Under Heaven

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  “I know it for certain,” her brother said. “You were very brave to do it in the courtyard on an autumn morning.”

  She’d permitted herself to briefly claim the notion she’d been brave. Then shook her head resolutely.

  “No, I just did it where mother and the drum man decided. I wasn’t brave.”

  He smiled. “Li-Mei, just saying that makes you honest and brave. And that would be true, it will be true, when you are twenty-six, not six. I am proud of you. And father was. I saw it as he watched. Will you dance again for us. Inside? Tonight?”

  Her lip quivered. “He was … father was almost laughing.”

  Tai grew thoughtful. “Do you know a truth about people? When someone falls, if they don’t hurt themselves, it is funny, little sister. I’m not sure why. Do you have an idea?”

  She’d shaken her head. She didn’t know why it was funny, but she remembered giggling when Chao toddled and toppled into leaves.

  Tai added, “And father didn’t laugh. He was afraid for you at first, then afraid he would hurt your pride if he smiled, so he didn’t.”

  “I saw. He was holding it back. He covered his mouth with his hand.”

  “Good for you, seeing that. Yes. Because he’d been very proud. He said he hopes you’ll try again.”

  Her lip wasn’t quivering any more. “Did he? Truly, Tai?”

  And Tai had nodded. “Truly.”

  She still doesn’t know, to this day, if that last was the truth, but they’d walked out of the orchard together, Tai carrying the basin and the towel, and she’d danced for them again that night (the dancing costume hurriedly cleaned), among carefully spaced lanterns in the largest reception room, and she hadn’t fallen. Her father had smiled throughout, watching her, and patted her cheek when she came over to him after, and then he had stood up and bowed formally, without laughing at all, and given her a string of copper coins, the way one paid a real dancer, and then a sweet from one of his pockets, because she was six years old.

  IF SHE WERE TO ADDRESS within herself—or explain to someone who might ask and have any claim to an answer—a few of the very great differences between her older brothers, Li-Mei thinks, those long-ago conversations in the autumn orchard would do well enough.

  Liu had told her—that day, and endlessly after, in person and in letters from Xinan—that she represented the family in all she did. She accepted it as true: for her, for any woman or man. That was the way of things in Kitai. You were nothing in the empire without a family behind you.

  But she is beyond the empire now. The nomads, with their strings of long-maned horses and huge wolfhounds and their primitive yurts and harsh-sounding language … don’t know her family. Her father. Don’t care at all about that. They don’t even know—the thought comes hard to her—that she’s part of the Shen lineage. She’s been named as one of the imperial dynasty. That is how the Bogü see her, that’s why they look so proud, glancing at her as they ride by.

  The honour of it eludes her, just now. She is the embodiment of a smug deception and of her brother’s cold ambition. And no one at home by their small stream will ever see her again.

  She wonders, controlling emotion, if a letter will even reach her mother and Second Mother, if she sends one, or a dozen, with Bogü riders to the trading place by the river’s loop in spring.

  Tai had called her brave, had repeated over and again how clever she was, growing up, how both these things would help her in life. She isn’t so sure any more. He wouldn’t have been lying, but he might have been wrong.

  Bravery might mean only that she doesn’t weep at night, or insist on hearing the same interminable lament as they travel, and Li-Mei has no idea at all how cleverness might play out for the second or fifth wife of the kaghan’s heir.

  She doesn’t even know what number she’ll be.

  She knows nothing of the man she’s travelling to wed—whose bed she’ll share, if he even chooses. In her carried litter, Li-Mei draws a deep breath.

  She can kill herself. That has been done by women married in this fashion. It is considered a disgrace, of course. She isn’t sure she cares. She can decide to cry and mourn all the way north, and after they arrive.

  Or, she can represent her father’s bright, tall memory, and the version of herself Tai has held up like a bronze mirror all her life. The version of Shen Li-Mei that an aged empress had loved and trusted in her own exile after the Precious Consort came and bewitched with music and wit and beauty, changing the world.

  A woman could change the world.

  And Li-Mei is not the first woman to be exiled from her life and home, through marriage, through the ending of marriage, through someone’s death, through birth, through the inability to bear a child … in one hard way or another.

  She hears shouted orders. She recognizes some words by now, having paid attention. They are finally stopping for the night. The approach of summer on the steppe means very long days.

  The routine has been established: the two princesses remain in their litters while their yurts are prepared. They step out when summoned and proceed directly into the yurts where a meal is brought to them. After, they are readied for bed by their women, and they sleep. They rise so early that, even nearing summer, there is sometimes frost on the grass, or a mist rising.

  In the litter, as it is set down, Li-Mei makes a face. It is somewhat childlike, in fact, although she wouldn’t like to be told that. She pushes bare feet into slippers.

  She draws back her curtain herself—all the way this time—and she steps outside into evening light and the dusty wind of the wide steppe.

  The grass around her, the world, is green as emeralds. Her heart is beating fast. She hopes no one can tell that.

  One of her litter-bearers cries out, startled. A rider turns at the sound, sees her standing there and comes galloping back through the tall grass: the same one who glanced at her before. He swings off his horse before it has even stopped, hits the ground smoothly, running then slowing, an action done half a thousand times, Li-Mei thinks.

  He comes up, anger and urgency in his face. He speaks fiercely, gesturing at the litter for her to re-enter, no ambiguity in the message though she doesn’t understand the words.

  She does not move. He says it again, same words, more loudly, same harsh, pointing gesture. Others have turned now, are looking at them. Two more riders are coming quickly from the front of the column, their expressions grim. It would be wisest, Li-Mei thinks, to go back into her litter.

  She slaps the man in front of her, hard, across the face.

  The impact stings her hand. She cannot remember the last time she struck someone. She cannot remember ever doing so, in fact.

  She says, enunciating clearly—he will not understand, but it doesn’t matter: “I am the daughter of a Kitan general, and a member of the imperial family of the Celestial Emperor Taizu, Lord of the Five Directions, and I am bride-to-be of the kaghan’s heir. Whatever rank you hold, any of you, you will listen to me now. I am done with staying in a litter or a yurt all day and night. Bring me someone who understands a civilized tongue and I will say it again!”

  It is possible he might kill her.

  She may be standing at the edge of night here, of crossing over. His shame will be very great, struck by a woman.

  But she sees indecision in his eyes and relief floods through her. She is not going to die in this evening wind, they have too much vested in her coming north to this marriage.

  He had looked so proud moments before, riding past, gazing at her. With nothing but instinct as her guide, Li-Mei steps back, places her feet together, and bows, hands formally clasping each other inside the wide sleeves of her robe.

  Straightening, she then smiles, briefly, royalty condescending to ease a hard moment.

  Let them be confused, she thinks. Let them be uncertain of her. Showing anger and independence, then courtesy and even grace. She sees that the curtain of the other princess’s litter (the real princess) has been pul
led slightly back. Good. Let her watch. At least the idiotic song has stopped.

  Li-Mei hears birds; they are passing overhead, in great numbers. There is a lake nearby. That will be why they’ve chosen this place to stop for the night.

  She points to the water. “What lake is that? What is it called in your tongue?”

  She looks at the man in front of her. The other two have reined up by now, have remained on their horses, visibly uncertain as to how to proceed. She says, “If I am to live among the Bogü, I must learn these things. Bring me someone who can answer!”

  The man in front of her clears his throat and says, amazingly, “We name it Marmot Lake. There are many of them here. Marmots, their burrows on the hills, other side.”

  He speaks Kitan. She raises her eyebrows and favours him—again, keeping it brief—with a smile.

  “Why did you not tell me you spoke our language?”

  He looks away, manages a shrug that is meant to be disdainful, but fails.

  “You learned it trading by the river’s loop?”

  He looks quickly back at her, startled (but it wasn’t a difficult surmise).

  “Yes,” he says.

  “In that case,” she says, coldly now, “if you have anything to say to me, including requests I may or may not agree to, you will say it from now on in the language I know. And you will tell the others what I said to you just now. Do you understand me?”

  And, gloriously, after a short pause, he nods.

  “Tell them,” she says, and she turns her back on them to look east towards the lake and the birds. The wind is tugging at her hair, trying to pulls strands of it free of the long pins.

  There is a poem about that, the wind as an impatient lover.

  She hears him clear his throat again, then begin to speak in his own tongue to the riders who have gathered.

  She waits for him to finish before she turns back, and now she gives him something, gives it to all of them. “I will be trying to learn your language now. I will have questions. You must show me the riders who know Kitan. Do you understand?”

  He nods again. But, more importantly, one of those on horseback lifts a hand, as if asking permission to speak (which is proper!) and says, “I speak also your tongue, princess. Better than this one.” He grins, crooked-toothed. An edge of competition here. He is a bigger man.

  And Li-Mei sees, with pleasure, that the one standing before her looks angrily at the new claimant. She smiles at the one on the horse this time. “I hear you,” she says, “though I will form my own conclusions as to whose speech is best among those here. I will let you all know, after I’ve had time to judge.”

  They must be played, she thinks, kept in balance, the men here. Any woman from the Ta-Ming knows something of how to do that. Meanwhile, this is useful, the first good thing in who knows how long. All her life she has been known for asking questions, and now she might find some answers here.

  She needs to learn as much as she can about the man she’s marrying and the life of women on this steppe. If existence is to become a dark horror, she will end it herself. But if days and nights can be shaped in any way here beyond the Wall and the known world, she has decided to try. She is trying now.

  She looks at the one standing before her. “Your name?” She keeps her tone and bearing imperious.

  “Sibir,” he says. Then adds, “Princess.” And inclines his head.

  “Come with me,” she says, bestowing this upon him as a gift for the others to see and envy, “while they put together the yurts. Tell me where we are, how far we have yet to travel. Teach me the names of things.”

  She walks away without waiting for him, going towards the water, out of this jumbled column of riders and litters and disassembled yurts. The long sun throws her shadow ahead of her. Be imperial, she reminds herself, head high. The sky, she thinks, is enormous, and the horizon (the horizon she is married to) is astonishingly far. Sibir bestirs himself, follows quickly.

  It pleases her that he does not fall into stride beside her, remaining half a step behind. This is good. It is also good that her heartbeat has slowed. Her right hand stings from when she slapped him. She cannot believe she did that.

  The ground is uneven; there are rabbit holes, and those of other animals. Marmots. The grass is astonishingly high, almost to her waist as she nears the lake. Grasshoppers jump as she walks through. She will need better shoes, she realizes. She is unsure what clothing they packed for her at the palace. She deliberately ignored all that at the time, lost in anger. She will have one of her women open the trunks and boxes they are bringing north, and look.

  “I intend to do this each morning before we start and every evening when we make camp,” she says, looking around. “Also at midday when we stop to eat, unless you tell me there is danger. I want you to attend upon me. Do you understand?”

  Do you understand? She is sounding like her brother Liu. And yes, there is irony in that.

  The one named Sibir does not answer, unexpectedly. She looks over her shoulder, uneasily. She is not as confident as she sounds. How could she be? He has stopped walking, and so does she.

  His gaze is not on her.

  He says something in his own tongue. An oath, a prayer, an invocation? Behind them, in the column of riders, the others have also fallen silent. No one is moving. The stillness is unnatural. They are all looking in the same direction—towards the lake, but beyond it, above, to the hills where the marmot burrows are supposed to be.

  Li-Mei turns to see.

  There is another stirring of wind. She brings up both hands and crosses them on her breast protectively, aware again, powerfully, of how alone she is, how far away.

  “Oh, father,” she whispers, surprising herself. Why did you leave me to this?”

  Of all creatures living, the Kitan most fear wolves. A farming people—rice and cereal grains, irrigation and patiently cultivated fields—they always have. The wolves of the northern steppe are said to be the largest in the world.

  On a hill slope beyond the lake there are a dozen of them, in the open, motionless against the sky, lit by the late-day sun, looking down upon them, upon her.

  Sibir speaks, finally, his voice thick with tension. “Princess, we go back. Quickly! This is not natural. They let themselves be seen! Wolves never do. And—”

  His voice stops, as if the capacity for words, in any language, has been ripped away from him.

  She is still looking east. She sees what all of them see.

  A man has appeared on the hilltop, among the wolves.

  The beasts make room for him. They actually do that.

  And Shen Li-Mei knows with sudden, appalling certainty that her life’s journey is about to change again. Because paths can and do fork, in ways no man or woman can ever truly grasp, for that is the way the world has been made.

  CHAPTER X

  That same evening, in the Ta-Ming Palace, bordering the northern wall of Xinan, with the vast, enclosed Deer Park visible through open balcony doors, a woman is playing a stringed instrument in an upper-level audience chamber, making music for the emperor and a select company of his courtiers. His heir, Shinzu, is also present. The prince is cradling a steadily replenished cup of wine.

  The Emperor Taizu, Serene Lord of the Five Directions, ruling with the mandate of heaven, never takes his eyes from the woman making music. That observation applies to most of the people in the chamber. (One mandarin is also watching, out of the corner of his eye, a prodigiously large man near the emperor, trying—and failing—to see into his heart.)

  Wen Jian, the Precious Consort, is accustomed to being the object of all gazes. It is the way things are, the way she is. This is so whether she is making music, as now, or simply entering a room, or riding through one of the city or palace parks alongside water or wood. It is acknowledged as her due. She is already named among the legendary beauties of Kitai.

  She is twenty-one years old.

  She takes the breath away, alters the rhythm of the he
art. First time seen, every time after: as if memory is erased, then renewed. One thinks of impossible ripeness, then of porcelain or ivory, and tries to reconcile these images, and fails, seeing Wen Jian.

  This evening, her instrument is western in origin, a variant of the pipa, played with the fingers, not a plectrum. She was singing earlier but is not doing so now; only rippling notes fill the room, which has columns of alternating jade and alabaster, some of the latter so finely wrought that lanterns placed within them cast a light.

  A blind man sits with a flute on a woven mat beside the woman. At a moment of her choosing, she strokes a final note and he knows this for his cue and begins to play. She rises, and it can be seen she is barefoot, crossing the pink marble floor to stand before the throne that has been carried to this room.

  The Son of Heaven smiles behind the narrow, grey-white length of his beard. He is robed in white. His belt is yellow, the imperial colour. He wears a soft black hat pinned upon his head, black silk slippers stitched with gold, and three rings upon each hand. One of the rings is a green jade dragon. Only the emperor can wear this. Forty years ago, a little more, he killed his aunt and two of his brothers, and sixty thousand men died in the weeks and months following, as he claimed and secured the Phoenix Throne after his father’s passing.

  Bold and capable on the battlefield, learned, imaginative (much more than the brothers who died), a hardened leader, Taizu had secured the Ninth Dynasty and shaped the known world, using war to bring expansion and peace, and then that peace—enduring, for the most part—to begin the flow of almost unimaginable wealth to Kitai, to this city, this palace, which he’d built beside the smaller one that had been his father’s.

  He is no longer young. He is easily wearied now by affairs of state and governance after so many decades of diligent care. He is building his tomb northwest of Xinan, beside his father’s and grandfather’s, dwarfing them—but he wants to live forever.

  With her. With Jian, and her music and youth, the beauty of her. This improbable discovery, treasure beyond jade, of his white-haired latter days.