River of Stars Read online

  Kai Zhen, who had a beautiful voice, said, “Illustrious emissary, your emperor awaits your words.”

  The emperor, Mah realized, had not yet spoken. He was also tall, slim-shouldered, elegant—like his writing, Mah thought. Wenzong had a restless gaze. An impatient man? Were you allowed to think that way about the emperor of Kitai? The emperor’s eyes were on Mah’s uncle now.

  Kai Zhen added, “Be not hesitant to speak, honour the empire and your office.”

  Lu Chao bowed again. He said, “The revered and exalted emperor will know, of course, that ours is not a hesitant family.” There was a collective intake of breath. Mah bit his lip, lowered his eyes.

  The emperor of Kitai laughed aloud.

  “We do know that!” he said, in a light but very clear voice. “We also know this journey was a difficult one, going and coming, among primitive people. Your efforts will not go unrewarded, Master Lu.”

  “My reward is any service I can do Kitai, illustrious lord.” His uncle hesitated. Mah decided it was a pause for effect. Chao said, “Even if my words might displease some in this chamber.”

  Another silence. Not surprising.

  “They are duly-considered words?” the emperor asked.

  “It would shame my family if they were otherwise, my lord.”

  “Then tell us.”

  His uncle’s voice was not as rich as Kai Zhen’s, Mah thought, but it was assured, and the room was quiet for him. His father, speaking, also had that effect on people, on a room, Mah thought, and allowed himself pride.

  Lu Chao, also belted in red (emissaries were deemed of highest rank during their service), was saying, directly to the emperor of Kitai, exactly what they’d agreed he would.

  He reported first, calmly, that it was the Altai war-leader who had met with him. “It was not their kaghan, but I judged that this was the more important man, the one driving their rebellion, more so than the aged leader of the tribe. This man’s name is Wan’yen.”

  “Not the kaghan? Was this an insult to Kitai? To the emperor?” The prime minister’s question was quick, edged. Mah’s uncle had told him he would ask this.

  “I judged it not to be, as I just said. Wan’yen is the man we need to assess. He had ridden fast and very far to meet us at a place I designated. He came all the way from the Xiaolu’s Eastern Capital.”

  The first crisis would come with this, his uncle had told Mah.

  “They were negotiating with the Xiaolu there?” It was the emperor himself.

  “No, exalted lord. Wan’yen of the Altai told me that the Eastern Capital had already fallen to them, in no time at all. In the first months after their rising. The Xiaolu emperor’s whereabouts were unknown. He was, as we say here, in the wild.”

  “That is impossible!” The voice was a new one: the eunuch Wu Tong. An interjection that was either startled or pretending to be. “You have been tricked or misled!”

  “A Kitan emissary? Tricked by a barbarian tribesman? You think so, Master Wu?” Lu Chao’s voice was cold. There was surely a title he should have given Wu Tong. He hadn’t done so. “And if he did, what would that say about these Altai?”

  “What would it say about our emissary?” Wu Tong replied, as coldly.

  It hadn’t taken long, Lu Mah thought, for ice to enter the room.

  In the nervous shuffling that followed, someone stepped forward on the opposite side of the chamber. You had to be brave to do that, Mah thought. He saw that it was the chief magistrate, Wang Fuyin. He was plump, not tall, neatly bearded, in a very-well-fitted robe of office. He extended two hands, palms meeting, for permission to speak. Mah’s uncle, who had the right to do so at that moment, inclined his head towards him.

  “Please,” he said.

  “We can offer the illustrious emperor confirmation of what his emissary has just told us,” said the chief magistrate.

  “And who might ‘we’ be?” asked the prime minister. Mah didn’t hear any affection extended to the magistrate, either.

  “The former captain of my own guard, now a military commander. His name is Ren Daiyan, a man known to the emperor as a hero. He is with us this morning and can report, with his majesty’s gracious permission.”

  “Why a hero?” asked the emperor.

  “He saved a life in the Genyue this spring, gracious lord. A favoured writer, the Lady Lin Shan? You honoured him for it with the rank he holds.”

  Wenzong’s brow knit briefly, then he smiled. The emperor had a benevolent smile, Lu Mah thought. You could be warmed by it as by the sun.

  “We do remember! You have our permission to speak, Commander Ren,” said the emperor. The smile faded. Was he remembering an intrusion in his beloved garden, or unsettled by conflict emerging here? Mah had no idea. He really didn’t want to be in this room.

  The young man who’d been looking at him a moment ago stepped forward, without apparent anxiety. He wore a military uniform and boots, not a court robe and slippers. Mah didn’t know the different insignia well enough to identify his rank, but he was young, couldn’t possibly be high enough to properly be addressing this company.

  Rather him than me, Lu Mah thought. Watching, waiting, he had a fleeting, wistful image of the stream east of their farm, as it would be now, on a morning in summer, light filtering through trees.

  WHEN YOU LIVED and travelled and fought beside a man for years, you learned to recognize tension in him, however thin the edge might be, however invisible to others.

  Zhao Ziji, at the edge of the room among the magistrate’s guard, watched Daiyan step forward. In the deliberateness of his friend’s movements he read an awareness of how high the stakes of this game now were.

  He was afraid, himself. His role and that of the other three men with the magistrate was purely symbolic. They were escorts, a symbol of rank. Wang Fuyin was extending him a courtesy, giving him his old uniform for the day, allowing him to be present.

  The fact that Ziji had a thin, hiltless blade strapped to the back of his calf was enough to have him executed if it was found. They weren’t checking boots, that wasn’t what frightened him. The knife was only there in the event something went wrong on a grand scale and he and Daiyan ended up in a jail cell. Blades helped there. He had experience with that, not with this. Here he’d look a fool, wrestling his boot off to claim a tiny knife. He felt better with a weapon, though, even a useless one.

  He hadn’t nurtured any powerful impulse to be in this room. That wasn’t the way his mind and desires worked. Yes, he could now tell his children, if he ever had children, that he’d been in the throne room of Hanjin before the Emperor Wenzong. Had heard the emperor speak. Maybe it would help get him a wife one day, though he wasn’t sure he wanted a woman for whom his merely standing at the edge of this room beside a marble pillar would matter that much.

  Foolish, foolish line of thought! No, he was here because he was aware that Daiyan was grateful for the support of friends. So he was watching, and so was the magistrate, as Daiyan prepared—for a second time—to set in motion something devised by an old, nearly blind man.

  Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.

  He watched Daiyan bow three times, a soldier’s obeisance, not a courtier’s: respectful, unpolished. He wasn’t pretending to be something he was not. It wouldn’t work here.

  Ziji heard his friend speak then, his voice even and direct. “Great lord, I can report that what your illustrious emissary heard in the northeast is being said farther west in barracks and villages above Shuquian. The tale is indeed that the Eastern Capital has fallen to the Altai.”

  Ziji turned his gaze to the prime minister and the eunuch beside him. Daiyan couldn’t do that. Ziji could, from back here. Daiyan’s words were a direct refutation of Wu Tong’s. The prime minister was too poised to reveal any response. Not at this distance, and not to someone who didn’t know him. The eunuch’s mouth was th
in, however, a line like another knife, Ziji thought.

  The emperor of Kitai spoke then, directly to Ren Daiyan, born the second son of a minor yamen clerk in the west. He said, “How do you know this, Commander Ren?”

  DAIYAN TOOK A STEADYING breath. He needed to be calmer. But you could grow dizzy if you took even a moment to grasp that you were being directly addressed by the bearer of the mandate of heaven, wearing the ceremonial crown, in his throne room. He couldn’t dwell upon that, or think of his father.

  He said, “I was there myself, great lord. Having been posted west with my company, I felt it proper to learn as much as I could about the Golden River border.”

  “You went across the river yourself?”

  “I did, my lord.”

  “Into Xiaolu lands?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “With how many men?”

  “Alone, my lord. I posed as someone looking to smuggle salt.”

  “That would be illegal,” the emperor said.

  “Yes, illustrious lord.”

  Wenzong nodded thoughtfully, as if something of importance had been confirmed. It occurred to Daiyan how, secluded in the palace, the emperor was so vulnerable to information being kept from him. He hadn’t even known about Erighaya. A reason why this morning mattered so much.

  He was careful not to let his gaze slide to where the prime minister stood. It was Kai Zhen’s first wife who had tried to have Shan killed. But the bitter complexity of life and politics meant that he and the prime minister might want the same thing this morning.

  “And you believe the stories you heard, about their Eastern Capital ... you believe these were true?” The emperor’s brow was furrowed.

  “I was unable to decide, my lord. Until this morning. I did not know what the distinguished emissary would say. Now ... yes, my lord. Your servant believes it to be true. It comes to us from the Altai and from the Xiaolu.”

  “Wait.” It was Kai Zhen. Which meant Daiyan had to look at him. He turned, schooling his features. “If you had no idea what the emissary was going to report, why are you even here?”

  The old man had told him this would happen. The old man had just about written this out as an evening theatre performance. Except that they were where they were.

  Daiyan said, “My lord, I informed the chief magistrate, as a trusted friend, what I’d learned north of the river. He told me the imperial envoy was returning to Hanjin. He urged me to seek leave to come here, offered a place in his company, in the event my information might matter. I hope I did not transgress.”

  The timing, if anyone checked carefully, would be a problem—for information to have gone east and back west that fast without using the forbidden birds. But the old man had been quite sure (he was always quite sure) this would not be checked. Not in time, at any rate.

  “No transgression,” said the emperor of Kitai. He straightened his tall form on the wide throne. “Commander Ren, we are pleased to have brave men such as you serving us. We will give expression to that pleasure later.”

  Daiyan bowed again, three times, meaning every one. He stepped back beside the magistrate. Fighting was easier, he thought. Tigers were easier.

  The magistrate bowed to the emissary, yielding back his right to speak. Lu Chao resumed. “This is indeed helpful, my lord. It confirms me in the view I wish to share.”

  First defining moment, Daiyan thought. And again the old man, like a spider in his web, had told them what he’d thought would follow.

  Lu Chao said, “Illustrious lord, I believe the Altai are a danger to us, not allies. The Xiaolu are a known presence. They are not newly ambitious, their emperor is weak, and word is that his sons are equally so, and divided.”

  “They hold our land!” snapped the prime minister. “We can get it back! The Fourteen Prefectures!”

  “I am deeply aware of what they hold,” said Lu Chao. His voice was extremely calm. “I doubt any man in this room is unaware of it.”

  “We can use this chance to get them back!” The eunuch this time. It was as if they were in a canyon, Daiyan thought, and he was an echo of Kai Zhen.

  “I believe this is the matter under discussion. It is why I was sent north, is it not?”

  “You were sent north to assist Kitai and the emperor.” Kai Zhen again.

  “And I have returned to do this as best I can. I ask humbly: Do you wish to hear me, prime minister?”

  Daiyan, watching closely, was of the opinion that the prime minister would rather not, in truth, but Kai Zhen could hardly say that. What made things worse was that Daiyan knew himself allied in this with a man he hated. How did the world create such unions?

  The tall emissary, younger brother to the poet, said, facing the throne again, “If the Eastern Capital has fallen already it means the Xiaolu empire is rotting away, my lord. Cities like that can be taken at speed only if the gates are opened in surrender. That means the attacking force has been swelled by other tribes, and the Xiaolu are turning on their own.”

  “If this is happening, our own course is clear!”

  Kai Zhen was obviously determined to break the other man’s persuasiveness. On his farm, Hang Dejin had guessed that this, too, would happen. He’d said that Lu Chao could deal with it. What he did not know, he’d said, was what the emperor would do. Wenzong, even after years of being studied, could be unpredictable.

  Lu Chao said, “I do not believe it is clear at all, my lord emperor. If we intervene on behalf of the Altai, as the prime minister suggests—”

  “He has said no such thing!” exclaimed Wu Tong. The eunuch’s voice was a little too loud.

  “Of course he has,” said the emissary gravely. “Are we children? Is the emperor a child? Our course is clear? What course would that be?”

  No answer. The man was good at this, Daiyan thought. And again the strangeness of his own position was brought home to him.

  Prime Minister Kai Zhen of Kitai wanted a northern war. So did Ren Daiyan, middle-ranking military commander, son of Ren Yuan, a clerk. One could laugh, or decide to get very drunk.

  In the silence, it was the emperor who spoke. He sounded tired. There had been years and years of this, in his father’s days, through his own long reign. “Master Lu, offer your counsel. You are the one who has spoken with these new barbarians.”

  Again a formal bow. “Gracious lord. Let the peoples of the steppe fight each other again. Our task, our wisest course, is to be watchful, defend our borders, present a firm and guarded front to both the Altai and the Xiaolu.”

  Wenzong’s mouth was also thin now. This was not what he’d wanted to hear. The emperor had come to this room, Daiyan realized, thinking about conquest. Reconquest. He said, “You do not believe we can induce the Altai to give us back the Fourteen, in exchange for our aid?”

  “They do not need our aid, serene lord. I will tell you what they offered. I proposed, as instructed, that for our assistance they return the Fourteen Prefectures.”

  “Exactly so,” said Kai Zhen. He said it quietly, but everyone heard.

  Lu Chao didn’t look at him. He said, “Wan’yen, their war-leader, smiled at me. I believe he laughed.”

  “The barbarian!” exclaimed Wu Tong.

  “Yes,” said the emissary. “Exactly so.” His voice was a precise mimicking of the prime minister’s a moment ago.

  After a pause, Lu Chao went on. “He offered four prefectures, in the west, north of Xinan, not the lands above us here. In exchange we are to take the Xiaolu Southern Capital ourselves, then join them with our armies in attacking the Xiaolu’s Central Capital. We are to hand over to the Altai the Southern Capital, and to continue sending all current gifts, but to the Altai, once their kaghan is installed as emperor. And he is to be named brother to the emperor of Kitai. Not nephew. Not son.”

  There was a silence. Silence could be loud, Daiyan thought. In it, Lu Chao finished, as if ending a poem, “This is what Wan’yen of the Altai said to the emissary of Kitai.”

 
Daiyan’s heart was thudding. It felt as if a battering ram were hammering at the bronze doors of the room, so shocked was the response of those assembled.

  Into this rigidity, Lu Chao added, almost casually, “I told him this was unacceptable to the celestial emperor. That we required all Fourteen Prefectures to be returned if we were to care which tribe ruled the steppe. He said, perhaps five or six, if we took the Southern Capital and joined them fighting north.”

  “The man has been stripped of his reason by the gods,” Kai Zhen said loudly. “He is marked for terrible ruin.” But his tone had altered, you could hear it. The arrogance of what they’d heard ...

  “He is a barbarian,” Lu Chao agreed. “But they feel no danger, no threat from the Xiaolu, and the other eastern tribes have already yielded to them. I will say it one more time: I do not believe they need us to take the steppe. I believe we need to make them fear our power and so must hold it in reserve.”

  “Could we help the Xiaolu against them instead?” It was a grey-bearded man from behind Kai Zhen.

  “I considered this, my lord, all the way home. But how do we begin such a conversation? Do we ally with an empire that is falling? I wondered if this rebellion might simply be a desire for freedom in the east. If so, it would have been sensible to assist, and claim back some of our lands. It is not so. They are chasing an empire. My lord emperor, celestial lord, we need to be wary. There is a great deal to be lost.”

  “And gained!” cried the prime minister, his confident tone restored. “They are inviting us to take the Southern Capital! We take it, and we hold it, and then we negotiate for more after they’ve worn themselves out against the other cities!”

  Now Lu Chao did turn to him. “And who takes the Southern Capital for us? What force of ours? After what happened in the west against the Kislik, for years?”

  Daiyan fought the impulse to step forward. A ludicrous impulse, but it was why he was here. Wait, if this happens, the old man had said.