She Who Became the Sun

by Shelley Parker-Chan

  “Ha! When we aren’t around to kill their generals, they feel the need to do it themselves?”

  Tall cypresses cast their scented blue shadows across the manicured garden in which they were playing. In adjoining gardens, ponds blushed with lotuses. Purple wisteria poured over the crisscrossing walkways and down the stone walls on the perimeter. The rising warmth of the day had already quieted the birdsong, and even the bees seemed indolent. Despite their minimal exertion they were both sweating. Esen, because he was constitutionally unsuited to the heat; and Ouyang, because he was wearing too many layers. He felt throttled. In normal circumstances the rhythmic motions of archery would have been soothing, but now they only wound him tighter.

  A servant came by with perspiring cups of cold barley tea and fragrant cold towels for the face and hands. Ouyang drank gratefully and pressed a towel against the back of his neck. “My lord, we could consider advancing our departure date a few weeks, to engage them before they resolve their infighting. We may as well take advantage of their distraction.”

  “Can you?”

  “Logistically, yes. It only requires extra funds—” Ouyang left unsaid whose permission was needed for the release of such funds. Since Hichetu, Lord Wang had kept mostly to his own office and apartments and was rarely seen. Ouyang had only run into him once in the courtyards, whereupon Lord Wang had given him a penetrating, bitter look that drew him up and pinned him for inspection. The thought of that look gave him a pang of disquiet.

  Esen’s lips thinned. “Start your arrangements. I’ll make sure you get the funds. Do you have any idea where the rebels will strike next?”

  Ouyang felt a stab. Never had he experienced so many different kinds of pain, the one layered over the other. Even as the pain of his first betrayal hadn’t healed, he already felt the painful anticipation of the next. Oh, he knew well enough where the rebels would go next. Having eschewed the strategic target of Jiankang, they would be looking for a symbolic victory. And if their goal was to cast doubt upon the Great Yuan’s right to rule, they would aim to retake an ancient capital located in the center of Henan—in the very heart of the empire. They would want the last throne of the last great dynasty that ruled before the barbarians came.

  Any Nanren would know. And for all that the Mongols had made him theirs, Ouyang was a Nanren. He thought: Bianliang.

  Out loud, he said, “No, my lord.”

  “No matter,” Esen said. “Wherever they pick, I hardly think we’re in danger of losing.” He raised his bow again and drew. “Although this time: no river crossings.”

  It felt like a lifetime ago that the rebel monk had called a tower of water down upon them and drowned ten thousand of Ouyang’s men. That had been the start of it all. He had been shamed and forced to kneel; he had looked his fate in the eye; he had betrayed and killed. And now there was nothing left for him but pain. He felt a surge of hatred towards the monk. Perhaps his fate was fixed, but it was that cursed monk who had made it happen now; who had set it all in motion. Without him, how much longer might Ouyang have had with Esen? He was stabbed by a yearning of such intensity that his breath ran out of him. The easy pleasure of companionship on campaign; the pure sweetness of fighting side by side: it all belonged to the past, when Ouyang had still deserved Esen’s trust.

  As if reading his mind, Esen said in frustration, “I don’t know how I’m going to bear it, having to stay here. Just because I’m the Prince now, and I don’t have an heir yet.” His arrow thunked into the center of the target. Ouyang was ordinarily the better of them at stationary archery, but since Hichetu a new aggressiveness had entered Esen’s bearing. On the range and practice field, at least, it impressed.

  “If anything were to happen to you—” Ouyang said.

  “I know,” Esen said, bitter. “The bloodline would end with me. Ah, how I curse those women of mine! Can they not at least perform their one use?”

  They walked over to retrieve their arrows. Esen’s were buried so deeply that he had to use his knife to cut them free. He said harshly, “Win for me, Ouyang. For my father.”

  Ouyang watched him stab at the wood. Dark emotions sat unnaturally on Esen’s classically smooth features. The sight made Ouyang feel that he had broken something beautiful and perfect. Chaghan’s death had been unavoidable: it had been written into the fate of the world from the moment Chaghan had killed Ouyang’s family. In that respect, killing Chaghan hadn’t been a sin.

  But breaking Esen felt like one.

  * * *

  Esen sat at his father’s desk, hating it. As per tradition, after his assumption of the title he and his wives and their households had all moved into Chaghan’s residence. Perhaps someone else would have enjoyed the closeness of memory, but Esen found memories invariably unpleasant: they waylaid him unexpectedly, like slaps to the face. The only consolation was that he had been able to force his own residence upon Ouyang. Ouyang’s insistence on living in isolation, beneath his station, had always mystified Esen and caused him some resentment. It seemed unfair that the person closest to his heart should persist in choosing loneliness and in so doing make Esen feel it too. But there was always something untouchable about Ouyang. He was always moving away, even as Esen wanted to hold him closer.

  The door opened, and a Semu official came in ahead of a servant bearing a stack of papers. Officials all looked much the same to Esen, but the man’s unsettling ice-pale eyes were distinctive. His mood soured instantly: it was his brother’s secretary.

  The Semu came forwards boldly and made his reverence. Indicating the pile of papers, he said, “This unworthy official begs to trouble the esteemed Prince of Henan for his seal upon the following—”

  Esen clamped down on his irritation and took his father’s seal out of its paulownia box. The stamping face bled cinnabar ink. The sight of it filled Esen with despair. He couldn’t countenance a lifetime of sitting down, stamping documents. He took the topmost paper, then paused. It was entirely in native characters. In a growing fury he snatched the pile from the servant and saw the same was true for all of them. Esen had always been proud of his capabilities. But unlike his brother, or even his father, he had no literacy in anything but Mongolian. It had never mattered before. Now his inadequacy sent a hot burst of shame through him. Turning on the Semu, he said sharply, “Why do you write in this useless language?”

  His brother’s secretary dared raise an eyebrow. “Esteemed Prince, your father—”

  Behind the impertinence Esen saw his brother’s supercilious face, and he felt a flash of pure rage. “You dare speak back!” he snapped. “Get down!”

  The man hesitated, then sank down and placed his head on the floor. The bright sleeves and skirts of his dress splashed around him on the dark floorboards. He was wearing purple, and for a stunned moment all Esen could see was his father, after the fall.

  His brother’s secretary murmured, not entirely repentantly, “This unworthy servant begs the Prince’s forgiveness.”

  Esen crumpled the paper in his fist. “Can a mere official be so bold just because he has my dog of a brother behind him? Do you take me for his puppet, that I would sign anything he hands me even if I can’t read it? This is the Great Yuan. We are the Great Yuan, and our language is Mongolian. Change it!”

  “Esteemed Prince, there are not enough—” His brother’s secretary broke off into a satisfying yelp as Esen came around his desk in a rage, and kicked him. “Ah, Prince! Mercy—”

  Esen shouted, “Tell my brother! Tell him I don’t care if he has to replace you and every one of his cursed minions to find ones that can work in Mongolian. Tell him.” He let the crumpled documents drop on him. His brother’s secretary flinched, gathered his skirts, and scuttled away.

  Esen stood there, breathing fast. Baoxiang would make a fool of me in my own household. The thought was inescapable. He felt himself revolving around it, each time winding tighter the mechanism of rage and hate. Since returning to Anyang he had done his best to pretend to hims
elf that his brother no longer existed. He had hoped that erasing Wang Baoxiang from his thoughts would somehow erase the pain of betrayal and loss. But, Esen thought viciously, that hadn’t worked.

  He snapped at the nearest servant, “Summon Lord Wang!”

  It was more than an hour before Baoxiang was announced. His fine-boned Manji features seemed more prominent, and there were shadows under his eyes. Under his familiar brittle smirk there was something as pale and secretive as a mushroom. He stood in his usual place in front of their father’s desk. Esen, seated in their father’s position behind it, felt unpleasantly disoriented.

  He said harshly, “You made me wait.”

  “My most humble apologies, Esteemed Prince. I hear my secretary caused you offense.” Baoxiang was wearing a plain-looking gown of driftwood gray, but when he bowed the silver threads in it caught the lamplight and sparkled like the hidden veins in a rock. “I take responsibility for the matter. I will have him beaten twenty times with the light bamboo.”

  It was all a performance; it was all surface. In a flash of anger, Esen saw his brother wasn’t sorry at all. “And the other matter, of the language?”

  Baoxiang said smoothly, “If the Prince commands it, I will have it changed.”

  His smoothness made Esen want to hurt—to twist until some jagged sincerity might be produced. “Then change it. And another matter, Lord Wang. You may be aware that I recently commanded General Ouyang to advance his departure dates for the next campaign to the south. I understand this will require additional funds from your office. I would have you provide them at your earliest convenience.”

  Baoxiang’s cat-eyes narrowed. “The timing is not ideal.”

  “You speak as though I were making a request.”

  “I have a number of large projects under way that will be impacted if funds are withdrawn at this critical moment.”

  “What large projects?” Esen said scornfully. “More roads? Ditch-digging?” He felt a surly thrill of pleasure at the thought of crushing what his brother cared about. Returning pain for pain. “Which is more important, a road or this war? I don’t care where you take it from, just make the funds available.”

  Baoxiang sneered. “Are you really so keen to undo all my efforts and run this estate into the ground for a single effort against the rebels?” Behind him on the wall, the horsetail death banners fluttered: one each for their great-grandfather, grandfather, and Chaghan. “Have you ever thought about what will happen if you don’t win, brother? Will you go in shame to the court to tell them you have not the resources to continue your defense of the Great Yuan? The only reason they care about us is our ability to maintain an army. Will you throw away that ability for a chance of glory?”

  “A chance—!” Esen said incredulously. “You can’t think we’d lose.”

  “Oh, and last season you didn’t lose ten thousand men? It could happen again, Esen! Or are you fool enough to believe the future will match your dream of it, with no consideration of the reality of the situation? If so, you’re worse than our father.”

  Esen slammed back his chair. “You dare speak of him to me!”

  “Why?” said Baoxiang, advancing. His voice rose. “Why can’t I speak of our father? Do tell, is it something you think I did?”

  The words flew out of Esen. “You know what you did!”

  “Do I?” Baoxiang’s face remained a cold mask of disdain, but his chest rose and fell rapidly. “Why don’t you clear it up between the two of us, and say exactly what you think.” He leaned over the desk and demanded, “Say it.”

  “Why should I say it?” Esen shouted. His heart thumped as hard as if he were riding into battle. A cold sweat had sprung out all over his body. “Isn’t it upon you to beg for forgiveness?”

  Baoxiang laughed. It could have been a snarl. “Forgiveness. Would you ever forgive me? Should I kneel and take your punishment willingly, and beg and grovel for more, just to hear you spurn me? Why should I?”

  “Just admit—”

  “I don’t admit anything! I don’t need to! You’ve already made up your mind.” Baoxiang grabbed the desk and held on as if it were a slipping deck at sea; his pale fingers whitened further with the pressure. His narrow eyes blazed with such intensity that Esen felt it like a physical blow. “You can’t reason with fools who refuse to see reason. Our father was a fool, and you’re an even bigger fool than he was, Esen! No matter what I say, no matter what I do, both of you would think the worst of me. You slander me with ill thoughts I’ve never had—no, not even when he had me on my knees, and was cursing my very existence. You think I murdered him!”

  Pressure rose in Esen; he felt his entire being throbbing with it. “Shut your mouth.”

  “And do what, vanish? Be silent forever? Oh, you’d love to be rid of me, wouldn’t you, so you never have to see my face again. What a pity our father decided on a formal adoption, and only the Great Khan himself can strip a noble of his titles.” His voice rose mockingly. “So what are you going to do about me, brother?”

  Esen slammed his hands against the desk with such ferocity that it dealt a blow to Baoxiang and sent him stumbling. He straightened and glared at Esen with a pure fury that matched Esen’s own. That look, raw with the sincerity that Esen had sought, split them with the finality of a falling axe blade.

  Esen heard ugliness in his voice: it was his father’s voice. “He was right about you. You’re worthless. Worse than that: a curse. Rue the day this house took you in! Even if I have not the authority of the Great Khan, then at least my ancestors should witness the truth of my words in disowning your name. Get out!”

  Two bright spots stood on Baoxiang’s colorless cheeks. His body trembled inside his stiff robes; his fists were clenched. He looked at Esen for a long moment, his lip curled, then without saying anything further he left.

  * * *

  “General?” One of the servants was calling through the door, wanting to assist Ouyang with his bath.

  “Wait,” he said sharply, getting out and pulling on his inner garments. This act of self-sufficiency provoked a confused silence; the servants had yet to become accustomed to the peculiarities of a eunuch master. They had been left behind after Esen’s move, the result of Esen’s insistence that Ouyang maintain a staff commensurate with the status of the residence. The generosity had proven awkward, as several of them had been known to Ouyang during his own slave days, and he’d had to dismiss them.

  Emerging from the bathroom and consenting to having his hair combed, he said, “Take down the mirrors in the bathroom.”

  “Yes, General.”

  He stared ahead as the servant worked. Around them, the faded floor was marked with dark rectangles where the furniture had been, like a house where the owner has died and the relatives have taken away all the things. It was unpleasant occupying a space that had been someone else’s for so long. He was forever catching traces of a vanished presence: the oil Esen favored for his goatskin bridles; the particular mix of soap and fragrances his servants used on his clothes.

  Outside a servant announced, “The Prince of Henan.”

  Ouyang looked up, surprised, as Esen entered. He visited Esen’s rooms, not the other way around.

  Surveying the empty territory, Esen laughed. There was a slur in his voice; he had been drinking. “I gave you so much space, you can live like a lord, and here you still are living like some penniless soldier. Why don’t you ever need anything? I would give it to you.”

  “I don’t doubt your generosity, my prince. But I have few needs.” Guiding Esen to the table, Ouyang caught the eye of one of the hovering servants and gestured for wine. Esen was usually a cheerful drunk, but now it seemed that alcohol had loosened every restraint upon his misery: it billowed from him, unstable and dangerous. Ouyang wished he’d had time to prepare. Without his usual multiple layers to protect him, his hair hanging loose over his shoulders, he felt uncomfortably vulnerable. Too close to the surface; too open to Esen’s sorrow.

&
nbsp; Esen sat quietly at the table as they waited for the wine to be warmed. He still wore the white mourning overgarment in the evenings. Ouyang could see a glimpse of rich color through the splayed split in the skirts, like a wound. The smell of wine drifted off him, layered with the flowery smell of women. Esen must have come to him directly from one of his wives. It was already the second watch; he had probably been eating and drinking with her since the afternoon. The thought gave Ouyang a feeling of curdled distaste.

  “Give me that.” Esen took the wine from the servants and dismissed them. Not trusting him, Ouyang took the wine away and poured it for both of them. Esen took the offered cup and stared down into it, shaking his head slowly. The jade beads in his hair clicked. After a long while he said, “Everyone warned me. You warned me. But somehow … I never thought it would happen like this.” Disbelief in his voice. “My own brother.”

  Ouyang pressed his feelings down until they were packed as tightly as a cake of tea. “He’s not your brother. He doesn’t have your father’s blood.”

  “What difference does that make? My father took him in, I thought of him as a brother, we were raised together. I never thought of him as less, even if he wasn’t a warrior. We had our differences, but—” He seemed sunk in memory for a minute, then exhaled with a shudder.

  Destroying what someone else cherished never brought back what you yourself had lost. All it did was spread grief like a contagion. As he watched Esen, Ouyang felt their pain mingling. There seemed to be no beginning or end to it, as if it were all they could ever be. He said, “There are people who say that grief will hurt as much as it’s worth. And there is nothing worth more than a father.”