Chapter 115

"...And then Master Gong went explaining a good while before Master Ji believed we weren't father and son. Brothers, isn't that funny?"

Being taken for father and son was an experience he'd never had, and for three days running Guan Si'er brought the thing up at every meal, his face all excitement.

He rambled, but the old sabers didn't find their brother tiresome, and listened him out with a smile every time.

And every time they'd say, "Is that so, how funny indeed. The truth is, we think you and Master Gong have a tie between you too."

Hearing his brothers say so, Guan Si'er nodded, hugely excited. "The first day Master Gong came to Yanjing, the one he met was me, so there's a tie, isn't there."

And with that he bolted his rice, wiped his mouth, stood, and went.

Chen Dasheng asked after him with a smile, "Off to the Imperial College again?"

Guan Si'er's voice went off into the distance. "Yes, big brother. Tonight I'm to stay at Master Gong's. He's going to tell me about things up on their mountain today, ever so interesting..."

Yu Qingguan set down the cloth in his hand, took the clear tea an attendant handed him, rinsed his mouth, spat, and said, "So now he's got a father, he doesn't even want his brothers anymore."

Tong Jintai stopped his chopsticks and jeered too, "Second brother, why's your tone so thick with vinegar? Is it a bad thing for Little Seven to have a father to dote on him? Look at your own Shoutian, even now he's in the Inner Guard, whenever he's off duty doesn't he turn straight round and run to the Long Saber garrison to find his father? And last time I heard them say your boy was boasting out in the world that you with one saber-stroke could cut through fifty layers of oxhide!"

To hear his son worshiped him Yu Qingguan was glad, of course, but he had to be modest a word or two, so he coughed a few times and said, "Twenty layers at most. Ahem, that wretched boy, I said it before him just once and he kept it."

The brothers teased Yu Qingguan all at once, but Chen Dasheng said, troubled, "What I fear is that in a while, when the second party of scouts is back, the thing won't be as we think."

The old sabers fell silent in an instant, and it was a good while before Ma Ergu forced a smile. "Hai, what of it, he doesn't know anyway."

Tong Jintai smiled with an effort. "Yes, yes, he doesn't know anyway."

From the time Little Seven grew besotted with the Imperial College, he'd shown a happiness he'd never shown before, and no one wanted him disappointed, so they all together kept the thing from him.

And someone or other said, "At worst, he can take a foster-father, can't he."

"That would do, too."

Each autumn rain brought a weight of cold, and Zhong-shi and Tan Shiyuan were borne to burial, not back to Shaoshang, but laid in Yanjing by the grace of Tan Shize.

On the morning of the burial, Chen Dasheng changed early into black, took a casket from the hidden room of his study, and drew out a roll of names made of sheepskin.

He took a knife and cut his finger, drew it firmly but lightly across Tan Shiyuan's name, and then sat quietly in the chair, looking at that full roll of names.

"Chief, it's time."

Chen Dasheng answered, stood, and rolling up the sheepskin, sighed softly. "At last, the first one's settled..."

On the old long streets of Yanjing, the sons of the Tan house, hastily gathered, wore hemp and mourning, and the women of the branches, come in a hurry, sat on the funeral carts gloomy-faced, not wanting to weep, unable to weep, pressing kerchiefs to their faces and stepping quick and short as if they'd done some guilty thing.

Two coffins, nothing lavish, were slowly lifted, a Daoist flung a handful of paper money into the air, and hired mourning sons and worthy grandsons held the biers and wailed, "So bitter! Can't bear to part! Our kin!"

Wu Xiu looked down at his sister's son with a smile. "Little whelp, just say whether you'll get in the cart or not."

Little Tan Xingye raised his face and looked at his uncle, all stubbornness. "I want my father!"

Wu Xiu lifted him by the back of the collar. "Your father has no use for you."

And he stuffed his nephew into his sister's cart.

Wu-ling took her son, stroked his head to comfort him, and raised her face toward the far end of the procession, where it was all white, the grass withered, a stretch of mourning color. But the grandson holding the spirit-tablet for his own grandfather was not the trueborn one, but the eldest grandson, Tan Xingyuan.

A child of seven or eight, not whole in his wits, he knew his father had taken his brother along, and used to such disappointment, his face was downcast past measure.

Afraid of her son's disappointment, Wu-ling looked to her brother and begged, "A-xiu."

Wu Xiu hadn't meant to meddle in it, but he loved his sister most, and helpless he turned back, put out both hands to his nephew, and said, "Come, I'll take you up on the horse."

A pity, his little nephew too, like everyone else, looked down on his uncle, and said stubbornly, "I won't ride with you. Your, your horse isn't as tall as my father's. My, my father's horse is ever so tall, it can go up to the sky..."

Wu Xiu looked at the child with a cold laugh, and in the end yanked the cart-curtain down, muttering low, "Fine blood, a whole family of white-eyed wolves..."

With that he led up the famous steed he'd bought at a high price from the Six Steeds Horse Farm, and when he'd sprung onto it, more sobbing rose.

When a great clan-wife goes out there's always a train and a show about her. Wu-ling had none, only her brother slowly guarding her single cart forward.

Now and then Wu Xiu looked toward the cart window, and that whelp Tan Xingye would duck at once back inside, and before long poke his head out to look at his uncle again, round and round.

Zhong-shi and Tan Shiyuan had died too horribly, and the whole way was very quiet. However good their ties with the Founding Marquis's house, no family dared put up a roadside offering-tent.

And so this funeral became the bleakest among the noble houses since Great Liang's founding.

Passing the six-markets crossing, Zheng Aman stood on the second floor of a teahouse, pushed the window open a crack, and sighed. "A fierce man of his age, you'd call him, and who'd have thought it would come to this end. Do you remember the first time we saw the fellow before the throne?"

Chang Lianfang's mouth curved a little at this, and he set down the wine-pot in his hand and sighed. "Come away. Why speak of him?"

Li Jinggui nodded, took up his chopsticks, and heaped Chang Lianfang's plate full of dishes. "Just so, don't bring up the Tan house for no reason. What angers me most is our Little Flower off at the wars near three years, and when he'd won at last and come back to court, he meets a thing like this. They couldn't even pick the time to go seeking death... Let it be, eat more, you've had a hard time of it these years out there, haven't you?"

"Little Flower?" Chang Lianfang snorted a laugh, and shook his head, helpless. "How long since I heard that name. If you hadn't said it I'd have forgotten it."

The south gate-tower.

The Emperor stood with his hands behind him, looking into the distance, She Qingling in plain clothes at his side, and only when the procession was out of sight did She Qingling sigh. "Hear the grievance of the parting dead. Contend and contend, beg and beg, and a whole load of sin, afraid even the wheel of rebirth is closed to them now. And why? For what?"

The Emperor's face was grave. The Tan house had true merit in his winning this realm, and however foul Tan Shiyuan, there were a good many fine memories of him in the Emperor's head. But however fine those memories, they could never outweigh Tan Shize, who'd had true brotherly friendship with the Emperor.

And so the Emperor suddenly smiled, and turned to She Qingling. "Today, A-ze will be glad."

She Qingling nodded, and said with a smile too, "Then let me drink a cup with you today, and call the little Sixth along, it's not merry without him."

String on string of palace music struck up deep in the palace, and they came down from the tower and walked slowly across the palace square, when far off they saw a hurrying figure, white-haired, come up to them.

Chang Mianshen knelt heavily on both knees, came before the Emperor with his eyes full of tears, and, weeping and laughing, choked out, "Your Majesty, your servant has come back."

The Emperor was taken aback, and only after a moment scolded him with a touch of anger. "Didn't I bid you halt the troops to rest and refit, and then choose a lucky day?"

But Chang Mianshen, aggrieved as a child, complained, "I know, Your Majesty, only, only I missed Your Majesty. It's been three years since I saw you."

She Qingling watched, smiling, the warmth between sovereign and subject, while a line of autumn geese drifted across the sky overhead, the head of the skein toward the palace, the tail of it toward that train of hemp-clad mourners leaving the city.

Chen Dasheng and the brothers of the Long Saber garrison rode hard all the way to the highest stone terrace of Mount Baiquan, where there was a small temple, and beside the temple a high joint grave, its mound tall, near to the very sky, its headstone great and without a single word.

There lay buried a few locks of hair. Never to return, never to return, and who could say who was whose beloved in the dream.

Melons and fruit, pears and peaches, fat chickens and ducks, a dripping pork knuckle, a steamed sheep's head that stared, its eyes refusing to close, at the men kneeling before it.

Chen Dasheng broke open the old wine-jar, turned it upside down, and poured out the fine wine lavishly.

He laughed, very happy, and at the last shook the jar, and loath to waste the lees, tipped his head back and caught the last few drops, and drinking them off said to the lone grave, "Brothers, we seven haven't lived for nothing. Today's a good day. See? Whoever he is, whoever did wrong, whoever owed us, there's a reckoning for them sooner or later. Don't you go on. Wait at the Bridge of No Return, and watch your brothers send them over to you one by one."

Yu Qingguan broke open a wine-jar, poured out a jarful, opened a fresh one for himself, and after several swigs wiped his mouth with relish. "Brothers, you're in for a treat today, this is Sangou's twenty-year-old wine, and the taste is a fine one!" And at this he turned and called his cubs. "You pups, come here, knock your heads good and loud to your uncles."

Yu Shoutian and Yu Youtian came over wholly at a loss, and their father pressed them down to knock their heads loud, and at their ears heard their father say, "You pups, mark this for me. From now on, when I die, never mind my grave is leveled flat. I've held office, I've known good fortune, it's enough! That I lived to see you at all is because your uncles threw their flesh-and-blood bodies in front of your father, and only so do you have the good days you have now. Hereafter, tell your sons and grandsons: sooner cut off the offerings to me than ever cut off the offerings here. Do you mark it... you pups?"

Yu Shoutian knocked his head in earnest. "I'll mark it, Father. Hereafter our sons and grandsons will all keep the offerings to our uncles."

Tong Jintai carefully took a little wine-gourd from his coat and poured it out on the ground to the last drop, shedding tears as he poured, and yet smiling, and he asked the grave with a smile, "Chief, good, isn't it? Never had it before, eh? It's a fine thing, my wife stole it from her father. Brother, your little brother's got on in the world, I've a big fat daughter now, born so fair, not like me, like your sister-in-law. She's only the first, and Granny says flowers first and fruit after, it's a great blessing.

"But sometimes I see you in dreams, and I sit up, and dare not take my ease. I, sometimes I dare not eat, dare not drink. Every extra drop of oil your little brother eats now, I feel I owe it to you. See, brother! Our enemy's borne to burial today. Are you... glad? I'm glad, at any rate."

Ma Ergu tipped his head back and drained a whole jar of wine, panting when he'd done, and weeping and laughing sat cross-legged there and slapped his knee. "Good! Truly good... it eases the heart. Brothers, wait a few days and we'll send them over one by one, and when that wicked lot are sentenced by King Yama, then you brothers can watch them cut a thousand times over, and that'll be satisfying."

Hu Yougui was a good-looking man, but at bottom a very practical one, and he poured no wine, but moved up a huge brazier, and in it burned as offering half a cartload of gold and silver ingots he'd brought, talking it over with his old brothers as he burned. "Today... there's no snatching, either. Back then your little brother could never out-snatch you, so I could only scheme against you. Tss... lucky you brothers were generous and didn't take it up with me. Well, I cheated you of your shoes, and of food and drink, and today I pay you brothers back double. No snatching, there's plenty, this year and next year and every day."

At the last he took out a bound-up bundle and burned it with great care. "Brothers, have you seen your big nephew Yangdan? This is for him, clothes and shoes and socks and pocket-money I had his foster-mother fold for him. Just, dote on him well for your brothers' sake, won't you, he's only small, isn't he?"

While the brothers made their offerings, Cui Erdian and Guan Si'er took tools and heaped earth on the brothers' grave and pulled the weeds, and at the last borrowed water from the temple, and half-kneeling with white cloth in hand, cleaned the grave up neat and spotless in earnest.

Erdian was a man of few words, but today he rambled a little, and talked as he worked. "Yesterday I arranged it with Brother Quan, but he said that since he didn't die with you brothers, he dared not come and make his offerings before you. What's in that? You brothers are generous, you'd surely not blame him. Brother Quan married a rich widow, and has a big fat daughter, and he's doing well now, only he dares not think of you, dares not speak of you. And I say, what's in that..."

Guan Si'er scrubbed hard a few times and nodded. "That's right, Brother Quan always thinks too much... Me, I don't think of anything."

At the Tan burial-ground in Sangou, Tan Shize's lavish grave was built to the measure of a minister above all the ranks, its grave-goods only one grade below a commandery-prince's.

He lay underground in four nested coffins, wrapped in a jade suit sewn with silver thread, on his breast the scroll of the edict that made him a duke, and around the body four marshal's seals of jade, gold, silver, and bronze, and by the pillow where he slept a black lock of hair, and five hundred thousand strings of copper cash set in his treasure-store... Vessels for a life of bells and cauldrons heaped the tomb-chamber, and down the central passage, before the coffins, there stood only a suit of battered armor and a long saber.

A li off above ground, the hastily built grave was shabby, and Zhong-shi, dead a wicked death, had no mound and could raise no stone, and so slept beside the son she'd loved best.

Tan Weixin made to enter the tomb-passage, but his elder brother caught hold of him and, looking at him sidelong, said, "This is my father, my grandmother, and your father's grave..."

Before all those eyes a great slap landed. Tan Weitong looked coldly at Tan Weixin, then turned, walked over to his injured younger brother Tan Weizheng, slowly crouched, and said, "Brother, you're hurt. I'll carry you."

Tan Weizheng lay slowly against his brother's back, and as the tomb-passage grew darker and colder, he choked out at last, "Brother!"

"Mm?"

"I did my best."

"I know."

"But why did Father still have to die?"

"Because we had no power."

"I want power."

"You'll have it. You've got your brother."

The three fatherless children slowly knelt before the coffins, and looked a last time at the father who'd loved them best, and at their grandmother.

Tan Weitong lit incense, led his brothers in knocking their heads, and said to the coffins, "Your son knows, Father, you were always contending, with Second Uncle, with the Emperor, with everyone in this world. They all said you were no good, not the equal of Second Uncle. But your son never thought that mattered so much. You were the best father in the world, the best grandmother. Your son was good for nothing, and couldn't shield you in the end..."

He put out his arms and gathered his two brothers to left and right, and said to the poor single-layer coffin, "Your grandson swears here today: this estate, this dignity you won for us, your grandson will keep for you with all his strength! Father, Granny, go in peace. Hereafter they'll have me. Things won't go badly."

Tan Weizheng, his face red and swollen, knocked his head numbly.

Tan Weixin, worn thin as a bundle of kindling, coughed a while, and slowly knocked his head, but his face was full of the bitterest hatred, and he said through his teeth, "Father, Granny, bear with it a few years. One day your son will dig up the one in the middle, and bury you both in his place..."

But Tan Weitong looked at his brother and said, "Have some spirit. If you make something of yourself, win our father another burial-ground."

Tan Shize's burial-ground, with a jade-belt river curving at its waist and three hills at its back, was a plot of the finest fortune.

Above ground, Tan Shouyi's clan-younger-brother Tan Shoulin looked left and right, judged the hour, and nodded to the officiant.

The officiant raised a long funeral-banner and waved it to the four quarters, calling the names of Zhong-shi and Tan Shiyuan, "Come home... come home... come home..."

Tan Shoulin stepped back and jeered to a clan-brother, "Come home, my eye, this is no home. Well, that's that, all bunched up keeping mourning, and not a good meal to be had."

His clan-brother patted his shoulder. "Hush your mouth. Haven't you suffered enough yet?"

A li off, before Tan Shize's grave, a figure in a great black cloak led a black horse, and she came slowly up before his grave.

Qing Buyi slowly drew back her hood, sat before the headstone, stroked it back and forth as if it were precious, pressed her face to it a while to feel it, and then said, "You fool, I've avenged you. Those two will never dare bully you again... You fool, are you glad? Are you glad?... I told you long ago, how good it would have been to come away with me..."

Qing Buyi's offering lasted from daylight until the Dipper rose, and she burned the offerings she'd gathered from half a street, and at last mounted, looked back once at the headstone, and in the end rode round Yanjing and off toward Yuegong Mountain.

Qin She had been at war with Yuegong Mountain a long while, and she couldn't let her old father hold it up alone. Only, a pity, as she rode up to an offering-pavilion beside the official road, she saw from afar dozens of torches lighting a long stretch of the road.

Someone was lying in wait, and Qing Buyi cracked her whip and spurred the horse faster, charging at the obstacle, and just as she was about to break through, a sky-filling killing-intent struck at her all at once from right ahead of it. She'd ranged the martial world with few to match her, had fought past counting, yet had never met so cold and cutting a saber-edge.

Forced off her horse, she flung herself backward, and heard at her ear a sound like a ripe autumn melon splitting of itself.

Crack...

When she landed, under the blaze of dozens of torches, she saw to her shock her own horse split in two, blood spraying, fallen some twenty-odd paces off.

And the man in the middle of the road had already put away his saber. He wore a guard's robe of red worked with gold in a fighting-bull pattern, not old, just past twenty, his eyes bright, his cheeks faintly red with drink, and Qing Buyi couldn't see his saber, but the way he attacked was familiar.

In a fury she glared at Chen Dasheng and shouted, "Do you know who I am?"

Chen Dasheng laughed softly. "Qing Buyi."

Qing Buyi raised her chin a little. "You ungrateful dog, you dare cut at me with the martial art he taught you?"

Chen Dasheng still smiled. "The reverend nun has broken the law of the land."

Qing Buyi gave a cold laugh. "And what of it?"

But Chen Dasheng said, "Turn back, and the shore is there."

Qing Buyi grew angry. "Don't you know I go back to my death? Today it's your life or mine. Whatever moves you have, bring them on. Qin She has never had one afraid to fight!"

But Chen Dasheng shook his head and sighed. "The reverend nun surely hasn't read many law-books. Not reading always costs you in the end."

Qing Buyi reeled with anger, her shaven head gleaming in the moonlight, and with a flick of her green blade she cursed, "You're mocking me!"

But Chen Dasheng nodded and owned it. "I am."

Qing Buyi, cold and grave, was just about to attack when Chen Dasheng cupped his hands in earnest and made her a bow. "Reverend nun, Great Liang is newly founded and the people only just settled. The nun has offended in Yanjing many times, and if she'd not drag Qin She's three thousand disciples down with her, so that they dare never walk again in the light of day, she had best come back with this humble man and own her guilt and submit to the law."

Qing Buyi breathed in to master her anger. "Go back, and be delivered to your execution ground, and have my head cut off before all those eyes, and be shamed?"

Chen Dasheng sighed again. "So you see, one really must read books..." Seeing Qing Buyi about to fly into a rage, and having had some wine today, the drink rising to his head, he wanted the matter done sooner, and said:

"The nun is sadly muddled. The faults you've committed in Yanjing are no more than breaking the curfew, and wounding men gravely without going up on the dueling platform. Tan Shiyuan had long since left to be a monk, and been driven out of his clan besides. He counted as no noble, no great minister of the court, nothing but a plain commoner. And as for his death, it wasn't the nun's hand that did it. So why, when all's well, can't the nun see sense, but must take a warrant on her own back and drag down Qin She, already hurt by the Yuegong Mountain quarrel?"

Qing Buyi was a little stunned, and thinking it over carefully, it did seem so, didn't it?

She said, somewhat puzzled, "I, this poor nun, I seem to have tried to kill Yang Zao before..."

Chen Dasheng sighed, weary at heart. "The Qing Buyi of that time had been snared by others and her wits were not clear. My sovereign is magnanimous; had he meant to take it up, he'd have done so long ago. So you see, one must read books... I recall that the nun, to help her beloved, had Qin She put out great effort, and won a title and reward besides. The faults the nun has now, at worst can be offset against that title. And truly, does your Qin She want for these few bits of silver?"

Qing Buyi, who came out of the martial world, had no idea the law could be read this way at all.

She licked her lips, thought of her white-haired old father, and of her junior fellow-disciples not yet grown, and said at last, "...Then, was the kill-order Yang Zao laid on me a false one?"

Chen Dasheng laughed softly. "How can the nun call my sovereign by his name? That you'll have to mend hereafter. My sovereign's word is gold and jade; say he'll kill you and he'll kill you, there's no falseness in that. Only, a pity, that pack of fools at the Jiusi Hall never found you, and what's that to do with me?

"Today is not as before. Tan Shiyuan's dead, so what's the sense in killing the nun now? My sovereign wants a decent face, the law of Great Liang wants a decent face, the court wants a decent face all the more. Only let the nun come back with me and then do as I arrange, and I'll say no more, but I can answer for it that you'll come to no harm."

At most, exile three thousand li.

The green blade was slowly put away, and Qing Buyi, turning it over front and back, asked Chen Dasheng at last, "You and I have never known each other..." Her tone turned doubtful of a sudden, and she stepped forward and looked carefully at Chen Dasheng's face before going on, "but it's as if, somewhere? I've seen you?"

Chen Dasheng, open and unflinching, denied it. "The nun's surely misremembering, we've never met!"

Qing Buyi gave an "oh." "Oh. But I still can't trust you."

Chen Dasheng had known it would be so, and laughed softly. "Does the nun remember the imperial guard's jail?"