Under Heaven

It was Wei Song, still beside him (she was always beside him through that night, he would later remember). It made sense, what she said.

“Are there enough of you? At the sanctuary? Will they release so many?” Tai was calculating quickly. “If they are good with horses, we can do this with sixty, five horses behind each rider, ten to guard us.”

“There are enough,” she said. “And they will be good with horses.”

The prince nodded. “Attend to it, Kanlin.”

“This is why you sent for me, my lord?” Tai was still wrapped in strangeness, struggling to believe what had happened.

“I didn’t send for you,” the prince said.

It took a moment. They looked ahead, at the nearest carriage.

It wouldn’t have been the emperor. Once, perhaps, in his burnished, brilliant youth, new to the throne or ready to claim it, but not now. Not any more.

It was Jian who had summoned him, Tai realized. Awakened in the middle of the night herself, amid panic, preparing to fly from all they knew, she had thought of this.

A question came. It ought to have been, he thought, his first. “My lord, forgive me, but I don’t understand. How was there a battle? General Xu held the pass. He would never have—”

“He was ordered out,” said Shinzu flatly.

And then, very deliberately, he looked ahead, towards where a handsome, moonlit horseman rode at the front of their small procession.

“In the name of all nine heavens!” exclaimed Sima Zian. “That cannot be. He would not have done that!”

“But he did do that,” said the prince. He smiled, mirthlessly. “Look where we are, poet.”

It seemed as if he would say more, but he did not. The prince flicked his reins and moved up beside his father’s racing coach, then they saw him go past it to ride with the soldiers guarding them.

Just as the sun rose on a summer morning they reached the posting station by the lake at Ma-wai.

TAI HAD BEEN WARNED that the soldiers were beginning to murmur amongst each other as the night drew to an end.

Lu Chen, a shrewd, experienced man, had moved up for a time among the cavalry escort. Then the Kanlin drifted back towards Tai, where he and Zian and Song had kept to the rear of the party.

Chen had spoken to Song first, then brought his quick Bogu horse over beside Dynlal. “My lord,” he said, “I am not certain how it is, but the soldiers know what they should not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone has spoken to them about Teng Pass. Word is spreading as we ride. The Second Army was in the pass, my lord. These men will be grieving, and angry.”

Zian moved up. Song shifted her mount to let him. The road was wide; they rode four abreast in the night.

“They know who gave Xu Bihai that order?” the poet asked.

“I believe that is so, my lord.” Lu Chen was invariably courteous to the poet.

“Do you think it was intentional? That they know this?” Zian’s voice was grim. Tai looked quickly over at him.

“I do not know, my lord. But I believe it would be wise to be cautious at the posting station.” He glanced at Tai. “My lord, I have determined that your honourable brother is in the other carriage. I thought you might wish to know.”

Never much of a horseman, Tai’s honourable brother, to their father’s regret. Even less so now, undoubtedly. Clever in the extreme, however, hard-working, ambitious, precise, with foresight and discipline.

He would never have let Wen Zhou send that order to Teng Pass.

Tai knew it with certainty. As surely as he understood how Liu could send their sister to the barbarians, he knew he would not have ordered Xu Bihai out of that pass into battle.

His Kanlins were gathered tightly around him now. Someone had obviously given instructions. He looked ahead at the carriage nearest to them. The emperor of Kitai was in there, rolling through the night, fleeing in the night. Could the world really come to encompass such a thing?

Tai knew it could, that it had before. He’d studied a thousand years of history, hadn’t he, preparing for the examinations? He knew the legacy of his people, the dark and the brightly shimmering. He knew of civil wars, palace assassinations, slaughter on battlefields, cities sacked and burned. He had not thought to live through any of these.

It suddenly occurred to him, belatedly, how almost all of the court and imperial family—children, grandchildren, advisers, concubines—had been left behind tonight, to get away as best they could, or face Roshan when he came.

And there were two million people in Xinan, undefended.

His heart twisted. Be very alert, he’d written to Rain. So helpful, that. What would she do? What was possible? Would she even get his message, from that twisted figure in the street? He’d left two Kanlins behind for her—at least he’d done that.

His mouth was dry again. He spat into the dust beside the road. Zian handed over a wine flask. Wordlessly, Tai drank. Only a little. He needed to be clear-headed, surely, above all else.

He glanced ahead. Wen Zhou was still among those up front. Lit by torches, he was easy to see, on a splendid black horse, a riding posture to be envied. Born to ride, they said about him.

The light grew as they went on. All but a handful of the brightest stars disappeared, then these, too, were gone. Individual trees took shape on their right, and fields on the other side of the road, ripe with summer grain. Torches were extinguished and discarded.

End of night. Morning, soft and clear. Tai looked back. Thin clouds east, underlit, pale pink, pale yellow. He caught a flash of blue, bright between trees, then he saw it again: the lake, ahead and to the right.

They came to the branching road that would lead around its shore to the extravagant luxury of the hot springs at Ma-wai. Jade and gold there, alabaster and ivory from the Silk Roads, porcelain, flawless silk, marble floors and columns, sandalwood walls, room screens painted with mastery, rare dishes from far lands, exquisitely prepared. Music.

Not today. They carried on along the road straight past that lakeside cut-off so often taken by this court, and not long after they came to the postal station inn and yard and stables, instead.

Riders had galloped ahead. They were awaited. The officers and attendants of the station were assembled in the courtyard, some bowing three times, some already prostrate in the dust, all visibly terrified to have their emperor suddenly among them like this.

There was a clatter of coach wheels and horses and orders shouted, then an odd, intense near-silence as they came to a halt. Birds were singing, Tai would remember. It was a summer morning.

The imperial carriage stopped directly in front of the station’s doors. It was a handsome posting inn, Ma- wai’s, so near Xinan, so very near the hot springs and aristocrats’ country estates, and the tombs of the imperial family.

The carriage door was opened and they saw the emperor step down.

The Exalted and Glorious Emperor Taizu wore white, unadorned, with a black belt and hat. Alighting behind him, in a vivid blue travelling robe, with small gold flowers for decoration, came Jian.

The two of them went up the three steps to the station’s porch. It was deeply disturbing to see the emperor walking. He was carried, always. His feet seldom touched the ground—not in the palace, and certainly not here in the dust of an inn yard. Tai looked around, and saw that he wasn’t the only one unsettled by the sight. Wei Song was biting her lip.

Too much had changed too swiftly in a night. The world was a different place, he thought, than it had been when they went to bed.

On the porch, the emperor turned—Tai hadn’t thought he would—and looked gravely out at those in the courtyard. He lifted a hand, briefly, then turned and went inside. He held himself very straight, Tai saw, leaning on no one. He didn’t look like a fleeing man who’d lost the guidance of heaven.

Jian went in behind him. The prime minister and the prince followed, handing their horses to servants,