Under Heaven

grinning, clearly delighted by this theatre.

Tai cleared his throat. A roomful of high-ranking figures was staring at him. “Thank you, exalted lady,” he said. “I admit I was unhappy about concealing myself, but your servant defers to your greater wisdom.”

She laughed. “Oh, dear. You make me sound ancient! Greater wisdom? I just wanted to see their faces when you came out!”

Which wasn’t the truth, and he knew it. All of them knew it. But this was a part of how Jian danced at this court, Tai was realizing. How she made others dance. This lay beneath the silk and scent. You didn’t have to be with her long to see it.

Now that he was among them, the fact that he and she were wearing similar colours was unmistakable. Tai had wondered if it was deliberate. Of course it was.

He’d made a decision before, he reminded himself. If he could not weave subtle intentions towards a known design, he would have to do things differently. There wasn’t really a choice, was there? Either he was a puppet, or a piece of wood in a river in spate, or he had some control over what was happening.

And he could do that here only one way.

He turned to Wen Zhou. “How did you know I was at Kuala Nor?”

He ought to have phrased it with courtesy, prefaced by bows and a deferential greeting. He ought not to have asked it at all.

Zhou stared bleakly at him. Said nothing.

“Second Brother,” said Liu, a little too loudly. “Be welcome back among us! You have brought great honour to our family.” Liu bowed, and not just the minimal salute of courtesy.

There was no way forward here, Tai thought, but straight.

“And you have shamed our father’s memory, Eldest Brother. Did you never think how he would have felt about Li-Mei being sent north to barbarians?”

“But of course!” cried Prince Shinzu. “I had forgotten that our newest princess was of this family! How interesting!”

Tai doubted he’d forgotten it at all. Liu did not answer him. That could come later.

He turned back to Zhou. “You haven’t responded, first minister.” He could only be direct here. Or accept being a wood chip in rapids.

“I am unaware,” said Wen Zhou coldly, “of any protocol in any dynasty that would require a prime minister to respond to a question phrased that way. A beating with the rod is possibly in order.”

Tai saw Zian signalling with his eyes, urging caution. He declined. He was here. Li-Mei was gone. Yan was dead by a cold lake. And his father was dead, lying under a stone Tai hadn’t even seen.

He said, “I see. Roshan suggested you might avoid the question.”

Zhou blinked. “You spoke with him?”

Tai’s turn to ignore a question. “A beating with the rod, you said? How many? People die under the rod, first minister. That could cost the empire two hundred and fifty Sardian horses.”

If he was doing this, Tai thought, he was going to do it. There was exhilaration in having the chance, to be out from concealment, standing before this man and saying this. “Protocol might be amended, don’t you think, when murder is involved? I ask again, how did you know I was at Kuala Nor?”

“Murder? You seem healthy enough. Are you a ghost yourself, then, Shen Tai?”

It was upon them, Tai thought. The poet had stopped trying to get his attention. The prince moved forward from the wall again. Only Jian seemed composed, sitting (the only person sitting) on her platform in the midst of all of them.

Tai said, “No, first minister. I am not dead yet. But the scholar Chou Yan is, at the hands of the assassin sent after me. Admissions have been made. By that false Kanlin who killed my friend. By two other assassins who confessed their purpose to Governor Xu in Chenyao.” He paused, to let that name register. “Those two were also seen by my friend Sima Zian, and the governor’s own daughter brought us the name the killers offered up. So there are others who can speak to this. And then, first minister, Roshan presented me with a copy of the letter sent him by Xin Lun, saying he feared he would be killed, since he knew too much.”

“A copy of a letter? From Roshan? He cannot even read!” Zhou actually managed a laugh. “After all we’ve heard this afternoon—some of us skulking behind a screen—about his designs? You don’t think that would be an obvious forgery meant to damage me? The only one openly resisting him? Surely you are not so entirely—”

“It is not a forgery,” Tai said. “Lun died that night. Exactly as he feared he would. And the Gold Bird Guards saw who did it.”

He turned to his brother, as if ignoring Zhou. As if there was nothing left to say to him at all. He looked at Liu. His heart was pounding.

“Someone tried to kill you at Kuala Nor?” Liu asked. He said it quietly. Assembling information—or that was how it sounded.

“And at Chenyao.”

“I see. Well. I did know where you were,” said Liu.

“You did.”

It was strange, speaking to his brother again, looking at him, trying to read his thoughts. Tai reminded himself that Liu was easily skilled enough to dissemble here.

“I tried to persuade you not to go, remember?”

“You did,” said Tai again. “Did you tell the first minister where I was?”

The question he’d been waiting to ask since leaving the lake and the mountains.

Liu nodded his head. “I think I did, in conversation.” As simple as that, no hesitation. Someone else could be direct, or appear to be. “I would have to check my records. I have records of everything.”

“Everything?” Tai asked.

“Yes,” his brother said.

It was probably true.

Liu’s face, carefully schooled from childhood, gave nothing away, and the room was much too public for what Tai really wanted to say again, face to face this time, a hand bunching Liu’s robe tightly at the collar: that his brother had shamed their father’s memory with what he’d done to Li-Mei.

This wasn’t the time or place. He wondered if there would ever be a time or place. And he also realized that, for reasons that went far beyond his own story, this encounter could not turn into anything decisive about murder attempts. There were issues too much larger.

His thought was mirrored, anticipated. There was a dancer here. “Perhaps we should wait for my cousin’s guardsman to answer some questions,” said Jian. “Perhaps we can talk of other matters? I don’t find this as amusing as I thought I might.”

An order to desist, if ever there was one.

Tai looked at her. She was icily imperious. He drew a breath. “Forgive me, illustrious lady. A dear friend was killed in a place beyond borders. He died trying to tell me about my sister. My sorrow has made me behave unpardonably. Your servant begs indulgence.”

“And you have it!” she said promptly. “You must know you will have it—from everyone in the Ta-Ming—for the honour you have done us.”

“And for the horses!” said Shinzu cheerfully. He lifted a cup towards Tai. “Whatever questions or troubles any of us might have, surely our task now is to amuse our hostess. What sort of civilized men could we call ourselves, otherwise?”

A servant appeared at Tai’s elbow, with wine. He took the cup. He drank. It was pepper wine, exquisite. Of course it was.

“I asked for a poem,” Jian said plaintively. “Half a lifetime ago! My cousin declined, our wandering poet declined. Is there no man who can please a woman here?”

Sima Zian stepped forward. “Gracious and exalted lady,” he murmured, “beauty of our bright age, might your servant make a suggestion?”

“Of course,” said Jian. “It might even earn you forgiveness, if it is a good one.”

“I live only in that hope,” said Zian. “I propose that someone present a twinned pair of subjects and our two