Under Heaven

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He said, “It was very good, Li-Mei, until the wind picked up. I started worrying when I felt it.”

She looked at him.

“Perhaps … perhaps next time, maybe even tonight … you might do it inside? I believe that is a reason dancers dislike performing out-of-doors. Any breeze affects how their clothing flows, and … they can fall.”

“I didn’t know … do they prefer inside?”

“I know it for certain,” her brother said. “You were very brave to do it in the courtyard on an autumn morning.”

She’d permitted herself to briefly claim the notion she’d been brave. Then shook her head resolutely.

“No, I just did it where mother and the drum man decided. I wasn’t brave.”

He smiled. “Li-Mei, just saying that makes you honest and brave. And that would be true, it will be true, when you are twenty-six, not six. I am proud of you. And father was. I saw it as he watched. Will you dance again for us. Inside? Tonight?”

Her lip quivered. “He was … father was almost laughing.”

Tai grew thoughtful. “Do you know a truth about people? When someone falls, if they don’t hurt themselves, it is funny, little sister. I’m not sure why. Do you have an idea?”

She’d shaken her head. She didn’t know why it was funny, but she remembered giggling when Chao toddled and toppled into leaves.

Tai added, “And father didn’t laugh. He was afraid for you at first, then afraid he would hurt your pride if he smiled, so he didn’t.”

“I saw. He was holding it back. He covered his mouth with his hand.”

“Good for you, seeing that. Yes. Because he’d been very proud. He said he hopes you’ll try again.”

Her lip wasn’t quivering any more. “Did he? Truly, Tai?”

And Tai had nodded. “Truly.”

She still doesn’t know, to this day, if that last was the truth, but they’d walked out of the orchard together, Tai carrying the basin and the towel, and she’d danced for them again that night (the dancing costume hurriedly cleaned), among carefully spaced lanterns in the largest reception room, and she hadn’t fallen. Her father had smiled throughout, watching her, and patted her cheek when she came over to him after, and then he had stood up and bowed formally, without laughing at all, and given her a string of copper coins, the way one paid a real dancer, and then a sweet from one of his pockets, because she was six years old.

IF SHE WERE TO ADDRESS within herself—or explain to someone who might ask and have any claim to an answer—a few of the very great differences between her older brothers, Li-Mei thinks, those long-ago conversations in the autumn orchard would do well enough.

Liu had told her—that day, and endlessly after, in person and in letters from Xinan—that she represented the family in all she did. She accepted it as true: for her, for any woman or man. That was the way of things in Kitai. You were nothing in the empire without a family behind you.

But she is beyond the empire now. The nomads, with their strings of long-maned horses and huge wolfhounds and their primitive yurts and harsh-sounding language … don’t know her family. Her father. Don’t care at all about that. They don’t even know—the thought comes hard to her—that she’s part of the Shen lineage. She’s been named as one of the imperial dynasty. That is how the Bogu see her, that’s why they look so proud, glancing at her as they ride by.

The honour of it eludes her, just now. She is the embodiment of a smug deception and of her brother’s cold ambition. And no one at home by their small stream will ever see her again.

She wonders, controlling emotion, if a letter will even reach her mother and Second Mother, if she sends one, or a dozen, with Bogu riders to the trading place by the river’s loop in spring.

Tai had called her brave, had repeated over and again how clever she was, growing up, how both these things would help her in life. She isn’t so sure any more. He wouldn’t have been lying, but he might have been wrong.

Bravery might mean only that she doesn’t weep at night, or insist on hearing the same interminable lament as they travel, and Li-Mei has no idea at all how cleverness might play out for the second or fifth wife of the kaghan’s heir.

She doesn’t even know what number she’ll be.

She knows nothing of the man she’s travelling to wed—whose bed she’ll share, if he even chooses. In her carried litter, Li-Mei draws a deep breath.

She can kill herself. That has been done by women married in this fashion. It is considered a disgrace, of course. She isn’t sure she cares. She can decide to cry and mourn all the way north, and after they arrive.

Or, she can represent her father’s bright, tall memory, and the version of herself Tai has held up like a bronze mirror all her life. The version of Shen Li-Mei that an aged empress had loved and trusted in her own exile after the Precious Consort came and bewitched with music and wit and beauty, changing the world.

A woman could change the world.

And Li-Mei is not the first woman to be exiled from her life and home, through marriage, through the ending of marriage, through someone’s death, through birth, through the inability to bear a child … in one hard way or another.

She hears shouted orders. She recognizes some words by now, having paid attention. They are finally stopping for the night. The approach of summer on the steppe means very long days.

The routine has been established: the two princesses remain in their litters while their yurts are prepared. They step out when summoned and proceed directly into the yurts where a meal is brought to them. After, they are readied for bed by their women, and they sleep. They rise so early that, even nearing summer, there is sometimes frost on the grass, or a mist rising.

In the litter, as it is set down, Li-Mei makes a face. It is somewhat childlike, in fact, although she wouldn’t like to be told that. She pushes bare feet into slippers.

She draws back her curtain herself—all the way this time—and she steps outside into evening light and the dusty wind of the wide steppe.

The grass around her, the world, is green as emeralds. Her heart is beating fast. She hopes no one can tell that.

One of her litter-bearers cries out, startled. A rider turns at the sound, sees her standing there and comes galloping back through the tall grass: the same one who glanced at her before. He swings off his horse before it has even stopped, hits the ground smoothly, running then slowing, an action done half a thousand times, Li-Mei thinks.

He comes up, anger and urgency in his face. He speaks fiercely, gesturing at the litter for her to re-enter, no ambiguity in the message though she doesn’t understand the words.

She does not move. He says it again, same words, more loudly, same harsh, pointing gesture. Others have turned now, are looking at them. Two more riders are coming quickly from the front of the column, their expressions grim. It would be wisest, Li-Mei thinks, to go back into her litter.

She slaps the man in front of her, hard, across the face.

The impact stings her hand. She cannot remember the last time she struck someone. She cannot remember ever doing so, in fact.

She says, enunciating clearly—he will not understand, but it doesn’t matter: “I am the daughter of a Kitan general, and a member of the imperial family of the Celestial Emperor Taizu, Lord of the Five Directions, and I am bride-to-be of the kaghan’s heir. Whatever rank you hold, any of you, you will listen to me now. I am done with staying in a litter or a yurt all day and night. Bring me someone who understands a civilized tongue and I will say it again!”

It is possible he might kill her.

She may be standing at the edge of night here, of crossing over. His shame will be very great, struck by a woman.

But she sees indecision in his eyes and relief floods through her. She is not going to die in this evening wind, they have too much vested in her coming north to this marriage.

He had looked so proud moments before, riding past, gazing at her. With nothing but instinct as her guide,