River of Stars Page 11

  The man had heard far too much, lying on the ground throughout the exchanges before and after Kai Zhen arrived at the pavilion. He would be uneducated but he wasn’t a mute, and the times were dangerous.

  Some days later he would learn that the man had not been found. He wasn’t, evidently, a fool. It had proved extremely difficult even to establish his identity. None of them there that morning had asked his name, of course, and there were, Prime Minister Hang was informed, four thousand, six hundred men employed in the emperor’s garden.

  Eventually they would determine, through the Genyue supervisors’ records, who he was—a man from the north. Guards sent to his residence would find it empty, with signs of a hasty departure. Well, they knew it had been a hasty departure. The gardener was gone, his wife and a child were gone. None of the neighbours knew where. He hadn’t been a talkative man. Northerners tended not to be.

  There was a grown son living in a house outside the walls. He was interrogated. He did not know where his parents and young sister had gone, or so he would maintain right up until he died under questioning.

  It was disappointing.

  Holding high office (for so many years) meant that you had done, and would have to continue doing, unpleasant things at times. Actions inconsistent with philosophic ideals. It was necessary, at such moments, to remember that one’s duty was to the empire, that weakness in power could undermine peace and order.

  Difficult as it was for a virtuous man to have someone killed merely for overhearing a conversation, it was even more difficult to discover that the order, once given, had not been carried out.

  He would also give thought to the imperial guards who had been standing by that morning. They were trusted favourites of the emperor, always with him, not men one could order executed. Not without consequences. He had them promoted in rank, instead.

  You did what you could.

  CHAPTER V

  “Deputy Kai,” the emperor of Kitai had said in his garden that morning, “we are displeased.”

  Kai Zhen, standing below him on the brushed path, inclined his head in sorrow. “My lord, I live to amend anything that causes this, any errors your servants have committed. Only tell me!”

  Wenzong’s face remained chilly. “We believe it is the deputy prime minister’s errors that have disturbed our morning.”

  Even with bad eyesight, Dejin could see Zhen’s eyes flicker towards him, then back to the emperor. Dance a little, he thought. Unworthy malice, perhaps, but he had cause.

  He watched as Kai Zhen sank to his knees. Dejin envied him the ease of the movement. The deputy prime minister’s beard and hair were still black, his back was straight. His eyes, undoubtedly, were keen.

  Impatiently, Wenzong motioned him upright. Zhen took a careful moment then he did rise, head still lowered, hands folded submissively in sleeves. Dejin wondered if they were shaking. It was possible.

  Looking down at the smoothed gravel path (and at the gardener lying on it), Zhen said, “Our fates are in the emperor’s hands, always. It is a grief to me if I have erred in your service.”

  “Excess,” said Emperor Wenzong, “can be an error as much as neglect.”

  Hang Dejin blinked. It was an elegant phrase. Wenzong could surprise. Although it would not do to dwell upon the emperor’s own neglect of duties. For one thing, that habit had allowed Dejin to control and shape Kitai these many years.

  Kai Zhen, smooth as finest silk, murmured, “Zeal in your service may indeed lead me to excessive devotion. I will admit it.”

  But Wenzong was in a dark, sharp mood. He shook his head at the sleek evasion. “Why is Court Gentleman Lin Kuo exiled to Lingzhou Isle?”

  Dejin could almost feel Zhen’s relief. He now knew what he was facing. A small matter, easy to address.

  The deputy prime minister said, “The emperor is so gracious! To offer imperial guidance on minor affairs of state! It humbles his servants!” His voice was rich. He was a handsome man. No one would ever have said either about Hang Dejin, even when he was young.

  “We have seen petitions on the court gentleman’s behalf. We would know why our well-known benevolence has been compromised in this matter.”

  That placed things in a different light. Zhen could be seen absorbing this. He cleared his throat. “Celestial lord, it must surely be the task of your servants to defend you and the empire. As dangers mount around us and—”

  “What danger did Court Gentleman Lin Kuo present, Deputy Kai?”

  Yet another interruption. The emperor was in a dangerous mood.

  A real hesitation for the first time, as Zhen registered this too. “I ... he was allied with the conservatives, of course, my lord. That evil faction intent on destroying all peace!”

  “He wrote a book on the gardens of Yenling. He sent it to us last year. We read it and approved of it.”

  At this point, thought Hang Dejin, happily silent, his expression composed, Deputy Minister Kai would believe he understood the gravity of the moment.

  “My lord, he visited with the exiled Xi Wengao.”

  “Years ago! Many visit him. It is not forbidden. He presented him with a copy of his book. Master Xi’s garden is described in it. We ask again, what is it Lin Kuo has done? Really. Lingzhou Isle?”

  “The ... the banished poet was there that same day! They met with Lu Chen on his way to exile. It was ... it was an obvious moment of plotting!”

  Time to speak. “Xi Wengao, whose honour we will not impeach, has written to say that the court gentleman had no idea Lu Chen would be present. Xi Wengao writes that he was grieving for his friend, and asked Lin Kuo to attend upon him the same day to brighten his own mood. Lin Kuo brought his young daughter, now married into the imperial clan. She writes the same thing. What plot did you uncover from that day?”

  There was nothing so obvious as hatred in the look Zhen gave him, but it could chill you, nonetheless, if you weren’t his superior, still, and used to such glances over the years. And they hadn’t yet reached the heart of this morning. He knew that; Zhen did not.

  Kai Zhen said, “Xi Wengao, all his life, has been loyal to his friends and followers.”

  “A trait,” said the emperor, “we admire.” He paused. “We choose to give instruction in this matter. The order of exile for Lin Kuo will be rescinded and notice conveyed to him immediately. He is to be raised two ranks in the civil service by way of redress and given the proper adjustments in salary and housing. His daughter and her husband will attend upon us in our garden. We wish to meet this woman. Her calligraphy is exceptional. From today, all names proposed and punishments decreed for those remaining in the conservative faction are to be reviewed by the prime minister. We are displeased, deputy councillor.”

  Naturally Kai Zhen went straight to his knees again. Quite close to the gardener, in fact. He pressed his forehead to the gravel of the path.

  “My life is yours, celestial lord!” he cried.

  “We know this,” said Wenzong.

  He could be impressive, Dejin thought, when moved to engage with his power. It rarely happened. You could sometimes regret that.

  The emperor said, “Remain as you are, and advise us where General Wu Tong is, your chosen commander in the northwest. Explain why he has not been brought to court to tell us what happened in the Kislik war. We have learned this morning, for the first time, from a gardener, what the whole of Hanjin seems to know!”

  He did not trouble (he was the emperor) to hide his anger.

  And here, of course, was the true and deadly menace of the morning. Kai Zhen would be realizing it, Dejin thought. His heart would be hammering, sweat would be on his body, his bowels would probably be clenching and releasing with fear.

  He would be aware that he could lose all power and rank, could even die today. Or be exiled to Lingzhou Isle.

  On the isle that same day—south and south away, beyond peaks and rivers, rice fields and marshes and jungles, across a whitewaved, wind-chopped strait, barely even with
in the world of Kitai—morning prayers and thanks were once more being offered that the summer rains had ended.

  The rains arrived at Lingzhou with the west wind in the third month and lasted into autumn. The downpour, the steaming damp and the heat, and the diseases they brought were what tended to kill people, mostly those from the north.

  Those born south of the coastal mountains, and the natives of Lingzhou itself, were better able to deal with the illness and enervation that came with a sodden summer in a place seen by many as lying adjacent to the afterworld.

  There were giant snakes. They were not legends. They slithered through muddy village lanes, or stretched themselves along dripping branches in the dark-leaved forest.

  There were poisonous spiders, many different kinds. Some so small they could hardly be seen as they killed you. You never, ever put on boots or shoes without shaking them out first, prepared to jump back.

  There were tigers unique to the south. Their roaring could sometimes fill the thick nights of the isle under clouds or stars. The sound was said to paralyze a man if he heard it from too near. They killed many people each year. Being cautious wasn’t enough if the tiger god named you.

  There were ghosts, but there were ghosts everywhere.

  Wondrous flowers grew enormous blossoms, brilliantly coloured, dizzying perfumes. But it was dangerous to go walking out to see them in meadows or by the forest’s edge, and during summer downpours it was impossible.

  Even indoors, in the worst of rain and wind, life became precarious. Lanterns would swing wildly and blow out. Candles on altars could be knocked over. There were fires in huts while rain slammed outside and thunder boomed the anger of gods. One might sit in a sudden midday blackness, shaping poems in one’s head, or speaking them aloud, voice pitched above the crashing and the drum of the rain, to the loyal son who had come to the end of the world as a companion.

  When it grew calm, and it was possible to write, Lu Chen took brush and paper, ground his ink, and busied himself with descriptions in poems, and in letters north.

  He offered in his correspondence a resolute, defiant good humour. He had no idea if the letters would reach their destinations (they were mostly to his brother Chao, some to his wife, both living on the farm south of the Great River) but there was little for him to do here but write, and it had always been the essence of his soul.

  Poetry, essays, letters, memoranda to the court. A habitation built in the mind. He had some books with him, damaged by the damp after several years now. He had the Cho classics committed pretty much to memory, however, and a great deal of poetry. He had written once, long ago, that he truly believed he could find contentment anywhere. That belief was being tested. Along with his ability to laugh, or make others laugh.

  Paper was hard to come by. There was one temple housing six clerics of the Path at the edge of the village, and the current elder admired Lu Chen, knew his poetry. Chen walked over there most days, watchful on the muddy path near the forest. They drank the harsh, yellow-tinted island wine and talked. He liked to talk to intelligent men. He liked to talk to anyone.

  At intervals, one of the clerics would make the crossing—dangerous in the rainy season—to the mainland for news and supplies, and arrange to obtain paper for him. Thus far the administrators here (the new one was very young, very unhappy, not surprisingly) had not stopped this, though they were aware of it, of course.

  They’d had, to this point, no instructions in the matter. Those might yet come. The hatreds of the faction years could reach this far. He was here, wasn’t he? He was proof of hatred. He did think (though never said) that it might have been a woman who had wanted him sent here to die. No way to be sure, but the thought was there. He had decided, from the start, to be difficult about dying.

  The clerics took his letters across the strait as well, entrusted them to others journeying over the mountain barrier, through narrow, crumbling passes above chasms, amid the shrieking of gibbons. That was how letters travelled back into the world from this far away.

  In exchange for their kindnesses he had written a poem on a wall of their temple.

  He was so well known that when word reached the mainland people might come, even to Lingzhou, to see Lu Chen’s writing here. They’d make offerings at the temple. Stay a night or two, pay for that. That was how such matters tended to unfold. He had done wall poems before. His presence here might be a benefit to some.

  The brush strokes of the poem, written last spring, were already disappearing in the dampness, though. They hadn’t survived a single summer’s rains. There was a lesson in that, he supposed, about the aspirations of men to do something that would endure. He tried to find it amusing. He was usually able to find amusement in the world.

  He had written on the wall about the human spirit, resilience, friendship, red and yellow flowers at the forest’s edge, and ghosts.

  There was a ghost lingering by their cabin.

  He had seen her twice for certain on the roof: once at sunrise as he walked out, once as he returned at twilight. It did not seem malevolent. It was not a personal ghost, he was sure of that, not one that had followed them here. It was a ghost of the village, the island, of this cottage. No one he asked knew anything about her. There was no name given him.

  He’d seen her hair, unbound. It hid her face. There was a phrase, often used in poetry, about the cloud of a courtesan’s hair. The ghost’s was more like smoke, he thought.

  He added a candle for her on their altar. They spoke the prayers and made offerings, invoking rest for her unquiet soul. It was likely she had never been buried. That could happen to a person, or to thousands on a battlefield.

  He was worried about his son. Beginning this past summer, Lu Mah coughed at night when he lay down, and through the night hours. It seemed to be easing as the dry season finally came, but he was aware this might be his hope as a father, not the truth of things.

  It was early morning now, not raining and not yet too hot. Time, soon, to rise from bed. He and Mah were doing exercises each morning whenever it was possible—to the amusement of the villagers, who often gathered to watch them. Twirling and stretching, they used staffs to mock-fight in front of the cottage, holding them like swords at times. “I will be a bandit yet!” he’d cry (and had written of this to his brother, mocking himself). “I will bring back the memory of young Sima Zian!”

  His son laughed. That was good.

  It was interesting, Lu Chen thought, how many of the references a man made reached specifically to the Ninth. It was as if they were all marked (scarred? diminished?) by glory achieved four hundred years ago, and by the rebellion and the fall.

  Sima Zian, one of the master poets, had lived (mostly) before the rebellion. A chasm in the world, another poet had called the civil war that had ensued. The world, Lu Chen thought, exiled on Lingzhou Isle, confronted you with chasms—or jagged peaks—all the time.

  He was trying to decide how to persuade Mah to leave. He was the one exiled. Children might have their lives undone by a father’s disgrace but there were precedents for rising above that, given the passage of time and changes at court.

  Problem was, he was certain the boy would not go. For one thing, he wasn’t a boy any more. Lu Mah was of an age to take the jinshi examinations (he wouldn’t be allowed to now) and certainly to make his own decisions. He would never defy a direct order from his father, but Chen wasn’t ready to break his son’s heart that way, instructing him to leave.

  He could remember travelling to the capital with his own father (long gone, dearly missed) and his brother. He’d been twenty-three years old. Three months’ journey to Hanjin, to prepare for and take the examinations. He had come first in their year; Chao, two years younger, had come third. They launched you into life like an arrow, results like that—and sometimes you landed in strange places. Arrows could go astray.

  There came a time, he thought, lying in his cot-bed, when the years you had lived, your memories, stretched too much further behin
d than the years you could imagine in front of you.

  He lay there a little longer, thinking of his dead wife and his living one, and women he had loved. There was a girl here who tended to their cottage. He did not lie with her. His son did, when Chen was with the clerics at the temple. It was better that way. His thoughts drifted to another girl, the one in Wengao’s home in Yenling. His last visit there.

  She had offered herself to him, a spring night during the Peony Festival, standing in the corridor outside her room in a spill of light. He had looked back (vivid memory!) at the youngness of her. And had realized what she was doing. An illumination, like a lamp.

  He had bowed to her, and shaken his head. “My everlasting thanks,” he’d said. “But I cannot accept such a gift.”

  She’d be married now, for years. Perhaps with children. She’d been offering him her innocence that night, in sorrow: for strength on a terrible journey, and on Lingzhou.

  She had been remarkably clever, Chen remembered, for someone so young. Over and above the fact that this had been a woman, a girl. He had encountered clever women, after all.

  Too great a gift she’d been offering. He was, he thought, a man easier with giving gifts than accepting them. Nor did he follow Arcane Path teachings in the matter of lovemaking. (The emperor did, everyone knew.) You did not spend a night with a woman, Lu Chen had always believed, for whatever mystical strength you might gain from her.

  You did it for pleasures you could share.

  He wasn’t a good observer of doctrines. He would admit to that. He’d said it to the clerics here, his first visit, when they rang their one tall bell and prayed. He offered prayers with them, sincerely, but after his own fashion. His own doctrines were about compassion, the brush strokes of words, painting, conversation, enduring friendship, family. Laughter. Music. Service to the empire. Wine. The beauty of women and of rivers under stars. Even if you thought you were at the Red Cliffs of legend and you weren’t.

  You needed to be able to laugh at yourself, too.