army’s marching tread and their horses’ hooves, there was a woman to be taken from the city.
Especially since that woman had been the concubine of the man who would surely be the most hated in Xinan, even before the rebels came. Vengeance could give birth to horrors not to be spoken aloud. So could fear.
One woman who had given all of them music (and more) was dead this morning, in her youth and grace. Tai wasn’t ready to lose another now because of Wen Zhou.
He had always known that actions could have unintended consequences, any man’s actions, of whatever rank. But sometimes events could also be shaped. Words had been spoken to soldiers by the imperial heir, on their ride from the palace. Consequences had followed.
Wen Zhou. Jian. Tai’s brother. And the emperor yielding the throne that same morning to his son. Tai had knelt before the Serene and Exalted Emperor Shinzu, ruling now with the mandate of heaven, and realized he didn’t know how much had been foreseen, or intended, by this man.
He didn’t ever expect to know for certain.
He would do his duty. Kitai was an empire at war now, beset from within. But the Kanlins from the sanctuary could not be at the imperial highway inn before nightfall, at best. So he had a little time, though he’d have to move at speed, and probably through the night again, depending upon what he found in Xinan.
As ordered, he started from the inn yard with his own Kanlins, Taizu’s carriage, and the soldiers who’d escorted their party from the palace in the night.
The other fifty men of the Second Army were going north with the new emperor. It was a great honour. Their
Tai had watched Wei Song observing this. He thought about the idea that these men were being honoured. He said nothing. Sometimes it was better not to know the details of what might come. And he had his own task to attend to now.
A short distance from Ma-wai he reined Dynlal to a halt and in the middle of the roadway told Song and Zian and Lu Chen his intention. He didn’t present it as a matter for discussion.
They all came with him. His other Kanlins stayed with Taizu and the soldiers. They’d wait at the inn for the sixty riders from the sanctuary.
Tai and three companions set out across the fields, cutting south to intersect the imperial highway. They rode through a late-summer morning and then an afternoon that ought to have registered as beautiful. High white clouds and a breeze from the west.
He was thinking of death. Behind them and at Teng Pass, and increasingly, as they rode, with a cold awareness of more to come in the days ahead.
The road system near Xinan was exceptionally good. It was rare that riders had to cross farmland or skirt the edges of what small bamboo forests remained. They found a track leading east, then another running off it south towards the highway, passing through village after village, a blurred progression.
People came out to watch them gallop through, or stopped in whatever they were doing. Riders moving so fast was unusual. Something to talk about on a quiet day. Dynlal was a glory, running easily. The other three had changed mounts at the station. Even so, he could have outstripped them had he chosen to. He almost did make that choice, but he knew he’d need them when he entered the city.
He never entered the city. He never came close to doing so.
They heard the noise, like a heavy storm or a waterfall, before they saw anything: a roar of sound as they raced up a rise in their small roadway near the highway. Then they crested that rise and saw what was happening below.
The city was emptying out, in panic. His heart aching, Tai saw the imperial road thronged with the people of Xinan, pushing west in a tumultuous mass that spilled into the drainage ditches and across them into the clogged going of the summer fields beside the road.
People were struggling with their belongings on their backs, or pulling carts with children and the elderly and their goods. The noise was punishing. At times a scream or cry would rise above it, as someone was pushed into the ditch, or fell and was trampled. If you fell you were likely to die. Progress was agonizingly slow, Tai saw, and the mass of people stretched back east as far as he could see.
He couldn’t even see the city gates, they were too far away. But he could imagine them. All the gates. Word of disaster had arrived. Xinan’s inhabitants were not inclined, it seemed, to wait for Roshan to come to them.
“They will starve out here,” said Sima Zian softly. “And these are just this morning’s vanguard. Only the beginning.”
“Some will stay,” said Lu Chen. “Some always stay, for their homes, their families. They will keep their heads down and hope that bloodshed passes.”
“Eventually, it probably will,” said Tai. “He wants to rule, doesn’t he?”
“Eventually,” agreed Lu Chen. “But that can seem like forever.”
“Is it going to be forever, this war?”
Tai looked at Song, who had asked that, gazing down on the crawling-forward multitude on the road. She was biting her lower lip.
“No,” he said. “But much will change.”
“Everything?” she asked, looking at him.
“Much,” he said again. “Not everything.”
“Tai, we can’t get into the city.” It was Zian. “We must hope she received your warning and responded. But there’s no way to swim against this current.”
Tai looked at him, a bleakness in his heart. Then he shook his head. “Yes, we can. Swim is a good idea. We’ll get in through the canals.”
It
They spent the rest of the afternoon cutting overland across fields and along small roads again, forcing their way east. Even the back roads and rutted cart tracks had crowds by late in the day, all fleeing west. It became difficult to make any headway. People cursed the four of them on their horses. If it hadn’t been for the Kanlins, the respect and apprehension they engendered, they might even have been attacked. Tai fought anger and panic, aware that time was running against them.
When they finally reached a vantage point, forcing tiring horses up a ridge from which they could see Xinan’s walls, he heard a voice cursing, and realized it was his own.
In the evening light, Xinan, capital of the empire, glory of the world, was spread below them. The city looked like a hive with all the insects in flight from it, pouring out of every gate, along all roads. And within the walls, they could see smoke rising.
Roshan was days away, and already Xinan was burning.
“Look at the Ta-Ming,” Sima Zian said.
The palace was on fire.
“They’ll be looting it,” said Tai.
“Where are the guards?” Song cried.
“Looting it,” Tai said wearily.
Zian murmured, “They know the emperor has fled. What could the city understand from that, other than that he’s abandoned it? Abandoned them.”
“He left to regroup! To gather armies. The dynasty will fight!” Song’s tone revealed a great strain.
“We know that,” the poet answered, gently. “But how does that help those down there, with An Li coming for them?”
Tai was looking at the canals, where they flowed lazily into the city under arches in the walls, bearing firewood and lumber, marble and other stone and heavy goods and foodstuffs on any normal day. There were substantial punishments for being found in a canal; they were known to be a weakness in the city’s defences.
There were thousands of people, he saw, who had chosen to take the risk of a beating today. So many bodies were in the water, pushing, fighting their way through, bearing goods on their heads, children on their backs, or carrying nothing at all but terror and the need to get away.
Lu Chen lifted a hand and pointed. Tai saw a new tongue of flame within the Ta-Ming Palace.
