She Who Became the Sun

by Shelley Parker-Chan

  “We should go inside,” Zhu clarified, cheered by the sight.

  “I know what you meant! Ah, Zhu Chongba, you haven’t changed a bit. Don’t you know what cities do to people they think are thieves? How do you think they’ll greet a rebel and a bandit?”

  “I know exactly what they do to thieves; Anfeng tried to do it to me,” Zhu said. “But from that I can say: as long as you can make the case that you’re something other than a thief—”

  She drew a handful of long, whippy sticks from the pile of firewood beside them, intending to weave a basket, then paused as the back of her neck prickled. It felt ominously like Heaven watching. After a moment the feeling subsided, and Zhu started weaving with lingering unease. She was Zhu Chongba, but if she used skills he could never have had—

  The more I do things he couldn’t or wouldn’t have done, the more risk I run of losing the great fate.

  Her hands tightened on the weaving. I have to be him. I am him. “Big brother—”

  He was watching the nimble movements of her hands, fascinated. Seeing me doing women’s work. Forcing away a chill, she said as brightly as she could, “Can you find me a couple of rats?”

  * * *

  “Purpose of your visit,” said the Lu guard, half-bored and half-suspicious. Above them the Lu walls stretched the height of a six-story pagoda: smooth pale gray stone, so cleanly fitted together that they resembled the limestone cliffs above Wuhuang Monastery.

  “Pest exterminators,” said Xu Da, who could manage a better peasant mumble than Zhu. He made the more convincing-looking exterminator, too: big and burly, and as dirty as a bandit. In an unplanned degree of verisimilitude, he was bleeding from a rat bite on his hand.

  “Uh-huh,” said the guard, leaning in to inspect the trap Zhu held up, and startling when he came eye to eye with one of the rats. “If you’re exterminating them, why’re you carrying them around alive like that? You should let them go. Outside the city.”

  “Let them go?” said Xu Da. “Why’d we do that? We sell them. In the countryside.”

  “Sell—?”

  “You know. To eat.”

  Giving them a look of disgust, the guard waved them through. “Ugh. Go on, go on. Be out by nightfall, and stay out of the way of the procession—”

  “Procession—?” Zhu said, almost crashing into Xu Da’s back as he came to a sudden halt. “Oh. That procession.”

  In front of them a richly carved and lacquered wooden palanquin was being borne along in a flow of servants. Swaying hawberry-red tassels edged its domed roof, and the latticed windows were shut tightly with curtains.

  “The new governor, arrived from Dadu just this morning,” said an onlooker to Zhu’s question.

  Zhu exchanged a tight look of annoyance with Xu Da as they moved with the crowd in the wake of the palanquin. Having missed her part-of-a-chance by a matter of hours seemed worse than having missed it by days. Xu Da murmured as they walked, “We’ll have to do it while he’s settling in. It will only get harder the longer we wait.”

  An under-resourced assault on a walled city had been a bad enough idea before, but now it seemed as clearly suicidal as Little Guo had thought it would be. At least we found out before we tried.

  They were approaching the governor’s residence. Zhu and Xu Da might have been raised in the region’s richest monastery, but the sight of that palace-like compound widened even their eyes. Above the whitewashed outer wall Zhu could see the main building was at least thirty columns wide, each column carved and painted and thicker around than Zhu’s arms could have reached. The other buildings were almost as large, arranged around courtyards planted with towering camphor and parasol trees. Glimpsed above the foliage, mountain-shaped roofs bore turquoise tiles so thickly glazed that they broke the light like water. Gold-painted carp finials leaped into the streaky spring sky.

  Zhu and Xu Da pushed through the crowd and saw the palanquin halt at the gate of the residence in front of the greeting party that had emerged from within. It was a group of the expected old advisers, and a woman in white mourning. The dead governor’s Nanren wife. The spring breeze lifted the gauzy outer robe away from her dress so it fluttered like cherry petals. Her pale face bore a dislocating intensity. Even without being able to see such details from a distance, the tension in her carriage made it impossible to believe she wasn’t trembling.

  Governor Tolochu emerged from the palanquin. A stern-looking Semu man of middle years, he viewed the small party with his hands clasped behind his back and a dissatisfied look. To the woman he said, “Lady Rui, I presume. What are you still doing here?”

  The tension in that gauze-wrapped form was like a primed cannon before the explosion. There was an edge in Lady Rui’s voice as she said, “I pay my respects to the esteemed Governor. This unworthy woman was promised to be allowed to stay here in this residence, after my husband’s death.”

  Governor Tolochu scoffed. “Promised? Who can make such a promise?”

  “There is no place for me in Khanbaliq—”

  “There is no place for you here, either! Are you a woman without shame, that you would be a burden upon my house?” The Governor was obviously the kind of person who received as much spiritual contentment from berating others as a cold man does from a bowl of soup. “No, I think not. To Khanbaliq or elsewhere, it matters little to me; I have no responsibility for my predecessor’s debts and belongings. I cannot even fathom what he was thinking: to bring his wife with him to his post! He must have been a self-indulgent man. I will have much to correct of his work here.”

  Zhu watched Lady Rui’s hard downturned face as Governor Tolochu’s tirade beat upon her. If anything, she seemed to become even harder. Zhu had the impression that she was clenching her fists inside her sleeves. When the Governor finished he glared at Lady Rui for another moment, then swept past and into the residence. As soon as he had gone, Lady Rui straightened. She was not a beautiful woman, but the look on her face drew Zhu’s attention like a wound: inwards and dreadful.

  Xu Da said, frowning, “A hard man. It won’t take long for him to assume control and put the militia in order. Perhaps if we do it tonight—”

  Zhu’s eyes were still on the Nanren woman. She didn’t know what it was, but there was something—

  Then she did know, even as she had no idea how she knew, given the absence of anything as obvious as a rounded belly. A dozen little observations, all coming together into a single conclusion. With a sick lurch, she realized it was something the person she was supposed to be would never have noticed. But she couldn’t unsee it: the explosive potential that could end a woman, and that for a widow spelled a fate of hardship and misery.

  In seeing what she shouldn’t have seen, Zhu glimpsed a terrible opportunity. Every instinct screamed in alarm, and she recoiled from the idea with disgust. And yet with a wall and a strong governor now standing between her seven hundred men and success, it was the only opportunity she could see.

  Governor Tolochu’s servants streamed into the compound, laboring under boxes and furniture—a procession that had seemed endless on the city streets, but that was now rapidly diminishing. As Zhu watched them enter the gate, her thoughts raced. Her heart thudded a nauseating counterpoint. She knew instinctively that by doing this, she would be increasing her risk for a catastrophic future. But it was risk for the sake of a better chance of success in the here and now. For her only chance of success.

  Risk is only risk. It doesn’t make it a certainty. Not if I never do anything like it again—

  She interrupted Xu Da, “Not tonight. Wait until tomorrow, then do it.”

  “Do—me?” His eyes widened. “Where will you be?”

  “I have to speak to Lady Rui. Quick: let the rats out, make a distraction for the crowd so I can join those servants. Now, before they’re all inside!”

  Xu Da grabbed her arm as she lunged towards the procession, his voice rising in panic. “Wait. What are you doing? Get inside, then what? Lady Rui will be in
the women’s quarters, surrounded by maids—you won’t have a chance of getting near her, let alone talking to her!”

  Zhu said grimly, “You wouldn’t. I will.”

  * * *

  Lady Rui was sitting in front of the bronze mirror with a shaded, saturnine expression. The front of her dress lay open, baring the green veins branching across the downwards slope of her breasts. When she saw Zhu enter from behind, she glanced up; their eyes met in the metal, blurred as if through a veil. “I have no need of you at the moment. Leave me.” She spoke with the unhesitating forcefulness of someone used to commanding servants.

  Zhu drifted forwards. The air around her was thick and sweet, like an orchard on the hottest day of spring. It was the smell of a woman’s inner sanctum, as alien to Zhu as a foreign country. Wide skirts swished around her legs, and the scarf over her head fluttered. Women’s clothes gave her new dimensions, as if she were moving through space as someone else. The stolen disguise had done its job: nobody had looked at her twice as she passed through the compound and into the women’s quarters. But with every moment her feeling of suffocating wrongness mounted. A violent litany repeated inside her head: This isn’t me.

  Lady Rui’s inwards look sharpened. “You—! I said leave!” When Zhu still approached, she turned and delivered an open-handed slap across Zhu’s face. “Are you deaf, worthless dog?”

  Zhu turned her face to avoid the worst of the impact. The scarf slithered to the ground. She felt a burst of relief to have it gone. Her shaved head with its ordination scars, the one thing that set her apart from all those others who wore women’s clothing, was the indelible mark of her true identity: her monk self. That’s right, she thought, as she swung to face Lady Rui. See who I really am.

  At the sight of Zhu’s shaved head, Lady Rui gasped and snatched her clothes around herself. Before she could scream, Zhu clapped her hand over the woman’s mouth. “Shh.”

  Lady Rui’s flailing arm encountered a teapot on the side table, and smashed it hard into the side of Zhu’s head.

  Zhu staggered, blinded by a starburst of pain, and felt a gush of warm liquid drench her neck. She recovered just in time to catch Lady Rui’s arm as she plunged the remaining piece of teapot towards Zhu like a knife. Zhu squeezed Lady Rui’s wrist until she dropped the improvised weapon. Her eyes flashed mutely at Zhu from behind the silencing hand.

  “Good!” Zhu said, her head swimming. “I knew you had spirit.” But it had been the very opposite of good. The pain of the blow had been cold, like the touch of a familiar shadow: the nothingness that belonged to a woman’s body. Just thinking of it sent a spike of panic through Zhu. She released Lady Rui and tore at her blouse and skirts in a paroxysm of dread.

  Lady Rui watched her. Her first fear had been replaced by the brittle scorn of someone who had seen a grimmer future than any Zhu might represent. As Zhu stepped out of the ruins of the women’s clothing and straightened her crushed robes, Lady Rui said with some hostility, “Unless you stole that robe too, I assume you must be a monk. But do tell me, esteemed one, what business requires you to go to such lengths to seek an audience. Or is it that you simply want to eat someone else’s tofu? I had thought monks eschewed the carnal pleasures—” Her mouth twisted. “But then again: men are men.”

  She sees a monk, not a woman. Zhu could have gasped with thankfulness. She was still Zhu Chongba, and for all she had deviated from his path: it had only been for a moment.

  “Greetings to Lady Rui,” she said, wincing at the throb in her skull. “Normally this monk would beg forgiveness for the disrespect, but you’ve taken your revenge quite well. Rest assured that this monk intends no ill will—he comes bearing only a message.”

  “A message? From who?” Lady Rui’s expression hardened. “Ah. The Red Turbans. They even have the monasteries on their side now?” The bitter look was back. “But none of that has anything to do with me. That’s all the new Governor’s problem.”

  “Perhaps Governor Tolochu’s problems aren’t yours, but forgive me, Lady Rui: I can’t help noticing that he seems to be something of a problem for you,” Zhu said. “You’re a young widow expecting a child, and he plans to send you back to your birth family to whom you’ll be nothing but a shame and burden. It can’t be what you want. Will you simply accept it?”

  Though it had been Lady Rui’s intensity that had aroused Zhu’s interest in the first place, the strength of her reaction was still impressive. Her cherry petal face darkened with anger and humiliation, and she looked as if she were perfectly willing to risk her future lives by slapping a monk. “What business is it of yours, that you dare comment? And even if I didn’t want it, what else is there?” Zhu opened her mouth, but Lady Rui cut her off viciously. “No. Who are you, a monk, to come and speak of my situation, as if you can understand the first thing about what women can and can’t do?”

  A memory leaped up, involuntarily: the hot coal of resentful submission a girl had felt, a long time ago. Zhu did understand, and the fact that she did sent a frisson of danger down her spine. She answered carefully, “Sometimes it takes people outside the situation to help us see clearly. Lady Rui: What if this monk can provide you with another option, one that’s to both our benefits? Governor Tolochu is nothing but a Dadu bureaucrat. He has no particular knowledge of this city which qualifies him to govern. And so why let him, when there’s one better qualified—one who already knows the mechanisms and office, and the characters of the men to be commanded?”

  Lady Rui said, frowning, “Who?”

  “You,” said Zhu.

  The peppery smell of chrysanthemums swirled up from the censer on the table between them. After a moment Lady Rui said flatly, “Are you mad?”

  “Why not?” Not having anything concrete to offer, all Zhu could do was open her eyes and let Lady Rui see her the depth of her sincerity. I understand. Even more than the act of wearing women’s clothing, the acknowledgment of that girl’s past was a moment of such terrifying vulnerability that she felt like she’d pulled open her skin to show her organs beneath. “Why is that so preposterous? Take power for yourself. Call upon the men who still have loyalty to your husband. Pledge Lu to the Red Turbans, and with our support even the Yuan won’t be able to take it from you.”

  “You are mad,” she said, but Zhu caught a flicker of puzzlement. “Women can’t govern. The Son of Heaven rules the empire, as men govern cities, and fathers head the family. That’s the pattern of the world. Who dares break it by putting a substance in a place contrary to its nature? It’s in men’s nature to take risks and lead. Not women’s.”

  “Do you really believe that? Are you weaker than Governor Tolochu, simply by virtue of your substance? This monk doesn’t think so. Aren’t you risking your life right now to bear and raise a child? A woman gambles all of herself, body and future, when she marries. That’s more courageous than any risk a bureaucrat takes when it concerns only his face, or his wealth.” Zhu’s own mother had made that gamble, so many years ago. She had died of it. Now the only person in the world who knew where she was buried was someone who was no longer a daughter, but who remembered, unwillingly, a little of what it was like to be female.

  “You think I’m capable of governing because I’m a woman?” Lady Rui asked incredulously.

  “If this monk knows equally little about Governor Tolochu or you, why wouldn’t he choose you? A pregnant woman has more at stake than any man. She knows what it’s like to fear, and suffer.” Zhu dropped her monk speech and said, raw and urgent, “I might not know you, but I know what you want.”

  I recognize it.

  The woman was silent.

  “Let me help you.” Zhu picked up the half teapot from the ground, and pressed it into Lady Rui’s pale, limp hand. “Let me give you the means to survive.”

  Lady Rui fingers tightened around the handle. Blood gleamed on the jagged edge: Zhu’s blood. “What about the Governor?”

  “If you’re ready to step up—”

  Lady Ru
i said suddenly, “Kill him.” Her eyes flicked open and stabbed Zhu. Zhu all but reeled back at the violence of it. Unleashed, this delicate woman in her white gauze had all the subtlety of a crashing trebuchet.

  Zhu’s headache tripled. She remembered Xu Da’s face: I didn’t mean to kill. At first. “Actually, what I meant was—”

  “You said I have the desire to survive? Well, you’re right: I do.” Lady Rui’s jaw was tight with the same intensity Zhu had glimpsed earlier: a compressed rage that had as its heart the female desire to survive all that sought to make her nothing. “And since you’re so determined to believe I can take a risk, believe that this is the risk I’m taking.” She swiveled back to her position in front of the mirror. “Kill him. After that, we’ll talk.” Her eyes, hooded, stared coldly at Zhu from the metal. “Don’t come into my rooms again.”

  * * *

  “Come in,” Governor Tolochu called from inside his office. Zhu, bearing a fish-oil lamp in one hand and a document for his seal in the other, stepped over the raised threshold and into the room. She felt a peculiar internal judder that was neither trepidation nor anticipation. Her hands sweated. For all that this was the right way, the culmination of the opportunity that had been presented to her in the form of Lady Rui, Zhu was unnaturally aware of her intent. The twelve ordination scars on the crown of her head burned. A reminder of her monastic oath, the first precept of which was: Abstain from killing any living thing.

  Tolochu looked up as Zhu came in. His lavishly appointed office was lined with bookshelves. A perimeter of candles cast their familiar vegetable-wax smell into the room, reminding Zhu of kneeling before the monastery’s altars. A shiver radiated along her shoulders. She wondered if it was the sorrowing glance of the bodhisattvas at what she was about to do.

  “A monk?” Tolochu said, taking the document. “I haven’t seen you before. Did my predecessor fear for his future lives so badly that he felt the need for constant guidance?” Taking up his seal, he suddenly jolted with disgust. “What—”