The other rode towards her under his own flag. Zhu felt the universe quivering around them as they entered the empty space between the armies. They were two things of the same substance, their qi ringing in harmony like twin strings, interconnected by action and reaction so that they were forever pushing and pulling each other along the path of their lives and towards their individual fates. She knew that whatever happened here, it wouldn’t be him acting upon her, but each of them upon the other.
At the middle they dismounted and approached each other, holding their sheathed swords in their left hands. Zhu was struck anew by the eunuch general’s crystalline beauty. Flesh of ice and bones of jade, she thought: the most exquisite form of female beauty. But for all that, there was no mistaking him for a woman. Where that smoothness should have been yielding, there was only hardness: it was in the set of his jaw, the arrogant tilt to his chin. His stride and bearing were those of a person who carried himself with the bitter pride of knowing that his separation came from being above.
The cool morning light drained the color from their surroundings. Their breath smoked.
“And so we meet.” His raspy voice was instantly familiar. It had been stamped into Zhu’s memory with fire and violence. The last time I heard him speak, he destroyed everything I had. “I admit, your challenge was a welcome surprise. After all that running and ambushing, I thought you’d make us grind it out to the end. Is there any particular reason you’re so intent on making a public spectacle of your death?”
Zhu replied calmly, “I’d be a poor leader if I returned my men’s loyalty of these last days by failing do everything I could to change the situation.”
“Are you so certain of the possibility of change? It seems to me the outcome is inevitable.”
“That may be. But are you sure it’s the outcome you think? Perhaps you need more information to see clearly,” Zhu said. Deep beneath her calm, she was distantly aware of her suppressed uncertainty reaching its peak. “For instance: you might like to know that this engagement is nothing but a distraction. Did you think we Red Turbans were so few? Our numbers have grown more than you’ve realized. As we speak, our main force is making its assault on Bianliang. I doubt I’m wrong in thinking that the loss of Bianliang would be a blow indeed to the Great Yuan.”
Her attention on his face was as keen as a lover’s, but he gave nothing away. “Interesting. But men will say anything to save their own skins. Indeed, if what you say is true, aren’t you betraying your own side just for the chance that I might withdraw and go running to Bianliang? So you’re either a liar, or a coward.” He raised his eyebrows. “Which is more likely, I wonder?”
“Whether or not you believe me, can you risk not acting? Messages go astray. If Bianliang called for help but falls for lack of aid, who do you think will bear the blame for its loss?”
Now a shadow did cross his face. He said sardonically, “It’s hardly the recipient of a lost message who should be blamed.”
Zhu heard, unspoken: But they will blame me. The tremble in her depths subsided with relief: it was working. “But now you know. So the question is: What will you do with that knowledge, General Ouyang?” It was the first time she had ever said his name, and at the sound of it she felt that disorienting pull of fate more strongly than before, as if he were a lodestone to her needle. A sharp tang on her tongue tasted like the air before a storm. “Will you refuse to go—and afterwards like to explain why you failed to do everything possible to prevent the greatest symbol of Nanren power from falling into rebel hands? I can only imagine how unhappy your masters must have been with you after Yao River. What will they do to you for having lost Bianliang?”
As he considered the question a dense whiteness came pouring from his army, as supple as fog cascading down a mountainside. It flowed over the ground and encircled them. Before, his ghosts had never paid her any more attention than any other ghosts did. But now their absent black eyes watched her from over his shoulder, and she felt the hair on her neck rise as unseen gazes touched her from behind. Their murmur filled her with a numbed feeling of dread. Far above, the banners thwacked.
At length the eunuch general said, “That was an unpleasant homecoming, to be sure. It seems you know the situation well. But perhaps it’s my turn to give you some information. So you can see the outcome clearly.”
Being archers, Mongols didn’t wear gloves. The closed hand he extended between them was bare. Like the rest of him, his hands evoked that tension of being both and neither: as fine-boned as a woman’s, but scarred from a warrior’s thousand small injuries. He opened his hand slowly. At first Zhu couldn’t grasp what she was looking at. Then, staring down at that folded paper with its brief swirl of Mongolian script on its upper face, she felt a violent internal shaking, as of all her repressed emotions swelling in unison against the barrier of her willpower. She could have gasped with the effort it took to keep them contained.
Bianliang.
She had gambled everything upon the hope of his withdrawal, but now she saw clearly, just as he had promised. It had never been a possibility at all.
Instinctively she clamped down as hard as she could on that rising mass of disbelief and horror and fear. She crammed it back down until there was nothing for him to see but a glacial stillness that matched his own. She had been wrong, but being wrong wasn’t failure—not yet. And it won’t be. There was always another way to win.
He watched her with vindictive pleasure, as if he could sense how hard she was working to stay in control. “My thanks for your concern, but I know about Bianliang. This message from its governor came yesterday. It is indeed a frantic plea for help.”
He knew and he chose not to go. She hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. “But if you’d withdrawn when you first received it, you could have reached there in time—”
“Oh, please,” he said. “We both know your plan was based on the assumption that if I withdrew upon receiving the message, I wouldn’t make it to Bianliang in time to prevent its fall. Which only shows you have no idea of my capabilities. Rest assured: if I’d wanted to get to Bianliang before it fell, I could have.” Then, in response to whatever uncontrollable reaction he saw on her face: “Why didn’t I? But esteemed monk: How could I pass up this chance to settle the score between us?”
Zhu thought, terribly, of those ten thousand drowned men. Even as she had known he would want revenge, she still hadn’t grasped just how deep his hurt ran. The truth hummed in the connection between them. He hurt, and he was driven by it; it was the reason for everything he did, and his reason for being. He’s haunted by it. Chilled, she said, “For the sake of revenge against me, you went as far as to let Bianliang fall?”
“Don’t flatter yourself too much,” he said bitterly. “Bianliang had to fall. But given this opportunity to finish things between us, I find myself pleased to take it.” His black brushstroke eyes bored into her with the promise of murder. “You caused my loss at Yao River, and started something I have no choice but to finish. Regardless of my own desires, you took the liberty of setting me on my path towards my fate.” His delicate face burned with hate and blame. “So let me return the courtesy, and deliver you to yours.”
He drew his sword. It sang as it came out of the sheath, and caught the icy light down its straight length.
And somewhere in the compressed depths of Zhu’s emotions, there was panic. But for all that this didn’t seem like the path to victory and her fate, it had to be. She drew herself up and let him see her: unshrinking and unbowed. “What is it you think you know as my fate?” she said. She was speaking to Heaven as much as she was to him: sending her belief, maintained with every particle of her will, up into that distant, jade-cold firmament. “Let me tell you my name: Zhu Chongba.”
He answered coolly, “Should I know it?”
“One day you will,” she said, and drew her sword.
* * *
In that instant before either of them acted, Zhu had the odd feeling
of their flesh and blood having become immaterial—as if, in that single, shimmering moment, they were nothing but pure desire.
Then Ouyang struck.
Zhu threw herself aside with a gasp. He was faster than she’d imagined—faster than she’d have thought possible. She felt the shock of it clawing at the desperate, tiring part of herself that clung to Zhu Chongba’s identity. It had already slipped, and she could feel the slide of it away from her, but there was nothing to do but hold on. I have to keep believing—
She twisted, and heard the whine of his sword as it sliced through where she’d been. She came down crouching, swinging the sheath in her left hand high for balance, then sprang forwards to strike. He deflected easily, then caught her next strike and held it. Their crossed blades slid along each other as they pressed in. The keening vibration set Zhu’s teeth on edge. Her wrist screamed. She looked into Ouyang’s beautiful porcelain face, and saw the curl of his lip. She was fighting for her life, and he was playing. But as terrifying as that thought was, there was hope in it. If he could have finished me already, but hasn’t, then I have a chance—
But for all she tried, she couldn’t see what that chance was. If he’d been as vain and fragile as Little Guo, she could have distracted him with wounding words. But how could you hurt someone who was nothing but pain? She flung him away, panting. It took all her strength. “You’re a Nanren, aren’t you?” she called, straining against rising desperation. “How can you fight for the Hu, knowing that every action you take against your own people is making your ancestors cry in the Yellow Springs? I have to wonder if you let Bianliang fall because, deep down, you know the Nanren cause is the right one—”
She broke off as he lunged forwards with a flicker of strokes in attack. She parried, hearing the clear tone of steel on steel alternating with the thump of his sword against her sheath. They flew across the ground, Zhu turning and skipping backwards with her heart racing faster than her feet. High and low and high again, but before she could recover from the last stroke he lashed her viciously across the ribs with the sheath in his left hand, then slammed his shoulder into her. She went spinning and hit the dirt lengthwise, and rolled just in time as he stabbed the ground where she’d been. She barely made it to her feet before he was on her again.
This time parrying was harder. It would all end well, because it had to, but her lungs burned and her feet stumbled rather than flew. Her heart felt like it was about to explode. A line of fire burst to life on her left arm as they fell apart for a single breath, then sprang back together. His strokes came fast and hard, and she could hear the awful rasp in her throat as she deflected and dodged and deflected again—
Then she twisted the wrong way, and the breath came out of her with a thump.
Why isn’t he moving, she thought. In that first moment she didn’t feel anything. Her hands were suddenly empty. She stared at him, seeing the amber flecks that made his eyes more brown than black, and groped blindly between them. Her fingers clenched around the sword in her lower body, and she felt its edges cutting her fingers and palm, and somehow that hurt. She would have gasped, but she didn’t have the breath for it.
The tang of blood rose up between them as he leaned in. His lips almost brushed her cheek as he said, “I’m a Nanren, it’s true. And I fight on the Mongol side. But I’ll tell you the truth, little monk. What I want has nothing to do with who wins.”
He wrenched his sword out, and the world turned into a white shriek of pain. All the strength ran out of Zhu like water from a holed leather bucket. She staggered. He watched her expressionlessly, his sword lowered. It was glossed with blood. She looked down at herself, feeling a strange distance. Such a small hole, she thought, as the dark stain spread from under her cuirass. All of a sudden she was freezing. The agony radiating from that awful new center felt like the pull of fate magnified a hundred times—a thousandfold. And with horror, she recognized which fate she was feeling. Not the fate she’d been pursuing, the fate she thought she’d one day reach. Nothing. Under the physical pain, she felt an even deeper agony: a grief more intense than anything she had ever experienced. Had she even had a chance of the great fate, or had she been fooling herself this whole time, thinking she could be Zhu Chongba and have something other than what she’d been given?
She was as cold as she had ever been in her life, her teeth chattering with it, as her knees buckled. The world spun. Behind Ouyang’s head she saw the flags that were the color of blue and red flames, and the empty face of Heaven. She looked into the void and saw the nothingness of herself reflected back from it.
His sword flashed.
She swayed from the impact. The cold had her by the throat. She had never imagined cold could be this painful. With a feeling of confused, abstract interest, she glanced down at the site of the impact and saw the blood spurting from where her right hand had been. It had been a clean cut, above the wristguard. The blood came and came, as red as the Mandate of Heaven, and pooled on top of the dust without sinking in. Her heartbeat echoed in her head. She tried to gather the beats, to count them—but the more she tried, the more they scattered. Finally a quiet lassitude stole in, calming and smoothing away the terror of the cold. She was being claimed by the nothingness, and it felt like relief.
She looked up at Ouyang. She saw him in silhouette: black hair and black armor against a night sky. Behind him were the dark shapes of his ghosts, and behind them: the stars.
“Zhu Chongba,” he said, from very far away. “Your men were loyal to you, before. Let’s see how loyal they are to you now, when all you can inspire in them is scorn and disgust. When you’re nothing but a grotesque thing to be shunned and feared. You’ll wish I’d killed you with honor.” The shadow had swallowed her, and she was falling. It seemed as though a chorus of inhuman voices was speaking, but at the same time she knew it was only him: the one who had delivered her to her fate. He said, “Every time the world turns its face from you, know it was because of me.”
PART THREE
1355−1356
18
ANYANG, ELEVENTH MONTH
It was a cold gray evening when Ouyang returned from Bianliang, which he had conveniently reached only days too late to prevent from falling to the rebels. He had sent no notice of his impending arrival, and came alone into the courtyard of his residence. A faint dusting of snow fell and melted onto the wet flagstones. For a moment he stood there, taking in the familiar cluster of buildings. It still seemed like Esen’s residence, not his own, and the sight of its unnatural emptiness shot pain through him—as if Esen hadn’t just moved to the other side of the palace, but had gone.
A female servant passing under the eaves saw Ouyang standing there and gasped loudly enough for him to hear from the middle of the courtyard. In another moment he was surrounded, his servants stumbling in their haste to make their greetings. As if his disgrace might somehow be alleviated by them lowering themselves even further beneath him. It wasn’t exactly a kindness. He had lost Bianliang—and as much as they pitied him for the punishments that presumably awaited, no doubt they feared more for themselves.
One of them said, “General, will you like to send a message to the Prince of your arrival? He requested immediate advice of your return.”
Of course Esen had known Ouyang would come in unannounced. “Don’t bother,” Ouyang said curtly. “I’ll pay my respects to him in person. Where is he?”
“General, he is with Lady Borte. If you’ll let us send a message—”
The thought of Esen in his wife’s quarters filled Ouyang with familiar disgust. “No, I’ll go myself.”
His servants couldn’t have been more shocked if had he slapped them. More like I slapped myself in front of them, he thought viciously. They all knew the rule: no man save the Prince of Henan himself could enter the women’s quarters of his residence. It was almost flattering that it hadn’t occurred to them until this moment: that because Ouyang wasn’t a man, he could go anywhere he pleased. A privilege I ne
ver wanted. He had never availed himself of it before; he had less than no interest in seeing Esen as the stallion amongst his mares. But now Ouyang seized his disgust, and twisted it until it burned like a fingernail dug under a scab. There was no avoiding this encounter. The angrier he was, the easier it would be to take this next step. Deep down, he knew the reason it seemed so hard was because this was the true point of no return. And the knowledge that there was a point of no return—that if he had been anyone other than himself, he could have chosen not to continue—was the worst thing of all.
Women’s quarters were a foreign land. The colors and scents and even the feel of the air itself were all so alien that Ouyang’s skin crawled. As he stalked down the corridor the female attendants startled at the sight of his armor, then relaxed as soon as they saw his face. Each time it happened his vicious feeling mounted. Women: twittering, perfumed, worthless things. He wished that his armor, with all its sharp edges and blood-metal smell, could actually hurt them. But instead they were hurting him with every one of their understanding looks intimating that he belonged here, in this female space. He burned with humiliation and anger and shame.
He was directed to an antechamber where hanging scrolls of Buddhist wisdom clashed with a suffocating array of chairs, side tables, and vases in the current blue-and-white style. Two maids opened the black-lacquered doors of Lady Borte’s bedchamber and Esen emerged. He was fully dressed, but he had a loose-limbed air and his braids had been combed out. Ouyang’s armor did nothing to protect him from the sight. It was one thing to know Esen had wives, and another to see proof of that life actually lived. To know that he had so recently touched another, and been touched. In this domain of women and children that would always be alien to Ouyang, Esen had a whole life of pleasures and intimacies and small sorrows. Ouyang’s emotions nearly choked him: revulsion and scorn and jealousy, so tangled that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Beneath it all was a piercing yearning. He had no idea if it was a yearning for or a yearning to be, and the equal impossibility of each of those hurt beyond belief.
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