Zhu glanced at Xu Da as he rejoined her at the head of the column; he had been riding up and down its length all morning, keeping everyone moving in an orderly manner despite the excitement of their first real outing. That morning the entire Red Turban force had left Lu and started their eastwards trek across the flat plain towards Jiankang. The region’s thousand lakes sparkled all around them under the roasting sun. That was the reason Mongols never fought in summer: neither they nor their horses could tolerate the southern heat. The Red Turbans, who were Nanren by blood and mainly infantry, trudged on. The columns belonging to Little Guo and the other commanders stretched ahead. The dust they kicked up gave the sky an opalescent sheen like the inside of an abalone shell.
“You can tell?” Zhu said, giving him a wry smile. It was good to have him by her side again, and even all this time after their reunion she still felt a twinge, like a stretched muscle releasing, whenever she saw him.
“Of course I can. I’ve known you all your life,” Xu Da said comfortably. “I know at least three-quarters of your secrets.”
That made Zhu laugh. “More than anyone, that’s for sure.” Sobering, she said, “This could get messy.”
“Wall or no wall: a city this size, we’re bound to take casualties.”
“That too.” She had been chewing over the situation since Lu. “Big brother, what do you think Left Minister Chen has in mind for Little Guo?”
“Are you sure there’s anything? Little Guo is perfectly capable of screwing it up by himself. It doesn’t need a plot.”
“Chen Youliang likes control.” That powerful, still presence filled her mind. “I don’t think he’d leave it to chance. He’d want to use his power; to know that whatever happened was his own doing.”
“But wouldn’t we already know if he was planning for something to happen during this campaign?”
The dust made it seem like the plain went on endlessly in all directions, even though Zhu knew its southern border was the Huangshan mountains. She remembered looking at them from the monastery and marveling at how far away they were. The world was shrinking, coming within reach. She said, “He doesn’t fully trust me yet. He could have given instructions to Commander Wu.”
“To turn on Little Guo? Sun Meng would retaliate, and you know how strong he is. Chen Youliang wouldn’t risk losing Commander Wu’s whole force for that.”
“No. He would have a plan for Sun Meng, too.” Zhu brooded again. Like Yao River, it was one of those situations where she would have to wait in the hope that more information would eventually present itself. She knew that if Chen gave her orders against Little Guo, refusing to carry them out would be tantamount to taking a position on the losing side. That wasn’t something she was willing to do. But on the off chance she was only indirectly involved, then perhaps she could act in Ma’s favor. She found herself hoping the latter was the case. She sighed. “I suppose we’ll just have to keep our eyes open.”
“I’d have thought you’d be the last to cry about Little Guo meeting his fate. Why can’t we just stand back and let it happen?”
Zhu admitted with some reluctance, “I told Ma Xiuying I’d look out for him.”
“Who? Not—Little Guo’s woman?” Then, grasping it, Xu Da put his full powers of innuendo into his eyebrows. “Buddha preserve me, little brother, I never thought I’d see it. But do you—like her?”
“She’s a good person,” Zhu said defensively. She thought of the girl’s broad, beautiful face with her phoenix eyes full of care and sorrow. For Little Guo, of all people. The new protective feeling inside her was as tender as a bruise. Even as her pragmatic side warned her of its inevitability, she didn’t like the idea of seeing Ma hurt, or of being miserable without even allowing herself to admit that she was miserable.
“So now you’re going to save Little Guo from himself.” Xu Da laughed. “And here I thought I was the only one who got manipulated by pretty girls. Even I don’t go for the married ones.”
Zhu gave him a withering look. “She’s not married yet.”
They stayed watchful as they crossed the Yangzi River and approached Jiankang. But in the end there was nothing. Little Guo led a wasteful, brutal assault that produced far too many casualties on the Red Turban side: a wave of flesh breaking against Jiankang’s defenders. On a high-walled city like Lu, it would have been futile. But against unfortified Jiankang, Little Guo’s assault began to have an effect. The slow and hard-won influx of Red Turbans was gradually matched by an outflow of fleeing citizens, and by the Horse hour of the tenth day, Jiankang had fallen.
* * *
Beautiful as they were, the palace grounds of the Duke of Wu (now deceased) were wreathed in smoke like the rest of the city. Not the everyday stink of burning clam shells and fruit pits, but the smell of the ancient Jiankang mansions: their lacquered furniture and grand staircases turned to nothing but ash. Floating in the haze above, the afternoon sun glowed like a red lotus.
In the middle of the palace’s parade ground a line of women stood in their undyed underclothes. The Duke of Wu’s wives and daughters and maids. Zhu and the other commanders waited to the side, watching Little Guo parade along the line. The red light gave his brow and aquiline nose a heroic glow. His smile carried the bone-deep satisfaction of someone who has achieved, against all the ill will of his doubters, what he had always known himself capable of.
Raking one shivering woman with an assessing glance, Little Guo pronounced, “Slave.” To the next, “Concubine.” Zhu saw him look at the next with even greater appreciation, taking her arm to see the fine texture of its skin and lifting her lowered face to see its shape. “Concubine.”
Sun called out teasingly, “Are all of those for you? Don’t you think Ma Xiuying will be enough?”
“Maybe one woman is enough for you.” Little Guo smirked. “I’ll have that girl, and a few concubines as well. A man of my status can’t have none.”
As he moved down the row the women trembled with their arms wrapped around themselves. With their tangling hair and white clothes Zhu could have mistaken them for ghosts. All save one. She stood tall, arms by her sides, unashamed of the revealed shape of her body. Her hands were hidden in her sleeves. She watched Little Guo with such bladed intensity that he startled a little as he came to her. “Slave.”
She smiled at that, a wild and bitter smile. And the moment Zhu saw it, loaded with the woman’s hatred of Little Guo and everything he represented, she understood instantly what she planned to do. As the woman flashed towards Little Guo, her knife arrowing towards his neck, Zhu was already flinging herself shoulder-first into Little Guo. He stumbled, crying out, and the knife skittered off his armor. The woman screamed with frustration and tried to stab Zhu, and then Xu Da was between them, wrenching the woman’s arm so the knife fell ringing to the stones.
Zhu picked herself up. She felt oddly shaken. Even after the fact, the other commanders were still flailing in disbelief that a threat had come from a woman—and a barely dressed one, at that. But in the instant Zhu had looked at that woman and grasped her intent, she had understood her. More than that: for just a moment she had shared the woman’s urge to see the surprise on Little Guo’s face as the knife sank into him. To enjoy his disbelief at an inglorious death, when he had always believed the future held nothing but the best for him.
Zhu felt a spasm of cold dread. She couldn’t fool herself that it was a reaction Zhu Chongba would have had. Worse than that was the realization that these moments seemed to be happening more and more frequently, the more she lived in the world outside the monastery. It had happened with Lady Rui, with Ma, and now this woman. There was something ominous about it, as though each time it happened she lost some fraction of her capacity to be Zhu Chongba. Her dread intensified as she remembered her empty hand outstretched in the darkness of Lady Rui’s dungeon. How much can I lose, before I can’t be him at all?
Little Guo recovered from his shock and rounded on Zhu, his embarrassment already turned to
anger. “You—!” He gave her a hateful look, then shouldered her aside and snatched the woman from Xu Da. “Bitch! Do you want to die?” He slapped her face so hard that her head snapped sideways. “Bitch!” He struck her until she fell, then kicked her where she lay. Zhu, involuntarily remembering the long-ago sight of someone kicked to death, felt her stomach flip.
Sun hurriedly stepped in. He had forced a smile, but his eyes were strained. “Aiya, is this the behavior of the next Duke of Wu? General Guo, why are you lowering yourself by dirtying your hands like this? Let someone else take care of this trash.”
Little Guo stared at him. Sun looked like he was holding his breath. Zhu realized she was holding her breath too. Then after a long moment, Little Guo grimaced and said, “Duke! Didn’t you say I should be king?”
“King of Wu, then!” Sun cried, making a valiant effort. “Nobody would deny it to you. Come, this is your achievement of achievements, the Prime Minister will be beside himself. This is the city of the south, and now it’s yours. Let the Hu come for us now! We’ll show them—” Chattering all the while, he drew Little Guo away.
“A good outcome?” Xu Da asked wryly, coming up. “But was this it—Chen Youliang’s plot against Little Guo?”
Zhu watched the woman heaving for breath on the ground, Little Guo’s bootprint on her white dress. “I don’t think so. I think she was just really angry.”
“Little Guo tends to have that effect on people. And I suppose it isn’t Chen Youliang’s style. Where’s the spectacle in a literal backstabbing?”
“Then it’s still coming.” Zhu sighed. “Well, let Little Guo enjoy his moment.”
“He’s definitely enjoying it,” Xu Da said. “As we were coming in I heard him telling Sun Meng he wants to rename the city. He wants something more suited to a capital, like Yingtian.” Responding to Heaven.
Zhu raised her eyebrows. “Yingtian? Who knew he had enough learning to come up with something good like that? But it’s ambitious. The Prime Minister won’t like it. I think he wanted naming rights.”
“Why should he care what it’s called?”
Zhu shook her head instinctively. “Names matter.” She knew better than any of the Red Turbans how names could create their own reality in the eyes of either man or Heaven. And with that thought, she felt the dark beginnings of a realization about what Chen had planned for Little Guo.
* * *
“Finally!” Xu Da exclaimed as Anfeng’s familiar earthen walls came into view. Their return journey had taken longer due to late summer’s oppressive humidity, and they were all thoroughly sick of travel. The thought of their victorious homecoming was a balm to everyone’s spirits. Even now a greeting party was emerging from the southern gate; it flew towards them under the fluttering scarlet banners of the Prince of Radiance.
The moment Zhu saw them, her shadowy half realization became as crisp as ink on a page. The action she and Xu Da had been looking out for had already happened. Chen hadn’t even needed her; there was never anything she could have done to stop him. Even as she urged her horse down the length of her column, Xu Da half a length behind, she knew it was too late. She thought with genuine regret, I’m sorry, Ma Xiuying.
Ahead the banners had halted at the head of the leading column. Little Guo said in a loud displeased voice, “What’s this?”
Zhu and Xu Da came up and flung themselves from their horses, and saw what he saw. Xu Da said, disturbed, “Aren’t they the men we left at Jiankang?”
“You dare disregard your general’s command?” Little Guo demanded. “Who ordered your return? Speak!”
Sun arrived at a gallop and dismounted, then stopped short at Zhu’s side in confusion.
It was a man named Yi Jinkai who addressed Little Guo from the greeting party. Even including his wispy moustache, his was the kind of unmemorable face that nobody would think twice about. Zhu certainly hadn’t, in the weeks since they had left him in charge of Jiankang. But now Yi was radiating power. Borrowed power: it was the vicarious pleasure of carrying out another’s will. Of course Chen hadn’t needed her, Zhu thought with detached clarity. Her loyalties were too new; why would Chen ask her, when others would so gladly do his bidding?
Now Yi said peremptorily, “General Guo, the Prime Minister summons you to an audience.”
“You—!” Sun exclaimed in outrage.
Little Guo glared at Yi. This wasn’t the fawning homecoming he had expected. Confusion, disappointment, and anger warred on his face, and Zhu wasn’t surprised when the anger won. “Fine,” he said. “You’ve conveyed your message. Tell the Prime Minister I’ll give him his audience when we reach Anfeng.”
Yi took hold of Little Guo’s horse. “The Prime Minister has ordered us to escort you.”
Sun lunged forwards with a snarl. He stopped abruptly, Yi’s blade at his throat. Behind Yi, the other members of the greeting party had drawn their swords.
Yi repeated, “Prime Minister’s orders.”
They remounted and departed, flanking Little Guo like a prisoner. Little Guo sat stiffly, his low brows drawn into a bitter mask. He was probably worrying that he would find his father dead—weeks dead. He would be wondering whether it had been an accident or an open assassination, and whether his father had suffered. Perhaps—though Zhu doubted it—he was even realizing that the girl Ma Xiuying had spoken truly about the danger Chen posed.
Sun was cursing Yi: “That motherfucker. Fuck eighteen generations of his ancestors!”
As Zhu watched the party diminishing towards Anfeng, she was reminded of Prefect Fang’s last moments in the monastery. But Prefect Fang had known the fate awaiting him. Little Guo thought the danger had already happened; he didn’t realize it was yet to come.
“Commander Sun,” she said, remounting. “Come on. Quickly.”
Sun gave her a vicious, accusatory look. But he didn’t realize, either, what was happening.
As Zhu saw the future the rest of them had yet to grasp, she felt something unfamiliar. With astonishment she identified it as the feeling of someone else’s sorrow, but within her own breast, as though it had come from her own heart. The pain of someone else’s suffering.
Ma Xiuying, she thought.
* * *
Anfeng was as empty as an abandoned plague village. It was the middle of the day, so there weren’t even any ghosts. Their horses’ hooves clattered; the ground had dried as hard as stone during their absence. As they rode Zhu became aware of a growing energy. More a vibration than a sound, she felt it in her guts as a primal unease.
They came into the center of the city and saw the scene before them. High above the silent crowd a stage had been erected as if for a performance. The crimson banners flew. The Prince of Radiance sat on his throne under a parasol edged with silk threads that shimmered in the wind like a fall of blood. The Prime Minister paced in front of him. Beneath the stage, kneeling in the dust, was Little Guo. His hair and armor were still neat. Even though Zhu knew better, for a moment even she had the impression he was being honored.
The Prime Minister stopped pacing, and the containment of his agitation was even more awful: the quiver of a hornets’ nest, or a snake about to strike. He looked down at Little Guo and said in a dreadful voice, “Tell me why you took Jiankang, Guo Tianxu!”
Little Guo sounded completely bewildered. “We all agreed that Jiankang made the most—”
“I’ll tell you why!” The Prime Minister’s voice carried clearly to where Zhu, Xu Da, and Sun sat on their horses. The crowd rippled. “Jiankang, the place where kings and emperors sit, isn’t it? Oh, how you said that so many times. Guo Tianxu: I know your intentions! Did you really think you could take that city for yourself, ride back here, and tell me you didn’t sit on that throne and call yourself king?”
“No, I—”
“Don’t pretend you were ever a loyal subject of the Prince of Radiance,” the Prime Minister spat. “You always had your own ambitions. You would betray the will of Heaven for your own self
ish purposes!”
A large, black-clad figure was standing next to Yi at the foot of the stage. Even from this distance, Zhu could tell Chen was smiling. Of course Little Guo had been enough of a fool to announce his desires loudly, and Yi had reported them back to Chen. And who within the Red Turbans had more experience than Chen in stoking the Prime Minister’s paranoia?
“No,” Little Guo said, alarmed. His voice was that of someone who was only gradually realizing the seriousness of his situation. “That’s not what I—”
“You dared take that city and call it Yingtian? You dared ask Heaven for the right to rule? When the Prince of Radiance is our ruler, and he alone possesses the Mandate of Heaven?” Leant down over the edge of the stage, the Prime Minister’s face was reddened and distorted with fury. “Traitor. Oh, I know everything. You planned all along to come back here to kill the both of us, so you could have that throne for yourself. You traitor and usurper!”
Finally understanding, Little Guo cried out in horror, “Your Excellency!”
The Prime Minister hissed, “Now you call me that. When you’ve been sneering and plotting behind our backs all this time!”
There was a commotion: Right Minister Guo was forcing his way through the crowd. His robes were disarrayed; his doughy face had solidified in shock. He shouted, “Your Excellency, stop! This servant begs you!”
The Prime Minister rounded on him. “Ah, the father of the traitor appears. You would do well to remember that under the old rules, a traitor’s family was executed to the ninth degree. Is that what you want, Guo Zixing?” He stared down at the other old man as though willing him to let him make it a reality. “If not, you should be on your knees and giving me thanks for sparing you.”
Right Minister Guo threw himself towards his son. But he was caught and held. Despite the futility of it, the old man kept struggling. He cried, “Your Excellency, I beg for your mercy!”
Little Guo had apparently believed that his father’s arrival might resolve the misunderstanding. Now, obviously panicking, he shouted, “Your Excellency, I can keep Jiankang for you—”
She Who Became the Sun Page 24