Under Heaven

assignation.

In Xinan, after darkfall, it was fair to say that someone on a main thoroughfare was—if not an officer of the guard—either at risk, or part of the court.

Prime Minister Wen Zhou normally took pleasure in riding his favourite grey horse down the very centre of the imperial way at night. It made him feel as if he owned Xinan, to be so conspicuously at ease, a powerful, handsome, richly dressed aristocrat proceeding south from the palace to his city mansion under moon or stars. He had guards with him, of course, but if they kept behind and to either side he could imagine himself alone in the imperial city.

The distant outer edges of the road had been planted with juniper and pagoda trees by the present emperor’s father, to hide the drainage ditches. There were beds of peonies—king of flowers—running between the lamplit guard stations, offering their scent to the night in springtime. There was beauty and a vast grandeur to the imperial way under the stars.

But this particular night, First Minister Wen found no pleasure in his night ride.

He’d been afflicted with such anxiety (he would not call it fear) this evening—after his cousin’s dance in that upper chamber of the Ta-Ming—that he’d felt an urgent need to remove himself from the palace lest one of the appallingly astute figures of court or civil service note apprehension in his features. That would not be acceptable. Not in a first minister (and president of seven ministries) in his first year of office.

He could have asked Shen Liu to come home with him, and Liu would have done that, but tonight he didn’t want even his principal adviser beside him. He didn’t want to look at that smooth, unforthcoming face, not when he felt his own features to be revealing depths of indecision.

He trusted Liu: the man owed everything to Wen Zhou, his own fate by now completely tied to the first minister’s. But that wasn’t always the point. Sometimes you didn’t want your counsellors to see too clearly into you, and Liu had a habit of appearing able to do that, while revealing next to nothing of himself.

The first minister had other advisers, of course, a vast bureaucratic army at his disposal. He had done his own investigations, had learned a good deal about Liu—and his family—some of it complex, some of it unexpected.

Liu’s subtlety made him enormously useful, because he could read others in the palace with acuity, but it also meant there were times when you were just as happy to arrange for morning attendance from the man, and spend the night with others.

Zhou had to decide if he wanted Spring Rain alone tonight or to pair her with one of his other women. He was angry and uneasy, that might affect what he needed. He reminded himself, again, not to use—even in his mind—her name from the North District. He was the one who had changed it, after all.

He looked around. Not far now from his ward gates.

His home in Xinan, provided by the emperor, was in the fifty-seventh ward, east of the imperial way, halfway down. There lay many of the most luxurious properties in the city.

Including, as of this same night’s proclamation by the emperor, the newest mansion of the military governor of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts: An Li, widely known as Roshan.

Whom Wen Zhou hated and feared and wished dead—in all his bloated grossness—and consumed by eyeless, crawling creatures without names.

His hands tightened on the reins, and the high-strung horse reacted, pacing sideways restively. Zhou handled it easily. He was a superb rider, a polo player, enjoyed speed, and the most challenging horses. Enjoyed them more than, say, calligraphy displays or landscape painting or poetry improvised in a palace room. Dancing, he’d concede, was pleasant enough if the dancer was even nearly as skilled—or as stunningly desirable—as his cousin.

His cousin, who had changed the empire. Jian, to whom he owed everything he was now and everything he had. But who refused, capriciously, to be unequivocal in supporting him against a monstrous general’s obvious ambition. She’d even adopted Roshan as her child some months ago! What game—what possible woman’s game—was she playing at?

The obese barbarian had to be thirty years older than her. His odious sons were older than her! The adoption had been a frivolity, Zhou had to assume, meant to divert the court—and the emperor.

The first minister was among those who had not found it diverting. From the moment Chin Hai had died and Zhou had manoeuvred swiftly from his position as president of the Ministries of Revenue and Punishment to succeed him, he had been aware that An Li was his greatest danger—among many.

Roshan, with Chin Hai gone, was like a beast of the jungle uncaged. And why, why did the emperor and his exquisite concubine not see that, beneath the clownish act Roshan offered them?

Zhou forced himself to be calmer, if only for the horse. He looked up at stars, the waning moon, racing clouds. He was saluted by the next set of guards as he approached their station. He nodded vaguely to them, a straight-backed, broad-shouldered, impressive man.

It occurred to him, undermining any movement towards tranquility, that if he was—and he was—contemplating having his enemy ruined or killed, it was possible that Roshan was shaping similar thoughts about him.

These night rides from the palace might become less prudent, going forward. It was a consideration to be weighed. In fact … he gestured his guards in closer. Motioned one to ride ahead. They were nearly at their gate: someone would need to signal for admittance.

Even in the presence of the emperor, Roshan seemed to know no fear, inhibition, no idea of restraint—his very bulk suggested as much. He had been mortally afraid of Chin Hai, however, would break out in a sweat if Prime Minister Chin spoke to him, if they were even in the same room. Zhou had seen it, more than once.

No great surprise, that terror; everyone had feared Chin Hai.

Whatever any man might accuse Zhou of doing since accepting office—in the way of choosing persons for exile or elimination, with formal design, randomly, or for a personal reason—no one could honestly suggest that he was introducing this as a feature of government. Not after what Chin Hai had done for most of the emperor’s reign.

It was Shen Liu, his so-clever adviser, who had pointed this out, not long after Zhou had been appointed to succeed the one called (privately) the Spider. Some men simply had to be dealt with, Liu had said, if one were to properly discharge the duties of office and establish the proper tone as first minister.

If one were new, and relatively young—and Wen Zhou was both—weakness might be anticipated, and probed, by some within the court, the wider empire, or abroad. Any such misconception on their part needed to be swiftly addressed.

A measure of effectively employed terror, Liu had suggested, was almost always useful.

One might argue, he’d added, that it was imperative in challenging times. Kitai might be wealthy beyond description, but that could make it more vulnerable to destructive ambition, more in need of loyal men to have narrow eyes and suspicious hearts. To be cold and vigilant while others played at polo games, wrote poems, danced to foreign music, ate golden peaches brought from far corners of the world, built lakes in private gardens, or used extravagantly expensive sandalwood for the panels of pavilions.

Polo was Wen Zhou’s favoured sport. Sandalwood, he happened to believe, was entirely proper for a display of wealth. He had it in the walls of his bedchamber. And the man-made lake behind his mansion had jade and ivory rocks on the island built within it. When he had guests for a party, courtesans hired from the best houses would play music from that isle, dressed like creatures from legend. Once they’d worn kingfisher feathers, rarer, more expensive than jade.

But the new first minister had taken Liu’s central point: a firm hand was needed for the Ta-Ming Palace and the civil service and the army. Perhaps especially the army. Chin Hai, fearing the aristocrats in his own early days, had gradually placed barbarian generals in many of the military governorships. It had made him safer (what could an illiterate foreigner, who owed him everything, aspire to be, or do?), but there were consequences. All the more so since the celestial emperor (may he live a thousand years!) was older now, distracted, less firmly attentive to imperial matters, month by month, day over day.

Night after night.

It was widely known that Roshan had sent the emperor an alchemist’s potion shortly after Taizu had