River of Stars

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Just outside the wall, Daiyan reined up to think. He patted his horse’s neck. The animal was brave and strong and had moved at speed for a long time. It was possible to love a horse, he realized.

  On impulse, or perhaps not, he removed the over-tunic that marked him as a soldier and revealed his rank. Soldiers entering cities needed to identify themselves. In the way of thinking for a long time, they were a danger. He decided he wasn’t going to carry on all the way around the wall and west to the barracks. He folded the tunic into his saddlebag and entered Xinan between torches at the gate. He nodded to the bored guards there. They weren’t guarding against anything much. Not here, not any more.

  The palace loomed on his left, empty, dark. His own emperor slept, or lay awake, in another city a long way east.

  He knew Xinan a little by now. They’d been in the barracks for some time before he’d had that idea of going north into Xiaolu lands alone. It had seemed a useful plan. It wasn’t unfolding that way, necessarily.

  He’d never ridden through Xinan by night, however. There were people about, but nothing like in Hanjin, or even Jingxian after dark. Those he saw seemed scattered, like pieces on a game board at the end of a game. He found himself on the wide immensity of the imperial way. He’d felt empowered, excited, expanded by the size of it the first morning he’d been here, earlier this summer. He’d seen it as a symbol of what Kitai had been—and could be again. The past wasn’t a burden, it was a challenge. They could be worthy of it. His life, he had thought, was all about achieving that.

  Shortly after arriving he’d sent his entire company into the city at intervals, had the leaders walk or ride them in formation down this avenue. He’d spoken to them at the barracks afterwards. He had told his soldiers that their task, their shared ambition, was to become worthy of that roadway from the palace to the southern gate. He’d spoken strongly, he’d felt strong.

  It was different at night, under stars and a just-risen moon, alone, his horse’s hooves echoing. The imperial way was nearly empty, there was nothing here but vastness. Men would be in wine shops, at small night markets, food stalls, singing girl houses. Or asleep in their beds.

  He turned off the imperial way, and turned again, and then again. He came to his destination, without having fully acknowledged to himself this was where he’d been going all along.

  He gave the horse to a sleepy stableboy, ordered it rubbed down, given water and food. He offered a handful of coins for the labour. He didn’t count them out, saw the boy’s startled surprise, watched him lead the horse away.

  He stood a moment in the dark street before the inn’s locked door. The boy led the horse into a stable yard, the hoofbeats receding. There was no one abroad. Daiyan turned away from the inn’s door without knocking. He walked a little distance from the stable. He climbed the stone wall and dropped down silently into a courtyard.

  It was a good inn, the best in the city. There was a fountain, not flowing any more, though rainwater had collected from the storm, he saw. There were trees around the edges of the courtyard and beside the fountain. He couldn’t have explained what he was doing here, entering this way, over the wall like a thief.

  He walked to the fountain. He looked up and saw the moon, which had cleared the horizon and the wall. He turned to look back at the inn, three storeys tall, in the summer night.

  She was standing on her balcony, wrapped in a robe, and she was looking down at him.

  Spar by the lake at Ma-wai. Held in his mind as he turned to face a daiji. Real now, in the night. Here. An image holding a man to the world, keeping him from being lost. He was afraid again. A different kind of fear. There were different kinds.

  He moved slowly forward to stand below her. He lifted his open hands out from his sides. He said, quietly, directing his voice, the way you learned to do when you commanded others, “I mean no harm, my lady. We have ... met each other before.”

  “I know who you are, Commander Ren,” she said.

  It was dark where he was, down in the courtyard, only a waning moon behind him. He wasn’t wearing his military tunic.

  “How?” he asked. Her hair was loose on her shoulders.

  She said nothing to that, only stood there, looking down. He heard wind chimes in the branches of one tree behind him.

  He said, “Forgive me.”

  The chimes, wind in leaves.

  She said, “We will wake someone. You may come up.”

  IT IS AS IF SHE’S EXHAUSTED all her courage with those words. It is one thing to challenge the world, but she’s just invited a man into her bedchamber at night.

  She leaves the balcony, re-enters the room. There is always a small brazier left burning for her, a wine vessel and candles beside it. She lights a candle at the brazier and crosses the room to use that to light the lamp on the desk they have provided for her. It is understood that she wakes in the night and writes sometimes.

  Her hands are shaking, she sees. It is difficult, in fact, to deal with the candle and the lamp. Her heart is beating very fast.

  She is lighting the second lamp, beside her bed, when she hears a sound from the balcony and he climbs over the railing there. She blows out the candle, sets it down, turns to look at him. She places her hands inside her sleeves, folded before her. They are still trembling.

  The bed linens, she sees, are in disarray. Of course they are. She can feel that her cheeks are flushed. She moves away from the bed, towards her desk.

  He stops just inside the room. The night is behind him, and the moon in the window. He bows, twice. “Forgive me,” he says again.

  “I invited you, Commander Ren.” It would be easier, she thinks, if her hands would only be still.

  He inclines his head. He seems calm, self-possessed. She remembers that about him.

  “I am able to report to you, Lady Lin, that your honourable husband will be kept safe in the north.”

  “I was unaware he was in danger,” she says. Which is true.

  “I have outraced tidings. There has been trouble across the river. Someone killed Xiaolu soldiers, took horses. I had my soldiers move people into Shuquian in the event there was a response. I sent my best officer to your husband.”

  “The one I met?” she asks. “The one who loosed an arrow at me?”

  Her hands are all right now, mostly.

  He seems uneasy for the first time. She doesn’t know if that is good. She doesn’t know why she’s asked him up. Or, she doesn’t want to think about it, more accurately.

  He says, “Yes, my lady. Deputy Commander Zhao.”

  She nods. “My husband can be difficult when someone tries to take him from his work for the collection.”

  A first, faint smile. She remembers him with their bronze bells, how he’d known about them.

  He says, “Deputy Commander Zhao can be difficult at all times, my lady.”

  She feels herself smiling, doesn’t want it seen for some reason. “A battle of sorts, then?”

  “I am quite sure we will have protected your honourable husband, my lady.”

  She nods her head again, tries to make it brisk. “I am being ungracious to a guest. I have wine. Will you let me warm a drink for you?”

  He looks awkward again. “My lady, I have ridden all day and until just now tonight. I am embarrassed. My clothing, my boots.”

  Some things can be addressed, if one is able to think clearly.

  “Do not give this a thought. You have brought me reassuring word. I am grateful. There is a basin of water on that table by the wall. I will pour the wine and then sit at my desk to leave you privacy. You may take a tunic of my husband’s from the chest when you have washed.”

  “I dare not presume so much.”

  She laughs quietly. “If your men saved his life, I think you may.”

  She turns, not waiting for him to reply. She is pleased to see that her fingers are steady when she picks up the wine and seats it on the stand over the brazier. She readies two cups, keeping her back to the
room.

  She hears him moving, a grunt, the sound of boots removed. Then other sounds, water splashing softly. She is thinking about what he has told her—a way of not thinking about anything else.

  She says, still facing away from him, “Commander, why were your men even up by Shuquian?”

  A pause, she can picture him hesitating over the basin. He says, his voice careful, “Routine patrolling along the river. We need to understand the conditions there.”

  “Do you? Are they not other commanders’ prefectures up north?”

  For the second time, amusement in his tone. “Do you study the military divisions of Kitai as well as shaping poetry, Lady Lin?”

  “Not in any detail,” she murmurs.

  The wine isn’t ready yet. A dipped finger (which one isn’t suppose to do) tells her as much. She crosses to her desk, head averted. She sits beside the lamp there. There is a silence. Then, whatever this encounter has been, it becomes something else.

  He says, “I am sorry. I spoke untruthfully. The trouble north of the river was caused by me. I crossed the border, disguised, to see what I could discover. Zhao Ziji brought others of our company north, out of concern. I killed four Xiaolu horsemen. Took two horses.”

  She spins around. She had said she would not. Why did you do that? she wants to say, but also, Why are you telling me this?

  But words aren’t there for her. He is bent over the basin, bare to the waist, his back to her. She sees what she sees. She brings both hands to her mouth.

  In Hanjin, in her home, the night of the day he’d blocked an arrow in the Genyue with his shield, she and her father had heard him say, I was born into the world to win them back.

  Now she sees his upper body. His naked back. She tries to imagine a man doing this. She cannot.

  Through her fingers, she whispers, “When ... when did you have that done to you?”

  He turns quickly. Sees her looking at him.

  “My lady! You said—!” He stops. He takes a step back, away from her, stands against the wall beside the balcony, as if trying to find a place to defend himself. From her?

  “Have what done?” he asks, his voice altered. “What do you see?”

  Her eyes widen. “You don’t know?”

  “Lady Lin. Please. What do you see?”

  She brings her hands down. Slowly, carefully, she tells him.

  Sees him close his eyes, leaning against the wall. He stays like that.

  “You really didn’t know?” she repeats.

  He shakes his head. He opens his eyes, looks at her, she makes herself hold his gaze. He takes a step from the wall, standing very straight now, facing her. He holds a square of fabric in one hand, he had been washing himself. There are droplets of water on his face and torso.

  He draws a breath. He says, “My lady, I did not just come to report about your husband. Not so late at night.”

  Instinctively, she folds her hands in her sleeves again, then changes her mind and lets them fall to her sides. She waits. Her heartbeat, again.

  He says, very quietly, “I met a daiji this afternoon by the lake at Ma-wai.”

  The words drop into the stillness of the room like pebbles into a pool. Shan looks at him. She is aware she is holding her breath.

  He says, “She did this to me, when I went away from her.”

  She makes herself breathe. She is biting her lip. A bad habit. She says, carefully, “You lay with a fox-woman today and you are—”

  “No. I did not. I was ... I was able to look at her and then walk away.”

  “I ... didn’t think men could do that. If the tales ... if they are true.”

  He looks, she is thinking, like a man who truly has gone into the spirit world. It never occurs to her not to believe him. She thinks about that, later. His eyes and his voice, and what she’s seen on his back.

  “I didn’t think so either,” Ren Daiyan says. He sets the cloth down by the basin, so he stands empty-handed before her, shirtless, and he says, “I did so by thinking of you.”

  Then, after another moment, he adds, “I am sorry, my lady. I have shamed myself. I will go now. Please turn your back again while I dress.”

  She finds she cannot speak. It seems brighter in the room, though, and not from moonlight or the lamps.

  WHAT DO YOU SEE? he’d asked, and she’d told him, standing on the far side of the room in a green robe, beside the lamp on her writing desk.

  Never forget our rivers and mountains lost.

  Those were the characters. The daiji had fixed his own words, his lifelong heart’s desire, onto his body. He was tattooed like a western barbarian, a compelled soldier, a criminal branded with his crime.

  But this was different. This was from the spirit world. He understood now why he’d felt that searing blade of pain as he’d walked away from the lake. He had passed out, lost the world. He’d rejected the daiji, as she thought, for his task in the world, and she’d given what she’d called a gift—to remember her by. Remember the lost prefectures, or remember a lost world of delight—that could have taken him away from this toil.

  The daiji hadn’t known (he believed) about the spar in his mind. The woman standing here now.

  He heard himself telling Lin Shan, after all, about Ma-wai, how he’d been able to turn and face a fox-woman and still hold to the world, to his own time, to mortal life, because of her, because of the mortal woman in this room.

  He hadn’t meant to say it. He didn’t think he’d meant to say it, coming here. He hadn’t meant to come here. He didn’t think he’d meant to come here.

  He hadn’t thought she’d be on the balcony.

  Could a man be any more confused? He didn’t know, today, tonight, what he thought. About anything. How was the world intended to unfold? Was it fine silk unwound in a merchant’s shop? Or a stained hemp cloth opened to reveal the dagger that ended a life?

  He said the only thing he could think to say, having confessed what he hadn’t known he would confess.

  “I will go now. Please turn your back again while I dress.”

  He would put on his sweat-stained tunic, his boots, climb down again (he was good at that, he was skilled at all such things), reclaim his tired horse, and make his way to the barracks. Where he should have gone in the first place.

  The woman’s hands were by her sides. He had seen that they’d been shaking, before. He was observant, he’d always been observant. Her courage, and trust in him, had been very great. The hands weren’t trembling now, he saw, and she didn’t turn her back on him.

  Her voice was gentle. She said, “The characters. The calligraphy. The ... the daiji did this in the emperor’s hand, Ren Daiyan. Slender Gold. You are marked as no one has ever been.”

  “You believe me?” he asked.

  It mattered a great deal, he realized. He scarcely believed himself, his own story. Fox-woman’s scent, wind blowing the other way. Red silk in that wind. He heard wind chimes behind him now, outside.

  “I think I must. I have seen your back. They are flawless, the characters. How should we imagine we understand all things under heaven?”

  He was silent, looking at her.

  “You are very composed,” she said. “If that just happened today.” She finally turned, but only to go to the brazier. She lifted the wine vessel and poured out two cups.

  I need to go, he thought. She turned back to him, cups in hand.

  “Composed? No. I am ... not myself. I would not be intruding here otherwise. I am sorry, my lady.”

  “You can stop saying that,” she said. “I am ... honoured that in some way I helped keep you among us, Commander Ren.” She crossed the room, extended a cup. He took it. She was too close.

  He said, “Qi Wai will be safe. I am very sure.”

  She smiled at that. “You said. I believed you.” She sipped from her wine. He put his down untouched, beside the basin. “Will you turn around?” she said. “I would see those characters again.”

  He turned around. W
hat else was he going to do? She put her cup beside his. A moment later he felt her finger on the first character on his back, right side, at the top. Never forget.

  Slender Gold, the emperor’s brush. He was not himself tonight. He was looking at the moon, above the courtyard wall and trees. Self-control was something in which he had always taken pride. His goals were held before him. Life steered by them, as by a star. He had walked away from a daiji today. He was still here, in this world. Because of her.

  He cleared his throat. “My lady, this is difficult. I am not entirely able to ...”

  She was following the second character down, then back up, then to the third, as if making the brush strokes. The mountains, the rivers.

  “Not able to do what?” she asked, and she was closer than the fox-woman had been. He heard strain in her voice. He closed his eyes, facing the moon.

  “To show ... proper respect, if you do this,” he said.

  “Good,” said Lin Shan, and finished tracing the last character, low on his back: lost.

  He turned and took her in his arms.

  TWO THINGS SHAN remembers later, from the time after he brought her to the bed, from when they were together there. One is astonished, breathless laughter rising in her, the release of it.

  “What is amusing?” he’d asked, and she told him how she’d just then been trying to remember a passage from The Dark Girl and the Emperor, one of the old texts of lovemaking, a trick women could do.

  He laughs (a relief, that he does) and tells her, “You need not, Shan. This is not a pleasure house.”

  And so, “No pleasure?” she’d asked, making her voice go upwards in false indignation. He’d laughed again, then lowered his mouth to her breasts, one and then the other, answering her that way.

  The second thing, later, when he is above her, inside her. He pauses, leaving her suspended in a never-known place between need and something near to pain, and he says, “You must know I am yours, all my days.”

  “That is good,” she says, her body open to him, to his gaze.

  He says, after a moment, “You understand I am a soldier.”

  She nods her head.

  “And that there may be war.”

  Again, she nods. In that moment her hands are on his back, needing him even closer, deeper in, urgently—and the fingers of her left hand find the character for Never forget.