Mai suppressed a groan. When Jing was pregnant, she made Mai do everything for her, including running errands she should send servants to do. Though she knew her father wanted a son, she hoped Jing would miscarry early this time, instead of giving birth to a stillborn child. Better than nine months of hope only to have them dashed at the end.
"If you bear me a son, my blacksmith will craft him his own sword," Fu said firmly. "This belongs to Mai. She needs it to practice, for a wooden sword is no longer enough."
"She needs a husband," Jing grumbled, shuffling back inside.
"For your next birthday, I will see about finding you a husband," Father said. "But in the meantime…will you dance with me, Mai?"
Mai smiled. "Gladly, Father."
Five
Jing's time came early and the house rang with her screams even as the midwife tried to quiet her. Mai's father prayed in the shrine, where he could not hear the screaming, so when a messenger arrived at the gate, it was up to Mai to meet the man.
He wore the Emperor's colours of red and gold, and the scroll case he carried on his belt blended in with his robes so completely Mai almost didn't see it until he reached for it.
She instinctively dropped into a defensive pose, thinking that he was reaching for a blade.
The man laughed. "Easy, boy. I bring a message from the Emperor. Though it is a declaration of war, it is not war on Yeong Fu, but a call for him to provide troops. Perhaps if you are lucky, he will send you."
Mai opened her mouth to tell the messenger that she was no boy, nor would her father waste her life in a war against the rebellious cities to the north, but a particularly loud scream issued from the house.
"Sounds like war is already here," the messenger commented. He thrust a scroll into her hands. "Your father might go to war just to get some peace and quiet." Laughing to himself, the man headed down the road toward the town.
Mai itched to unfasten the scroll and read the message it contained, but not even she dared to break the Emperor's seal. Instead, she carried it to her father where he knelt in the family shrine.
"What is it? Another dead daughter?" Fu asked without turning around.
Mai moistened her dry mouth. "No, Father. It is a summons from the Emperor. Calling you to war."
Fu made a disgusted sound. "No doubt throwing more lives away, trying to reclaim one of the lost cities in the north when it is too little, too late. Only a strategist like your mother could take those northern cities, but not even she could devise a way to hold them. The northerners breed so much faster than we do, and their would-be king sends them against us in greater and greater numbers. Better to broker a treaty than to besiege some northern city. The worst policy is to attack cities, as any decent general should know."
"But he is calling you to war, Father. You are the greatest general in the kingdom." Mai dropped to her knees beside her father. "If anyone can win, it is you." Mai's eyes shone with admiration as she gazed at him.
"The man who now calls himself Emperor made me retire when he foisted Jing on me. He ordered me to go home and sire sons to serve him as I served his father." Fu waved angrily in the direction of the house. "Even my stillborn sons are too smart to die in that man's service. They would rather founder in their mother's womb, and I cannot blame them. Let him take my sons, for the Emperor will not have me for this stupidity!"
A breathless maid entered the shrine, bowing deeply. "Master, young mistress. The mistress has given birth to a son!"
A live one, Mai presumed, by light of the Jia's joyful expression.
"Come, I must see this for myself," Fu said, rising. He led the way into the house, with Mai and the maid following close behind.
Jing lay in bed, a gloating smile on her face as she regarded the tiny, wrinkled baby in her arms, oblivious to the army of maids carrying out bloodied sheets and replacing the soiled linen around her.
"I have given you a son, husband," Jing said, pride dripping from her every word. She held the squirming child out for his inspection. "I have named him Yeong Fu, after his father."
Fu laughed mirthlessly. "And when the Emperor sends more troops to take Yeong Fu to war, I will offer him my son. For this baby here will grow to manhood before General Li retakes the city he lost."
Jing's eyes grew wide as she swaddled the baby tightly. "What is this?"
"The Emperor has summoned me to recruit and lead an army of reinforcements north to assist General Li's siege of Dean," Fu said.
Jing clapped a hand to her mouth. "So you are going to war? How soon?"
Fu laughed. "I am not going anywhere, woman. Did I not say I would offer the Emperor my infant son in my stead? If he'd sent the Empress herself to command the siege, it might have a better chance than the one led by her brother."
Mai stared in wonder as Jing's eyes widened further. "But you cannot disobey the Emperor!" Jing cried.
"I can, and I have. He thinks he can send me to certain death under that fool's command. If the army doesn't die of disease or starvation, the garrison of Dean will cut them down just as they did last time. The Emperor sends me so that he may blame someone else for General Li's mistakes. It will not be me!" Fu's voice rose to a roar and baby Fu began to cry. Father strode out of the room, swearing under his breath about fools and those who didn't understand the first thing about war.
Mai turned to follow him out.
"You have to convince him to change his mind," Jing said. "Mai, you must. Or we all will die."
Mai stopped, and shot a scornful glance at her stepmother. "You don't understand the first thing about war. If Father says this is foolish, then it is."
"More foolish to disobey the Emperor than to go to war," Jing insisted. "In battle, men live or die, but when the Emperor sends his troops to crush a defenceless household like this one, not a fortified city, we will be slaughtered. You may play with swords in the yard, but one girl cannot hold off an army."
For once, Jing was right. Mai could best her father in training, but not an army of highly trained troops. And she didn't want to die. "I will ask him," she said.
Six
She didn't need to look far for her father, for Fu had chosen to take out his frustrations in a furious training session in the courtyard. Mai took up her sword and joined him, shifting from pose to pose as effortlessly as her father.
"You are a better fighter than me now," Fu said grudgingly.
Mai bowed her head at the compliment. "Thank you, Father, but I still have a lot to learn. I hope to live long enough to do so, though. Jing says that if you disobey the Emperor, he will send an army to kill us all. Even you and I together are no match for an army." She glanced around the yard. "And there is nowhere we can retreat to from their superior numbers here."
Fu lowered his blade. "Jing sees only a small part of the picture. Your mother would see it all, and know how to act, but without her, I have no grand strategy any more." He sighed. "If I disobey, one day the Emperor may send an army, if he is not too busy making war on cities where he has no business being. But if I obey him, my dishonour is certain. General Li is the Empress' brother and for all that he is a fool, he still commands the respect of his army. If I were to arrive at the Siege of Dean, I would be under his command. When he offers battle, he will lose, just like he did the first time he besieged the city. And he will lay the blame on me. Perhaps my inexperienced troops, or my poor commands, or my insubordination, for I will not take orders from a fool. When word reaches the Emperor, he will move swiftly to seize my lands and all who live on them. He will kill my family, and he will kill me, because he only holds power as long as General Li is his ally. If I ride to war, we will all most certainly die. And if I do not…we at least stand a chance that the Emperor will forget about us. For the best chance of victory, a general must know when to attack, and when to defend, and when not to fight at all." He bowed his head. "Mai, this is not the time for fighting."
"A general who fears defeat cannot be victorious," Mai replied. "Th
at is what you taught me, Father. The hope of victory will only result in defeat. It is strategy and planning that win, every time. And hoping to be forgotten…is no plan at all."
Fu smiled sadly and shook his head. "For a moment, I saw your mother looking out through your eyes. She always had a clear view to victory. Always. But without her…I am lost. If you were my son, I would send you in my place, so that you could learn the truth of war on a battlefield instead of just a training ground. True victory must be won, and contrary to what General Li believes, the best victories are bloodless ones."
Mai shook her head. "How can you win a victory without spilling any blood?"
"Through winning the hearts of your enemies," Fu replied. "I should send you to court as my messenger. Perhaps you could win the heart of the Emperor, or one of his sons. Maybe there is hope after all. I shall think on it, and tomorrow we will make plans to send you to court. For now, go see your stepmother, and tell her what I have told you." He shooed her away.
Mai's head spun. Sending her to court to seduce the Emperor? What hope did she have? Jing commented on her unmarriageable feet every time she saw her, until Mai knew no man would look on her as a possible wife, let alone a prince or the Emperor. She was better suited to war, like her mother.
If only she was a boy and not a girl…
"What did he say? Did you change his mind?" Jing demanded when Mai returned to her stepmother's room.
Mai shook her head. "He will not go to war. He wants to send me to court to be the Emperor's concubine instead, I think." She felt sick at the thought.
Jing snorted. "You? The Emperor would not even look at you. No man wants a wife or a concubine who plays with swords."
"There was one who did," Mai said slowly. "Long ago, when Sunxi first wrote his treatise on war, the Emperor asked him to prove it by training his concubines in the art of war. And he did."
Jing waved the words away like a bad smell. "That is nothing but a story. Soldiers carry swords, concubines need to be pretty. Your sisters will have all the accomplishments and beauty a girl needs to charm a prince, when they are old enough, but not you. You would do better to take up a sword and lead an army in your father's place. In court, you will only make enemies. More than we have already."
For a moment, Mai's heart soared at the thought of commanding an army, as her father had done. As her mother had, too, or so she'd said. When her father had fallen in battle with a near-mortal wound, she had rallied his troops to victory. Mai had studied ever tenet in Sunxi's treatise and trained every day for more than a decade. Why couldn't she command troops in her father's stead?
Because no army would follow a woman, not even the daughter of Yeong Fu and Da Ying. If she were truly a boy like the messenger had first assumed…
Mai raised her head and met her stepmother's gaze. "I will. I will dress in men's clothing and take up my sword and take Father's place. It is the only way."
As the words left her lips, Mai knew they were the right ones. She could bring no honour on her family here. But if she was victorious in battle…or even died bravely in battle, she would honour her ancestors and her mother by her deeds.
Jing's mouth fell open in shock. "You are too small to pass for a man. And your breasts…" Mai expected her stepmother to launch into a scathing lecture about the size of Mai's breasts, whose only virtue, according to Jing, was that they made Mai's feet seem small, but the lecture never came. "You must bind them, but an illusion would be better." Jing bit her lip. "Yes, I think I can do it."
"An illusion? What do you mean?"
Jing smiled, revealing blood on her teeth that had not been there before. "I shall cast an illusion, so that all who see you or your clothing while it is near you will believe you to be a man."
"But…surely only a witch could do something like that…" Mai faltered. She swallowed. "Are you a witch? Can you make me into a man?"
Jing made an impatient sound. "I cannot turn you into a man, girl. I am a witch, not a powerful enchantress, and a weak one at that. I can make things look like they do not, but I cannot change you. Do you want to look like a man, join the army and save your family?"
Mai lifted her chin. "I do. All warfare is based on deception."
Jing rolled her eyes. "You should have been born a boy. I can make you look like one, but you will have to make them believe you are a man, and not a girl. If the soldiers find out you are a girl, you will become nothing but a common whore. If they don't kill you." She wet her lips. "Either way, you will dishonour your family, so you will not be welcome back here."
Mai nodded. "I understand." And she did. She would not dishonour her mother or her ancestors. Da-Ying's and Yeong Fu's daughter could only be victorious. It was in her blood.
Seven
Mai flexed her arms as she donned her mother's armour, amazed at the play of muscles she'd never seen on her arms before. No matter how much Jing said it was an illusion, they looked and even felt real. She itched to try lifting something heavy, like one of the big urns in the garden. It probably helped that she'd bound her breasts flat under her shirt, too. She felt…manly.
Even her mother's shoes had taken a more masculine appearance. They looked more like something her father would wear than the pretty silk slippers she knew and loved. Yet if she closed her eyes, she felt exactly the same. Her balance was the same as ever, and that was what mattered. She buckled on her sword belt and drew the blade from its sheath.
"Be swift as the wind. Plunder like fire, stand as firm as the mountains, and move like a thunderbolt," she whispered, as she did at the beginning of every dance.
She moved through the sequence of morning exercises she'd performed every day for as long as she could remember, noting the places where her armour restricted her movement, few though they were.
In the stable, she found her father's warhorse, saddled, packed and ready, as Jing had promised. Staring up the huge animal, Mai almost doubled over as doubt punched her in the belly. She shouldn't be doing this. Girls didn't ride to war. If anyone in the army found out, she was as good as dead – to her family, even if she still breathed. It was one thing to spar with her father, who surely had gone easy on his daughter, but to fight armed soldiers in battle? She would die in a heartbeat. Now Mai felt queasy, too. If she rode to war, she would never return. Never see her family again. Her stepmother. Her sisters. Her father…
Mai wanted to run to the shrine, where she knew she would find her father, to bid goodbye to him one last time.
But she could not. If her father saw her like this, he would stop her. Even if it killed her, she had a duty to save her family from the Emperor's wrath.
She found the messenger camped just outside of town, on the outskirts of what looked like an army camp in a fallow field. Some of the men she recognised from the village, but most of them were unfamiliar. There were more men in this one field than in the entire village where she'd grown up. More than enough to slaughter her father's household, if commanded to do so.
All she had to do was walk in, and convince the men she was one of them.
Her heart sank, but Mai took a deep breath as she dredged up her courage. "All war is deception," she reminded herself under her breath. She rode up to the messenger's tent, reined in her horse and managed to dismount without falling. "My father sent me to captain his troops," she announced.
The messenger laughed. "And how many wars have you served in, boy?"
Mai felt her face redden. She hoped Jing's illusion hid that. "None," she admitted. "But my father has been training me for battle since I was six."
"Did you learn much?"
"Some," she said. "He said I could train for a lifetime, but learn more on one battlefield than in a decade of practice." She lifted her chin. "That is why he sent me."
This seemed to satisfy the messenger. "What's your name, boy?"
"Yeong Ma…oh!" Mai clapped a hand over her mouth in horror. She hadn't been here a minute and already she was about to reveal her identity.
"Yeong Mao?"
"Yyyes?"
"That is your name?" the messenger asked.
Mai nodded, not trusting her voice.
"I hope baldness doesn't run in your family, then. It would be a great pity to have a name meaning thick hair when you have none. Your men would have no respect for a general with a funny name." The messenger laughed, then gestured at the grass behind his tent. "You may set up camp beside me. In the morning, we march for Dean."
"Don't I get to decide when my men move?" Mai asked.
The messenger laughed so hard, he almost bent double. "These are not your men any more, boy. They belong to General Li, as do you. When we reach his camp, he'll make the decisions. My orders are to bring reinforcements, and I will. Untrained farm boys, most of them, but once the general's captains are done training them, even you might manage to kill a man in battle. Or die trying."
Mai smiled wanly and tried to hold back her tears as she led her horse to what would be her campsite for the night. Men did not cry, she told herself. At least, not where anyone could see. Once she had her tent set up, then she could go to pieces at the thought of killing people. That she might die, she had come to accept, but that other men must die at her hands? The very thought made her shudder.
But if a stranger had to die to protect her family…so be it, Mai decided. There was nothing she would not do for those she loved. She might be a girl, but when the time came, she would have the heart of a warrior, until her heart beat its last.
Eight
"There is no greater pleasure than thrusting your sword hilt-deep in another man's heart," Prince Yi declared, demonstrating.
"My advisers told me you had never been with a woman before, but now I begin to believe it," Emperor Yun replied. "No wonder you don't have any sons yet. You're supposed to do the thrusting lower down, and into a woman."
Dance: Cinderella Retold (Romance a Medieval Fairytale series Book 3) Page 2
