Chapter 125

When an emperor blunders into trouble, for a minister to point out his error straight and criticize him for it is to make his office its last.

And to jump up and tell the Emperor outright, use my method and you'll solve it at once, that office won't last long either, and might even earn the Emperor's hatred.

Only you're clever, and I'm shown up stupid as a pig?

Every emperor is a touchy, black-hearted thing. When he needs you now, he won't say a word, and may even be so good to you that he'd bestow a solid-gold hammer for cracking walnuts in your house for you to use.

But should the day come when the hard thing is lifted and the Emperor's days are easy, he might not want to lay eyes on you at all.

Yang Zao was no fool, and had yet caught no emperor's sickness, and freshly down from the battlefield, a martial emperor of many years' real fighting, he understood strategy. And so... it took She Qingling two whole days to guide him to a method, to be counted as a strategy the sovereign himself had thought up.

Behead the Gongji Tan King, and set the Tan heirs at each other's throats.

Past Zuoliang Pass lay the Tan River, and the land its waters flowed through was called Gongji. Gongji was no kingdom, but a naturally formed seat of tribal power.

At the source of that land's river stood the Sun Palace all the Tan worshipped. The Sun God was there, and the Gongji Tan King slept at the Sun God's feet.

It was a palace. In the mornings the Gongji Tan King worshipped the Sun God, in the afternoons he governed the tribes. He wasn't like the Great Liang emperor, wanting to manage everything, know everything. The Gongji Tan King took the offerings and spoke with the god on everyone's behalf, only helped govern the tribes and mediate their quarrels, like the heart of a people, and meant beyond measure to the Tan.

Only the greatest Tan could be the Gongji Tan King. He was the son of the god.

The Tan said the land they dwelt in was the first ground the rising sun shone on, that they were born noble, and the last warrior standing must be of the true god's blood, acknowledged by the god. Gongji meant son of the god, and the father of all the Tan.

Though the Great Liang people's view of the Tan was that they were savages of a wild land with no rites or teaching.

Yet they too had their own heritage. The Tan had an inborn beast-nature, set little store by blood-ties, but worshipped the strongest as king.

Take their succession. When the old Gongji King died in the Sun Palace, the attendants who served him would hang his head up high, so the Sun God might take away the soul of his son.

And from that moment every Tan tribal chief held the right of succession. They had to return to the Sun Palace for single combats that drew in no tribes, to become the great father. In short, the way of the wolf pack.

And their fighting was no plain brawl. There were trials of tribal governance to pass besides... And so the Gongji Tan King was the strongest man, whole in both force and wisdom, worshipped by all the Tan, revered like a demigod.

In short, the Emperor, under She Qingling's guidance, mulled it over a long while himself, and in his wise brilliance hit at last on an earth-shaking little stroke, and resolved to send assassins to behead the Gongji King, touch off a succession war among the Tan, and win Great Liang time to recover.

The sovereign named his men: the four Jiusi Hall Executive Wardens under Xie Wuhao, and the seven Long Saber scouts he trusted most, Chen Dasheng and the rest.

Look at it another way, the plan was very high in risk, but wealth and rank are sought in danger, and it had its good side too.

Chen Dasheng and She Qingling both saw it clearly: if the old sabers were to win the regard of sovereigns generation on generation, if they were to climb higher hereafter, they had to have a merit built in the sovereign's heart and theirs alone. For the merits of before, won in the Tan army, the Emperor had already given their due reward.

As for whether it would fail, whether men would die, that couldn't be weighed. Before the life and death of a nation, the tender ties of man and woman, She Qingling saw past them, and Chen Dasheng further still.

As for Qi Qian'er, she'd surely grieve, but if Chen Dasheng didn't go, who would? For the fighting power of a small band, in all Great Liang who was there but the old sabers?

The warmth of spring came slowly on again. Qi Qian'er, low and joyless, wanted to do nothing, and could not shake it off, and had the servants harness a cart to take her back to Qingfeng.

Passing the mouth of the Sixth Market, they heard a clamor, called the cart to a stop, opened the window, and listened to a travelling merchant from the frontier weep out the news from over there.

The news was heartbreaking, and bitterer to hear still.

The merchant said they'd gotten word overnight and hidden in the woods, and the Tan, riding great horses taller than a man, passed by the wood's edge, and clever as they were, knowing people could hide there, laughed aloud and set the woods alight, and stood outside listening to the screams as a relish to their wine.

The merchant's face was burned horribly, not yet healed, still running pus and blood. He didn't weep, nor speak of the men's deaths, only ground his teeth telling how the women and children of Great Liang had been abused... A hurt done to women and children always doubles the grief, and a scholar rose up in fury, meaning to go demand an answer of the court.

And so from the blocked street half a street's worth of people came pouring out, and rushed together to the front of the Great Liang palace to beg their sovereign: send out your troops, save your people...

These days the Board of War minister Sun Shouyi stood daily on the city wall and gave out false news: that the court was moving troops and dispatching generals, that grain and fodder were gathering from every quarter, that a great army would set out any moment, that His Majesty was in a fury and had sworn to avenge the people of Great Liang and cut the Tan a thousand times over.

The people wept, bowed their thanks to their sovereign, and dispersed arm in arm.

Such scenes played out every day of late, and besides a handful of weighty ministers, the officials high and low of the court now believed too that the great army was about to set out...

To steady the people's hearts, every early morning false grain-carts passed down the main street of Yanjing, to be hauled to the camps garrisoned near the city.

In the camps the soldiers drilled hard, their shouts shaking the sky, the anger burning in their hearts ready to march out any moment...

The cart Qi Qian'er rode moved slowly on. As one of the few who knew the truth, she wondered now why Father and Chen Dasheng had told her the truth. Did she have a heart of iron?

The imperial city grew ever bigger, Qingfeng ever longer. Forty li had once seemed a distance, but with so many coming and going the road seemed short and not lonely, and before she knew it the cart had come within Qingfeng's bounds.

Chunfen, driving, happened to look back, and said from outside the cart, "Mistress, the master seems to be behind us."

What ears Qi Qian'er had, of course she knew that from the moment she'd left home the fellow had ridden silently behind her the whole way.

Your heart's guilty, and what use is following along?

Here was a dull, blunt oaf who couldn't say a sweet word to save his life. It wasn't that the man was bad, only that just now she wished she could push that face of his down into the mud. Qi Qian'er couldn't call the man bad either.

He was an eagle of broad bosom, born unable to be an ordinary man, able only to soar ever higher.

But she hated him still, wished she could bite a bloody chunk of flesh off him with her own mouth and eat it raw to ease her hate.

But these days Qi Qian'er found her thinking had changed after all. In both lives the Chen family had bought her, and last time when Chen Dasheng left she'd near died of despair, but this time she wasn't afraid either, only felt the hatred of it.

When Chunfen said the foolish piglet was following, Qi Qian'er said flatly, "Drive on, pay him no mind."

Chunfen wasn't the least afraid of the master. He heeded only the mistress, and with a crack of the whip drove the cart on into the city.

Qingfeng was a city that had taken a great wound. It had lost its walls, lost its water-source, but the old city was still crowded with people enough, refugees come from elsewhere who didn't want to go home and had settled here, resolved to put down roots.

They weren't necessarily without money, for to leave one's home country in flight with a whole family in tow, you'd wrap several generations' wealth about you.

Such were the people living in the old city of Qingfeng now, not looking well-off, honest and hard-working, a foreign accent on their tongues and no kin nearby, who'd poured out all they had to buy the cheap old houses of the old city and settle there, and set up stalls all over Qingfeng, trading in the traditional dishes of north and south and every quarter.

Fourth-Moon loved this stretch of the scene most, and most of the monthly allowance she earned went to this place too. Qi Qian'er couldn't tell, but Fourth-Moon today found it odd.

She asked curiously, "Mistress, how is it the peddlers aren't crying their wares today?" And she sighed. "We've passed the pine-nut candy."

Qi Qian'er leaned over for a look. The place by the Qingfeng city-edge, once so busy and loud, today had fewer traders, fewer cries. The refugees, like birds startled by the bow, their hurts not yet healed, huddled in corners talking low.

The little maid, her face like a peach-blossom, her hair in two buns, wore silk-wrapped pink apricot flowers in them, and below her ears a pair of the cheapest silver drops from a Yanjing gold-shop, worth six hundred cash. She was Qi Qian'er's head maid, and besides what the Chen house gave and the prince's mansion added, she could always get an unexpected tip, so it came to three or four strings a month.

A girl of no great age who'd suffered hardship, as if the world owed her, with money in hand she kept buying all kinds of snacks to make it up to herself, and went out like a flush landlord's daughter.

Worried in her heart too, likely, after the cart had swayed on a while she looked at Qi Qian'er in eager longing, as if for something to lean on, and asked, "Mistress, do you think there'll be fighting tomorrow?"

Qi Qian'er smiled and reached out and took her hand. "Don't be afraid... this is, the Great Liang dynasty..."

Yes. This was the Great Liang dynasty now.

It was so in the last life too, the whole country in a fright for a year and more, people saying every day the Tan were coming, the Tan were coming, and in her fear she'd begun secretly hoarding grain and bits of silver, and digging pits all over Baiquan Mountain to bury elm-bark flour... but the Tan never came in the end... Now, though, she was a little unsure, for Great Liang's cities had been broken.

A clamor came from the road, and Chunfen reined the horse to a slower walk, and Qi Qian'er opened the curtain again and saw Guard Lane's Kong Xiangchun, Dou Yonglun, Qu Yingfang and a pack of young lords, hooded fighting-cocks tucked under their arms, go whooping off amid a crowd of richly dressed youths.

Yu Shoutian, who used to play with them, had begun training hard at combat in the Jinwu Guard.

The boy Shoutian could bear hardship well. Scabby said that of all the guards' sons in the Jinwu Guard, Shoutian, though not quick-witted, was steady and honest, and most liked by his officer-instructor.

When the pack of young lords had run far off, a bronze gong sounded from the gambling-house, and Qi Qian'er saw two people.

So she said to Chunfen, "Rein in and go slow."

Chunfen reined in, and Qi Qian'er gave Fourth-Moon a string of cash, and Fourth-Moon jumped down and ran for the candy-shop. The old lady at home had a bitter mouth on waking and liked to suck a piece of the toffee from here. She didn't chew it, but could suck it an hour for the taste, and open her mouth and there'd be half a piece still inside.

People who'd known hardship even sucked candy differently, with not so much spit as the well-off folk.

Seeing his wife's cart stop, Chen Dasheng urged his horse a few steps forward, and from the saddle saw at a glance, before a shoe-stall, the Jiusi Hall's Xie Wuhao crouched on the ground fitting shoes on a young man.

The young man wore Jiusi Hall dress, and his face had something of Xie Wuhao's in it. Brothers, plainly. The younger one's whole face was displeased.

In five days more they were to go to Zuoliang Pass together, so Chen Dasheng greeted Xie Wuhao of his own accord.

He got down from his horse and called out, "Lord Xie."

Xie Wuhao started, turned and saw it was him, and gave his usual mild smile. He stood and hauled up his unwilling brother too. "Quick, make your bow to Marquis Chen."

Xie Liuhao had a few days' leave and had meant to sleep in, but his brother had come whirling like a madman into the branch hall, first dug him out of his bedding, then, seeing the head-grease all over his quilt, threw the quilt out, and set the whole branch hall of brothers laughing at him.

Grown men living rough, who washes his feet before getting into bed? And they couldn't very well, like the women, wear a cloud-collar to catch the hair-grease.

His brother said he'd take him to the street to buy a new quilt, but once in the market his brother went as if to spend the next life's money all in one go, bought him six outfits inside and out, bought him all kinds of snacks and hung them all over him, and where he'd always liked to lecture him, this time he didn't lecture, only kept nagging at him to behave, to behave!

Which was most tiresome...

His brother telling him to bow to a colleague was more tiresome still, and Xie Liuhao was a bit unwilling, until he saw, from the cart straight ahead, that Marquis Chen was handing down a she-devil.

Xie Liuhao gave a shiver, hurried over, brushed off the dust, straightened himself, drew a breath, and made a deep bow.

As one worships a god or buddha, he worshipped the bodhisattva who'd married the she-devil: I thank you for your great mercy, that saved every male soul around Baiquan Mountain.

"Marquis Chen, my respects!"

Chen Dasheng smiled, and feigning puzzlement said, "And this is?"

Xie Wuhao, awkward and abashed, hauled up his brother, who wouldn't rise from his bow, and apologized. "Forgive me, this is my younger brother Liuhao... Get up? Get up!"

Xie Liuhao raised his head, and the string of packets under his neck, steamed cakes, dried fruit, sugar-beans, salt-beans, swung about.

Just then he wished he were dead.

Chen Dasheng felt awkward for the petty warden himself, and steadying Qi Qian'er made the introduction, and Xie Wuhao hurried over to save the family's face and paid his respects to the lady.

Qi Qian'er put on a smile and returned the courtesy, and reached out and untied from Chen Dasheng's waist his beloved tiger jade pendant to give Xie Liuhao as a first-meeting gift.

This jade was worth three hundred strings, finely carved, the tiger roaring in the mountain forest fierce beyond compare, one of the few things Chen Dasheng loved. In an instant it was as if five thunderbolts struck his head, and Chen Dasheng's heart shattered on the spot.

And he didn't dare ask for it back.

Xie Wuhao hadn't been four years in great wealth, and rich as the family was they didn't know palace-made goods when they saw them, so he patted his brother's head. "Thank the lady, then."

Xie Liuhao gave his thanks, and Chen Dasheng thought, that's my jade, and if you're thanking anyone you should thank me.

But Xie Liuhao worshipped only the she-devil, and didn't so much as look at him.

Since they'd have to work together on the road ahead, Xie Wuhao and Chen Dasheng were on good terms this time, not point against point, and the two walked on in front, and in the instant Qi Qian'er passed Xie Liuhao she said to him, "Tell Old Xin, tonight, the old place."

Xie Liuhao gave a slight start, then nodded.

Qingfeng was a long, narrow city, and coming the whole way from the east, Chen Dasheng saw how much Xie Wuhao had bought his brother. His own purse was bare, so he shamelessly went back and ran up a debt with his wife, got some money, and as the fancy took him, for Granny, for his elder brothers, for the family, and most of all for his wife, bought a half-cartload of odds and ends.

Reckless spending, true, but not knowing how to show the guilt in his heart, he indulged himself for once even at the cost of a scolding.

Afterward he took leave of Xie Wuhao, and home again got his scolding, sure enough.

The old lady pointed at him and sprayed spittle calling him a spendthrift! A fool who, with muck in the crack of his backside, couldn't hold it in but had to drop it in other folks' fields. The house had more silk and satin than it could wear, so what was he buying her narrow-width cloth for?

But Chen Dasheng wasn't angry, and full of fondness pillowed his head on the old lady's knee and drowsed away a whole afternoon.

He dreamed again of the old home. The dead had all come home, and at sunrise went out to farm, and his mother, a bamboo cane raised, chased him round the well beating him and cursing, "Stinking fool, muck in your backside and you'd manure our own fields with it. There are people enough in the world, so why should you go and die?"

He begged them for help, but they all seemed angry, glaring at him the way you glare at iron that won't make steel, and Chen Dasheng, grieved past words, woke with tears at the corners of his eyes.

He sat up. It was already dark. Granny, for fear of startling his sleep, had dozed leaning against the kang-cabinet, and the moment he stirred she opened her eyes and reached for the string of keys under her clothes.

Only when she'd felt the keys did she see him, and she gave him a slap. "A grown man and still wanting coddling. Get back to your own house to eat, there's no food for you here."

Chen Dasheng said, dazed, "Granny, I dreamed of them."

Granny blinked. "What were they up to? A pack of fools who only know how to eat the burnt paper and the offerings, and never send so much as a dream to me!"

Chen Dasheng rubbed her numbed leg for her. "They all seemed to have gone back to the old home."

Granny let out a breath. "...Back is good, then."

And gave him another sharp slap. "Your grandfather, that fool, was he alone?"

"Mm, all alone, sitting under our tree watching the fruit, and when I got beaten he didn't mind me at all."

There was a touch of grievance in Chen Dasheng's voice.

Granny asked him, "Who beat you?"

Chen Dasheng sighed. "My mother."

He got another slap.

Granny huffed. "Your mother beat you and serve you right, who told our pack of spineless lot to wrong people. Get to your house to eat, there's nothing readied for you here... you fool? Your wife's carrying two bodies, and you'd let her eat alone?"

At the word "wife" Chen Dasheng started, jumped off the kang, and shuffled to go, but after a few steps turned back and hugged Granny once more. "Granny, the Emperor's given me a posting away, I have to go on a long journey."

A prickle ran to the old lady's hair-roots in an instant, her voice gave out all at once, and hoarse, she held him tight and asked, "They're sending you to war?"

The business of those Tan she'd been talking over with the women of the street for days, and cursing for days.

Chen Dasheng steadied himself and put on a much-aggrieved tone. "What war! I'd have liked to go, but Father wouldn't let me! So he got the Emperor to post me out of the capital. A chance to win merit and make a name like that comes maybe once in a hundred years..."

Before he'd finished, the old lady gave the back of his head a round of slaps, and in the end, unable to contain her vexation, pointed at the door and told him to clear off.

Chen Dasheng cleared off...

Ill at ease, halfway down Guard Lane he met Tong Jintai coming home, and jerked his chin at him and blinked, and Tong Jintai shook his head. "Brother, don't dare say it, Wanru's expecting again, you'd fright my child right out of her, ah, pah, pah, pah! Won't fall, won't fall..."

Parting from him, Chen Dasheng thought of what Father had said: whoever else you keep this from in the house, you can't keep it from your wife. Your wife is the balance-star. Don't make your going plain to her, and if something truly happens, Guard Lane will fall into chaos.

So, though his own wife was likewise with child, she'd have to bear the wrong of it first?

Sore at heart, Chen Dasheng went quietly into the house, quietly ate, and only when the candle in his wife's room was out did he slip quietly in and burrow into the quilt.

He caught Qi Qian'er to him and pressed his nose into her hair, drawing strength from it with all his might.

Qi Qian'er was awake, and heard him say, "Wife, it's I who've wronged you. If a person has a next life, keep your wits about you and don't marry a man like me."

Qi Qian'er, her eyes bright, looked ahead and asked, "Then what sort should I find?"

Chen Dasheng held her fondly a while longer, one hand gentle over her belly, one hand on her warm skin, trying to carve this memory, full of happiness and tenderness, into his heart.

He said, "If there truly is a next life, wife, don't look for me. Find one not as sharp as you... best of all a good deal older than you, for your temper's quick and he'd bear with you easier... His house needn't be rich, but should at least have a hundred or two hundred mu of land. And then, wife... you can be a bit of a simpleton, you can understand nothing, not housekeeping, not farming, not the ways of people, for the man you find will be good-tempered, and even if you understand nothing he won't hold it against you, wife..."

"Mm?"

"Have you got it by heart?"

"Got what by heart?"

"Mind this: next life, keep your wits about you, and if you pass again by the big willow on Quanhou Street in Qingfeng, with an old lady sitting under it, mind you keep away from that old lady, or her grandson will marry you, and though in his heart, in his heart he'd want to do you every kindness, he'll still... you're crying?"

Chen Dasheng gripped her hard all at once, caught Qi Qian'er to him, and soothed her softly, "Don't cry... what I told you, have you got it by heart?"

But Qi Qian'er tore free, sat up sharply, turned over to face him, her eyes shining bright in the dark, and growled low at him like a she-wolf guarding her cub, "Chen Dasheng! I have no next life!"

Chen Dasheng drew a breath, but said firmly, "Then there's no help but to wrong you, Huo Qiqian! Call it your bad luck, you're stuck with it, that brat called An'er is growing in your belly! I, Chen Dasheng, have wronged you! I, I'm set on it... There are always things in this world one does knowing they can't be done. This Great Liang you've seen today, someone, someone has to guard it..."

Qi Qian'er was furious, and huffing she nodded, got down off the kang, and put on her shoes.

Chen Dasheng got down and put on his shoes with her.

Seeing her storm out of the house in the dead of night, he took a cloak and draped it on her, and let her have her temper.

So the young couple left Guard Lane in a huff, letting no maid follow, and Qi Qian'er walked off wildly into Baiquan Mountain.

Afraid she'd fall, Chen Dasheng came up to steady her.

This time Qi Qian'er didn't resist, only, as they stepped into the woods, she stopped suddenly, turned her face to Chen Dasheng with a she-devil's grim grin, and said, "Chen Dasheng, do you know what place this is?"

Chen Dasheng paused, and shook his head. "No, wife, whatever you say it is, it is."

Qi Qian'er, grinning grimly up at the stars, said with some swagger, "This mountain is mine."

"Ah, yours, yours, yours, slow down, don't fall."

"The ground under your feet is mine!"

"Yes, yes, yes, yours, yours..."

"If I say you won't die, do you believe it?"

"Won't die, won't die, won't die, of course you won't die!"

Chen Dasheng soothed his wife firmly, "Of course I won't die, rest easy, wife, I still mean to..."

The poor Gate Marquis of Great Liang never got to finish what he still meant to do, but found himself already flying through the air...

Qi Qian'er, gripping Chen Dasheng by the collar, leapt rising and falling through the century-old trees of Baiquan Mountain.

When they'd reached a place where no one would hear them speak aloud, Chen Dasheng, his soul fairly frightened up to heaven, heard his wife, as if a ghost possessed her, say, "Chen Dasheng, I won't let you die, so you can't die! Believe it?"

"...Eep?"