The others sat their horses beside him on the ridge. They said nothing. They were honouring his sorrow, Tai knew, by letting him be the one to say it. To surrender the day’s hopeless quest. They had come with him, and stayed by him.
He sat astride Dynlal gazing at a nightmare, or the beginnings of a nightmare. The sun was setting, its long light falling upon Xinan, making the walls seem gold. He was thinking of Rain, of green eyes and yellow hair, and a mind shrewder than his own, even in the days when he’d been immersed in his studies, trying to understand ancient courts and long-dead sages and the forms and rhythms of poetry.
He was thinking of her singing for him, of her hands in his hair, the two of them on a bed in a lamplit room.
There were so many poems over so many hundreds of years about courtesans, young or not young any more, at upper windows above jade or marble stairs, at twilight time or by moonlight, waiting for lovers to return.
“We can’t do this,” he said. “We have to go back. I am sorry.”
He was, for so many things, as a long summer day finally went down to the dark. They turned west again, leaving the fires behind.
IT TOOK MOST OF THE NIGHT to reach the inn on the Imperial road. The same one where he’d awakened on a morning in spring to find Song wounded and held by soldiers, and Wen Jian waiting to take him to Ma- wai.
Because they were riding, even on tired horses and off the main roads, eventually they outpaced the struggling, exhausted vanguard of refugees from Xinan. They’d made their way down to the highway. It lay open before them under moonlight, serene and beautiful.
The Kanlins from the sanctuary, sixty of them, as promised, were waiting when they reached the inn. Taizu was asleep, they reported.
Tai had Dynlal led away to be watered and rubbed down and fed. They all needed to rest, he knew it, but he was unable to sleep. He was bone-weary and heartsick.
Song and Lu Chen went off with the other Kanlins. He thought of inviting her to stay with him, he’d seen how distressed she was. He didn’t feel able to offer comfort. She’d be better off with the Warriors, he thought.
Or perhaps not. He didn’t know. He didn’t have that much clarity in him tonight. Ma-wai, what had happened there. And Xinan on fire, with Spring Rain inside the walls. Or perhaps trapped among tens of thousands on one road or another.
He didn’t know. He walked through the reception chamber of the inn. Saw frightened men standing there, unsure of what to say or think. They bowed to him. He went through into the courtyard, the garden.
A little later Zian came out and found him. Tai was sitting on a bench under a mulberry tree. The poet carried wine, and two cups. He sat down and poured and Tai drained a cup, then held it out again. Zian filled it a second time and Tai drank that, too.
The poet was a quiet, comforting presence. It felt illicit, somehow, to take comfort in anything tonight. Friendship, starlight. The night breeze.
Zian said, “You will need to rest.”
“I know.”
“You will leave in the morning?”
“Before sunrise. We should stay ahead of those fleeing the city.” Tai looked at the other man, a shadow beside him. The leaves above blocked the moonlight. “You are coming with us?”
A short silence. Then Zian shook his head. “It may be arrogant of me, a delusion, but I believe I can do more good with the emperor. The … father-emperor.”
“Taizu can’t keep up with us.”
“Of course not. But he will be grieving, and he has only that fool of an alchemist with him, and soldiers. He has a long way to go and the roads are hard. Heaven’s way is bent like a bow now. Perhaps an old poet can help.”
“You aren’t old.”
“Tonight I am.”
There was a silence in the garden, and then Tai heard the poet speak again, offering him a gift:
Tai said nothing for a time. He was moved, and very tired. The wine, the words, the stillness. “I will see you again?”
“If heaven allows. I will hope so. We’ll drink good wine in another garden, listening to
Tai drew a breath. “I will hope so. Where … where will you be?”
“I don’t know. Where will you be, Shen Tai?”
“I don’t know.”
CHAPTER XXVI
Ye Lao, once under-steward to the Beloved Companion Wen Jian, was now principal household steward to the honourable and distinguished Master Shen Tai (son of the famous general). This meant, of course, that he was burdened with formal responsibility for Master Shen’s quite substantial compound in Xinan in extremely uncertain times. Household stewards, without exception, preferred certainty.
Ye Lao had never endured a major rebellion or the arrival of angry soldiers in any city or palace he’d known. You heard tales about such times, you didn’t live through them—if the gods in the nine heavens were kind.
They weren’t always kind, of course.
Being quite good at his job, and priding himself on it, Lao refused to allow himself to be unduly frightened or flustered (and, most definitely, did not permit the household servants to see a hint of such feelings in him) until the army of An Li was actually sighted at the eastern gates of the city, seven days after the emperor and a handful of the court had fled.
At that point, as rebel soldiers began pouring into Xinan, and reports of shocking conduct reached Master Shen’s compound, Ye Lao found himself becoming slightly perturbed.
Xinan was left open for Roshan, of course: only fools would close city gates when there were no soldiers to defend them. But this courtesy had not induced any immediate limiting of violence.
One expected, in the usual way of soldiers arriving in a civilized place, a certain amount of intoxication, destruction, looting, even killing, unnecessary though it was.
It was undoubtedly wisest to keep women out of sight, and hope the poor girls in the pleasure districts proved equal to the task of assuaging a drunken army.
About half a million citizens of Xinan had, if widespread reports were accurate, chosen to flee ahead of the
