Under Heaven (55 page)

Most nights now Rain awakens afraid, disturbed by sounds that turn out to be nothing at all, whether they are in some small inn on the road or a larger one in a city, as now.
She doesn't like being so fearful, it isn't how she thinks of herself, but the times are very dangerous, and she knows she isn't the only one feeling this way.
She is alive to feel anything at all--and she's acutely aware of this--only because of a note sent in the middle of the night, and because two men turned out to be loyal beyond anything she might have expected.
And because of the Kanlins, of course.
Perhaps, also, her own decisiveness, but when she looks back at that night it doesn't seem to her that she'd felt decisive. She had been panicked as much as anything, acted on impulse, instinct. Fear.
Small things, a difference in her own mood that night, a message not sent, or lost, or not delivered until morning (by which time it would have been impossible to get away). Smallest differences: living or dying. Such thoughts could keep you awake at night.
They now know, here in Chenyao to the west, a little of what happened in Xinan after they left. The two Kanlins, still with her, have ways of discovering information even in wartime. A time when letters go astray, when posting inn horses are all claimed by the army, when news of any kind is worth a fortune.
In particular, they have learned what took place in the city compound of the recently deceased first minister, Wen Zhou, when the rebel army arrived in the capital.
Is it so surprising, really, if she startles awake at alarming sounds in the dark, or never even falls asleep?
It is the narrowness of survival, of her being here and alive, that unsettles as much as anything. That, and the awareness of how many are dead, and how savagely. She knows names, remembers faces. It is impossible not to think about what would have been done to her, as favoured concubine. There are sickening stories, worse than anything ever heard about the barbarians beyond Kitai's borders.
She is
from
beyond those borders. Sardia is a beleaguered little kingdom that has always known warfare and contended with invasion. Even so, Rain has never heard tales such as those that come to them from Xinan.
Xinan, which lies behind her only because Tai sent a note in the middle of the night. He'd been summoned to the palace--she understands that from the Kanlins. Wen Zhou had been sent for as well.
That was what had put her on edge that night. He'd been with her when the message came. Sitting up in bed, watching him read it by the light of a quickly lit lamp, Rain had understood that this wasn't any routine summons to the Ta-Ming. Those didn't come at this hour, and they didn't shake him so profoundly.
He'd dressed in haste and left immediately with guards, saying nothing--nothing--to her, to anyone. Also disturbing. He'd burned the note, or she'd have retrieved it and read it as soon as she was alone.
Some time later--the passage of time that night is blurred--Hwan had come with another message, this one addressed to her.
He might so easily have waited until morning. That would have made all the difference. Or the note might not have reached her at all.
It had been carried by Qin, the crippled beggar in the street.
She understood, and it humbled her even now, that he had entrusted it to no one. Had paid coins to a drunken tradesman (and why had
he
been in the street, passing by, so late?) to carry him--
carry
him--all the long way around to the front gates of the compound. And he'd stayed there, painfully on his feet, banging at the gates and shouting, until someone had sleepily, angrily come.
And then he'd demanded, loudly, fiercely, without backing down, that Hwan be brought to him, and no one else but Hwan.
And, improbably (another source of fear in her imagining those moments), they hadn't beaten him and turned him away. Hwan, awake since the master had ridden out, had come to see what the disturbance was.
The disturbance.
He had accepted the note, hand passing it to hand, and brought it to her. Immediately, not waiting for morning. Perhaps he'd known she'd be awake. Perhaps he'd been frightened. She's never asked, though he's been with her all the way here, to Chenyao.
So has Qin.
She can't say with certainty why she kept them with her, but it had seemed proper, it had seemed ... needful. As she'd read Tai's note, Rain felt some inner imperative overtaking her.
Possible danger. Be very alert
, he'd written.
Alert meant remembering Zhou's face as he read the summons from the palace, as he burned it, as he went away. No good night, or goodbye.
You could describe the first minister in many ways, but he had never been a coward--and he'd looked afraid that night. And Rain had already had enough of a feeling of danger to have hidden jewels in the garden.
It had been enough--she remembers now, in Chenyao, middle of another night, late summer. All these things together, and a sense (her mother had also had it) of when something decisive needed to be done.
Decisive. There'd been only one action she could take. Like a gambler throwing dice in a late-night game in the pleasure district, staking everything he owned.
She'd been a little unkind to Hwan then, trading upon his love for her, the love she'd nurtured for her own reasons. On the other hand, she'd almost certainly saved his life.
Her instructions had been precise, much more assured than she'd felt. Inside, she'd been terrified. He was ordered to go out the gates alone. He was to find a sedan chair in the streets of the ward--there were always one or two of them, even late at night, bearers ready to carry someone to an assignation, or home from one.
He was to get the beggar, Qin, into that sedan chair, and lead it around to the back of the property.
Hwan's eyes had widened, she remembers.
He was to do this immediately, she'd said coldly, or never find favour in her sight again. If he did do this, she'd said, looking straight at him by the light of the lantern, wearing her night robe, he would find very great favour.
He'd left to do as she'd said.
She rose and dressed by herself, moving quickly now that a decision had been made, as if speed could overmaster second thoughts. The gods alone knew what was to come, but if she was wrong about this she was unlikely to live through the day.
She took more gems from the chest in the room. There was no point leaving them. She walked back alone through the vast and silent garden, past the lake and isle and the small, moored boats and the bamboo grove and the grassy space where Wen Zhou had played at games with others of the court. The path wound through night flowers. She breathed their scent.
She came to the gazebo, found the tree where she'd hidden that small bag. She claimed it (dirtying her hands) and then she climbed the wall herself, using the elm tree at the eastern end.
She'd learned how to climb as a girl in Sardia, had been good at it, better than most boys, treating a skinned knee or elbow as a mark of honour. She still has a scar on her left knee. There'd been little call for climbing in the North District, or here at the compound, but some things the body remembered.
The two Kanlins appeared out of shadow as she dropped down into the street. She hadn't doubted for a moment that they'd be there.
"I am leaving now," she said. "Because of the message you brought. Will you stay with me?"
They had stayed with her.
They'd done more than that, through the flight west. For one thing, it was the Kanlins who had gotten them out of the ward in the night. No gate official was going to deny them. It brought bad luck, at the very least. The understanding was, if the black-clad ones were abroad they had reason to be, and so did those they were escorting. That was the way of things.
Because of this, they'd made it all the way across Xinan and to the western gate, were right there before curfew's end opened the city. While they waited for sunrise and the drums Rain had Hwan arrange a carriage, and two good horses for the Kanlins.
With the coming of morning they were out of Xinan, moving along the western road against the flow of traffic coming in with goods for the markets. They bought food as they went, wine, millet cakes, dried meat, peaches. Hwan had brought cash. She didn't ask where he'd gotten it. Her jewels weren't going to help until they reached a market town. You didn't buy boiled eggs or barley cakes with amber earrings set in gold.
She was to understand later that they had been able to leave the city only because they'd moved so quickly, were out and going west before word spread of the disaster at Teng Pass. And with it, tidings of the emperor's flight.
Later that day the capital learned of these events, and Ma-wai, and panic erupted in the city, choking every gate and every road with terrified people in flight.
Rain and her party had left the imperial road by then. She'd decided there were too many people who might know her at the well-known posting inn on the road. It was used by the court, which meant by people who might have visited the Pavilion of Moonlight Pleasure House.
They branched off, found another east-west road, kept going all day along that. Stopped the first night at a small inn near a silk farm.
Rain never knew it, no one can ever know such things, but had they stayed on the imperial highway, stopped at the posting inn that first night, her own life, and the lives of many others might have been different, going forward.
This is a reason why we sometimes feel as though existence is fragile, precarious, that a random wind can blow, changing everything. They might have gone to the inn on the imperial road--it was an impulsive thought to leave the road. She might not have been able to sleep, could easily have risen to walk in the garden late, and seen two men in conversation on a bench under a mulberry tree ...
THE KANLINS KEPT THEM moving quickly, staying on secondary roads. They changed horses each day until horses became hard to come by. One evening a discussion was started, courteously, by the older of the two. His name was Ssu Tan. They wished to know whether she intended to continue west, or planned to go south, or even north. A perfectly good question.
But it meant she needed to have an idea where she was going.
She'd chosen Chenyao, told them so that night, as much to name a destination as anything else. It was close, by then, large enough to let them melt into the city, sell some jewels. It had roads leading in all directions, was accustomed to travellers coming through, often from far away.
People had stories in Chenyao, and they didn't have to tell them.
When they arrived, Hwan negotiated the lease of a good-sized house, with a staff to run it. He was apparently skilled at such bargaining, but it had also helped, Rain knows, that both Kanlins went with him and were standing by. No one was inclined to offend the black-clad ones in any possible way, and someone who had two of them serving her was not to be troubled.
An uncharacteristic lack of energy or will had settled on Rain from the time they took the city house. She knew it, knows it tonight, weeks later, lying awake.
She has no clear (or even vague) idea what to do next. Along with everyone else--Chenyao is crowded with refugees from Xinan and elsewhere now--they watch the movements of soldiers from the west and northwest, passing through, riding or marching, grim-faced. Some of the faces seem very young to Rain.
Armies are moving all through Kitai this summer.
They seize on news, or the rumour of news. Qin spends mornings in the market begging for coins, though it is hardly necessary. But he finds that people talk to a crippled beggar and he learns almost as much as the Kanlins do through their own channels.
Rain has never asked what these channels are. She's too grateful for their presence, unwilling to intrude. At night they gather and share what they know.
They know that the Ta-Ming Palace had seen wholesale slaughter, as did much of Xinan. That it is quieter in the capital now, but strange, tense, a city under occupation. Crouched against another blow, someone said.
They know that the Emperor Taizu is now the father-emperor, reportedly heading southwest, beyond the Great River. Shinzu rules them now, although Xinan and Yenling are held by the rebels, which makes it a fair question if anyone can be said to rule Kitai.
There was a battle in the northwest, not far from the Long Wall. Depending on who tells the tale, it was a victory against the rebels, or a victory for them.
They have known from near the outset of their journey that Zhou is dead, and Jian.
Awake at night again because some animal has screamed in the street, Rain thinks about war, the boys' faces seen in the army ranks, about Kitai, this land that she came to years ago with her
pipa
, her yellow hair and green eyes, and so young.
In summer darkness, stars in her south-facing window, she makes--or accepts--a decision in her heart. There is fear again with it, and sorrow, but also a kind of easing of disquiet and distress, which is what acceptance is said to bring, is it not?
With that, it seems her clarity returns, the sense that she can sort matters through, make plans, a choice and then the next one. For one thing, none of the four men with her is to be burdened with this. It is her decision, and is to be hers alone, she thinks.
She falls asleep.
IN THE MORNING, when the men are out and about, in the market, buying goods for the household, pursuing information, she has one of the servants call a sedan chair and she makes her way to a merchant's place of business, alone.
It is almost certain that he cheats her on the price he offers for a jade necklace and a golden brooch in the shape of a dragon, but she doesn't think he's been outrageously dishonest, perhaps intimidated by her manner and a casually dropped reference to Kanlins awaiting her at home.
She makes one other stop, conducts another negotiation, and is back at the house before the others.
That evening, in her chamber, she calls for brush and ink and paper and, some time later, by lantern light, writes a single message addressed to the four of them.
Chenyao, she suggests, is a good place for Hwan to remain for now. He and Qin will have money (the point of this morning's first transaction) to keep the house, to buy food, to live ... if the war does not last forever.
The Kanlins, she knows, will not accept money from her. They were hired and paid by Wen Jian. It is another strangeness for Rain, that these two--who have meant so much to her this summer, who have saved her life--she owes not just to Tai (whom she is leaving now) but to the Precious Consort, who is dead.