Under Heaven

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Figures appeared at the head of the lane, blocking it.

  There was no lantern at that end, it was hard to be sure of their number. Tai stopped, swearing under his breath. He looked quickly behind him. Was unsurprised to see more men at the lower end now, where he’d entered. Eight of them in all, he guessed. He was in the middle of an empty street. The doors of shops and houses on either side were, naturally, barred.

  He had only one of his own swords. It was considered bad manners to carry double blades into a courtesan house, but it was also regarded as foolish to go unarmed through night streets in any city.

  He might have been foolish just now. He drew his sword.

  There were tactics prescribed on Stone Drum Mountain, early levels of teaching, for dealing with a challenge such as this. It was set as a formal lesson. One was unlikely to defeat or break free of eight men. Four was possible.

  Tai drew two quick breaths and then sprinted forward, shouting at the top of his voice for the city guards. He heard a yell behind him, but he’d have a few moments with half of these men, whomever they were.

  And he did, as it happened, know how to fight.

  He hadn’t had much use for those skills in years, but the second son of General Shen Gao, trained by the Kanlin on their holy mountain, ran towards this new set of assassins with a rising, useful anger—he recognized it, let it surge, channelled it.

  Sword extended, he whipped through a full, running circle as he neared them, to confuse, cause hesitation. He leaped at the last house wall on his right, driving himself with three or four short steps, running up the wall, and then he sprang back from it, flying above the heads of the men—three only, not four, which was good—and he stabbed one and slashed another with his first two airborne passes, the good blade cutting deep, both times.

  He landed behind the one who remained. That man whipped around, lifting his sword to parry.

  It was at that point Tai saw that the man wore a uniform—the colours of the army of the Second District. The same as his own five cavalrymen. These were the military guards he’d been shouting for. Tai froze, blade levelled.

  “What is this?” he cried. “I am one of your officers! The commander at Iron Gate sent word of me!”

  The second man he’d wounded moaned, lying in the muddy street.

  The one still on his feet spoke rapidly, through shock and fear. “This is known! Your presence is required! It was judged you might decline to come. We were sent to ensure it happened.” He bowed, jerkily.

  Tai heard a rustling sound. He looked up quickly, saw someone hurtling down from a rooftop, behind the four other soldiers who had rushed up from the far end of the lane. He made as urgent a decision as he had in a long time.

  “Song, no! Wait! Leave them!”

  Wei Song landed, rolled, and stood up. She hadn’t been going to a courtesan house: issues of courtesy had not applied. She drew both her swords from the scabbards behind her and extended them.

  “Why?” was all she said.

  Tai drew a steadying breath.

  “Because there are twenty more soldiers here, not all of them incompetent, some with bows, and you are in a city I control.”

  The voice was assured, and amused. It came from the square behind Tai. He turned, slowly.

  There were half a dozen torches by a curtained sedan chair. The small square was otherwise empty, kept that way by soldiers at the edges, blocking each street. At least twenty men. The curtains of the litter were drawn back on this side, so that the man within might see what was happening—and be seen in the cast torchlight.

  Tai still felt anger within himself, a hot stone. He was dealing with the sick sensation that could follow violence. The two men on the ground were silent now. He didn’t know if he’d killed them. The first one, probably, he thought. He walked slowly over to the sedan chair and the torches.

  “Why have you done this?” he asked, his voice demanding, too arrogant. He was aware of the tone. He didn’t care. He was fairly sure who this was.

  “You look like your father,” said the thin, very tall man in the litter, stepping out to stand gazing at Tai. He used a stick, a heavy one, to support himself.

  And that made it certain. A city I control.

  Tai bowed. It was necessary, whatever anger he felt. He cleared his throat. “Sir, I told your officers outside the walls that I would be honoured to call upon you in the morning.”

  “And I have no doubt you would have done so. But I am an impatient man, and disinclined to follow the prefect in a matter such as this. You would have had to attend upon him first.”

  A matter such as this.

  It would always be the horses now, Tai thought.

  Governor Xu Bihai, commanding both the Second and the Third Military Districts, smiled at him. It was a cold smile.

  Tai sheathed his sword.

  “The Kanlin,” the governor said, in a paper-thin voice. “She is retained by you?”

  No time wasted. Tai nodded. “She is, my lord.”

  “And was assigned to guard you tonight?”

  “Assigned to do so always.” He knew what this was about. He was afraid again, suddenly.

  “She was not walking with you.”

  “Kanlin are conspicuous, sir. I chose to remain otherwise. She was not far away. As you see.”

  The cold smile again. The military governor had to be sixty years old, his long chin-beard and hair were white, but his posture and manner were commanding, notwithstanding the stick he held.

  “In that case, she will be permitted to live. You do not object if she is beaten? Twenty strokes?”

  “I do object. I would take it as an insult and an injury to me.”

  A raised eyebrow. The torches flickered in a flare of wind. “She drew weapons on soldiers in my city, Master Shen.”

  “She drew blades on men in darkness who appeared to be attacking me, Governor Xu. I say this with respect. I would have had cause to dismiss her, or worse, had she not done so.”

  A silence.

  “I will indulge you in this,” Xu Bihai said finally. “In memory of your father, whom I knew. I served under him in the west.”

  “I know that. He spoke of you often,” Tai said. Not quite a lie. He did know how the governor’s leg had been injured. “Thank you,” he added. He bowed again.

  It was entirely the governor’s right, even a duty, to have Song executed or beaten to crippled incapacity. This was a market town, thronged with drunken foreigners and transients. Hard men from the long roads. The soldiers were charged with keeping order. Certain rules followed upon that.

  “Wei Song, sheathe weapons, please,” Tai called. He didn’t look back. He heard, with relief, the doubled snick as she obeyed.

  “Thank you,” he said again, to her this time. She was Kanlin. They weren’t servants, to be ordered about as such.

  Neither was he. He said, “I am honoured, of course, beyond my worth, that the governor has taken himself abroad in the night to hold converse with me. I had been greatly looking forward to your counsel and tidings in the morning. I still am. What hour would be convenient?”

  “This one,” said Xu Bihai. “You weren’t listening. I said I was disinclined to see you after the prefect.”

  “I was listening, sir. I do not decree the protocols of our glorious Ninth Dynasty, governor. And I am disinclined to have my appointments for a day—or a night—decided by others, however greatly I honour them.”

  The white-bearded governor appeared to be considering this. Distant sounds drifted, music and laughter, one voice briefly lifted in anger, but they were alone in this square with the soldiers and Wei Song.

  “I don’t see that you have a choice,” Xu Bihai said, at length, “though I note your disinclination. I will not apologize for protecting the interests of this military district, but I can offer you mare’s teat grape wine at my residence and an escort to the entertainment district afterwards.”

  Tai drew a breath. He needed to decide, s
wiftly, how far he would take this—and how far the governor would.

  He was still angry. His father had liked this man. Elements to be balanced. Inwardly, he shrugged. A princess in Rygyal had changed his life. A moment such as this was part of that change. It was unlikely to be the last.

  “I have not tasted mare’s teat wine in more than two years,” he said. “I should be honoured to be your guest. Shall we invite the prefect to join us?”

  For a moment, the governor’s lean face betrayed astonishment, then he threw back his head and laughed. Tai allowed himself to smile.

  “I think not,” said Xu Bihai.

  IN THE EVENT, Tai came to understand, the governor wished to say only one thing to him, but he wanted quite urgently to say it. And to do so before anyone else spoke to the young man who now controlled enough Sardian horses to play a role in the balance of power towards the end of a long reign.

  The wine was luxuriously good. It was spiced with saffron. Tai honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted that.

  The two young women who served them were Xu’s daughters, unmarried. Each wore flawless silk, one in pale green, the other in blue, low-cut in a fashion that had evidently emerged, so to speak, since Tai had left Xinan.

  Their perfume was intoxicating, each different from the other’s. They both had painted moth-eyebrows, tinted blue-green, and a side-falling hairstyle with extravagant hairpins. They wore jewelled, closed-toe slippers, gold rings and jade earrings, and had amused, confident eyes.

  It was, he thought, unfair.

  The governor, cross-legged on a platform couch opposite, clad in doubled black robes, with a black hat and a red belt, seemed oblivious to the effect his daughters were having on his guest, but Tai was entirely certain that the wine and lamplit room, and the two exquisite, scented women had been carefully orchestrated.

  Wei Song was in the courtyard with the soldiers. The two men Tai had wounded were expected to live. He’d asked, on arrival here. This was good, of course, but reminded him that his skills were not what they’d once been: he had been trying to kill.

  They ate five-spice dried river-fish in three sauces, and early fruits served in ivory bowls by the daughters, not servants. They drank the saffron wine, cups steadily refilled. Talked of spring crops outside the city walls and along the river, of thunderstorms and a tail-star apparently seen in the east earlier that month, what it might presage. The two women brought water and hand cloths for them to wash and dry their fingers as they ate. Curving towards Tai, offering a lacquered bowl of scented water, the one in green allowed her hair (in strategic disarray to one side) to brush his hands. This was the “waterfall” hairstyle made popular by the Precious Consort, Wen Jian herself, in Xinan.

  It was unfair.

  Xu’s daughter smiled very slightly as she straightened, as if sensing, and enjoying, his response. Her father said, briskly, “Commander Lin writes that he proposed to you a position of high rank in the cavalry of the Second Army, a number of the Sardian horses to remain as yours, and your selection of officers to serve under you.”

  So much for polite discussion of stars, or millet and its ripening time and best-suited soil.

  Tai set down his cup. “Fortress Commander Lin was generous beyond my merits, and behaved with impeccable courtesy to his guest, on behalf of his military district.”

  “He’s ambitious, and clever enough. He would,” said Xu Bihai. “I imagine he will serve the district well if promoted.” Tai thought he owed the commander that much.

  “Perhaps,” said Xu indifferently. “He isn’t well liked and he isn’t feared. Makes it harder for him to rise. Your father would have agreed.”

  “Indeed,” said Tai noncommittally.

  He received a glance from the other couch. The two daughters had withdrawn to the door, either side of it, decorative beyond words. He very much liked the one in green. Her eyes, that knowing half-smile.

  “Perhaps further persuasion from me will be of use in causing you to reconsider his offer?”

  “I am honoured you would even consider me worthy of persuading,” murmured Tai. “But I told Commander Lin—a man I liked, incidentally—that it would be folly for me to contemplate a course of action before I consult with those at court.”

  “First Minister Wen Zhou?”

  “Indeed,” Tai repeated.

  “Your elder brother, advising him?”

  Tai nodded, uneasy suddenly.

  “Two men I understand you have reason to dislike.”

  “I should regret if you continued in such an understanding,” Tai said carefully. His pulse had quickened. “My duty to the Son of Heaven, may he rule a thousand years, surely requires that I take counsel in Xinan with his advisers.”

  There was a silence. It was not a statement that could be challenged, and both men knew it. Governor Xu lifted his cup, sipped thoughtfully. He put it down. Looking at Tai, his expression changed. “I can almost pity you,” he said.

  “I should regret that, as well,” Tai said.

  “You do know what I mean?”

  Tai met his gaze. “I might have chosen a simpler life, had it been my own decision, but if we accept the teachings of the Sacred Path, then we also accept—”

  “Do you? Do you follow those teachings?”

  The discussion had become uncomfortably intimate. Tai said, “I try. The balancing. Male and female, hot and cold, awareness of all five directions. Stillness and motion, polarities. The flow between such things suits my nature more than the Cho Master’s certainties, however wise he was.”

  “You learned this on Stone Drum Mountain?”

  It was curious how many people seemed to know of his time there. He remembered Rain telling him that—and what else she’d said. How it might be useful. Shaping a mystery about him …

  He shook his head. “From before. My own readings. It was a reason I went there.” He saw no reason not to be honest, to a point. It had been one reason.

  Xu Bihai nodded, as if a thought had been confirmed.

  He stared at Tai another long moment, then, as if speaking only of cultivated fields again, or early-summer rainfall, said quietly, “I understand you must consult at the palace before acting, but I would sooner kill you tonight and lose all the horses for the empire and be exiled to the pestilent south, or ordered to commit suicide, than have you give them to Roshan. This, Master Shen Tai, you need to know.”

  THE PROMISED ESCORT took him in the governor’s sedan chair to the entertainment district. He hadn’t been in one of those for a long time. The cushions were soft, there was a scent of aloeswood. He was slightly drunk, he realized.

  The bearers stopped. Tai opened the curtains to reveal the quite handsome entrance of the White Phoenix Pleasure Pavilion, which had a new roof, a covered portico, lanterns hanging by the entrance, wide steps going up, and doors open to the mild night.

  The leader of Tai’s escort went up and spoke to an older woman at the entrance. Tai knew—and there was nothing he could, in courtesy, do about it—that he was not going to be permitted to pay for anything here tonight.

  The soldiers indicated that they would wait for him. He wanted to dismiss them, but that wasn’t possible if they had orders from the governor, and he knew they did. They would take him back to the inn eventually. If he spent the night here they’d remain outside until morning with the sedan chair. This was the way things were going to be now. Men were investing in him. He could try to find it amusing, but it was difficult.

  I would sooner kill you tonight. This, you need to know.

  Murder as an alternative to investment, he thought wryly. And given consequences so sure and so severe, even for a governor—since word had gone ahead to Xinan and they would know about the horses very soon—Governor Xu’s statement carried its own uncompromising message.

  Roshan was not to be allowed to claim these.

  Roshan was a nickname, given by soldiers long ago, adopted by the court. The man’s real name was An Li. He
was a one-time barbarian cavalryman, then an officer, a general, now a military governor himself commanding the Seventh, the Eighth, and most recently also the Ninth District armies. A man everyone watched. And feared.

  Tai had been away too long. There were elements—balances—he needed to learn, and he didn’t have a great deal of time.

  I can almost pity you was the other thing Xu Bihai had said. And at Kuala Nor among the ghosts a blue-tattooed Taguran had said nearly the same thing.

  He had seen Roshan only once, in Long Lake Park, watching princes and aristocrats at a polo game. The general, visiting from his base in the northeast, in Xinan to receive yet another honour (and the gift of a city palace), had sat with the imperial party. He had been unmistakable in his colossal bulk, clad in brilliant, overwhelming red, his laughter ringing across the meadow.

  He hadn’t always been so fat, but one needed to be older than Tai to remember An Li’s fighting days. He would destroy a horse under him today.

  It was said that he laughed all the time, even when killing people, that he had never learned to read, that he was advised by a steppe demon, and had given the emperor certain potions for the delights of darkness in that time when Taizu first turned his aging eyes—and heart—to the youthful glory of Wen Jian.

  It was also said that the only man Roshan had ever feared—and he had very greatly feared him, as everyone did—was the infinitely subtle, calculating, now-deceased first minister, Chin Hai.

  With Chin gone, there was a new prime minister, and though Wen Zhou might be a favoured cousin of the Precious Consort, and owe his appointment to that as much as anything else, Roshan was also beloved of the emperor and had long been said to be equally close to the exquisite Jian—and perhaps more than merely close, depending on which rumour you heard and believed.

  In the night street before a courtesan house in Chenyao’s pleasure district, remembering a summer day in the park, Tai recalled looking across at the corpulent figure of the military governor from a distance and flinching inwardly at the image of such a figure embracing, crushing, the most beautiful woman of the age.