Under Heaven

He saw his brother wince, which meant he knew how deeply Tai had thrust—and couldn’t hide it.

“You will spoil my pleasure if you quarrel,” said Jian. She let her voice sound petulant. Tai looked at her: the exaggerated downward curve of that lovely, painted mouth. She was toying with them again, he thought—but with a purpose.

He bowed. “My apologies again, illustrious lady. If I am to spend time at this court, I shall need to show restraint, even when others do not.”

He saw her suppress a smile. “We have little intention of letting you leave us, Shen Tai. I imagine the emperor will wish to receive you formally very soon. Where are you staying in Xinan?”

He hadn’t given it a thought. You could find that amusing. “I have no residence there any more, gracious lady. I will take rooms somewhere and I will—”

She seemed genuinely astonished. “Take rooms?”

Prince Shinzu stepped forward. “The Precious Consort is right, as ever. It would be a shocking lapse on the part of the court if you were allowed to do that. Will you accept one of my homes in Xinan for the present? Until my father and his advisers have had time to consider the proper ways to honour you.”

“I have … I have no need for honours, my lord prince. I did what I did at Kuala Nor only—”

“—only out of respect for your father. I understand. The world is permitted to honour this, is it not?” The prince grinned. He drained his cup. “And there are those horses. One of my men will call upon you this evening, to make arrangements.”

There were, indeed, those horses, Tai thought. He wondered—yet again—if Princess Cheng-wan in Rygyal on its far plateau had had any idea what she was doing to him when she decreed that gift.

The other woman who seemed to be entering and shaping his life now, the one who seemed to know precisely what she was doing, declared an end to her gathering.

Guests bowed to her and began filing out the doors. Shinzu remained in the room. Tai looked at the screen he’d hidden behind. The viewing holes were invisible.

He looked at the other screen.

He went out, last to leave. The steward closed the door. Tai’s exquisitely delicate escorts were there, hands demurely in sleeves. He saw Zhou and Liu striding away together. He’d wondered if his brother would linger to speak. He wasn’t certain if he was ready for that.

Sima Zian had waited.

“Can you spend a few moments with me?” Tai asked.

“I would be honoured,” the poet said gravely, no hint of irony.

They started down the first long hallway together with the two women. Sunlight came from the west through tinted, silk-paper windows, casting a mild afternoon light at intervals. They walked through it as they went. Light and shade, then light and shade.

CHAPTER XVIII

The sun is low, reddened, there is a murky tint to the air. It has been cooler today, windy. Li-Mei wears a Bogu shirt over her tunic and a camel hair vest over that. She has no idea where Meshag found these for her in this emptiness. She has seen no signs of human life, not even smoke on the wind.

In the luxurious hot springs retreat of Ma-wai to the south and west across grasslands, the Wall, the wide, dangerous river, her older brothers are reciting poems for members of the Kitan court in a room of sandalwood and gold. Their listeners drink spiced pepper wine, and a sweet breeze softens the spring air.

Li-Mei keeps looking over her shoulder. She’s been doing that, nervously, from the time the sun rose, offering light enough to see. They’d begun riding under stars, the thin moon down, the wolves invisible. Night noises. Some small animal had died in the dark, she’d heard a short scream.

Meshag never looks back. He allowed only two brief halts in a very long day. He told her during the first rest that they would not be caught that day, or the next. “They will have had to wait, to learn which way we go. They know now, but there is a dust storm. It will cost them some of a day.”

“And us?”

He shook his head. “The storm? Not this far. Only wind.”

Only wind, and endless grass, and a sky so much farther away than any she’s known. It is difficult to feel that your life means anything under this sky. Are the heavens more removed from humankind here?

Do prayers and souls have a greater distance to travel?

Meshag signals another halt towards sunset. She’s anticipated this one. Sunset is the other time he hunts. She dismounts. He nods curtly, his awkward motion, and rides off, east this time, along the way they’ve been going.

She has no idea how he chooses his direction. If she understood him yesterday, these are lands where his people rarely travel. The Shuoki here are enemies, and have also been restive, unsettled in their submission to Kitan authority. She doesn’t know much about the Shuoki. Remembers a story about General An Li suppressing a rebellion, a heroic ride, something of the sort.

They haven’t seen anyone. She has a sense it would be bad if they did, if they were found here. The grasslands are vast, however, beyond belief. That may be what saves them, she thinks.

No water this time, where he’s decreed their evening rest. She was hoping for a pond. She badly wants to be clean again. It is a part of how she understands herself. This begrimed, lank-haired creature on a Bogu horse in Bogu clothes (the shirt is much too large and smells of animal fat) is not who, or what, Li-Mei considers herself to be.

She’s aware that this is more and more inadequate as a way of thinking with every day that passes, every li she travels. The person she was has already been altered, destroyed, by the decision to name her a princess and send her north.

If she were really strong-minded, she thinks, she’d declare the girl who’d been raised by a stream near the Wai River, the woman who’d served the empress at court and in exile, to be dead.

She’d leave her behind with memories, like a ghost.

It is hard to do. Harder than she expected. Perhaps it ought not to surprise her. Who can so easily lay down habits and images of a life, ways of thinking, an understanding of the world?

But it is more than that, Li-Mei decides, stretching out her aching back. She is living—and riding—in a fragile but undeniable condition of hope, and that changes things.

Meshag, son of Hurok, is strange beyond words, barely human at times, but he is helping her, because of Tai. And his dead eyes do not undermine or refute steadiness and experience. He killed a swan with a single arrow. And he has the wolves.

He returns to her before night has completely fallen.

She is sitting in the tall grass, looking west. The wind has died. The hook moon has set. She sees the star of the Weaver Maid. There is a song about how the moon swings past her, then under the world through the night, and comes back up carrying a message to her love on the far side of the sky.

Meshag has water in the flasks and a saddlebag full of red and yellow berries. Nothing else. She takes the water, uses some to wash her face and hands. She wants to ask about rabbits, other meat. Does not.

He crouches beside her, places the leather bag between them. He takes a fistful of berries. He says, as if she’s spoken aloud, “Would you eat marmot not cooked?”

Li-Mei stares at him. “Not … not yet. Why …?”

“No fires. Shuoki. More swans, maybe at night.”

Searching for them. He has said she asks too many questions. She is not ready to let this part of her be dead or lost. She takes some of the berries. The yellow ones are bitter. She says, “Is it … am I allowed to ask where we are going?”

His mouth twitches. “You did ask,” he says.

She wants to laugh, but it is too difficult. She runs a hand through her limp, tied-back hair. Her father used to do that when he was trying to think. So do both her older brothers. She can’t remember (a sorrow) if her little