Under Heaven

“Perhaps further persuasion from me will be of use in causing you to reconsider his offer?”

“I am honoured you would even consider me worthy of persuading,” murmured Tai. “But I told Commander Lin—a man I liked, incidentally—that it would be folly for me to contemplate a course of action before I consult with those at court.”

“First Minister Wen Zhou?”

“Indeed,” Tai repeated.

“Your elder brother, advising him?”

Tai nodded, uneasy suddenly.

“Two men I understand you have reason to dislike.”

“I should regret if you continued in such an understanding,” Tai said carefully. His pulse had quickened. “My duty to the Son of Heaven, may he rule a thousand years, surely requires that I take counsel in Xinan with his advisers.”

There was a silence. It was not a statement that could be challenged, and both men knew it. Governor Xu lifted his cup, sipped thoughtfully. He put it down. Looking at Tai, his expression changed. “I can almost pity you,” he said.

“I should regret that, as well,” Tai said.

“You do know what I mean?”

Tai met his gaze. “I might have chosen a simpler life, had it been my own decision, but if we accept the teachings of the Sacred Path, then we also accept—”

“Do you? Do you follow those teachings?”

The discussion had become uncomfortably intimate. Tai said, “I try. The balancing. Male and female, hot and cold, awareness of all five directions. Stillness and motion, polarities. The flow between such things suits my nature more than the Cho Master’s certainties, however wise he was.”

“You learned this on Stone Drum Mountain?”

It was curious how many people seemed to know of his time there. He remembered Rain telling him that —and what else she’d said. How it might be useful. Shaping a mystery about him …

He shook his head. “From before. My own readings. It was a reason I went there.” He saw no reason not to be honest, to a point. It had been one reason.

Xu Bihai nodded, as if a thought had been confirmed.

He stared at Tai another long moment, then, as if speaking only of cultivated fields again, or early-summer rainfall, said quietly, “I understand you must consult at the palace before acting, but I would sooner kill you tonight and lose all the horses for the empire and be exiled to the pestilent south, or ordered to commit suicide, than have you give them to Roshan. This, Master Shen Tai, you need to know.”

THE PROMISED ESCORT took him in the governor’s sedan chair to the entertainment district. He hadn’t been in one of those for a long time. The cushions were soft, there was a scent of aloeswood. He was slightly drunk, he realized.

The bearers stopped. Tai opened the curtains to reveal the quite handsome entrance of the White Phoenix Pleasure Pavilion, which had a new roof, a covered portico, lanterns hanging by the entrance, wide steps going up, and doors open to the mild night.

The leader of Tai’s escort went up and spoke to an older woman at the entrance. Tai knew—and there was nothing he could, in courtesy, do about it—that he was not going to be permitted to pay for anything here tonight.

The soldiers indicated that they would wait for him. He wanted to dismiss them, but that wasn’t possible if they had orders from the governor, and he knew they did. They would take him back to the inn eventually. If he spent the night here they’d remain outside until morning with the sedan chair. This was the way things were going to be now. Men were investing in him. He could try to find it amusing, but it was difficult.

I would sooner kill you tonight. This, you need to know.

Murder as an alternative to investment, he thought wryly. And given consequences so sure and so severe, even for a governor—since word had gone ahead to Xinan and they would know about the horses very soon— Governor Xu’s statement carried its own uncompromising message.

Roshan was not to be allowed to claim these.

Roshan was a nickname, given by soldiers long ago, adopted by the court. The man’s real name was An Li. He was a one-time barbarian cavalryman, then an officer, a general, now a military governor himself commanding the Seventh, the Eighth, and most recently also the Ninth District armies. A man everyone watched. And feared.

Tai had been away too long. There were elements—balances—he needed to learn, and he didn’t have a great deal of time.

I can almost pity you was the other thing Xu Bihai had said. And at Kuala Nor among the ghosts a blue-tattooed Taguran had said nearly the same thing.

He had seen Roshan only once, in Long Lake Park, watching princes and aristocrats at a polo game. The general, visiting from his base in the northeast, in Xinan to receive yet another honour (and the gift of a city palace), had sat with the imperial party. He had been unmistakable in his colossal bulk, clad in brilliant, overwhelming red, his laughter ringing across the meadow.

He hadn’t always been so fat, but one needed to be older than Tai to remember An Li’s fighting days. He would destroy a horse under him today.

It was said that he laughed all the time, even when killing people, that he had never learned to read, that he was advised by a steppe demon, and had given the emperor certain potions for the delights of darkness in that time when Taizu first turned his aging eyes—and heart—to the youthful glory of Wen Jian.

It was also said that the only man Roshan had ever feared—and he had very greatly feared him, as everyone did—was the infinitely subtle, calculating, now-deceased first minister, Chin Hai.

With Chin gone, there was a new prime minister, and though Wen Zhou might be a favoured cousin of the Precious Consort, and owe his appointment to that as much as anything else, Roshan was also beloved of the emperor and had long been said to be equally close to the exquisite Jian—and perhaps more than merely close, depending on which rumour you heard and believed.

In the night street before a courtesan house in Chenyao’s pleasure district, remembering a summer day in the park, Tai recalled looking across at the corpulent figure of the military governor from a distance and flinching inwardly at the image of such a figure embracing, crushing, the most beautiful woman of the age.

Jian was already named by then in poems, and had been painted, as one of the Four Great Beauties of Kitai, going back to the First Dynasty and the Empress Jade Pearl, among the immortals now.

To Xu Bihai tonight, Tai had simply said that he would seek counsel from as many people as he could before deciding what he would do, and expressed a willingness to come back west and meet the governor here, drink and dine again—perhaps in the presence of his charming daughters.

One of them had giggled at that from by the door, not the one in green. That one had simply looked across at Tai, her expression suddenly difficult to read.

Thoughts of the two of them drew his mind back to the house in front of him. He wasn’t in the best condition, after so much saffron wine, to deal with matters of court and rival governors. Such issues could surely be deferred for a night? His first in a city after two years?

The doors of the house were wide open. He saw lights within. The attendant woman smiled from under two red lanterns. Of course she’d smile a welcome. It was her assignment here, and she would have just been informed that anything—anything—the young man wanted was to be offered to him, and charged to the governor.

The young man wanted more wine to start with, he decided. The sage in the cup, the poets said. The rest could follow as the spring night deepened and the late moon rose.

He heard a voice inside, speaking poetry.

He went up the wide, handsome steps, between lanterns, and entered the White Phoenix, giving a coin to the woman at the door.