Under Heaven

He gestured, Shen Liu took one side of the platform. Zhou sat opposite, cross-legged. A breeze, music, late night. The two men waited. The servant, bowing three full times, eyes never leaving the floor, brought the wine again and extended it with both hands. Wen Zhou tasted.

He didn’t nod, he didn’t need to. Keeping the cup was sufficient. The servant poured for Liu, backed up, bowing all the way to the edge of the room. He was expecting to be beaten later. The wine had been too cool. Zhou looked at his adviser, and nodded permission to speak.

“What do you think happens,” Liu asked, his round face placid, as usual, “when we make jests about killing him?”

He hadn’t expected that as a start. “We don’t,” Wen Zhou said coldly. “I do. Unless you have become a humorist when I am not present?”

Liu shook his head.

“I thought not. What happens,” the prime minister went on, his mood congealing further, “is that I amuse myself.”

“Of course, my lord,” said Liu.

He said nothing more. He’d made his accursed point: sometimes you weren’t allowed to amuse yourself.

Zhou was inclined to disagree. If he wanted a woman or a horse, they were his until he grew tired of them. If he wanted a man dead he could have him killed. Why else be what he was? This came with his power, defined it.

“Why are you here?” he growled. He gestured, the servant scurried forward with more wine. Liu declined a second drink. The first minister had long intended to see his adviser drunk; it hadn’t happened yet.

From across the courtyard the pipa music had stopped.

She’d have been told that her lord was engaged with his principal adviser. Rain—Lin Chang—was impeccably trained, and intelligent. She’d not wish to distract them, he knew.

His adviser waited until the servant had withdrawn to the far wall again. He said, “Word came tonight, a military courier from the west. From Iron Gate Fortress.”

“Well, that is west,” said the prime minister, amusing himself slightly.

Liu did not smile. He said, “You know that my … my brother has been at Kuala Nor? You asked about my family last year and I told you?”

He did remember asking. It was before he’d taken office. He remembered this piece of information very well. And the man. He hadn’t liked Master Shen Tai. Hadn’t known him at all, but that didn’t matter.

The first minister nodded, more carefully. His mood had changed, he didn’t want it noticed.

“Burying bones,” he said indifferently. A flick of one hand. “A foolish thing, with all respect to your father. What of it?”

“He’s left the lake. He is coming back to Xinan. They made him a member of the Second Military District army to shorten his mourning time, permit him to return.”

The two men in this room had done the same thing not long after Shen Gao had died, to allow Liu to come back to the palace—to assist the ambitious cousin of the woman the emperor favoured above all others.

The first minister considered this a moment. Still carefully, he said, “I wonder why? We know this from Iron Gate?”

Liu nodded. “He passed through for one night. He sent a message ahead to the Ta-Ming, along with the fortress commander’s formal report.”

One night meant he wasn’t lingering as he travelled. Wen Zhou affected a yawn. “And why would the movements of your brother—diverting as the topic might be for you, personally—be of interest to me, or of importance to the empire?” He thought he’d said that well enough.

Liu looked discomfited. An extreme rarity. He shifted position. A rider could look like that after too long in the saddle. It was interesting. The prime minister kept his gaze on him.

“Well?” he added.

Liu drew a breath. “He … my brother reports first that an assassin was slain at Kuala Nor, having been sent there to kill him.”

“I see,” said Zhou, keeping his voice level. “That is first. Of little importance to us, as far as I can see. What else?”

His adviser cleared his throat. “It seems … it seems that the White Jade Princess, in Rygyal … Cheng-wan, our, our own princess …”

“I know who she is, Liu.”

Another throat clearing. Liu was unsettled. That, in itself, was disturbing. “She’s given him a gift,” Liu said. “To honour what he was doing by the lake. With the dead.”

“How pleasant for your brother,” Wen Zhou murmured. “But I fail to see—”

“Two hundred and fifty Sardian horses.”

Like that. A hammer.

Zhou felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed, with difficulty. “He is … your brother is riding from the border with two hundred and fifty Heavenly Horses?”

It was impossible, he thought.

In a way, it was. “No,” said Liu. “He has arranged to have them held by the Tagurans. He must go back and claim them himself, only he can do it, after it is decided what is to be done with them. He writes that he is coming to Xinan to inform the celestial emperor. And others.”

And others.

Now he understood why this was information he needed to know.

He also understood something else, abruptly. He struggled to keep this from showing in his face. Liu’s unpleasant younger brother had told the soldiers at Iron Gate Fort, and written a letter, about an assassin sent after him. He was a figure of significance now, with those horses. There would almost certainly be an inquiry, where there might never have been one before.

Which meant …

It meant that someone in Xinan had to be dealt with. Tonight, in fact, before word of Shen Tai’s journey and his gift—likely racing through the palace and the Purple Myrtle Court even now—spread too widely, and reached the man in question.

It was unfortunate. The person he was now thinking about had his uses. But he also knew too much, given these sudden tidings, for the first minister’s comfort.

It was still possible, for certain reasons, that the extremely irritating Shen Tai might not reach Xinan, but everything was changed with this information.

“What does that mean, he has to claim the horses himself? Did you read the letters?”

“I did.” The prime minister didn’t ask how Liu had achieved that. “If he does not go back for them himself the gift is revoked. It is a gift from the princess to him. There was … there is a third letter, from a Taguran officer, making this clear.”

Inwardly, with great intensity, the prime minister of Kitai began shaping the foulest oaths he could imagine. He felt a droplet of sweat slide down his side.

It was worse than he’d imagined. Because now if Shen Tai died on the road—if he’d already died—his death cost the empire those horses.

Two hundred and fifty was an absurd, a stupefying number. The man was coming back as a hero, with immediate access to the court. It was about as bad as it could get.

And someone needed to be killed, quickly.

The silence continued. No pipa music across the way. Liu was very still, waiting for him, clearly shaken himself. You might have thought it a good thing for him, for his family, but not if you knew these brothers—and something else that had been done.

Zhou said it aloud, with the thought. “Your sister is beyond the Long Wall, Liu. He can’t do anything about her.”

Liu’s eyes wouldn’t meet his gaze. This was rare, told him he’d hit upon the concern—or one of them—in his adviser’s mind. “You are,” he added tartly, “the eldest son, aren’t you? Head of the family. This was within your rights, and I approved it and proposed it at court. It brings you honour, all of you.”