Good, Ouyang thought viciously. Let me hurt.
He knelt. “Esteemed Prince, Bianliang is lost. This unworthy servant has failed you. Please give your punishment!”
Esen looked down at him. In his face was disappointment and a host of other emotions Ouyang couldn’t identify. For all Ouyang harbored a tangle, Esen did too. It was new in him, and Ouyang grieved to know he had put it there. “Don’t kneel,” Esen said at length. “I’m not my father. I have no such expectation that you should abase yourself before me for a loss I myself would have made. Did you not at least defeat their decoy force? You did your best.”
But Ouyang hadn’t done his best. He hadn’t even tried. He could have pleased Esen so easily, and he had chosen not to. To stave off guilt, he dug deep for his anger. You did your best. Esen’s sympathy cut Ouyang’s pride to the quick. He knew Ouyang better than anyone. How could he really believe that had been his best effort? All it showed was that Esen had forgotten the most important thing about him: that he was a Nanren.
Ouyang said, “Khanbaliq will not tolerate Bianliang being held by the Red Turbans. We have no choice but to retake it. Esteemed Prince, I would have your permission to go to the Zhang family of Yangzhou to request their assistance with the endeavor.”
“We have to retake Bianliang, that’s true, but it seems I have more faith in your capabilities than you do. There’s no need to go crawling to those wretched merchants,” Esen said. He added, more quietly, “I know what you’re doing, running from me out of shame. There’s no need to. I have no blame for you.”
You should have blame. Despite Ouyang’s efforts to stay angry, pain and guilt threatened to undo him. He had to force himself to speak. “I had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of their General Zhang in Hichetu this past spring. Whatever his brother’s reputation, General Zhang himself is more than capable. With his help, there will be no question of our victory.”
“For pity’s sake, get up! We shouldn’t talk like this.” Esen looked pained.
Ouyang’s heart ached. Why can’t you make it easier for me to hate you? “My prince, you should treat me as I deserve to be treated.”
“And let that be the case, had you actually brought shame upon me,” Esen said. “For years people have told me that the mere fact of having you as my general is shameful. I didn’t believe it before, and I don’t believe it now. I refuse to throw out my general, my best friend, for the sake of a loss that can be remedied. So get up.” When Ouyang still didn’t move, he said, lower, “Will you make me command you?”
The room was too full of perfume. Ouyang’s head spun. He was trapped in this nightmarish female space, where Esen was lord and king. And as with all the other inhabitants of this domain, Ouyang was Esen’s too; he was mastered.
When Ouyang didn’t move, Esen said very softly, “General Ouyang, get up. I command it.”
Not a yank on the leash, but a touch under the chin: the words of someone who had never imagined refusal. And Ouyang obeyed. He stood, and felt a deep current of pleasure beneath his anger. It was the pleasure of a slave who wanted to please his master; the comfort of a chaotic world returning to order. And the very instant Ouyang realized that what he felt was pleasure, it blackened like a cut banana heart; it became disgust. He recoiled from the truth that he was the servile dog he had always been told he was. But even in the swamp of his self-loathing, he knew that if it had been possible for them to continue like that, he would have.
Esen said, “Come here.”
Ouyang went. He was aware of the watching servants, and the telltale crack between the bedchamber doors. The thought of what they all saw pressed his humiliation closer. He stopped in front of Esen. Close enough to touch. The memory of Esen’s fingertips on his face seared him. Part of him yearned for the debasement of that touch again, and an equal part hated Esen for having called pleasure and submissiveness out of him without even realizing what he had done. Each part hurt. The combined pain of them crushed him.
Esen regarded him with a strange intensity. “Go to Yangzhou if you feel you need to. But stop worrying about Bianliang. You’ll win it back. And after you win it back—after you win me this war against the rebels—the Great Khan will reward us. I’ll ask him to reward you with lands and a son you can adopt to carry your name. That’s our future, don’t you see? Our sons leading the Great Yuan’s armies together. They’ll take Japan and Cham and Java for the glory of the empire, and men will remember their names the way they remember the great khans.” His voice rose. “Isn’t that something you want? So stop blaming yourself and let yourself want it. I’ll give it to you.”
Ouyang, staring at Esen in shock and anguish, saw he actually believed that vision of the future. At length he said hoarsely, “Then come with me to Bianliang, Esen. Ride with me as you used to. Let’s win it together, so we can finish all of this and start towards our future.”
He heard the servants’ scandalized murmur: that he dared address the Prince of Henan so; that he dared ask more than was his right. As if the Prince of Henan could just leave his duties to his estate—and to his wives, who were still vying for that precious son. Ouyang could feel Lady Borte’s resentment radiating through the bedchamber doors. Choose me, he thought, his eyes fixed on Esen’s face, and felt sick.
Esen didn’t answer immediately. His hand twitched, and Ouyang’s breath stuck, but then Esen caught himself and clasped his hands behind his back. “It’s snowing?” he asked abruptly. It was such a tangent that it took Ouyang a moment to realize there must still be snow in his hair. Esen was regarding him with an inwards, wretched expression, as of someone wrestling with a pain he had never expected to feel. “I suppose you wouldn’t know, since you’ve been traveling. It’s the first snow; it comes later than usual this year.”
First snowfall, which lovers liked to watch together. All the things that Ouyang could never have were too present, like haunting ghosts. This was why he had wanted to be angry, so it could wash away everything else he might feel. But instead it was his anger that hadn’t been strong enough, and had been drowned.
Esen said, still with that odd pain on his face, “If you want me there, I’ll come.”
He had always given Ouyang everything he wanted. Ouyang imagined the snow coming down outside, blanketing everything in its cold muffled stillness. If only he could take that blankness and wrap his heart in it, so nothing could ever hurt him again.
* * *
Lord Wang’s office was more subdued than Ouyang had ever seen it. Esen might not have been able to strip Lord Wang of his titles, but his disfavor fell heavily upon him. Regardless of events, Lord Wang was still at his desk: loyal as ever to his work. Or perhaps just determined to exercise the only power he had left.
“Greetings, my lord.” Ouyang bowed and handed over his request of resources for the upcoming siege on Bianliang. He had already tasked Shao with the preparations, so that they would be ready to depart as soon as Ouyang returned from Yangzhou.
Lord Wang scanned the list with a sardonic expression: Ouyang had made no attempt to economize. “You’ve outdone yourself, General. First you lose ten thousand men in what should have been a rout. Now your mistake sees the rebels put the Prince of Radiance on the historic throne of the last native dynasty to have power here in the north.” His black eyes flicked up, inscrutable. “As the descendant of a traitor, you might want to be careful to succeed with your next endeavor, lest people begin to wonder whether your mistakes are caused by something other than incompetence.”
Lord Wang was as nostalgic for the past as any full-blooded Nanren, Ouyang realized abruptly. If he knew that Ouyang had let Bianliang fall—
He dismissed the idea. It was only Lord Wang’s usual jealousy speaking. “To ensure my success, my lord, you need merely fulfil my requests without argument. Or would you prefer that I petition the Prince of Henan to become involved? Given how little goodwill he bears towards you, it might not turn out in your favor. How much land do you have left? It
would be a pity if he felt moved to take the rest of it away—”
Lord Wang rose, came around the desk, and struck Ouyang across the face. It was only as hard as one might expect from a scholar, but still enough to turn his head. When he turned back, Lord Wang said coolly, “I know you think you’re better than me. In my brother’s eyes, you certainly are. But I’m still a lord, and I can still do that.”
The punishment for a Nanren hitting a Mongol was death by strangulation. But even had it not been, Ouyang wouldn’t have struck back; Lord Wang’s misery was all too apparent. His whole life was humiliation and the knowledge of his own uselessness. Ouyang saw a brief flash of another drained, agonized face: the rebel monk, staring in disbelief at the bleeding stump of his sword-arm. The monk faced a life as full of shame and impotence as Lord Wang’s. It was a future Ouyang knew better than anyone. The worst punishment is being left alive.
He said, “Is that my thanks for saving my lord’s life?”
“Such thanks should I give!” Lord Wang said bitterly. “Saved me, only so that my brother could blame me for dropping our father off a cliff.”
Ouyang couldn’t resist taking revenge for the slap. He said, cruel, “If only you had been stronger”—if only you hadn’t been a worthless scholar—“you could have saved him.”
Lord Wang blanched. “And for that I have never been forgiven.” He went and sat back down behind his desk. Without looking up, he said harshly, “Take whatever you need. Do with it as you will.”
Ouyang left, thinking it had gone surprisingly well. If Lord Wang’s best revenge for Ouyang’s part in his humiliation was a slap on the face, then there was nothing to worry about.
But for one troubled moment, he remembered Altan.
* * *
Anyang and Yangzhou were separated by well over a thousand li. Ouyang, speeding south down the Grand Canal on a cramped merchant boat, watched the scenery change. The winter-flooded plains under their shining yellow inundations gave way to a brisk bustle of human activity: peasants in the fields, marketplaces on the arches of bridges, industry. And then finally the mounds of gleaming white salt, stretching as far as the eye could see. The vast mercantile empire of the Zhangs, which had as its capital the great walled city of Yangzhou. The water brought them directly into it. The wide canals took Ouyang past high-walled gardens, under stone bridges, between the famous green and black mansions of the pleasure quarter. Every street was a spectacle of wealth. Ordinary citizens wore the bright silk brocades of the region; their hair was piled and pinned and adorned; they stepped down from palanquins that seemed to have been dipped in gold. It was a splendor.
Having witnessed this of Yangzhou, Ouyang had thought himself adequately prepared for what to expect from the Zhang family’s residence. But even he, raised alongside nobility, was shocked. The Great Khan’s hunts might have displayed the finest things from the four khanates, but a certain Mongol simplicity ultimately prevailed. By contrast, Rice Bucket Zhang had built for himself nothing short of an imperial palace: the crass epitome of someone of incalculable wealth building on a region’s centuries of tradition in producing and consuming every luxury of an empire.
In his gold and black–lacquered hall, the man himself sat upon a chair that gave every impression of a throne. It was warmer in Yangzhou than Anyang, but that did not fully explain the need for the array of maidservants who stood fanning him. His eyes, alighting on Ouyang, glinted with greedy curiosity.
When Ouyang finished his greetings, Rice Bucket Zhang gave a vulgar laugh. “So this is the eunuch my brother speaks so highly of! I see he neglected to mention some important details. I was expecting some soft old man.” His gaze swept Ouyang from head to toe, assessing him in the same way one might judge the worth of potential new concubines on the texture of their skin and the size of their feet. “Here I thought the Mongols had no aesthetic tastes at all. I stand corrected that they put their most beautiful possessions at the head of their armies. What army of men would not be roused to protectiveness?”
“Big brother, I had heard General Ouyang from Henan had arrived—” General Zhang came in. “Ah, you did arrive safely,” he said, seeing Ouyang, and gave him a warm smile. “Now that you have made your greetings to my brother, will you not accompany me to the reception room? We have prepared a welcome for you.”
“I have received quite a welcome already,” Ouyang said tightly.
General Zhang said as they withdrew, “I’m sure. Why do you think I came?”
“Your brother did say he thought I inspired protectiveness in men.” He had thought he could repeat the insult for humorous effect, but had misjudged his own capacity to detach himself from anger.
“Believe it or not, he does have some redeeming qualities. But I can see how you might not be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt at the moment.”
“I trust the judgment of those I respect.”
Zhang smiled. “Don’t respect me too much. I was not yet a man when he had his first successes. As the younger brother, I owe him much.”
“Surely that’s more than balanced now by what he owes you.”
“Would that family and fate had the same rules as accounting,” Zhang said. His mobile face, under its handsome tragic brow, made a series of expressions that Ouyang couldn’t interpret. “But come, let’s relax. Are you not now in the pleasure capital of the world? When traveling I always miss its charms. Music, poetry, the beauty of lanterns reflected in the lake in the evenings. Trust me: that Goryeo ribbon dance they like in Dadu is nothing in comparison.”
“I must confess to lacking the education required to appreciate the finer entertainments,” Ouyang said. In truth he thought the charms of most arts lay in certain obvious qualities of their performers. Since these qualities left him cold, he found them all equally tedious.
“Ah, our customs are different indeed. But I remember we both have drinking in common. The Mongols perhaps exceed us in their serious attention to wine, but I think we can satisfy you well enough.”
He drew Ouyang into an intimate space where a table had been laid with an immense spread of dishes on fragile white porcelain. Even a soldier such as Ouyang could tell that the quality of the porcelain was such that a single plate was worth more than all his possessions put together. “Let us wait for— Oh, here he comes.”
Rice Bucket Zhang came sweeping in and took the position of honor. A few moments later a woman came in bearing a tray of cups and a ewer of wine. The many layers of her clothing rustled as she sank down to serve them. As she poured the wine she kept her head down; all Ouyang could see of her was her enormous sculptural hairpiece, pinned with gold and coral, and the milky skin of her wrist as she held her sleeve back to hand him the wine.
Rice Bucket Zhang looked on with proprietary pride. “My wife,” he said carelessly. “The most beautiful woman in a city of beauties.”
“My husband gives this woman too much credit,” the woman murmured. On her downturned face, powdered as white as a moonlit vase, a hint of curved scarlet lips could be seen. “Please, honored guest, drink and be at ease.”
She settled at Rice Bucket Zhang’s side as he held forth without any need for the opinions of anyone else in the room. Ouyang and General Zhang applied themselves to the food and wine. Ouyang noticed that the other general’s eyes strayed every so often to the woman as she attended her husband. When they finished, Rice Bucket Zhang belched and said, “Wife, will you not perform for us? A poem or a song?”
The woman laughed coquettishly behind her sleeve. “I have arranged some other entertainment for my husband. I hope it will please him.” She tapped the door and it opened. A stream of girls came tripping in, attired in diaphanous gowns in the pale colors of eggshells and moths. Their faces were painted; their perfume insipid.
Rice Bucket Zhang said, leering, “Ah, you know my tastes well! Girls from your own house, are they not? I see the standard of its wares has not slipped.” He looked at Ouyang and chuckled. “A shame, Gene
ral, that you can’t sample the true wealth and talents of this city. Though I’ve heard it said that palace women like eunuch lovers; having no personal needs they have only infinite patience. Strange for me to imagine!”
Ouyang saw the wisdom of General Zhang having had the servants take away his sword with his other belongings. He said as coldly as he could, “Patience is unfortunately not one of my virtues.”
“Good, for I’ve never had patience for those of virtue,” said Rice Bucket Zhang. “Virtuous women, I mean.”
“I’m sure his ears and eyes can feast as well as any man’s,” the woman said. “I hope our guest will find the entertainment to his liking.”
Ouyang gave her a sharp look, but she was already rising and withdrawing with little steps that made her sleeves flutter.
The girls sang for an interminable hour before Rice Bucket Zhang said, “So the Great Yuan comes seeking my support to retake Bianliang.”
General Zhang excused himself, saying, “I will leave you to discuss the details.”
“It will not only be to retake Bianliang, but to destroy the rebel movement entirely.”
“Ah.” Rice Bucket Zhang’s attention, which had only ever been half on Ouyang, returned to the girls. “Then I give it. I hope the Great Yuan will recognize my loyalty. Without it, it occurs to me that it might find itself in trouble.”
“Of course your contributions to the Great Yuan cannot be overstated.”
She Who Became the Sun Page 32