Under Heaven

in Teng Pass.

“Who sent for me?”

“I do not know.”

She handed him the scroll she carried. She ought to have done that first, he thought. She never did things properly.

He took it. Sat up. “Do you know what this says?”

She nodded. “A Kanlin brought it. That’s why we’re allowing you to go.”

Allowing. He ought to correct her, but there was no point. If any harm came to him his Kanlins would die.

He untied the scroll, read it by the candle’s light. It clarified nothing: was simply a command to come immediately, with a permit to pass through the ward gate and up to the Ta-Ming. The permit was signed by a senior mandarin, not a name he knew.

“Get Dynlal for me.”

“It is being done.”

He looked at her. Sometimes, not often, you were reminded of how small she was, for someone so fierce. “Then go put up your hair and let me dress.”

She looked embarrassed. It occurred to him that Song might be as uneasy about a middle-of-the-night summons as he was. With armies in the field, the times were deeply troubling. She put the candle on the table that held his washbasin and went to the door.

On impulse, he added, “Is Master Sima here?”

He never knew whether the poet had come in late or lingered wherever else he’d spent the night.

She turned in the doorway and nodded.

“Please wake him, Song. Say that I would like him with me.” The please and her name were an apology.

In the courtyard, another thought came. He hesitated. He might be making a large thing out of a small one, but trouble east, and a summons under stars carried weight, didn’t they?

He saw the poet, rumpled as ever, but moving quickly, alert, walk into the courtyard. Zian had his sword across his back. Tai felt a measure of relief, seeing him.

He beckoned Lu Chen, the leader of his guards, and arranged for two of the Kanlins to carry a message. He called for paper and ink and wrote that message, quickly, by torchlight, on a small table brought on the run into the courtyard. Then he sent the two Kanlins to deliver it to Spring Rain, by way of the crippled beggar who lived in the street behind Wen Zhou’s mansion.

The two guards had been there before, the night he’d met her in the garden, they would remember how to find the man. He instructed them to be respectful, request his aid, then stay until there was a reply. If they saw the Lady Lin Chang (that was her name now) they were to guard her life as surely as they’d been ordered to defend his.

He could give that order. He could assign them as he chose. There was no time to shape a better plan. Possible danger, he’d written, in hurried, ungraceful script. Be very alert. Two Kanlins in street behind garden awaiting word from you.

He didn’t sign it, to protect her, but the reference to Kanlins probably undid that measure, if anyone saw this. There wasn’t time for clearer thought. He didn’t have a clearer thought.

He rode out of the gate on Dynlal, taken again—always, in the moments when he mounted up—by the sensation of being on such a horse, his bay-coloured Sardian.

They went down the night street of the ward, and through the ward gate, then north towards the Ta-Ming along the starlit main avenue of Xinan. Tai saw Gold Bird Guards at their stations, patrolling. Then a handful of people on the far side of the wide street, increasing the sense of emptiness. Their horses’ hooves were the only sound.

The Kanlin who’d brought the summons was with them. At the city-side gates of the Ta-Ming another was waiting. The gates were opened at a signal, then closed behind as they rode through. Tai heard the heavy bar slide shut.

They continued north through the vast palace complex with its hundred buildings and courtyards. No paths were straight here, so that demons (who could travel in a straight line only) might be forestalled in any evil designs against heaven’s beloved emperor within his palace.

The emperor, Tai learned, was not in the Ta-Ming any more. He was on the road, heading northwest.

He exchanged a glance with the poet.

They reached the northern wall of the palace complex, and passed through another gate into the Deer Park, and rode through that. Continuing north, they’d have eventually reached a stone wall by the riverside. They turned west instead, led by their Kanlin escort. Song was at his side, Tai realized, hair precisely pinned, swords on her back.

They passed a bamboo grove on their right, an open space, an orchard, then they came to a western gate in the park wall and went out. They began riding quickly now, in open country.

Not long after, they saw the imperial party ahead of them on the road. Torches under moonlight.

Fear and strangeness were in Tai as they caught up with the others. He saw Prince Shinzu near the back of the small procession. It was shockingly small, in fact: two carriages, some riders from the court. Twenty or thirty cavalry of the Second Army guarding them. No more than that.

Normally, the emperor would journey to Ma-wai accompanied by two or three dozen carriages, preceded by an army of servants and five hundred soldiers, and escorted by five hundred more.

The prince looked back, hearing them approach. He slowed when he saw the Kanlins. He greeted Tai, who bowed in the saddle. Briskly, with nothing in the way of warning or preamble, Shinzu told them of the disaster that had happened east.

Or the first disaster.

With Teng Pass fallen, there was much more now to come.

Tai felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed hard. Had the world, their world, come to this? The emperor, they were told, was in the carriage just ahead—no kingfisher feathers. Jian was with him. The prime minister was riding at the front of the party.

“It is good that you are here,” said the prince. He was riding a handsome stallion, though it was almost a full head smaller than Dynlal.

“I don’t understand,” said Tai. “What can I do?” He felt lost. This night ride felt dreamlike, as if through some star-world not their own.

“We need your horses, Shen Tai. More than ever. As cavalry mounts, or for couriers. We are going to be spread very widely. Distances will need to be covered swiftly. When we reach the posting station ahead I am going to propose we head north to Shuquian. The Fifth Army is still mostly there, and we will summon the First Army from the west now. I think we can hold Roshan in Xinan while other forces come up from the south. We … we have to do that, don’t we?”

Don’t we? Why was a prince asking him? Was he waiting for a considered answer? A disagreement? What was Tai expected to know?

It was obvious the prince was shaken. How could he not be? It was the middle of the night. They were fleeing the capital, the palace, with twenty or thirty men, and an army of rebels was behind them, would be approaching Xinan unopposed. Was the mandate of heaven being withdrawn right here? Could the shape of the world change in a night?

“I am to go to Shuquian with you?”

He was confused, himself. The prince shook his head.

“You will take riders southwest to the border. You must claim your horses, Shen Tai, then bring them as speedily as possible to wherever we are.”

Tai drew a breath. Precise instructions were good, they freed him from the need to think. “My lord, there are a great many of the Sardians.”

“I know how many there are!” said the prince sharply. There was a half-moon shining but it was hard to see his eyes.

Another voice: “My lords, let the Kanlins do this. Take fifty of us, Master Shen, from our sanctuary ahead.”