She Who Became the Sun

by Shelley Parker-Chan

  His fingers came away from his gown slick with oil. He shot a murderous look at Zhu. “You incompetent—!”

  “Forgive me, Governor,” Zhu said. “It seems the lamp leaked.” The bodhisattvas were boring a hole in the back of her head, or perhaps it was only Lady Rui’s headache. As Tolochu gaped in astonishment at her unservile tone, Zhu came forwards and with a single stroke swept the candles from their ledge so they fell to the ground in a burning rain.

  One might have expected a sound, but in that first moment there was none. The silent wave of fire swept across the oil-soaked floor and snatched the hem of Tolochu’s gown. In another instant he was a human candle. The sheet of fire spread to the edges of the room and sent its fingers into the books on the shelves. And then it did have a sound. It was a whisper that deepened into a throaty roar like the wind through pines, except this was a vertical wind. As it blew the dark smoke roiled ever faster upwards, curling upon itself as it met the ceiling so that above there was nothing but descending blackness.

  Zhu watched, transfixed. For a moment she forgot all about Tolochu, and her broken vow, and the greatness and suffering that lay ahead. All she could see was the speed and power of the fire’s destruction. The monastery had burned, but not like this: terrifying and present, almost alive. It was only when the heat grew oppressive that she realized she had been there too long. She turned to go.

  There was movement in the corner of her eye. She twisted, too late, as a blazing figure slammed into her and bore them both to the ground. Zhu struggled as Governor Tolochu loomed over her, his face a cracked black mask with red bubbling through from within. His hair was a pillar of flame, melting the fat from his scalp so that it ran down his cheeks like tears. His teeth seemed to have elongated, standing out stark white in that lipless mouth that was open and soundlessly screaming. But there was still strength in his hands as they closed around her throat.

  Zhu fought like a cat, but she couldn’t break his hold. Thrashing, choking, her flailing hand found something on the floor that branded her even as she grasped it, and with the strength of desperation she thrust it straight into Tolochu’s face.

  He reared up, a writing brush sticking from his eye. Then he lunged back at her, and they rolled thrashing across the floor. They rolled again as Tolochu continued his hitching, silent screaming. This time Zhu landed on top. Some animal part of her knew what to do. She leaned forwards and pressed her forearm against his throat, feeling it slip on blood and fluid. Tolochu jerked under her. She kept pressing, coughing and retching from smoke. Beneath her, Tolochu’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Then, finally, it stopped.

  Zhu staggered off the corpse and towards the doorway. Every breath seemed to sear her from the inside, and she had the terrifying thought that she was crisping and curling around it like a piece of grilled meat. The room was a furnace of bright flame and that ever-lowering ceiling of smoke. She fell to her knees and crawled, then threw herself outside.

  She lay gasping on the cold stone, looking up at the black sky. The Buddha said: live life like your head is on fire. If she’d had the strength, she would have laughed and shuddered at the same time. She and Tolochu had been on fire: they had felt the fragile nature of their own lives. But instead of being lifted into enlightenment, they had fallen. The pressure of their mortality had driven every human thought from them but the determination to survive. And Zhu, who had nurtured that desire since childhood, had been the stronger and taken Tolochu’s life. She had felt his life ebbing under her hands and the moment it stopped. She had killed ten thousand Yuan soldiers, but this was different. She had wanted it. She remembered Xu Da’s grief at his own acts. There is no redemption for murder.

  The world was revolving, and she felt herself tipping slowly into the center of it. She was falling, but instead of into nothingness she was falling into smoke with flames licking far, far beneath.

  * * *

  Zhu coughed herself awake. In addition to a pounding headache, a body comprised solely of aches and pains, and lungs full of black phlegm: she was in jail. A cold, damp, dark, underground jail with ghosts in every corner. But while it wasn’t her favorite kind of place, the important thing was that she was still alive. With the vividness of a nightmare, she suddenly remembered the hot collapsing feel of Tolochu’s flesh as she pressed on his throat. I killed him, so I could live. When she’d imagined the act beforehand, she had thought she would get a grim satisfaction from it—that despite everything else, at least it proved she was capable of doing what she needed to do.

  Now she knew: she was capable. But there was no satisfaction in it, only a lingering sick feeling.

  After a length of time in which one could have drunk five or six pots of tea, an upper door clanged. A light footfall descended. Presently Lady Rui appeared in front of Zhu’s cell and observed her through the bars. Zhu, coughing, was disturbed to see a powerful inwardness about her: something new and evasive. Lady Rui said coolly, “You nearly burnt down the entire residence. That certainly would have had people thinking it was an accident. As it is, it would have looked better if you had died with him.”

  Zhu rasped, “Monk. Not assassin.” She wondered where the conversation was heading. “You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

  “Indeed,” said the other. Her face was as seamless as an egg.

  “So then we have an agreement.”

  “That I become governor, and pledge this city’s loyalty to the Red Turbans?”

  “That’s the one,” Zhu agreed. Every word from her crushed throat was an agony. No doubt Governor Tolochu’s spirit would be pleased by the thought of his murderer having been branded with a necklace of his fingerprints.

  Lady Rui drifted closer, one white hand settling on the lock. Her floating gauze made her seem as insubstantial as the ghosts lingering in the empty cells. “It happened just the way you said. I issued my commands to those who had been loyal to my husband, and the men followed me. Now I have a walled city to call my own. I have my own militia. And it makes me think—perhaps I don’t even need the support of either the Yuan or the Red Turbans.” Her composure seemed the embodiment of the underground chill. “You’ve opened my eyes, esteemed monk. There are so many more options open to me than I thought.”

  In other circumstances, Zhu might have admired her flowering. She said, “And you think if you leave me here, you’ll have even more options.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “In one respect, I suppose it’s a pity. I do admit to some curiosity about you. You saw something in me that I didn’t know myself. I find it strange. What kind of man bothers to see potential in a woman, and encourages her despite her own doubts? At first I thought it was because you were a monk. But such a strange monk, coming to me in women’s clothes. It made me wonder—” She paused, then went on, “Is that why you helped me? Because you’re a woman, too.”

  Zhu’s heart slammed hard once, then seemed to stop. “I’m not,” she said violently. It came tearing out of her abused throat before she even knew what she was saying, like blood from a wound. In a burst of clarity, she saw what loomed in front of her for the transgression of having understood a woman’s pain: to be stood up in front of Heaven, so her name and great fate could be stripped from her.

  No, she thought with increasing fury. Lady Rui didn’t have that power over her. She was only speculating; she didn’t know. And while Lady Rui might have options, Zhu hadn’t exhausted all her options yet either. Her heart resumed beating, murderously alive.

  “My name is Zhu Chongba, of the Red Turbans,” Zhu said with icy control. “And rest assured that the only reason I helped you is because it gets me closer to what I want.”

  As they glared at each other, there came a sudden clanging from upstairs, and raised voices. A guard charged down the stairs calling, “Lady Rui, the city is under attack!”

  At that, Lady Rui’s facade shattered and she looked at Zhu in raw surprise. Then, mastering herself, she said, “I see. You didn’t trust me either.
Friends of yours?”

  “Better to let them be your friends, too, don’t you think?” Zhu said. Her relief was sharp-edged, as vicious as revenge. “Unless this is the moment you want to put your newfound control to the test. Would you like to try, and see who has the better command of their men?”

  It was still mostly a bluff. Even Zhu’s steel determination couldn’t change the fact of seven hundred men against a city. But she let Lady Rui look into her eyes, and see her belief in her own future greatness there—and even before Lady Rui drew the key from her sleeve, Zhu knew she had won.

  Lady Rui unlocked the door with a vinegary expression. “It seems I still have something to learn. Go, Master Zhu, and tell your men to come inside, in peace.” There was something about the way she said Master Zhu that gave Zhu the unpleasant feeling she was being returned a similar female understanding to the one she had extended to Lady Rui earlier. “We have a deal. The Red Turbans will protect Lu, and I’ll give you everything you need. I give you my word.”

  Zhu stepped from the cell. “Rule well with the Buddha’s blessings, my lady,” she said. As she turned from Lady Rui, she was alarmed to feel, for the first time in her life, a strange, muted pang of sisterhood. Disquieted, she shoved it into that same deep place she kept the pain of her battered body, and ran up the stairs towards the door that led out to Lu. My city. My success. She had tempted fate by using tools that Zhu Chongba might not have had, and broken her monastic oath by taking a human life with her own two hands—but despite how those actions had felt, and whatever future suffering they would bring, they must have been the right choices. Because in the end, I got what I wanted.

  The thought jolted her to a stop on the dark staircase. She heard an echo of Xu Da’s voice: What does that even mean: to be great? Even before joining the Red Turbans she had known she needed power. She had known that greatness needed an army behind it. But the idea of greatness itself had been abstract, as if she were pursuing something she would only recognize once she had it. But now, in a flash of insight, she knew exactly what had been threatened by this encounter with Lady Rui. What she had killed for.

  Hesitantly, Zhu extended her closed right hand. The darkness should have made the gesture foolish, but instead it felt grave and real. She summoned her memory of the Prince of Radiance’s red flame hovering in his cupped palm. And then she believed. She believed in what she wanted so hard that she could see what it would look like. The acid taste of power filled her mouth. The power of the divine right to rule. She took a breath and opened her hand.

  And her belief was so strong that for the first moment she thought she did see that red flame, exactly as she had imagined. It was only a heartbeat later that she realized:

  There was nothing.

  The bottom fell out of Zhu’s stomach, and she felt as sick as she had ever felt. She couldn’t even tell herself it had been a joke. She had believed it: that she would have the Mandate, because it was her fate. But she didn’t have it. Did that mean that killing Governor Tolochu was only the beginning of what she was going to have to do to get what she wanted? Or—had she already done too much that wasn’t what Zhu Chongba would have done, and lost her chance at that fate entirely?

  No. She pushed that thought away in violent refusal. It wasn’t that she didn’t have it; it was only that she didn’t have it yet. Putting all her determination behind the thought, she told herself: As long as I keep moving towards my great fate, and keep doing what I need to do, one day I’ll have it.

  Somewhere in her head, Lady Rui murmured: The Son of Heaven rules the empire—

  When Zhu clenched her fist she felt her nails bite into her palm. Then she shouldered open the heavy dungeon door, and stepped out into the blinding sunlight of the walled city of Lu.

  * * *

  Ma Xiuying, standing atop Anfeng’s crumbling battlements, saw them arrive from Lu: a strange admixture of Red Turbans, bandits, and two thousand orderly, well-equipped city soldiers marching in their leather armor. Behind them came the wagons piled high with grain, salt, and bolts of silk. And riding on his bad-tempered Mongol horse at the head of the procession was Monk Zhu himself. An unprepossessing little figure in robes instead of armor. From Ma’s elevated perspective his circular straw hat made him look like a lopped stump. It was hard to believe that someone like that had done the impossible. But even as she thought it, Ma remembered him saying I. It hadn’t been the speech of a monk detached from earthly concerns, but that of someone keenly aware of his own interests. Someone with ambition.

  Monk Zhu and his procession came through the gate to the stage that had been set up to receive them. The Prince of Radiance and the Prime Minister sat on thrones that gleamed dully under the cloudy sky. The other Red Turban leaders waited at the foot of the stage. Even from a distance Ma could recognize Little Guo’s humiliated, disbelieving posture. He and his father had bet against Chen—and somehow, because of the monk, they had lost. The monk in question dismounted and knelt before the stage. Ma saw the thin brown stem of his neck under the tilted hat. It disoriented her: that someone who seemed incapable of failure could be housed in that small, vulnerable body.

  Left Minister Chen moved to Zhu’s side. “Your Excellency, your faith in the monk has brought upon us a thousand fortunes. And this is only the beginning of what Heaven has promised us. From this point on our victories will be increasingly numerous until the descent of the blessed Buddha himself.”

  The Prime Minister, who had been gazing devotedly at the kneeling monk, leapt to his feet. “Indeed! Our highest praises upon this monk, who brought the light of the Prince of Radiance into the city of Lu, and who gives us the faith and strength to defeat the darkness that remains before us. Praise upon the monk! Praise the new commander of the Red Turban battalions!”

  Zhu rose and cried, “Praise the Prime Minister and the Prince of Radiance! May they rule ten thousand years!” The power of his light voice shocked Ma to her core. It rang across dusty Anfeng like a bell, and in response the men threw themselves to their knees and performed their reverences to the Prime Minister, and shouted aloud their loyalty to him and the sacred mission of the Red Turbans.

  On the stage, high above those men standing and kneeling and standing again like breaking waves, the Prince of Radiance watched from behind his strings of jade beads. From the angle of his hat, Ma could tell he was watching Monk Zhu. When Zhu finished his prostrations and glanced up at the stage, Ma saw the Prince of Radiance’s head jerk backwards. The strings of his hat swayed.

  “May the leaders of the Red Turbans rule for ten thousand years!” cried the crowd with such force that Ma felt the vibrations in her chest, and faint tremors in the great wall beneath her feet.

  The Prince of Radiance raised his small head to the sky. The crowd hushed at the sight. With his head thrown back, the beads around his face had parted, and they saw he was smiling. As he stood there the crimson color of his gown intensified, as though a single ray of sunshine had penetrated the clouds and was touching him alone. And then the light escaped his boundaries; it surrounded him in a dark, shimmering aura. No drowning lamp flame as of the Mongol emperors, but a consuming fire that filled the whole space between Heaven and earth with its eerie red light.

  The Prince of Radiance said something that Ma couldn’t hear. The crowd picked it up, repeating it until the murmuration built into a cry that raised the hair on Ma’s arms: “The radiance of our restored empire will shine for ten thousand years.”

  The world was drenched in red, so intense that it seemed more akin to darkness than light. For a moment Ma felt so oppressed she couldn’t breathe. Shouldn’t radiance be brighter? For all that red was the color of fortune, of prosperity—she couldn’t shake the image of their new era awash in blood.

  * * *

  Two days later Ma picked her way through the throng of men, horses, and tents in the grounds of the ruined temple and went inside. She had expected it to be just as busy inside, but the main hall was empty. There was on
ly an unpainted wooden statue at the back, sitting serenely amidst the shafts of light piercing the disintegrating roof. At its feet a pot of ash and grains held a few smoldering incense sticks.

  Ma had just seated herself on a fallen beam when Monk Zhu came in. She glimpsed a roofless annex through the doorway behind him. A simple split-bamboo pallet was laid out under a tree that had grown up through the broken paving stones.

  “Your prayers won’t be heard that way. Incense?” He offered her a handful of sticks.

  Instead of taking one, she searched his face. He bore her scrutiny tolerantly. He was still wearing the same shabby robes. His expression was the same too: mild interest. But how much of that was performance?

  “How did you do it? Unseat the Yuan’s governor and put a woman in his place?”

  He smiled. “I didn’t do much of anything. I just saw what she wanted.” He was still using I. Something about the cool closeness of the temple made it seem profound, like a promise of the future.

  “You recognized it because you want something too. No one else knows, do they?”

  “Knows what?” His face flickered, and for one irrational moment she felt afraid.

  She said, less certain, “You didn’t accidentally stumble into Anfeng. You came here.”

  His tension released, and he laughed. “Came here deliberately?” He sat down beside her. “Aiya, why would I do that? Anfeng was hardly welcoming to this clouds and water monk. Don’t you remember how your own betrothed nearly chopped off my head the moment he saw me?”

  More performance, she thought, and just like that she was certain again. “Don’t pretend! You came here, and even from the beginning you wanted command within the Red Turbans, didn’t you?” Out loud, it sounded preposterous. Monks weren’t supposed to want things. They weren’t supposed to have ambition. And yet—