, the fields and mulberry groves and silk farms. The one genuinely good wine shop, and the places to find a woman and a bed between the imperial road they were on and the home where he'd grown up, where his mothers and youngest brother were, and his father's grave.
Not him. Not Liu. Not Li-Mei.
The three of them were in the world, entangled in it. In the dust and noise, jade-and-gold. After two years by the lake he didn't know how he felt about that, he'd been moving east so fast he hadn't had time to think about it. That was, he decided, a component of the dust and noise: never enough time.
For Li-Mei it would be worse. Tai remembered the dust storms of the north. Real ones, stinging, blinding, dangerous, not a poet's imagery. There was so much anger when he thought of her.
He'd felt a tug within, a feeling nearly physical, as they passed the cut-off south. Two years and more since he'd been there, seen the gates in the stone wall, the worn-smooth statues beside it (to frighten demons away), the always-swept path, the goldfish ponds, the porch, garden, stream.
His father's grave-marker would be raised by now, he thought. The allotted time had passed. His mother would have done things properly, she always did. But Tai hadn't seen the headstone, hadn't bowed before it, didn't know what was inscribed, what verse had been chosen, what memorial words, who had been selected to do the calligraphy.
He'd been at Kuala Nor. And was going elsewhere now, riding past the road that would bring him home. There could be peace there at night, he thought, after two years of hearing the dead.
He knew that this speed was almost meaningless. It crossed into some showy gesture, a display of love for his sister, driving riders and horses hard towards Xinan, and to no point.
She'd already been gone when Sima Zian left the capital. He'd said so. The decision had been made before poor Yan had set out for Tai's family estate, thinking to find him there, to tell him what was being done to her. There might have been enough time if he'd been home.
Too late now. So why was he pushing on so fiercely, all of them awake before sunrise, riding till nightfall? The days were longer now, too, approaching the summer festival.
No one complained, not by word or glance. The soldiers would not (would never!), but neither did Wei Song, who had given considerable evidence of a willingness to advise him as to correct conduct. And Sima Zian, older and presumably suffering most from their pace, did not seem to be suffering at all. The poet never spoke to Tai about their speed, the folly of it, the absence of proportion.
Perhaps, with a lifetime of observing men, he'd understood from the beginning what Tai only gradually came to grasp: he wasn't thundering down this road on his glorious horse in a wild attempt to rescue his sister.
He was going to his brother.
Accepting that truth, acknowledging it, didn't bring anything like the calm that resolving uncertainty was supposed to do. For one thing, there was too much anger in him. It seemed to find new channels with every
li
they rode, every watch of the nights when he lay awake, even in the fatigued aftermath of the day's riding.
He didn't talk about any of this with the poet, and certainly not with Song, though he had a sense they both knew something of what was troubling him. He didn't enjoy the feeling of being understood so well, even by a new, dazzling friend, and certainly not by a Kanlin woman who was only here to guard him, and only because he'd made an impulsive decision at Iron Gate. He could have dismissed her by now. He had thirty soldiers.
He didn't dismiss her. He remembered, instead, how she'd fought at sunrise, in a garden in Chenyao.
IT WAS LATE in the day. Tai felt it in his legs and back. The sun was behind them, a mild summer's day, slight breeze. The imperial road was thronged with traffic. It was too crowded, too noisy, for any attempt to appreciate the beauty of late afternoon, the twilight to come.
They were three days past the cut-off to his home now, which meant less than two days from Xinan. They might even be there tomorrow, right around curfew. He knew this part of the road very well, had gone back and forth often enough through the years.
Even with the crowds they were going quickly. They used the middle of the three lanes, reserved for soldiers and imperial riders. A pair of imperial couriers, galloping even faster than they were, shouted for them to make room and they did, jostling some farm carts and laden peasants right off the road towards the drainage ditch. The couriers carried full saddlebags, obviously packed with more than message scrolls.
"Lychees for Wen Jian!" one of them shouted over his shoulder as the poet threw out a query.
Sima Zian laughed, then stopped laughing.
Tai thought about helping the farmers right their carts and goods, but there was too much urgency in him. They would help each other, he thought, and looking back saw that it was so. It was the way of life for country folk: they'd probably have been fearful and confused if soldiers had stopped to aid them.
He looked over at the poet. Zian's horse was beside his. Dynlal could have outrun all the others easily; a foolish thing to do. It might not be as foolish in a day or so. Tai had been thinking about that, of making his way ahead, entering Xinan quietly, before the gates closed at dusk. He had someone to see, and it might be more possible after dark.
The other man's expression was grave, as they watched the couriers disappear into dust ahead of them, carrying a delicacy for the Precious Consort. Lychees. The military post, wearing out horses with them.
"That is wrong. It is not ..." Sima Zian began. He stopped.
Recklessly, Tai said, "Not proportionate?"
Zian looked around to ensure that no one else was near them. He nodded. "One word for it. I fear chaos, in the heavens, here on earth."
Words that could have you beaten and exiled. Even killed. Tai flinched, sorry he'd spoken. The poet saw it and smiled. "My apologies. Shall we discuss the verses of Chan Du? Let us do that. It always brings me pleasure. I wonder if he's in Xinan ... I believe he is the best poet alive."
Tai cleared his throat, followed the lead. "I believe I am riding with the best poet alive."
Sima Zian laughed again, waved a hand dismissively. "We are very different men, Chan Du and I. Though he does enjoy his wine, I am happy to say." A brief silence. "He wrote about Kuala Nor when he was younger. After your father's campaign. Do you know them, those verses?"
Tai nodded his head. "Of course I do." He had studied those poems.
Zian's eyes were tiger-bright. "Did they send you there? To the lake?"
Tai thought about it. "No. My father's sadness sent me there. One poem ... may have given me a task."
The other man considered that, then said:
Why sir, it is true: on the shores of Kuala Nor
White bones have lain for many years.
No one has gathered them. The new ghosts
Are bitter and angry, the old ghosts weep.
Under the rain and within the circle of mountains
The air is full of their cries.
"You thought it was a poet's imagery? About the ghosts?"
Tai nodded. "I imagine everyone does. If they haven't been there."
A short silence, and then the poet asked, "Son of Shen Gao, what is it you need to do when we arrive? How may I help you?"
Tai rode a little. Then said, very simply, "I do not know. I am eager to be counselled. What
should
I do?"
But Sima Zian only repeated back to him, "I do not know."
They rode on, the light very rich now, nearing day's end, the wind behind them. Tai felt it stir his hair. He reached forward and patted the mane of his horse. He loved the horse already, he thought. Sometimes it took no time at all.
The poet said, "You told me you wanted to kill someone."
Tai remembered. Late night in the White Phoenix Pleasure House. "I did say that. I am still angry, but trying not to be unwise. What would you do, in my place?"
A quick answer this time. "Take care to stay alive, first. You are a danger to many people. And they know you are coming."