Under Heaven

It is the same at twilight, when she finds a quiet place on one of the terraces and watches the sky grow dark and the stars appear.

She has to deal with some guilt. Slipping into peace at this moment is surely selfish, even shameful. They know by now why the Long Wall and the garrisons beyond have been emptied out. They know where the armies of Roshan have gone, are going.

Even so—or perhaps, more honestly, because of this—by the evening of her third day on Stone Drum, Li- Mei has decided she wishes to remain on the Mountain all her life, training to be a Kanlin, or simply serving them.

Early the following morning, summoned before the trio of elders who govern the sanctuary, she learns that she will not be allowed to do this. She is to leave almost immediately, in fact.

They do not look like men inclined to alter any decision made, she thinks, standing before them. Their faces are austere. Two are very tall, the third has only one hand. They wear the unadorned black of all the Kanlins she has ever seen. They sit on cushions on platform couches in a pavilion open to light and wind. The sun is rising.

She has questions.

She sinks to her knees. Isn’t sure if that is the proper thing to do, but it feels correct. She says, looking from one to the other, “Am I so unsuited to becoming a Kanlin?”

Unexpectedly, the elder in the centre, the one with a single hand, laughs aloud, a high-pitched, merry sound. He isn’t so remote, after all, she thinks. Neither are the others: they are smiling.

“Unsuited? Hopelessly so!” says the laughing one, rocking back and forth in mirth. “Just as your brother was!”

She stares. “You knew my brother?”

“I taught him! We tried. He tried.” He calms himself, wipes his eyes with his sleeve. He looks more thoughtfully at her. “His was not a spirit meant to grow within a larger group, a shared belief. Neither is yours, daughter of Shen Gao.” His voice is actually kind. “This is not to be seen as a failure.”

“It feels that way,” she says.

“But it is not so. Your brother had too strong a feeling of what he was, within. So do you. It is a nature, not a flaw.”

“I don’t want to leave.” She is afraid of sounding like a child.

“You love the Mountain because you have come through peril and it is peaceful here. Of course you want to linger.”

“I cannot? Even as a servant?”

One of the tall ones stirs. He is still amused, she sees. He murmurs, “You are a princess of Kitai, my lady. Circumstances have now changed in the world, and it is nearly certain you will not go back north. You cannot be a servant. It shames the Ta-Ming Palace, and us, too many people will know who you are.”

“I didn’t ask to be made a princess.”

This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough.

“Who chooses their fate?” It is the third one, the tallest. “Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?”

“Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?” she says, too quickly.

They grow quiet. “I do not know that passage,” the one in the centre says. “Is it from a disciple of the Cho Master?”

She says, not fighting a ripple of pride, “It is not. It is from General Shen Gao. My father said that to all his children.” She remembers him saying it directly to her, his daughter, more than once. It was not something she’d only overheard.

The three men exchange glances. The tallest inclines his head. “It is a challenging thought, and places burdens on those who heed it. But, forgive me, it only makes more clear why you are not meant to be a Kanlin. We are of many minds, and natures, but our way is to find fulfilment and harmony in the larger identity. You know this.”

She wants to fight, but finds it difficult. “My brother could not do that?”

“No more than he could find harmony in the ranks of the army,” says the one on the right. “It seems your father succeeded in shaping independence in his children.”

“Kanlins cannot be independent?”

“Of course they can!” It was the small one again, in the centre. “But only in some measure and only after acceptance of the self as gathered into our robes and the duties they bring.”

She feels foolish, young. These are things they might have expected her to know. She says, “Why are you helping me, then?”

They look surprised. The one in the centre—he appears to be the leader—gestures with his one hand. “For your brother, of course.”

“Because he was here?”

Three smiles. The tall one on the left says, “Not that. No. Certainly not that. It is because of Kuala Nor, my lady.”

And so she asks, having never learned what it was that Tai had done after he left home and went west in the mourning period.

They tell her, on a far-off mountain. They explain about the horses, and the attempts upon his life, one by a woman disguising herself as a Kanlin—trained here, in fact, before leaving the order, though still wearing the black robes, deceiving people. Something they deeply regret, the tallest one says. A burden they feel.

It is a great deal to absorb.

Li-Mei has the sensation that the world she left behind when she departed from Xinan in a litter, travelling north to the Bogu, is coming back in a rush of words and thoughts.

“Why would anyone have wanted to kill him?” The first question that comes.

They shake their heads. Do not answer. Choose not to answer.

“Is he all right?” she asks.

“He is in Xinan, we are told. And guarded. By Kanlins, which is as it should be. The horses will be even more important now, and they are his. It is a good assurance,” the tallest says. They are not smiling now, she sees.

A good assurance. She shakes her head.

It is all so strange, enough to change the way you understand everything. But it seems as if her second brother has done something astonishing, and that, even so far away, he has been with her, has protected her, after all. Here on Stone Drum, and before that, on the grasslands, because of—

“What about Meshag?” she asks suddenly. “The one who brought me. Will he be allowed to stay? Can you do anything for him? Do you understand what has happened to him?”

The one on her left answers this time. “Our teachings and our understanding do not go so far into the north.”

She stares at him. They have been nothing but kind to her. Still, she dislikes being told something untrue. They are right, of course: hers is not a Kanlin nature. These are elders, wise and revered.

She says, “Forgive me, but that is not correct, is it? Someone here understood a wolf messenger. Isn’t that how three of you came to meet us by the Wall?”

She has had several days to think about it.

“Kitan do not like wolves,” the one in the centre says. The one who had been Tai’s teacher here. It is not an answer.

She says, “He’s bound to the lead wolf, isn’t he? Meshag. That is what happened to him? His life ends when the wolf dies?” She’s had time to think about this, too.

“Perhaps,” says the elder on her right. “But it would be a presumption for us, for anyone, to believe we understand this.”

For anyone. That means her. And here, again, she knows what he says is true. How could what happened by that far northern lake be grasped?

“You won’t let him stay.” She doesn’t ask it as a question.

“He has no wish to stay,” the one in the middle corrects her, gently.