River of Stars Read online

  You needed to be so careful about what you said.

  “This is wrong place to wait,” the Altai says. “No food, no kumiss, no good yurts. No women!” He forces a smile.

  Chao smiles in return. “Where are these things?” he asks.

  “Best are six days. We have stopping places ready for you each night. Six days is a good place by a river, you meet with Wan’yen, war-leader. Discuss. He is riding fast to be there.”

  Chao’s mental map is quite good. Six days from the coast is reasonable. The other man is coming farther.

  “We will ride four days,” he says. “Send a man ahead to arrange for the best food and women to be there. I will wait for your war-leader in yurts four days from this place.”

  The Altai leader hesitates a moment, then nods. “This will be done,” he says. He smiles again. “Jeni women there for you. Most beautiful of all.”

  “And kumiss?” says Lu Chao, an offering.

  “Always kumiss,” says the Altai. “Kumiss tonight, for you and me!”

  Chao nods again. He turns his horse under the high sky he remembers. They begin to ride on. The grass is very tall, there are wildflowers and bees. Small animals startle as they pass. He sees larger, antlered ones in the distance, in great numbers. Hawks hover and wheel, and later a solitary swan tracks their path towards the sun as it goes down.

  THE WAR-LEADER Wan’yen says nothing at all about where they are meeting. It is as if the extra riding for him is beneath consideration, a waste of words to discuss, of thought to assess.

  The man speaks no Kitan, they use an interpreter, the same one as before. From the outset, from first glimpse before first words, Chao’s uneasiness about this mission has only deepened. The man is too hard, too assured. This is not a supplicant for aid in freeing his tribe from the Xiaolu’s yoke, lying heavily on the steppe. He is impatient, confident, intelligent. Chao is aware of being assessed, every bit as much as he is judging what he can of the Altai leader.

  He has only his nephew with him in the yurt. Wan’yen sits opposite with the translator. A woman, one of the Jeni (their women are more appealing than he’d expected), serves kumiss as cups are emptied. Chao drinks slowly, ignoring the speed with which the other man drains his own.

  This is a negotiation not a dinner party. He is permitted to display restraint. It feels proper to do so.

  In the event, it doesn’t seem to matter. Wan’yen’s proposal is immediate, direct, and he does not waver from it. Impatient, Chao thinks again.

  The Kitan are offered four of the Fourteen Prefectures. Not the most important ones, north of Hanjin, but over west, above what remains of Xinan—and only if Kitai takes the Xiaolu Southern Capital and hands it to the Altai. That is the first thing. The second is going northwest from there to take the Central Capital together. If these things are done, four prefectures will be returned to Kitai.

  All silk and silver sent in spring and autumn will continue to be sent—to the Altai.

  The Altai kaghan, Yan’po, will be named emperor of the Altai when the Central Capital falls. He will not be called nephew to the Kitan emperor. He will be younger brother to an older brother.

  Lu Chao has not expected this man to be aware of diplomatic symbols. He is making mental adjustments rapidly.

  If this is agreeable, the interpreter translates, we will communicate by sea and arrange for our riders to meet your army outside the Southern Capital next spring.

  Is it agreeable?

  The war-leader drinks. His eyes are impossible to read, past what he allows to be obvious ... which is complete and unwavering confidence. How does a horseman from where this man was born have so much of that? What does it say about his tribe?

  Carefully, Lu Chao says, in his most grave voice, “It is not agreeable. Tell this to your kaghan, or address it now yourself. We do not go roaming over the grass to help one tribe defeat another. For a thousand years and more Kitai has seen tribes rise and fall in the steppe lands. We have remained.”

  He pauses to let the interpreter catch up.

  Wan’yen laughs. He laughs.

  He drinks again, wipes his mouth. He speaks, visibly amused. The interpreter translates: “What are your dynasties, your kingdoms and rebellions, if not tribes rising and falling? Where is the difference?”

  The question is a disgrace, it is ignorant. Chao suddenly wants to speak a poem. Sima Zian, Han Chung, his own brother, himself, and say that is the difference, you kumiss-sodden barbarian. He wants to assert porcelain from Shantong, peonies in Yenling, the parks and gardens of Hanjin, music. He wants to be home.

  He draws a breath, keeping his features expressionless. He says, slowly, “Perhaps, one day, you will come as a guest to us, and you will learn the answer to your question.”

  The interpreter translates, and Chao thinks he sees something in the war-leader’s face. The man drinks again. He shrugs, speaks one word.

  “Perhaps,” the interpreter says.

  Lu Chao is thinking quickly. He says, “Have you authority to amend your terms? Or must you ride to your kaghan? I will not wait so long. If you need to go back, another man will meet you, perhaps at summer’s end.”

  He waits, lets the translator finish. He says, “But for aid from our armies, for gifts to your tribe when it declares itself an empire, for our guidance in that difficult change, we require the Fourteen Prefectures.”

  He pauses, throws a bone, though it may be more than he can offer: “And we can indeed discuss what status and kinship your emperor has in Kitai. Emperor Wenzong is known for his generosity.”

  The eyes of the war-leader meet his. If he were truly acting as a woman would, Lu Chao thinks, he would look away now. But there are moments when his analogy is not precise. He is Kitai, sitting here, he is an empire of more than a thousand years and must not be outfaced by a steppe rider with nothing behind him but grass and herds through all that time.

  Sometimes you had to change roles in the midst of an encounter.

  The war-leader stood up quickly. Lu Chao remained where he was, cross-legged, his cup beside him, his nephew silent just behind. Chao allowed himself a smile, eyebrows lifted. Wan’yen spoke, first hint of discomfiture in his voice. Chao waited.

  The translator said, “War-leader will speak with kaghan and his brother. It cannot be that we give back so much land. You lost it long ago. Time does not turn back. It is not the way the sky god made the world. Maybe five. Maybe six of fourteen. The brothers will speak with the kaghan. We send riders to you before end of summer.”

  “Riders? Past the Southern Capital?”

  Wan’yen shook his head, amused again, when the question was translated.

  “War-leader says it is easy for Altai to pass by Xiaolu guards and come to you. He says plain north of Hanjin is wide open for riders.”

  A message in that, Lu Chao thought.

  He stood up. There was power in being the one seated, but not in tilting one’s neck to see the other man. “The plain is open going north, as well,” he murmured. “Curious, how that is, isn’t it?”

  A moment, the translation, then the war-leader laughed. He grinned. He spoke. The translator said, “Esteemed Wan’yen says emissary is good, amusing man. He will eat and drink with you tonight, ride to kaghan tomorrow. He also says, Altai will destroy Xiaolu, with Kitai or not with Kitai. It is foretold and will happen.”

  Lu Chao bowed. He was the empire and the empire was nothing if not civilized. His nephew did the same. They went out of the yurt into the morning vastness of the grasslands, stretching in all directions, disturbingly, as if unending.

  LATER THEY DRINK AND EAT. At night he makes love to a Jeni woman. When she has gone at his request he lies awake, thinking as clearly as he can after too much kumiss.

  He will have time to consider all of this on the ride east, on the ship going south, before he is ushered into his emperor’s presence on the Dragon Throne in Hanjin.

  He already knows what he will say.

  He has spe
nt his life saying what he believes to be true. He’s been exiled for it, three times, has come near to being executed more than once.

  That can happen, even in a civilized empire.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The second man in Kitai to learn details of what happened on the steppe was the army’s most newly appointed commander of five thousand, Ren Daiyan.

  It was not an accident. He had taken himself north and west not long after his transfer to the military, was gleaning what he could above the trading city of Shuquian, having quietly crossed the Golden River into Xiaolu lands.

  It was disturbing and strange, being in one of the Fourteen Prefectures, the rivers and mountains of longing.

  Shuquian, not far from the river, not far from the Wall, had been an important city from the Second Dynasty onwards. The families that had founded and dominated Kitai once had all been from the north.

  It was much reduced, marked a limit of the empire now. The river was the border with the Xiaolu here. One of the lost prefectures lay on the other side, irrigated by the river, ruled by the barbarians.

  It wasn’t especially difficult to slip across the river, and almost all people living in barbarian lands here were Kitan farmers. Governed from the steppe, paying taxes north, but Kitan. So Daiyan could blend in, once he braided his hair in the style forced on the Kitan living here.

  He was alone. Ziji remained unhappily in Shuquian, on Daiyan’s orders, providing a story for him and his whereabouts. Commander Ren was exploring around the city, as far as anyone else knew.

  What he was really doing was breaching the treaty: a military man in Xiaolu lands was subject to death if found and diplomats’ accusations relayed to Hanjin. But he was a soldier now, an officer, and if their army was going to war next year against the Xiaolu, information would matter.

  Men went quietly back and forth here all the time. If either or both governments raised tariffs or asserted new monopolies, it simply increased the benefits—and the likelihood—of smuggling. Risks became worth taking. One of the realities of living near the border was taking tea or salt or medicines illegally north, crossing the river on a moonless night to an arranged assignation, bringing back amber or furs or simply silver. Silver was always good.

  You could be imprisoned and beaten or executed as a smuggler if caught coming back to this side, too, although that last fate probably didn’t apply to a military commander—if he could prove his identity in time.

  Tonight, he was hiding in a small barn, headed back south after a week north of the river. He was slathered in a foul-smelling unguent, face and hands and ankles, against the biting insects of a northern summer. He’d been told by the man who’d sold the unguent to him that it was sovereign against the night-biters.

  The seller had lied, Daiyan had decided.

  The man deserved a foul and vicious ending, ideally bitten to death by mosquitoes. Daiyan kept using the unguent, having nothing better to try. He swore a great deal, but under his breath.

  The two water buffalo in the barn knew he was here, and the three goats. The farmer didn’t. There was no dog or he’d have had to kill it, probably.

  The barn was very hot on a summer night, and it smelled. But he had heard tigers in the darkness, and he wasn’t going to sleep on open ground tonight.

  Ren Daiyan feared two things that he knew of, or admitted to himself. One, from childhood, was being buried alive. He could never have been a tomb-robber, and it had nothing to do with ghosts, or magic wards placed within.

  The other fear was tigers, though he hadn’t had it as a boy. People from Szechen learned how to be cautious. There were deaths, people and livestock, but usually that had to do with someone being careless. Only after he’d left home, living in the open for years, had he engaged with tigers.

  He’d killed two with his bow, in and around the marsh. One more with a sword when the creature had surprised him and was too close too quickly for an arrow. He could not remember being so terrified, before or since that evening. The world-swallowing sound of its roaring as it leaped in a half-moon twilight was with him now, years after.

  He had been acclaimed for that sword-thrust into the open jaws of the tiger. He had a scar on his chest from that encounter. Had he not twisted away as he thrust, he’d have been dead. The kill had become legendary among the outlaws by the time Daiyan left. He allowed that to happen, but knew the truth—how fortunate he’d been. How nearly his life had come to an end that night, wasted, trivial.

  The Kitan, as a rule, hated wolves more than anything else. Daiyan would take a starving winter wolf pack over a tiger any time at all. Accordingly, he was in a hot, stinking barn tonight, instead of finding what air he could on some elevation under the moon.

  He wanted a drink. He didn’t have anything. Had finished his flask of kumiss. The barn was sloppily built, cracks in the boards and roof. It would leak terribly in rain. The moon was bright through the roof cracks, which made it harder to sleep. Would also make it a little tricky crossing the river tomorrow night, but he knew where to do that now: smugglers left boats hidden on each bank. He wasn’t worried.

  He slapped at something drilling his forehead like a woodworker’s tool. His hand came away bloody, the colour made strange by moonlight. He thought of his bed in the chief magistrate’s yamen in Hanjin, of the good wines Wang Fuyin offered, the food to be found in the streets of the capital.

  He twisted his thoughts away. There was more to pull at him in memories of Hanjin beyond a soft bed or street food. There were channels down which he would not allow himself to go.

  He’d left the capital shortly after the ceremony at which he’d knelt before his emperor and received imperial recognition: the gift of a city home with servants, silver, and the rank he now held in the army of Kitai.

  It had been a turbulent, uneasy morning in the palace: Prime Minister Hang Dejin had resigned the night before. Daiyan’s ceremony had been brief. He’d spent the whole of it imagining his father and mother watching, even just learning of it. He could almost hear the loud beating of their hearts, see their faces. You bore children to bring you pride, with luck, and perhaps security in your age.

  He had money now, would send them assistance, as was proper. He could help others, too. He could even marry. He’d thought briefly about that, of having a son. But then he’d taken steps to have himself posted west—to Yenling, then on to Xinan.

  He was a soldier. He’d achieved that, finally. He was a ranking officer, and he knew why he was alive in the world under heaven. All else was distraction.

  Ziji came west with him, of course, and one of the other men who’d left the marsh with them. The others chose to stay with the magistrate. He couldn’t fault them for that. Their lives were their own, and Hanjin was a better place to be, serving in Wang Fuyin’s guard a smoother life than the army and following Daiyan in his journey.

  It was Ziji, and the man who’d joined them, who were foolish, if you looked at it with any intelligence. He thought about Hanjin and what lay there—who lay there. He’d grown skilful at forcing his mind away, and he did so now.

  Moonlight shifted as the moon rose, finding angles to slide into the broken-down barn, silver the straw and the animals.

  There were so many poems about the moon, he thought. The great Sima Zian was said to have drowned in a stream, trying to embrace the reflection of the moon like a lover, after a lifetime of writing about it.

  Daiyan doubted it was true. When someone became famous, legends gathered around him. It happened even on a small scale. He had heard once, sitting unnoticed at an inn, that the outlaw Ren Daiyan was a tiger hunter, had killed two dozen, most of them with a knife.

  The world liked its stories.

  He thought of the tales he’d heard this week, roaming among villages here, posing as a would-be smuggler looking to trade for amber later this summer in exchange for powdered tiger blood.

  Tiger blood was a cure, in Kitai and up here, for just about everything. It was subject to a
strict government monopoly and very, very expensive, since killing tigers for their blood was not a sensible way to feed oneself.

  He’d heard a great many tales over drinks with potential trade partners. One story he had been told, several times, wasn’t pleasing, or reassuring.

  The northeastern tribe rebelling—they were called the Altai—had, if people in border villages could be believed, already taken the Xiaolu’s Eastern Capital.

  There was considerable unrest, even down here. Well, there would be, if the news was true. It was unnervingly fast. The Xiaolu garrisons assigned to keep peace among their useful Kitan farmers were bristling and uneasy. They might be summoned north to fight, Daiyan thought in the night barn, slapping at things biting him.

  That could create opportunities. Not that he had rank or assignment to do anything about it yet. His difficulty was straightforward and unavoidable: if a war came next summer, as was rumoured everywhere now, with Kitai exploiting events on the steppe, it was going to arrive too soon for him to do the things he knew needed to be done.

  He would have to rise too quickly in an army that moved slowly. Even being here, gathering information ... why was he the only officer in Kitai who seemed to see the need for that, and willing to risk the consequences?

  He did know the answer. It wasn’t difficult. It was the same answer that explained Erighaya, or the loss of the Fourteen in the first place, the failure to regain them.

  Kitai feared its army even more than it relied upon it.

  You couldn’t build—or defend—an empire, enmeshed in that duality. And he couldn’t appear too hasty or ambitious himself, or he’d make enemies in the army and at court.

  He decided to see how long he could last without slapping at anything. He heard the steady swishing of the water buffaloes’ tails and their low, unhappy sounds. They were being bitten alive, he knew. At least they had tails.

  The tidings about the Eastern Capital baffled him. Like the other Xiaolu cities, it was walled, fortified, garrisoned. The only way he could make sense of this—a small northeastern tribe, no matter how fierce, taking a major city—was by assuming other tribes had joined them and that the soldiers in the city had chosen to surrender, even go over to the rebels.