by Zoe Marriott
“You’re alive!” He was surveying my gory appearance with a mixture of awe and concern. “Someone said they saw you marched into the stockade right before we were attacked – what happened, Hua Zhi?”
“Oh, that’s – never mind that, I’m fine,” I said. “Is – is everyone else all right?”
He drooped. “Ma Wen is dead.”
The breath whistled out of my lungs as if I had suffered a blow. “How?”
“He … he was right next to me. A spear went through his throat. There was nothing…”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I went to pat his shoulders, but thought better of it at the sight of my filthy hands, streaked with dried blood.
“Two others are in the infirmary for now. The new infirmary, I mean – the motherless bastards set the old one alight. It lost half its roof. They’ve set up in the sergeants’ mess for now. Zhang Yong will be all right, but Li Wei – it’s his leg. They’ll probably have to send him home.”
I stared up at him, my sense of dread almost suffocating me. The infirmary had been on fire? “What about—”
“Me?” a familiar voice interrupted. I jumped like a nervous cat and spun round to see Yang Jie behind me. His face was still mottled red and purple with bruises from the beating, just as it had been the last time I saw him – but he also sported a vicious-looking new cut through his left eyebrow and a bandage around his head. With his hair hidden he looked so young I could almost have taken him for a child.
“You walked right past me,” he said with a tired grin. “Losing your eyesight, Mother?” On his shoulder Bingbing gave a subdued chirp.
I couldn’t help myself this time. I reached out and pulled him into a desperate hug, clinging too tightly and for too long, but unable to let go. I felt his hands clutch at my back, dragging the layers of my armour and clothes taut. A shudder rocked me. Was that me shaking? Or him? Or both of us together?
Thank you thank you thank you…
One breath, then two. On the third, he sighed and pulled away. The other boy nodded at us, smiling, and left us in – relative – privacy.
“Don’t think you can ‘never mind’ me,” he said, coughing a little as his voice broke. He dragged one forearm roughly over his eyes. “Where were you all this time? I heard you’d been arrested.”
“It’s a long story. Very long,” I hedged.
“Tell the short version, then,” he said, shoving me gently down to sit on a random bed, and then almost collapsing next to me. “I thought you were dead!”
I let out a short groan, more weary than exasperated. “It was Lu. Captain Lu. He was … was working for the Leopard. He tried to kill General Wu. Twice. First with poison, but he tried to blame me – that’s why I was in the stockade – and then again after the call to arms. I … sort of … saved Wu Jiang’s life?”
“How?”
“I…” I swallowed hard. “I killed Lu.”
Yang Jie’s face was completely still. “You did?”
I nodded. “So now I’m a corporal. And General Wu’s aide-de-camp.”
Yang Jie kept staring at me. His mouth opened. Then closed. Finally he stuttered, “C–congratulations?”
“Thanks,” I said with a weak smile. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t even know if I can do it.”
“You can,” he said after a moment. “And if anyone deserves it, you do.”
“But?” I prompted.
He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, thinking deeply.
I waited in expectant silence.
“I’m glad for you,” he said at last. “Working for him could bring you a lot of good things. But you should be cautious, too. He’s a prince. He’s used to getting whatever he wants when he wants it. He might not be safe to trust. And people who get too close to Wu Jiang, or to any member of the Imperial Family… Well, just look what happened to Wu Jiang’s mother. It could be dangerous.”
Recent events flickered through my mind: the devastation of the camp, the smoke and mud and piled-up bodies. Yun and Diao slowly cooling where they had died, discarded like rubbish in the wake of a traitor. Lu’s blood gushing over my hands. I shuddered at the visceral sense of the memory, and knew abruptly that these were experiences which I would never forget. They would affect me for the rest of my life, in ways I probably could not yet fathom.
Yet to General Wu those things had been … not nothing, but business as usual. He had dealt with them and moved on. What must his life have been like, to make that possible for him?
I didn’t know if I would ever possess that kind of strength. If I even wanted it.
I swallowed. “I know. But you don’t have to worry. Wu Jiang’s a good man – and he’s miles above me. The closest I imagine I’ll ever get will be washing his socks.”
Yang Jie snorted and knocked me on the shoulder with his fist. But I couldn’t help noticing that he still looked worried.
Fifteen
ust as he had promised, General Wu was up before dawn, sending Shu Yuen to rouse me from my uneasy sleep in the barracks. We had a lot of work to do.
The first job was to line up the bodies of our fallen soldiers and double check their identities with their sergeants and friends – also called from their beds for the grim task. Peering down at the cold, distorted or disfigured faces in the merciless glare of lantern-light shook all of us of any lingering desire for sleep.
At least it had stopped raining.
Each death needed to be marked by the censor on the official record, and each man must have a notice drafted to his family. Officially, the camp’s commander should pen each of the death notices, but in practice he was far too busy writing official, coded communications. The task, therefore, fell to me, with General Wu’s involvement limited to his official seal affixed to each one.
I wrote Ma Wen’s notice first. Then Commander Diao and Sergeant Yun. After that, the distant phrases of confirmation and condolence, copied from a book which Wu Jiang had wordlessly handed to me, became rote. My hand moved the brush unthinkingly, tracing black lines on creamy paper while barely noticing the meaning of the words. That only freed my imagination to dwell on the shock and grief that each of these hastily penned notes would garner from the houses of the lost boys and men. I felt I was firing arrows into the darkness, knowing each one would find its target but with no real idea of the specific devastation they would cause.
It was a melancholy task.
From the way that General Wu sighed and shifted in his seat across from me at the desk, his letters also brought him little joy.
He broke at dawn to attend the mass funeral. The imperial soldiers were buried with necessary haste, but with all due honour and ceremony, just as their families would hope.
The enemy fighters, along with the body of Captain Lu Buwei, were tumbled into a shallow pit on the other side of the valley, a location that lay mostly in shadow. Forty-eight bodies went into that grave, but not a single prayer was said for them, and no offerings of rice or wine made. Given the rumours about the vile murderers and rapists that had flocked to join the rogue general’s forces, I was not troubled with thoughts of their possible grieving loved ones.
By the time the Young General returned from overseeing the burials, I’d finished my writing. He sealed each letter with gold wax and a jade seal that he carried on a chain around his neck, then hauled me off across camp to badger the medical staff into working faster. It had already been decided that the wounded troops should be loaded on to wagons and make a speedy departure – along with the death notices and other official letters and reports – to the nearest large town, five days away. They would report to the City of Endless Serenity to rejoin their fellows when they had been deemed fully recovered.
I was relieved beyond measure that Yang Jie had not been deemed badly injured enough to go. It was selfish, but I did not know how I would manage without my friend.
Having attended to the most pressing matters, Wu Jiang drove us hard, convinced that the Leopard would be mo
bilizing his forces to capture us with twice the speed with which we could prepare to escape. My own mental calculations, undertaken the night before as I struggled to find rest, had estimated that the earliest we could possibly be ready to move out would be the next day. Wu Jiang defied not only my private doubts but any protests by his officers, and had us mobilizing directly after the midday meal.
As we rode out of the valley that day, our lumbering caravan of wagons, infantry and cavalry – with the Young General on his giant blood-red mount at its head – slowly climbing up to meet the sun in the shallow bowl of tall summer grasses on the other side, I had every intention of heeding Yang Jie’s warnings. I liked and admired Wu Jiang, and was intrigued by his decision to hide his true skill as a fighter, just as my father had hidden his ability as a banner-breaker and I hid … other things. I saw the same look of respect on the face of every officer and soldier in our newly formed battalion. We all thanked the heavens that General Wu had been in the camp to take command after the fall of Diao.
But Wu Jiang’s sharp, dark eyes missed very little.
So I needed to be very careful.
The rank of corporal – and more importantly, the post of aide-de-camp to a general – came with certain privileges. A small tent next to General Wu’s, rather than a place huddled in one of the cramped five-man tents that the new privates shared. I was not expected to take part in the mandatory mass training drills that brought the privates groaning from their bedrolls in the early hours of each morning. Nor was I given sentry or scout duties. I did not have to dig waste trenches, or help to pitch any tents except the general’s and my own. I didn’t have to elbow and shove for a place to scrub myself hastily – and furtively, half-dressed, desperately holding illusions in place – at whatever freezing river or lake was available for washing: Shu Yuen brought me cans of heated water and soft cloths. He even offered to clean my armour, and brushed off my demurrals by pointing out that since my appearance reflected on his master, it also reflected on him.
I was still expected to care for Yulong myself, since the general’s personal groom was occupied with his two war horses and two riding mounts. But in all other ways my life, overnight, had become immeasurably easier.
And immeasurably lonelier.
I had been so glad when I heard that Yang Jie was deemed fit enough to accompany the battalion to the city that it never occurred to me how little he, as a new private, and I, as a formidably busy administrative corporal, would ever have opportunity to cross paths.
When Yang Jie and the others were eating, training, at watch or marching, I was with the Young General. During the day I rode by his side. When we made camp I was running around after him on foot, wishing for longer legs as he forced me to trot to keep up with him.
Despite this, I made an effort to seek out and socialise with my fellows. Of course they couldn’t be expected to come looking for me in the commander-general’s tent – they’d get into trouble. The overtures had to come from me. Each day I looked up their schedule and, if I could, arrived in time to sit with them when they ate, or to share their sentry fire for an hour.
Sometimes, if a few days had passed, things were a little stiff at first – but a few gently embellished stories of the general’s more outrageous demands, in which I figured as a hapless clown, usually had everyone laughing again. And they always seemed as glad to see me as I was them, especially Yang Jie. Still, I worried about it.
“Does it look odd to people that I just … arrive, without an invitation?” I asked Yang Jie from my place holding the head of a lieutenant’s horse. Yang Jie had been assigned to help the grooms this evening, and this particular horse didn’t like having his tail brushed, so it seemed only fair to pitch in. There was a rolled cloth of sweet red bean buns – a present from Shu Yuen, the one member of General Wu’s staff who seemed to have taken a liking to me – waiting for us to share when we were done. “Am I acting wrong somehow?”
I couldn’t see Yang Jie at that moment – he was brushing furiously, knowing that if I let the horse’s head slip for a second it would either rear up or whip around and attempt to bite. But I heard the eye roll in his voice as he replied: “You’re more concerned with how things look and acting ‘correctly’ than anyone I know. Is there some great, juicy scandal in your past that you’re attempting to atone for or something?”
I flinched. “What, me?” I forced a laugh. “O–of course not.”
Unless you counted stabbing a man in the guts at seven years old.
Or being born a female banner-breaker when no one had heard of one for hundreds of years – most probably because their families hid them away in shame.
Or secretly going against all the precepts of proper womanly behaviour by training in martial arts totally forbidden for my birth gender – and keeping it a secret from my own mother and siblings.
Or becoming, in every meaningful sense, a boy, in order to illegally join the Imperial Army and fight in my father’s place…
Quite a lot for which to atone, if you looked at things that way. I had transgressed many rules that my people held dear.
But all my actions had been driven by the highest and most treasured values of the Red Empire: love for family, for country, respect for duty. Should I feel guilty about saving either of my parents, about serving my emperor, because I had been born a girl? Was there … something wrong with me, if I didn’t?
“You don’t sound very certain,” he said, suddenly at my side, the horse brush still in his hand.
I could see the shadows cast by his long, thick lashes over cheeks flushed pink by exertion, skin glowing in the light of the sun as it set behind us. He smelled of horses and sweat and of his own personal Yang Jie smell that I was sure, by now, I would recognize anywhere. Always.
I cleared my throat and let go of the horse’s head, swiftly stepping away.
“Hua Zhi?”
Now he sounded really concerned. I groped for something to say – anything – to distract him from whatever suspicions might be crowding into his quick, clever mind.
“No. You know how lucky I am. My family … I’ve been so lucky. I have nothing to complain about. Especially not compared to – I mean – nothing.”
“Nothing?” he repeated cautiously, as though feeling his way. “Not even … what you told me before? About the assassins?”
I wished I’d never confided in him about that. As if by rote, I spouted my mother’s favourite platitude: “Great men make enemies. My father is a very great man.”
He blinked at me, biting his lip. His fingers were white around the horse-brush, and his other hand was extended towards me, as if he was on the verge of trying to snatch me back from some invisible precipice. He cared. He was my friend. And he was Yang Jie. Of all people, of all the people in the world, he might be the only one who would understand what I’d done. What I was doing.
Tell him. Tell him. Tell him.
But the person he cared for was Hua Zhi. A boy. How could I possibly explain that even though my body was different from those of other men, even though the name I had been given at birth was Zhilan … I was still that person? The one he knew? Wouldn’t he think I was sick, twisted inside, insane – or all three? I let out a long, slow breath.
I can’t.
“Being the oldest child of a great man isn’t always … easy. No matter what you do, you’re never quite enough. They love me. I even think, sometimes, that my father might understand me. But then I realize that he’s just … just sorry for me. Because I try so hard, but I can never be what he was. And my mother looks at me, and sees the person I could have been – the person I should have been. And she’s disappointed. Every time. No matter how much she loves me, that disappointment is always there.”
And, ancestors – that was a lot more honest than I had meant it to be, even if it couldn’t possibly make any sense to Yang Jie.
He was still chewing at his bottom lip, making it disturbingly plump and red as he worked through my word
s. Finally, he dropped the horse-brush and came towards me, silent despite the dry crunchy grass underfoot.
He was too close. That was all I could think. He stood there, no closer than he ever stood, but somehow, now, it felt entirely too close. Or maybe – a jolt of giddy realization – not close enough.
“I don’t know your parents. I’m sure they’re just as wonderful as you say. But if I’ve learned anything from my life so far, it’s that sometimes you grow up believing things that, outside the family, just make no sense.”
I nodded, blankly, unable to tear my eyes from his lips.
“And the idea that anyone could possibly be sorry for you, or disappointed with you, Hua Zhi,” he went on softly. “That makes no sense to me. No sense at all.”
He was looking at me. I could feel his gaze on my face, my shadow face, like … like a kiss. Involuntarily, my eyes lifted from his lips to his eyes. Such beautiful eyes…
For just a breath, a blink, we stared at each other. All was still. Waiting. Waiting for one of us to move. This was what he had been implying before. That his family hated him because he was “the way he was”. Yang Jie was attracted to other men. He was attracted to me. And I … I wanted him back. So much … so much that it was terrifying.
Tell him.
Yang Jie’s hand, that strong, small hand, lifted tentatively towards me again.
I can’t.
With a graceless jerk, I turned away, hiding my face by pretending to scratch my nose. “Oh! I – I forgot I have … the general needs me. I’d better go. I’ll – um – come to the dice game at your tent tomorrow night. I can win my coins back. See you!”
Are you a coward, daughter? my father’s voice asked in my mind as I ran away.
Yes. I told him. Yes, Father. I am.
I didn’t go to the dice game.
I didn’t go to east company’s evening meal. I didn’t turn up to keep anyone company on watch, and I didn’t help Yang Jie with the horses.
I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t even risk facing him by spending time with any of my other friends. I knew it made me the worst kind of coward, and each day when I woke I resolved to do better, to seek him out, to tell him…
