They had stayed with her.
They’d done more than that, through the flight west. For one thing, it was the Kanlins who had gotten them out of the ward in the night. No gate official was going to deny them. It brought bad luck, at the very least. The understanding was, if the black-clad ones were abroad they had reason to be, and so did those they were escorting. That was the way of things.
Because of this, they’d made it all the way across Xinan and to the western gate, were right there before curfew’s end opened the city. While they waited for sunrise and the drums Rain had Hwan arrange a carriage, and two good horses for the Kanlins.
With the coming of morning they were out of Xinan, moving along the western road against the flow of traffic coming in with goods for the markets. They bought food as they went, wine, millet cakes, dried meat, peaches. Hwan had brought cash. She didn’t ask where he’d gotten it. Her jewels weren’t going to help until they reached a market town. You didn’t buy boiled eggs or barley cakes with amber earrings set in gold.
She was to understand later that they had been able to leave the city only because they’d moved so quickly, were out and going west before word spread of the disaster at Teng Pass. And with it, tidings of the emperor’s flight.
Later that day the capital learned of these events, and Ma-wai, and panic erupted in the city, choking every gate and every road with terrified people in flight.
Rain and her party had left the imperial road by then. She’d decided there were too many people who might know her at the well-known posting inn on the road. It was used by the court, which meant by people who might have visited the Pavilion of Moonlight Pleasure House.
They branched off, found another east-west road, kept going all day along that. Stopped the first night at a small inn near a silk farm.
Rain never knew it, no one can ever know such things, but had they stayed on the imperial highway, stopped at the posting inn that first night, her own life, and the lives of many others might have been different, going forward.
This is a reason why we sometimes feel as though existence is fragile, precarious, that a random wind can blow, changing everything. They might have gone to the inn on the imperial road—it was an impulsive thought to leave the road. She might not have been able to sleep, could easily have risen to walk in the garden late, and seen two men in conversation on a bench under a mulberry tree …
THE KANLINS KEPT THEM moving quickly, staying on secondary roads. They changed horses each day until horses became hard to come by. One evening a discussion was started, courteously, by the older of the two. His name was Ssu Tan. They wished to know whether she intended to continue west, or planned to go south, or even north. A perfectly good question.
But it meant she needed to have an idea where she was going.
She’d chosen Chenyao, told them so that night, as much to name a destination as anything else. It was close, by then, large enough to let them melt into the city, sell some jewels. It had roads leading in all directions, was accustomed to travellers coming through, often from far away.
People had stories in Chenyao, and they didn’t have to tell them.
When they arrived, Hwan negotiated the lease of a good-sized house, with a staff to run it. He was apparently skilled at such bargaining, but it had also helped, Rain knows, that both Kanlins went with him and were standing by. No one was inclined to offend the black-clad ones in any possible way, and someone who had two of them serving her was not to be troubled.
An uncharacteristic lack of energy or will had settled on Rain from the time they took the city house. She knew it, knows it tonight, weeks later, lying awake.
She has no clear (or even vague) idea what to do next. Along with everyone else—Chenyao is crowded with refugees from Xinan and elsewhere now—they watch the movements of soldiers from the west and northwest, passing through, riding or marching, grim-faced. Some of the faces seem very young to Rain.
Armies are moving all through Kitai this summer.
They seize on news, or the rumour of news. Qin spends mornings in the market begging for coins, though it is hardly necessary. But he finds that people talk to a crippled beggar and he learns almost as much as the Kanlins do through their own channels.
Rain has never asked what these channels are. She’s too grateful for their presence, unwilling to intrude. At night they gather and share what they know.
They know that the Ta-Ming Palace had seen wholesale slaughter, as did much of Xinan. That it is quieter in the capital now, but strange, tense, a city under occupation. Crouched against another blow, someone said.
They know that the Emperor Taizu is now the father-emperor, reportedly heading southwest, beyond the Great River. Shinzu rules them now, although Xinan and Yenling are held by the rebels, which makes it a fair question if anyone can be said to rule Kitai.
There was a battle in the northwest, not far from the Long Wall. Depending on who tells the tale, it was a victory against the rebels, or a victory for them.
They have known from near the outset of their journey that Zhou is dead, and Jian.
Awake at night again because some animal has screamed in the street, Rain thinks about war, the boys’ faces seen in the army ranks, about Kitai, this land that she came to years ago with her
In summer darkness, stars in her south-facing window, she makes—or accepts—a decision in her heart. There is fear again with it, and sorrow, but also a kind of easing of disquiet and distress, which is what acceptance is said to bring, is it not?
With that, it seems her clarity returns, the sense that she can sort matters through, make plans, a choice and then the next one. For one thing, none of the four men with her is to be burdened with this. It is her decision, and is to be hers alone, she thinks.
She falls asleep.
IN THE MORNING, when the men are out and about, in the market, buying goods for the household, pursuing information, she has one of the servants call a sedan chair and she makes her way to a merchant’s place of business, alone.
It is almost certain that he cheats her on the price he offers for a jade necklace and a golden brooch in the shape of a dragon, but she doesn’t think he’s been outrageously dishonest, perhaps intimidated by her manner and a casually dropped reference to Kanlins awaiting her at home.
She makes one other stop, conducts another negotiation, and is back at the house before the others.
That evening, in her chamber, she calls for brush and ink and paper and, some time later, by lantern light, writes a single message addressed to the four of them.
Chenyao, she suggests, is a good place for Hwan to remain for now. He and Qin will have money (the point of this morning’s first transaction) to keep the house, to buy food, to live … if the war does not last forever.
The Kanlins, she knows, will not accept money from her. They were hired and paid by Wen Jian. It is another strangeness for Rain, that these two—who have meant so much to her this summer, who have saved her life—she owes not just to Tai (whom she is leaving now) but to the Precious Consort, who is dead.
She thanks them by name: Ssu Tan, and the younger one, Zhong Ma. She asks them to accept her gratitude and to convey it to the leaders at their sanctuary. And also, if they will be so very kind, to convey that same gratitude, and farewell, to Master Shen Tai, who sent them to her, should they encounter him again.
There is sadness, and she doesn’t write this part quickly, or easily. But what woman has ever been promised a life, has ever lived a life, without sadness? And at least she is not sitting above jade stairs in moonlight, waiting, waiting while life recedes.
He had asked her not to do that when he went home after his father died. He had ended up at Kuala Nor among the ghosts. She had ended up with Wen Zhou.
Or, no, she thinks. She has ended up here.
She finishes writing and puts the brush aside, blows on the letter until the ink dries. She leaves it on the writing table and she rises and takes the money she’s received today and places most of it on the table.
