Under Heaven

like either of them. They cry all the time. She is aware that they resent serving her instead of the real princess.

She’s a princess now. Or, they call her one. They made her royal before this journey north started from Xinan. There was a ceremony in the Ta-Ming Palace. Li-Mei, in red-and-gold silk with a too-heavy headdress decorated with white jade, and tortoiseshells and pearls from the south, had paid little attention. She’d been too angry. Her brother had been standing behind the prime minister. She’d stared at him the whole time, never looking away. Making certain that he knew exactly how she felt, as if that would mean anything to Liu at all.

She is still more angry than anything else, though she is aware that this could be a way to hide fear from herself, and from others. It is anger that stops her from being gentler with the two women who are hers now. They are afraid. Of course they are. She could be gentler. None of this is their fault.

There’s no shame to their grief, she thinks. Or their terror, which has grown worse, predictably, since they left Shuquian behind—the last major city north of Xinan—and then reached the Golden River’s great bend and the Wall.

Shuquian had been many days back. They’d passed through the Wall and entered wilderness four days ago. Soldiers saluted from above as their party went through.

Li-Mei is counting, keeping track of time as best she can. A habit of mind. Her father used to say he liked it in her. Her father is dead, or this would not be happening.

The leader of their imperial escort had bowed three times to the princesses, and then he and the Flying Dragon Army from Xinan had turned back at the heavy gates in the Long Wall—back towards the civilized world. Li-Mei had left her sedan chair to stand in a yellow-dragon wind to watch them go. She saw the gates of the world swing shut.

The nomads, the barbarians, had taken custody of two Kitan brides, negotiated—traded—for furs and camels and amber, but mainly for horses and military support.

This is the first time the Bogu have aimed so high, or been given so much.

The actual princess, thirty-first daughter of the Glorious Emperor Taizu (may he live and reign forever, under heaven), will become the newest wife, in whatever ceremony they use on the grasslands, of Hurok, the ruling kaghan, lord of the steppes, or this part of them, loyal (for the most part) ally of Kitai.

It has been duly judged, by the clacking, black-garbed crows who serve the Imperial Throne as advisers, that with a momentarily overextended military, and issues as to both army costs and the supply of horses, it is a sage and prudent time to allow the kumiss-drinking steppe-barbarians this otherwise unthinkable honour.

Li-Mei should not be here, does not want—the gods know it!—to be a princess. Had her father not died, putting a two-year halt to all family ceremonies and celebrations, she’d surely have been married by now, and safe. Her mother and Second Mother had been working on that marriage, through the proper channels.

She is not remotely a true member of royalty, only an attendant to the aging, exiled-to-the-countryside empress. But Li-Mei is also the sister of an ambitious, brilliantly positioned brother, and because of that she is about to become, soon now, the whatever-the-number wife of Hurok Kaghan’s second son, Tarduk, currently his heir.

Not that there is anything certain about remaining an heir on these steppes, if you’ve listened to the stories. Li-Mei is someone who does listen to what is said around her, always has been, from childhood—and her second brother, Tai, had come home from the north with a tale, years ago.

There are—as with everything done in the Ta-Ming Palace—precedents for elevating lesser women to royalty for this purpose. It is a kind of sly trick played on the barbarians. All the subject peoples want, ever, is the ability to claim a link to Kitan royalty. If a woman is called a princess that is more than enough for the second or third member of a wedding party. For the foreign ruler (this has happened a handful of times, though never with the Bogu) a true princess is … made available.

There are more than enough daughters, with this particular emperor, after forty years on the throne and ten thousand concubines from all over the known world.

Li-Mei has thought about the lives of these women, at times. Locked behind walls and gates and silk-paper windows in their wing of the palace, at the top of eunuch-guarded stairways. Most of them have grown old, or will, never having even been in a room with the emperor. Or any other man.

The true princess, the emperor’s daughter, has not stopped having one of her attendant women (she has six of them) sing and play “Married to a Far Horizon” for her since they left Shuquian. They are weeping, day and night, Princess Xue and her women. Endless lamentation.

It is driving Li-Mei to distraction.

She wants a deeper calm around her in this wilderness, this wind, to nurture the fury within, ward off terror, think about her brother.

Both her brothers. The youngest, Chao, still at home by the stream, doesn’t really count yet. Thinking of home—cascading images of it—is a bad thing to do right now, Li-Mei realizes.

She concentrates her mind, as best she can, on the brother she wants to kill, and on the one who ought, somehow, to have saved her from this.

Although, in fairness, there would have been nothing Tai could have done once Liu had—brilliantly, for his own purposes—proposed his sister as the second princess for the Bogu alliance and had that accepted. But why be fair? Why be accepting in this place of wolves and grass, when she is leaving everything she’s ever known for empty spaces and primitive yurts, yellow-dust wind off the western desert, and a life among barbarians who will not even speak her language?

This would never have happened if her father were alive.

Eldest Son Liu has always been eloquent and persuasive, and daughters are tools. Many fathers would have acquiesced, seen the same family glory Liu did, but Li-Mei, only girl-child of her family, is almost certain that the general, even in retirement, would have stopped his first son from using a sister this way. Liu would have never dared propose it. Ambition for self and family was proper in a balanced man, but there were limits, which were part of balance.

She wants to think this, but has been with the court long enough—arriving the year before the empress’s exile—to picture it otherwise. She can almost hear Liu’s polished, reasonable voice: “What is so different from offering her as an attendant to the empress, in my proposing her elevation to a princess? Are they not both exaltations for our family? Has she any other duty, or role in life?”

It is difficult, even in the imagination, to shape a sufficiently crushing reply.

Tai might have done so, equally clever, in a different fashion. But her second brother is impossibly far away right now, west, among the ghosts. It is an absolute certainty that Liu took that absence into account, as well, when he shaped his plans. Nor could Li-Mei’s sad, sweet empress, exiled from the palace, lost to endless prayers and a dwindling memory, do anything to shield her when the summons to the Hall of Brilliance came.

Li-Mei, being carried north, is beyond all borders herself now. The difference is, Tai—if he is alive—will be going home soon. She never will.

It is a hard thing to live with. She needs her anger.

“Married to a Far Horizon” starts up again, the worst pipa player of the six this time. They appear to be taking turns. Li-Mei allows herself to curse, in a very un-royal fashion. She hates the song by now. Lets that feeling help drive and shape the fury she requires.

She peeks out of her litter (they will not let her ride, of course). One of the Bogu is just then passing, riding towards the front. He is bare-chested, his hair loose, almost all the way down his back. He sits his horse in a way that no Kitan ever has. They all do, she’s come to realize. The nomads live on their horses. He looks at her as he goes by. Their eyes meet for an instant before Li-Mei lets the curtain fall.

It takes her a few moments, but she decides that the expression in the rider’s face was not conquest or triumph or even a man’s lust, but pride.

She isn’t sure what she wants to make of that.

After a time, she peers out again. No rider now, he’s moved ahead. The landscape is hazy. The evening wind blows dust, as usual. It has done that for several days now. It stings her eyes. The sun is low, blurred above the endless grass. They have seen vast herds of gazelles the last two days. Heard wolves at night since leaving the Wall behind. The Kitan have a terror of wolves, part of the fear and strangeness these northern grasslands evoke.