Chapter 66

They reached the crag kiln works at Tingyan County just as a fresh firing of porcelain was coming out. A dozen and more craftsmen struck up a chant and hauled open the first kiln door. Heat poured out through the seams of the sealed mouth and gushed across the whole yard, so that it felt like the height of summer. Zhuo Siheng thought his eyebrows might be about to catch fire.

"This kiln has already been let cool." On his own ground of expertise, Pan Guangling could always speak with more patience. "Once the porcelain is fired, it has to stand inside a while and let the last of the damp bake out in the dying heat. Then the ware comes out hard and ringing and will last."

It was the first time Zhuo Siheng had seen such a thing, and his heart stirred. He half wished to roll up his own sleeves, take hold of the rope, and heave the sealing-bricks open shoulder to shoulder with the kiln-men.

Even the quiet Chen Rong couldn't help saying, "I'm a local too, but I've never heard the work-chant they sing. Some of the words I can't make out either. It doesn't sound like our commandery's dialect?"

Pan Guangling shook his head. "I've been here many times and asked about it. They only say it's for working in time together, passed down by mouth among the local kiln-men. It isn't the county's country speech. I can't follow the words either."

"Those are old Yizhou airs."

The speaker was a bare-chested man wiping his smooth, bald crown with a wet towel. He threw in his word to the three of them in accented court speech.

"Young Master Wu." Pan Guangling, who knew the people and doings here best, recognized him and hurried to introduce him to Zhuo Siheng. "This is the kiln-master, Wu Xing. He came into this works young, but he's the most seasoned hand of all, and anything about the crag kiln you can ask him."

Then he said to Wu Xing, who was still mopping hard at his sweat, "This is Vice-Prefect Zhuo, newly come to our commandery. He's on his inspection round through the county and made a point of coming to the works."

Wu Xing's hand stopped dead on his head. He was about to make his bow when someone shouted from across the yard, "Boss Wu! The kiln's open!" So he set it aside, left the three of them, ran to the kiln, wound the wrist-thick rope round his forearm, and called back over his shoulder, "Strike it up!"

"They're going to haul open the second sealed kiln-mouth." Afraid Zhuo Siheng would take Wu Xing's rudeness amiss, Pan Guangling hurried to explain for him. "It has to be opened to let the heat out before the kiln has cooled all the way, or the whole load of ware is ruined."

But Zhuo Siheng had no mind to spare for that. He was watching and listening hard.

A dozen and more men, their faces flushed red, struck up that bleak old tune the others couldn't follow. Their scattered movements drew by degrees into one. As the song reached its last line, the pitch climbed and the singing turned to shouting, almost a roar, and the kiln door went down with it. Inside, the red light blazed so fierce it seemed only one color was left before their eyes.

It was a while before the three came back to themselves out of that grand, mighty, man-made sight. By now Wu Xing had lined up his dozen and more men and was bowing to Zhuo Siheng. At their head he made his plea. "Lord Zhuo, please, save the crag kiln!"

---

The capital. The Zhuo residence.

The weather was turning hot. The roll-blinds of the cool pavilion had all been changed for bamboo screens, the window lattices taken out to let the good breeze through. The place was Huiheng's now. She had kept her brother's books and writing things just as they were, and only set a small table of her own beside the big one, where she went over the accounts and read at her leisure. Whenever she turned her head and saw the brushes and inkstone still laid out on the big table in the old way, it felt as if her elder brother were still in the capital, only a little late, soon to come home from the Hanlin Academy.

But today what Huiheng held in her hands was no book. It was a clay-yellow brush-washer of crag-kiln porcelain.

Xiheng, home on his ten-day break, had changed his robe and come to the screen with his book-case. The cool pavilion had no door, so he called out, "Second Sister." Huiheng was too absorbed to hear at first, and only at the sound of his voice looked up with a start and called him in.

"I've put the poems in order. Most are my own, with a few pieces by schoolmates I'm friendly with. A hundred and seventeen in all." Xiheng set down a bound stack of booklets, carefully backed with heavy paper covers.

The work at Xiongya Academy was heavy, and to have gathered so many poems in ten days made Huiheng's heart ache for her brother. She told him to go and rest first. But Xiheng shook his head and sat down, and said in a low, grave voice, "There's something I'd like to send to Elder Brother with your letter."

"Is it urgent?" Huiheng asked, turning to fetch paper and brush. "Write it down now and I'll have it sent to the post-station tomorrow."

"It's about Elder Brother Gao."

Huiheng paused. She knew well what Gao Yongqing meant to Zhuo Siheng. The two had been brought together as friends by their fathers, and their bond was no common one. Since Gao Yongqing was sent into exile, Zhuo Siheng could never speak of him without a worry he had no answer to. Now the two were one in the southwest, one in the southeast, with mountains and rivers between them, and with the court's factions in the way besides, they could hardly keep in touch. Before Zhuo Siheng left, he had charged Huiheng that if any word of Gao Yongqing reached the capital she must send it on by fast post. But she'd only lately called on Lord Zeng, and Tong Shipei had come visiting with Zhao Lanxuan a few days back, and neither had mentioned anything at court to do with Gao Yongqing.

"I have a schoolmate at the academy I'm on fair terms with. His eldest brother is a seventh-rank captain in the prefecture army of Wuning Commandery, Weizhou, stationed at Jinchuan County in that commandery. Elder Brother Gao is the county constable there." Xiheng paused and took the water his sister handed him, but did not drink. "His elder brother wrote to him two days ago, asking him to look after their parents and do his filial duty for him, since he couldn't come home this year because of trouble in the army. In the letter he said the county constable of Jinchuan, that is, Elder Brother Gao, had arrested and sentenced and beheaded a fifth-rank vice-commander of the prefecture army, and the army nearly mutinied."

Huiheng shot to her feet, her face gone a little pale. What the charge was she did not know, but a mutiny in the prefecture army was a grave thing.

The prefecture armies were not the match of the several garrison commands and the two offices of the Imperial Guard, but a good many frontier prefecture armies were crack troops too, hard forces guarding the borders. Weizhou lay on the far western edge, next to the old Fan lands. The two had not come to open war in living memory, but blades had crossed there before. For the garrison of such a place to mutiny could shake the court, and that made it a very serious matter.

"Did your friend tell you what the vice-commander had done?" Huiheng asked, steady again after her fright.

"Elder Brother Gao sentenced him for violence done in drink, the killing of two herders." Xiheng said softly. "The herders' only son brought the dagger used that day and laid a charge, with witnesses and evidence both. The vice-commander truly couldn't deny it. Yet he kept saying he remembered nothing, and that if he was to be dealt with it should be by military law and not by a civil officer. The finer points the schoolmate's brother didn't set down. He only said the vice-commander was sentenced in open court to beheading on the spot, and that by the time the garrison commander of the prefecture army came rushing up, the head had been off for a good while."

"If the charge is true, the army's people should still have taken part in the sentencing." Huiheng knew the statutes. A military officer of the seventh rank or above, even when brought before a civil yamen on a charge, could be sentenced only with the head of his army command present. But Gao Yongqing was not a rash man, unless he had some other reason. She thought a moment, then said, "Mutiny over a fifth-rank vice-commander under them? Unless this garrison commander were the man's own father? There's surely more to this."

Xiheng had reckoned on his sister's sharp wits, and said at once, "The matter may be a secret one, and even the elder brother couldn't say much to the younger. My schoolmate only said the garrison commander wanted to smooth it over and make it small. But the vice-commander had always been well-liked, and a good many of his men, seeing their commander would not stand up for him, banded together, a few dozen who feared nothing, and broke into the county yamen to kill Elder Brother Gao in blood-payment. They found no one there, though, and killed several yamen runners and servants by mistake. The county magistrate, in a fury, reported it up to the commandery and the prefecture as a mutiny. The officials of both levels were blazing with anger and would not be soothed or let it drop. Those men are now held in the prefecture jail. Only..."

"Only once it reached the emperor's ear there's been no word since." Huiheng said it without a moment's thought.

"There's no telling how the sovereign will rule." At that, a cold, mocking smile flickered across Xiheng's face. "I only hope it's not the last time over again, fifty strokes to each side, as though he were so even-handed and never took a part..."

"Xiheng." Huiheng stopped him with a rare sternness in her eyes. "Have you forgotten everything Elder Brother taught us? Hard as the road has been for the four of us, we shouldn't be full of bitter words. For no other reason than that we shouldn't trap our own hearts in it and pile on our own troubles. We must fix our eyes on the present and look to the road ahead, so as not to fail our parents' hopes."

Xiheng knew he'd spoken out of turn. He was silent a while, then lowered his head. "Second Sister, I was wrong."

Huiheng felt her words just now had been too hard, and blamed herself inwardly. Xiheng was the deepest and most close-kept of them all. If it weren't to her, how would he ever let out what was in his heart? To anyone else he'd never open his mouth so. She laid a hand lightly on her brother's shoulder and softened her voice. "It was my fault. Elder Brother's away, and I'm clumsy at drawing you out and guiding you. Don't take it to heart. Only, however little it pleases you, are you not going to enter the court one day and be your brother's right arm? Thinking of that, you should start now to learn to keep the inside from showing, and the face from following the heart. You've only to look at how our brother carries himself every day to know."

The guilt in Xiheng eased at last. After a moment he said, "Second Sister, there's something I've thought about a great deal these days."

"Tell me. I'm listening."

A depth beyond his years came suddenly into the eyes of the sixteen-year-old. He said in a low voice, "I will never stand by and watch Elder Brother fight alone in the mire of the court. But is the examination and office truly the only road to being his right arm?"

This time Huiheng did not scold her brother for words that might sound close to wild and improper. She only looked quietly into his eyes, a long while without speaking. The crisp drip of spring dew falling on the flowering trees came drifting to her ear before she spoke, in that gentle, slow, firm voice.

"Neither of us has the power to reach heaven and know the earth, nor the art of seeing what's to come. But we don't need either to know that the road our brother walks is surely one of thorns and danger. If we, as his sister and brother, wait for the sorrow to come before we think of sharing it, isn't that too useless of us? Our elder brother is no common brother. He is father and mother both to you and me. Ours is no bond of blood alone. In the family's bitterest days, you hated your own youth and I hated my own weakness, both of us unable to lift a hand to share his load. We are not what we were then. It's time, too, that we stood shoulder to shoulder with our brother and bore the wind and rain of the road with him."

Xiheng had never seen such a light in his sister's eyes, a brightness to climb past the stars and outshine the moon. He knew his own eyes must hold the same now.

"But there's one thing." Huiheng said the hardest words in the lightest voice. "Whatever we choose, we must tell our brother, and not go our own way alone and leave him in a hard place."

"I understand you, Second Sister." Xiheng's smile at last had the free, open ease of a young man, spreading from the corners of his mouth up to his brows and eyes, offering up his promise and his resolve from the heart.