River of Stars

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Fuyin swallowed hard. This one, too, he thought. This one had passion as well. He, too—

  Daiyan said, “And in that peace, what of your serene lordship’s beloved people in Hanjin? In Yenling? Xinan? In poor, abandoned Shuquian in the north? In every town and village above the Wai? Every farm? Are they not your endless duty, too, my lord emperor? Are they not Kitai?”

  “Not any more,” said the emperor, his voice clear and absolute.

  It seemed to Wang Fuyin that the room vibrated then, as if in the aftermath of the sounding of some great bell.

  He saw the emperor look calmly around, then back at the man in front of him. Zhizeng said, “We had decided so. We had decided Kitai needs peace more than anything. And there are prices to be paid, exchanges made, in any treaty. We have been forced, by errors before our time, to do as much.”

  He gestured, one hand, a dismissal.

  Men came forward. Ren Daiyan was led away. He had entered the throne room by himself. He left escorted—surrounded—by six guards.

  He was taken from there to the prison of Shantong, a structure beside the palace, on the hill above the city, built down into the earth. There were no other prisoners held there at that time. It was for Ren Daiyan alone.

  FROM HIS CELL, if he stood on a bench, there was a view through iron bars of West Lake in all its beauty below. Sometimes music could be heard, sometimes a woman’s voice singing, drifting up from red lantern boats on the water, even in autumn, if a night was mild under stars.

  As time passed, bringing colder nights, there were no more pleasure boats on the lake after dark. The sound one heard, listening from up the hill, was pine trees in the wind as winter came.

  CHAPTER XXX

  The first magistrate appointed to prepare the formal charges of treason against Commander Ren Daiyan withdrew from his office after a brief interval, surrendering the great honour of that assignment with abject and extreme regret—citing duties to his family in the southwest compelling an extended absence from court.

  The second judicial official selected by Prime Minister Hang Hsien also lasted only a few weeks. In this case, it appeared, challenging concerns regarding his own health required him to undertake a period of rest and the ingestion of certain arcane remedies.

  The third magistrate, established to be in impeccable health and with family located in the capital, had not yet completed his investigations.

  He did concede, in a private encounter with the prime minister, that there might be some difficulty in presenting a conclusive case for treasonous behaviour. He also, cautiously, made mention of widespread public admiration for the imprisoned man. There were reports of songs and poetry, tea room and entertainment district talk (loose, idle talk, he hastened to add) concerning the commander’s heroism and loyalty and his well-known victories. There was even a poem—men were saying it had been written by Ren Daiyan himself (which was surely nonsense, the magistrate was again quick to say)—about avenging the Calamity of Hanjin.

  It appeared to be widely known that Commander Ren’s forces had been preparing to retake the imperial capital—the former capital, he amended—with a stratagem when they’d been ordered to withdraw.

  No, the magistrate had no notion how all this information was being disseminated. Did the illustrious prime minister know, perhaps? There was no reply. He hadn’t expected one.

  Would it be at all possible, the magistrate inquired casually, as if merely musing aloud over tea, to simply have Ren Daiyan dismissed from rank and command with honour, perhaps as one who had done more than Kitai could fairly demand of any man? Let him slip into obscurity somewhere? Didn’t he come from the west? Couldn’t he ...?

  The prime minister of Kitai thought, privately, that this was a perfectly good idea. He’d had the same thought more than once, often late at night. He was, however, only a servant of his emperor, who held a different view, and there were other elements at work in this affair, important ones.

  Aloud, he said only that there were dimensions to the matter that he could not, the magistrate understood, discuss.

  The magistrate understood entirely, absolutely.

  He was urged, in calm, forceful language, to proceed with making the case for treason. He was to remind himself that his emperor was trusting him and that the future for a man could be either bright or dark. He was also advised, gently, that it would not be acceptable if he were to become ill, or discover concerns that might take him from his task.

  As it happened, the prime minister had read the poem in question. One of his spies in the city had brought him a copy, affixed, apparently, to a wall in one of the mercantile streets. There could be times, Prime Minister Hang Hsien thought, when the new printing devices might cause more trouble than any benefits they offered.

  He had heard Ren Daiyan speak, more than once now. He didn’t, for a moment, doubt that the lines could be his. He had them in memory already:

  The rain stops as I stand on the wide plain.

  I look at the clearing sky and let loose a warrior’s cry.

  My battlefields have covered eight thousand li.

  We must not sit idle or we will grow old with regret.

  The shame of Hanjin lingers.

  When will the sorrow of the emperor’s people end?

  Let us ride our horses and carry our bows

  To shed the blood of barbarians.

  Let us restore Kitai’s glory of old,

  Recover our rivers and mountains,

  Then offer loyal tribute to the glorious emperor.

  Earlier that autumn, even before the first appointed magistrate had decided he was needed elsewhere, a message had arrived for the prime minister from the River Wai.

  It ought, properly, to have been sent directly to the emperor, under the new rules instituted by Zhizeng, but the sender might be excused for not knowing how court protocols had changed.

  Commander Zhao Ziji, entrusted on a temporary basis with command of the (very) large Kitan army currently positioned on the south bank of the Wai, presented his humble and respectful compliments to the prime minister of Kitai and regretfully begged to advise him that certain military personnel, evidently sent north from Shantong, had encountered one of the many bands of outlaws between the Great River and the Wai.

  It was Commander Zhao’s lamentable duty to report that these honourable soldiers—some fifty or so—appeared to have all been slain, though Commander Zhao could not confirm this, since some might have escaped, and he himself had received no communication from the court as to who these soldiers were and what their number had been.

  One of them, in a commanding officer’s uniform (what was left, after the bandits had stripped much of it away), he himself recognized from the western campaign against the barbarians: a particularly incompetent and cowardly man named Shenwei Huang. Perhaps he was being sent to the border for discipline by his peers, after his failures in the past? Commander Zhao sought guidance.

  He added that he had immediately sent cavalry to search out the bandit killers, but the countryside was wild, as the prime minister undoubtedly knew, and had been badly disrupted by the Altai horde that had swept through in winter and during their retreat in spring. He had doubts they would ever identify the perpetrators of this appalling deed.

  He closed by expressing the fervent wish that the prime minister would soon see fit to return Commander Ren Daiyan to the army, so that his far greater skill and wisdom could be brought to bear on calming a difficult situation along the new border. The last thing they needed, he wrote, was trouble here, including the possibility that bandits might cross the Wai and raid on the Altai side, breaching any treaty!

  The prime minister of Kitai wasn’t normally prone to the affliction of headaches, but had he felt one beginning behind his eyes, reading this.

  He hadn’t the least doubt what had happened. He had many doubts as to how to proceed. He realized he needed to know more about this Zhao Ziji. Was the man ambitious? He didn’t think so, rememberin
g him at Little Gold Hill, but men did change, and that army’s commander was imprisoned here, which could cause such changes.

  If Commander Zhao and a force of sixty thousand on the Wai decided that they were displeased with current judicial processes, what might they do?

  On the other hand, he had an emperor whose desires were clear (if never spoken aloud), and they did have a treaty now, with terms and conditions (not all written down), and the barbarian army had indeed survived to get home from Hanjin. They would surely be engaged in recruiting new riders even now.

  Meanwhile, trade had already begun at designated places along the Wai. The government was trading, collecting tariffs. Normal life was beginning—just beginning—to resume. There was money coming in, finally. The Altai needed rice, they needed medicine, they wanted tea and salt. Surely the barbarians understood all this? Surely the treaty made as much sense to them? If so, his plan, the emperor’s plan, had a chance to succeed. But there were so many things he needed to do right to make it happen.

  Dreams of his father did not help.

  THE CONSIDERABLY BESET prime minister avoided one particular meeting for a long time that autumn, then decided he was being cowardly. He received the honourable Lu Chao—a man he respected even more than he did the older brother, the poet.

  The Lu brothers had been opponents of his father. Both had been exiled during the faction wars of the previous generation, and Hsien’s father, in turn, had been banished in the (fortunately brief ) time they were in power. But it was Hang Dejin who had brought Lu Chen home from Lingzhou Isle and begun the downfall of Kai Zhen.

  The man currently imprisoned in a cell beside this palace had been a part of that. It was, he imagined, about this man that Lu Chao wished to speak. It wasn’t a difficult guess: there had been letters from East Slope.

  There were times when Hsien thought that living quietly on some estate—like Little Gold Hill, perhaps, but here in the south—would make for a better life than the one he was living now.

  He was usually able to dismiss such selfish ideas. It would be unfilial to withdraw, and disloyal to Kitai.

  He received Lu Chao in a room he used for such purposes. A servant poured chrysanthemum tea into porcelain cups of a distinctive red hue, then withdrew to stand by the door.

  Hsien had alerted the emperor about this meeting; he was instructed to report after it was over. The emperor remained, that autumn, what he had been from the beginning here: attentive, direct, afraid.

  Lu Chao praised the elegance of the teacups and the simplicity of the room. He congratulated Hsien on his assumption of office, and offered the view that the emperor was fortunate in his principal adviser.

  Hsien expressed his gratitude for these words, his regret concerning the death of Chao’s nephew, and asked after Lu Chen’s health.

  Chao bowed his thanks and said his brother was in health but quiet of late. He spoke, in turn, of his sorrow to have learned of Hang Dejin’s death, the unkindness of such an ending after a distinguished life.

  “There are many sorrows in this time of ours,” Hsien agreed. He gestured to two chairs and they sat beside each other with a small table between.

  Lu Chao said, “War brings grief. So does surrender.”

  “Is peace a surrender?”

  “Not always,” said the tall man. “Sometimes it is a gift. Shall we say, with the sages, that it depends on the terms given and taken?”

  “I think so,” said Hsien. His father would probably have asked a sly question of Lu Chao, pressed him for definitions that revealed his own views. Probably Chao would have seen that, and deflected the question back.

  He said, surprising himself, “This is the emperor’s treaty, honourable sir. I am making of it the best I can.”

  Lu Chao looked at him, a grave, thoughtful man. The older brother, the poet, was the impetuous, reckless, brilliant one. Or had been, perhaps, before his son was killed.

  Chao said, “I see. Would there be, perhaps, unrecorded terms to this treaty that are ... of particular importance to the emperor?”

  He was delicate, fair, discreet.

  Hsien said, suddenly, “I would be grateful to have you here in Shantong to advise the emperor with me.”

  Chao smiled. “Thank you. I am honoured by your words. Your father would not have agreed.”

  “My father is gone, to my sorrow and Kitai’s. Much has changed.”

  Another thoughtful look. “Indeed. Two emperors are imprisoned, hostages, in the farthest north.”

  “It is,” said Hsien carefully, “the daily sorrow of Emperor Zhizeng.”

  “Of course it is,” said Lu Chao. And repeated, “Of course it is.”

  They understood each other. It was possible to do that, with the right man, without forcing words into dangerous existence. It was sometimes necessary to do that, Hang Hsien thought.

  He said, “I am not speaking idly, sir. Will you consider coming to court to shape a new Kitai?”

  Lu Chao inclined his long neck in a bow from his chair. He sipped from his tea appreciatively. He said, “I could not do so while Commander Ren Daiyan, to whom we all owe so much, is imprisoned, or if he is punished for loyalty.”

  It was, thought Hsien, probably what he deserved. It felt very much like a blow. From quiet, tacit, shared understanding, to this. His hand was steady as he sipped his own tea. He had been well trained. But it was difficult to speak for a moment.

  In the silence, Chao spoke again. “You need not answer me, but it is my thought—and my brother agrees—that this matter might have been one of those terms of the peace that can never be written down or spoken aloud.”

  Hsien was remembering another meeting in this palace, in a larger, more richly decorated room: the Altai emissary, himself, the emperor of Kitai.

  He looked at the man beside him. Thinning hair, greying beard, simple cap, unassuming clothes. He felt too young, too inexperienced for this, though he knew he really wasn’t. A changed world could need younger men, and it wasn’t unfair to say the older generation had destroyed the dynasty.

  Without speaking, but forcing himself to meet the other’s eyes, he nodded. He owed this man that much, he felt.

  Lu Chao said, “It is a sorrow.”

  And Hsien, after a moment, said, “It is a sorrow.”

  Yan’po, who had been the kaghan of the Altai tribe for a long time and then, somewhat against his nature, an emperor, lord of the steppe, had died in his Central Capital at the end of summer.

  He was wrapped in a red cloth and placed outside the city walls on the grass at twilight for the wolves, as was the custom of his people. He was not young, Yan’po, and his death hadn’t been unexpected. He had never entirely mastered the change from tribal kaghan to emperor of many tribes. In some ways, he’d just been carried along, swept into the world, by his war-leaders.

  Word of his passing did not reach the Kitan court, or even the Altai Southern Capital, for some time. There were those who wished to delay the report to their own advantage, perhaps hoping to succeed Yan’po.

  If so, they were forestalled in this desire. They died, unpleasantly.

  At the time of Yan’po’s death, Wan’yen, the war-leader, had been trapped with an army of thirty thousand, the best soldiers of the grassland, inside the recently conquered Kitan city of Hanjin. His tribesmen in the north did not know this either. Information travelled with great difficulty in that time.

  Eventually, as it was later explained on the steppe, Wan’yen’s terrifying reputation, and that of his riders, caused the encircling Kitan army to turn, like the dogs they were, and flee south. Wan’yen could have pursued the cowards again, but instead he returned in triumph to the steppe, and there he received tidings of Yan’po’s passing to the Lord of the Sky.

  Wan’yen accepted the homage of those sharing this news. He drank kumiss with his tribal leaders. Informed that there were foolish pretenders in the Central Capital, he immediately started north and west—with half of his army. The rest of
his soldiers remained in the Southern Capital, against the unlikely event that the Kitan decided to come north, If so, they would need chastisement like the coward-dogs they were.

  The new emperor of the steppe was crowned at the beginning of winter—a new crown was made for the occasion by captured artisans, with jewels taken in the sack of Hanjin.

  Emperor Wan’yen swore, in rites led by bell-and-drum shamans, to accept and fulfill his duties to all the tribes of the grassland and the Lord of the Sky.

  He did not live long enough to do this in any significant way. He died the next summer, still young, still vigorous.

  He did not die in battle, which would have been honourable, or of old age as an elder of his people. A deadly spider bite had forced the sawing off of his right leg and the green poison followed, as it often does. In his last agony Emperor Wan’yen was heard to loudly shout his brother’s name over and over, and to cry wild words to do with dancing and a fire.

  His reign had lasted five months. It was followed by a violent struggle for succession.

  The peace between the newest steppe empire and Kitai, however, would last more than two hundred years along the border of the Wai, with almost unbroken trade, diplomats exchanged, even gifts between ever-changing emperors on their birthdays, as the rivers flowed, and the years.

  Fear and fury define her, even amid the quiet of East Slope, and the autumn and winter nights are sleepless. She is tired and close to tears in the cold mornings.

  It isn’t a question of being only a woman. None of the men has been able to achieve anything. She is thinking of Ziji, of Wang Fuyin, of the Lu brothers. Chao has even been to Shantong, spoken with the prime minister.