Ma sighed. “Yes, Guo Tianxu?”
“Get me some water. I want to wash.”
When she came back with the basin he sat up and unselfconsciously stripped off his robe and inner shirt. As though I were no more than a maid, and he a king. She had mostly succeeded in putting her strange last conversation with Monk Zhu out of mind, but all of a sudden it came roaring back, as unwelcome as ever. She remembered Monk Zhu looking into her with those sharp black eyes, and speaking to her not only as if she were a person capable of desire, but as someone who should desire. In her whole life she’d never heard anything so pointless. This is the life I have, she reminded herself. This is what it looks like.
But instead of her usual feeling of acceptance, what came was sadness. It was self-pity, but for some reason it seemed like grief. She felt like crying. This is what it will be, for this life and every life thereafter.
Little Guo hadn’t noticed a thing. As he scrubbed he said with high spirits, “We’ll be marching on Jiankang next! It’s about time. What better location for our capital? I’m sick of this moldy old city; it’s too poor for our ambitions.” His eyes flashed under his impatient eyebrows. “But Jiankang won’t do as a name. It needs something new. Something fitting for a new line of emperors. Heaven-something. Capital-something.”
“Jiankang?” said Ma, startled out of her despondency. “I thought the Prime Minister wanted Bianliang as our new capital.” With a sinking heart she realized she had made a mistake by missing that afternoon’s meeting. Not that my previous efforts to save Little Guo from himself have ever made any difference.
“I’ll take it after,” Little Guo said dismissively. “Even Chen Youliang agreed—”
“Why would he support you?” Ma’s body flooded with alarm. There was no altruism in Chen, nor even a commitment to mutual goals: he always went in the direction that served his own purpose.
“He knows sense when he hears it,” Little Guo retorted.
“Or he wants you to lose! Don’t be a stupid melon: Which is more likely, that Chen Youliang supports your success or waits for your mistake?”
“What mistake? Are you always thinking so little of me that my defeats seem inevitable?” Little Guo’s voice rose. “Such disrespect, Ma Xiuying!”
As she looked at his handsome face, flushed with indignation, she suddenly felt pity. Those who didn’t know him might think him powerful-looking, but to Ma he seemed as brittle as a nephrite vase. How few people there were with the willingness to treat him tenderly, that he might not break. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Whatever.” Little Guo flung the washcloth into the basin, slopping water on her dress. “Stop giving your opinions on things that don’t concern you. Understand your place, and stay in it.” He shot Ma a vengeful look, as though she were an irritant he couldn’t wait to get rid of, then grabbed his clothes and stalked out.
* * *
Ma was coming out of the Prime Minister’s living quarters with a tray when someone came around the corner. She dodged left; the person dodged right; they collided with a smack and a scream. When she saw the source of the scream, a jolt of raw feeling ran through her from head to toe. The monk, crouching, was looking up at her; somehow he had caught the tray on its way down. The cups rattled. A single cake teetered, then plopped to the ground.
“Did you make these?” Monk Zhu straightened and nudged the quivering casualty with his toe. “The Prime Minister’s favorites! Worried about something?”
“Who says I’m worried?” Ma said repressively. Zhu had been busy since his return from Lu; all she had seen of him since their uncomfortable conversation had been glimpses of his small behatted figure running across town from one appointment to another. Now, meeting him again, she was disturbed by a frisson of strange new awareness. For whatever reason, he had gifted her with some truth of himself, and she couldn’t unsee it: the unnatural, frightening immensity of his desire. She didn’t understand or trust it, but knowing it was there filled her with the fascination of a moth for a flame. She couldn’t look away.
Zhu laughed. “Who would bother with these fiddly things for no good reason? It’s obvious you’re trying to put the Prime Minister in a good mood.” All at once the performance slipped off his face. He was a short man, so they were looking eye to eye; it gave the moment a shocking intimacy, as though something of his inner self was touching something of hers. He said gravely, “You’re working so hard to help Little Guo. Does he even know?”
How was it he saw her as someone who acted of her own volition, when to everyone else she was just an object performing its function? It filled her with a sudden rage. She was grieving her life as she never had before, and it was all this monk’s fault for having conjured the impossible fantasy of a world in which she was free to desire.
She snatched the tray from him, though it lacked the violence to be truly gratifying. “As if you know how much effort it takes, either!”
In the instant before performance swept back in, she thought she saw understanding in his small dark cicada face. It couldn’t have been real—it was absurd to think a man could feel for a woman—but somehow it was enough to dissolve her anger in a tide of pain. It hurt so much she gasped with it. Stop doing this to me, she thought, anguished, as she turned and fled. Don’t make me want to want.
She’d made it halfway down the corridor when someone hauled her around a corner. To her relief it was only Sun Meng, a half-serious glint in his eye. “Pretty cozy with that monk, sis. But remember, he’s on Chen Youliang’s side.”
“He’s not like Chen Youliang,” Ma said reflexively.
Sun gave her a sideways look. “Do you think? But whatever he’s like, he wouldn’t be anything without the Left Minister. Bear it in mind.” He helped himself to a cake and said indistinctly, “I think he likes you.”
“What! Don’t be an idiot.” Ma flushed as her memory served her that tingling fascination of knowing that Zhu desired. Against her will, he had given her this new sense with which to experience the world—an awareness of desire—and her inability to repress it filled her with shame and despair. “He’s a monk.”
“Not a normal monk, that’s for sure,” Sun said, chewing energetically. “I saw him training the other day. He fights like a man; who’s to say he doesn’t think like one? Ah well. Don’t worry; I won’t tell Little Guo.”
“I haven’t done anything for Guo Tianxu to think badly of me!”
“Ah, Yingzi, calm down. I’m just teasing.” Sun laughed and slung his arm around her shoulders. “He isn’t the jealous type. Look at me with my hands all over you. He’s never cared, has he?”
“Only because you’re so pretty he thinks of you as a sister,” Ma retorted, raw.
“What! You mean I wasted all that blood trying to make him my sworn brother?” Sun’s fake-mournful face vanished as fast as it came. “Hey, Yingzi, you know sworn brothers share everything? Once you’re married—” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Who’s getting married!” What a non sequitur.
“What, the bride doesn’t know? Little Guo told me you’ll be married after we take Jiankang. The mourning period for General Ma will be done by then. I thought you must have talked about it last night.”
“No,” Ma said. A dreadful heaviness rushed into her bones. “Last night I was trying to give him advice.” She couldn’t imagine how she could survive under that weight for the rest of her life. She tried to tell herself she would get used to it; that it was only the shock of moving from one phase to the next. But now, facing the reality of it, it seemed more than anything like a kind of death.
“What’s with the black face black mouth?” Sun said with surprise. “Are you worried about giving him a son? You’re good at everything else, you’ll have one straight off. He’d treat you well if you could even manage a couple; you know it suits a general to have lots of sons.”
How casually he laid it out, the purpose of her life in the eyes of others. Sun’s fey prettiness sometim
es tricked Ma into thinking that he understood her better than Little Guo. But despite his looks he was just as much a man as Little Guo, and all men were the same.
Except Monk Zhu, a traitorous part of herself whispered. But it was as pointless as the rest of her thoughts.
She followed Sun outside and sat with him on a bench next to a stump in the middle of the courtyard. A single remaining branch had sprouted a few leaves. The last gasp of a dying tree, or new life? Ma didn’t know.
She said, “Big brother.”
“Mm?”
“I have a bad feeling about Jiankang. Can’t you get Little Guo to change his mind?”
Sun snorted. “In which life could that happen? Even I don’t have that power. But aren’t you worrying too much lately?”
“I don’t trust Chen Youliang.”
“Who does? You’d have better luck putting your finger in a snapping turtle’s mouth. But I actually agree with Little Guo on this one. The victory at Yao River has given us this extra-long summer season. This is our chance, so we should spend our efforts on a strategic target. Jiankang makes sense.”
None of them ever listened. “Chen Youliang wants you to fail!”
Sun looked startled by her vehemence. “So then we just have to succeed, don’t we? He wanted us to fail at Yao River, and look how that turned out.” He flicked Ma’s forehead, affectionate. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
Apparently hoping to change their minds was as pointless as wanting something different for the course of her life. Ma stared up at the blue box of Heaven framed by the four dark wooden wings of the Guo mansion, and tried to tell herself that she was worried about nothing. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all walking down a long nighttime road, the others chatting cheerfully, and somehow she was the only one who could see the hungry eyes in the dark all around them, waiting.
* * *
Anfeng rang with the sounds of departure. Thousands of torches in the streets made it almost as clear as day, and in a few more hours the bonfires would be lit. As Zhu stepped over the raised threshold of the Guo mansion’s front gate, she remembered how Anfeng had looked the night before they went to Yao River: capped by an eerie dome of red light that spanned wall to wall, as of a city consumed by fire.
Despite the warming days, the inside of the Guo mansion breathed out the cool fragrance of smoky southern tea. Walls, floors, and ceilings of dark wood swallowed the light of the hallway lanterns. Zhu looked around curiously as she walked; being a member of Chen’s faction, it was her first time in the Guo mansion. Empty rooms branched off the hallway. In what had once been a scholar’s study, she saw two ghosts hanging in the filtered light coming through the window-paper, their still forms no more substantial than the dust motes. Had they been killed when Chen took Anfeng, or were they even older than that? Their vacant gazes were fixed on nothing in particular. She wondered if they were aware of time passing in this strange gap between their lives, or if to them it was nothing more than a long, restless sleep.
Zhu left the hallway and came out into an internal courtyard, wrapped above by a shadowy upper balcony. A wavering square of light showed halfway along. At the sight of it Zhu felt a tug of an unidentifiable emotion. She was already late for Little Guo’s meeting, but before she could think about it she was slipping up the creaking stairs and into Ma’s room.
Ma was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her head bent down in concentration, in the center of a constellation of small rectangular pieces of leather. It took Zhu a moment to realize the object in Ma’s lap was Little Guo’s armor, divested of all its lamellae. Ma had laid the lamellae out in the same positions they had occupied on the armor, which gave Zhu the disturbing impression of seeing a disassembled body laid out for study. As she watched from the doorway, Ma took up the book beside her, read a page with a sorrowing expression, then ripped it out and sewed it neatly onto the naked armor. After that she took up a handful of lamellae and sewed them one by one over the paper-reinforced backing. She held the armor with as much care as a lover’s familiar body. Zhu marveled at it. Ma wasn’t arrow-proofing Little Guo’s armor out of duty, but a genuine desire to protect him from hurt. How could anyone go around in such a state of openness that a part of herself would attach to others with love and care, regardless of how much she liked them or they deserved it? Zhu couldn’t understand it at all.
Ma glanced up and jumped. “Master Zhu?”
“General Guo called the commanders over to discuss the order of departure tomorrow,” Zhu said, which explained why she was in the Guo mansion, although not why she was in Ma’s room. Zhu was uncertain about that herself. She came in, noting how the room was unfurnished except for a simple bed. Nobody lived in any style in Anfeng, but it was plain even for that: as though Ma had no higher status in the Guo household than a servant. A mountain of string-tied flaxen boxes occupied one corner. “Wah, is that all food for Guo Tianxu?” Zhu exclaimed. “He doesn’t need home cooking every night! Don’t you think it’s too much?”
Ma frowned and said pointedly, “It suits a general to be well fed. What’s there to be proud of in a leader who’s as skinny and ugly as a black-boned chicken?”
“Ah, it’s true,” Zhu said, laughing. “This monk grew up in a famine, and despite his years of fervent prayers on the topic, it seems he’ll never get any bigger. Or handsomer, for that matter. But we work with what we’ve got.” She squatted next to Ma and handed her the next lamella. “So I hear you’ll be getting married after Jiankang. I can’t help but think I should offer my condolences.” She kept her tone light, but the idea that Ma might never find anything to want for herself made her strangely angry.
Ma’s hands clenched on Little Guo’s armor. Her hair curtained over her downturned face, concealing her expression. At length she said, “Master Zhu. Aren’t you worried?”
Zhu had a lot of worries. “About what?”
“Jiankang. Chen Youliang convinced the Prime Minister to support the attack. But it was Little Guo’s idea. Doesn’t that seem strange?” When Ma looked up her luminous face was wretched with anguish. It was so pure that Zhu felt an unexpected pang of the particular combination of awe and pity that one gets from seeing fragile pear blossoms in the rain.
She asked, “Shouldn’t you mention this to Commander Sun?”
“He doesn’t listen! None of them listen—”
Little Guo and Sun Meng didn’t listen, but somehow Zhu had given Ma reason to think she would. Zhu felt a sudden shiver of unease. She thought unwillingly, Zhu Chongba would never have understood.
After a moment she said, “Maybe Chen Youliang is planning something against Little Guo. He probably is, though I don’t know any specifics. He hasn’t asked me to do anything. But you know this doesn’t mean anything. How can you know I’m telling the truth? And even if it’s true that I don’t know anything, it doesn’t mean he won’t do anything. He may not trust me. Or he may not need me.”
Ma said with sudden fierceness, “And if I ask you to help?”
Zhu gazed at her. How desperate did she have to be to ask? For a moment Zhu was overwhelmed by a wash of tenderness. She said honestly, “This is what I like about you, Ma Xiuying. That you open your heart, even though it means you’ll get hurt. There aren’t many people like that.” It was a rare character to start with, and how many of those born with it made it any distance? Perhaps only those with someone to protect them. Someone ruthless, who knew how to survive.
To Zhu’s surprise, Ma grabbed her hand. The immediacy of skin against skin shocked her into a sudden, exaggerated awareness of the thin boundary between herself and the outside world. Unlike Xu Da, who’d been as familiar to the village girls around the monastery as a stray dog, Zhu had never held hands with a woman. She had never ached for it or dreamed about it like the other novices. She had only ever wanted one thing, and that desire had been so enormous as to take up all the space inside her. Now a foreign tremor raced up her arm: the quiver of another�
��s heartbeat in her own body.
Ma said, “Master Zhu: please.”
The thought of seeing Ma’s spark crushed by Little Guo or Chen or anyone else was irrationally troubling. Zhu realized she wanted to keep that fierce empathy in the world. Not because she understood it, but because she didn’t, and for that reason it seemed precious. Something worth protecting. The idea swelled, not quite enough to push aside Zhu’s knowledge of the reality: that in a fight against Chen, there was no way Little Guo would win.
She hadn’t answered quickly enough. Flushing with embarrassment, Ma yanked her hand free. “Forget it! Forget I asked. Just go.”
Zhu flexed her hand, feeling the ghost of that touch. She said quietly, “I don’t like Little Guo. And he would be a fool to trust me.”
Ma’s head fell, the curtains of her hair swinging shut. Her shoulders shook slightly, and with a spurt of anger Zhu realized she was crying for a person who had never spared her a thought in his entire life.
“Ma Xiuying,” she said. It felt pulled out of her. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything, and even if I can, I don’t know how it will turn out. But I’ll try.”
It wasn’t a promise, and Ma must have known that. But after a beat she said, low and heartfelt, “Thank you.”
Perhaps, Zhu thought as she left, Ma had thanked her just for listening. She remembered how she had told Ma to learn how to want. It seemed Ma had learned the opposite. Even though she denied it even to herself, at some point since that conversation Ma had realized that she didn’t want the life she was being forced into.
Zhu felt a stab of uncharacteristic pity. Not-wanting is a desire too; it yields suffering just as much as wanting.
14
SOUTHEASTERN HENAN, SUMMER
“What’s wrong? You’re brooding.”
She Who Became the Sun Page 23