Here, ironically, in the home of the most important man in Kitai, according to some, Rain is cut off from events and their report. The other women are useless in this regard, and the servants alternate between stolidly uncurious and wildly credulous.
She knows that the rebels have taken Yenling and that the emperor’s forces are holding Teng Pass. It is summer now, fighting season, but when autumn comes, with winter to follow, the rebels in the field should be in serious difficulty. The imperial forces might be in trouble, as well, mind you, since Grand Canal supplies will be interrupted, but the west is theirs, and Roshan is bottled up in the northeast and in his proclaimed capital of Yenling.
On the other hand, Zhou is clearly uneasy, so there must be something she doesn’t know. She puts aside her
He does not answer.
After a moment she takes up the instrument again, and begins to play. They are in her chamber, it is very late. The sliding doors are open to the summer.
Gazing out, he says quietly, as if he’d not even heard her words, “Rain, have I ever been cruel to you?”
She is genuinely startled, hides it as best she can. “My lord, your servant knows—all your servants know— how good you are to us!”
His expression is odd. “But have I been cruel? To you?”
Rain shapes a smile. “Never, my lord. Not ever.”
He stares at her a long time. He stands up and finishes his wine, sets the cup down. “Thank you,” he says, and walks out.
She hears him speaking commands. He wants his horse, and guards. He is going back to the palace. At this hour?
And …
The next day she dismisses her servants mid-afternoon, claiming a need to rest after a tiring night with the master, and she sets about filling a discreet cloth bag with some of her most valuable jewellery.
Later, walking alone, as is her carefully established custom, towards the far end of the garden—not far from the rosewood gazebo—she buries those jewels at the base of a cherry tree.
The flowers on the tree have come and gone by then: beautiful for a little time, then falling.
In the Ta-Ming Palace, and in Ma-wai when she wishes to be there, a woman dances for the emperor of Kitai.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER XXIII
There have been rebellions before in Kitai, civil wars from the time the earliest dynasties of the empire were forged, and shattered, and reforged.
In one of these conflicts, notoriously, a Sixth Dynasty army was treacherously undone by a false order sent to its generals, purporting to be from the palace. Since that time, measures have been undertaken to offer commanders on a battlefield assurance that communications from court are truly their orders.
A certain number of imperial seals are made, fired in a small and guarded kiln on the grounds of whatever palace the emperor is using. On these seals dragons are variously depicted. On the backs of the seals are numbers, in a recorded sequence.
In the presence of military leaders and mandarins from the Purple Myrtle Court, these seals are ceremonially broken in half. It is considered an honour to be the man entrusted with doing this.
Before taking his army to the field, a commander is given a certain number of these seals—or half-seals, to be precise. Orders relayed to him from court are accompanied by the matching half-seal. The messengers carrying these have been Kanlin Warriors, for several hundred years. They are trusted by all parties to any conflict, and in that trust lies their sanctity.
The military commander must ensure that the piece they bring to him fits, in shape and number, one he carries.
If it does match, he must accept those orders, or death and shame (and ruinous dispossession) will invariably follow, as wolves follow sheep through summer grass.
Of the two men who met on a summer morning at the eastern end of Teng Pass, one arrived on horseback, as a general in the field always should, in his own view. He needed help dismounting, however, and used a walking stick to make his way forward, swinging a stiff leg.
The other man approached the shadows of the pass from the open ground east, carried in an enormous sedan chair by eight large men. The number is a concession to the circumstances; normally there are twelve.
Behind this, two other soldiers could be seen bearing a western-style chair, very wide, cushioned and backed in yellow cloth. It was, when viewed closely, a throne, or meant to be seen as one. The colour indicated as much.
They placed this on level ground, not far inside the pass. The sedan chair was also set down. The curtains were drawn back. With assistance, a fabulously large figure emerged and made his way to the throne-chair and subsided into it.
The other man waited, leaning upon his stick. He wore a battle sword (not a decorative one). He smiled thinly throughout all of this, watching with interest. Birds circled in the updrafts overhead. It was windless below. A hot day, though cooler in the shade of Teng Pass.
Each of the two men had five others accompanying him (aside from those allowed by agreement to carry the sedan and the throne, and to handle the general’s horse). None but the general was armed. His sword was, in truth, a transgression, as symbolic in its way as the throne and the kingfisher feathers on the sedan chair.
There were, in addition, fifty Kanlin Warriors in the pass, supervising this parley—as Kanlins had done during such encounters for hundreds of years.
Five of these were sitting cross-legged before writing tables with brushes and paper and black ink. They had arrived before anyone else. These would record, with precision, to be checked against each other, everything said this morning.
One scroll would be presented to each party attending, after the gathering was over. Three would be kept and archived by the Kanlins, as evidence of any agreement emerging here.
There was no great expectation on anyone’s part that an agreement would emerge from Teng Pass today.
The other black-robed ones were spread out around the canyon, and these men and women bristled with weapons. Two dozen of them held bows where they were posted some distance up the slopes on either side of the pass. They were here to monitor—or to preserve—the peace of this meeting and the safety of all who came to it.
The Kanlins, even the ones preparing to write, were hooded. Their identities meant nothing here. They were emblematic of their order and its history. No more than that, but certainly no less.
General Xu Bihai, commanding the imperial armies of Kitai in Teng Pass, waited until the other man had settled himself in the large chair. It took some time. Xu Bihai’s thin smile never wavered, but one would have been
