“Well, I suppose in some respects you’re like my brother,” Lord Wang mused. “You think the only things of any worth are the things you yourself value. Does the world even exist outside your own concerns, General?”
“I’ve spent my life fighting for the Great Yuan!” Despite his best effort, Ouyang couldn’t stop the bitterness from leaking out.
“And yet I care about it more than you, I think.” Under the apricot flowers, Lord Wang seemed someone out of time: one of the elegant aristocrats of old imperial Lin’an. A scholar from a world that no longer existed. With a chill, Ouyang realized Lord Wang was making an accusation.
As he wedged past Lord Wang and continued on, the lord called from behind him, “Oh, General! I should tell you: I’ve decided to come along on your little expedition to Bianliang. Since it’s my men and my money you’re using, I would find it a shame if they were thrown away without achieving any good purpose.”
The bitterness in Lord Wang’s voice matched Ouyang’s exactly. Like knows like.
* * *
Ouyang hadn’t taken Lord Wang entirely seriously, but it was confirmed the moment he stepped into Esen’s residence and found Esen looking grim and drunk. “Lord Wang came to see you,” Ouyang stated. He already associated Esen’s new type of bitter, miserable drunkenness with a recent encounter with Lord Wang. He clamped down hard on the thought of what had happened the last time Esen had come to him drunk after a fight with Lord Wang.
Esen said, “He claimed he wanted to come to Bianliang.”
“Don’t let him,” Ouyang said immediately, sitting opposite. “You know the only reason he wants to come is to cause trouble.” He didn’t need to add: remember Hichetu.
Esen swirled his cup. “Maybe it’s better to have him causing trouble where we can see it, rather than having him run around the estate without supervision.”
“That makes it sound like the worst he’s capable of is childhood pranks.”
“We might come back to find he’s sold the estate and gone to become a bureaucrat in the capital.”
“That wouldn’t be the worst outcome. But he can’t; Bolud’s family would destroy him,” Ouyang said disparagingly. “They don’t need proof he was behind Altan’s exile. The suspicion would be enough to set them against him.”
“I would back Wang Baoxiang over Bolud-Temur,” Esen said, “as to who would survive longer in that jar of snakes. No, I don’t trust him. Who would trust him, after what he’s done to my father? But he’s still my brother. Wish as I would, nothing can change that.” Brooding, he gave a harsh laugh. “I hate him! And still I love him. Would that I could only hate. It would be easier.”
“Pure emotions are the luxury of children and animals,” Ouyang said, and felt the terrible weight of his own tangled emotions.
“But perhaps this is an opportunity,” Esen mused. “For him to make amends and seek my forgiveness. What better place for it than on campaign, as when we were boys? I do want to forgive him! Why does he make it so difficult?”
“Wang Baoxiang killed your father. What forgiveness can you have for that?” It came out more harshly than he’d intended.
“Oh, fuck you!” In a sudden rage Esen flung the wine ewer across the room, shattering it. “You think I don’t know that? Curse your literal-mindedness. Why can’t you humor my fantasies just for a moment? I know it can’t be the same. I know it won’t be the same. I know I’ll never forgive him. I know.”
When Ouyang didn’t respond, Esen observed, “You don’t kneel.” He fumbled around on the table and found another ewer with some wine still in it, and poured himself a refill.
Ouyang was hit by the memory of his return from Bianliang. He’d knelt then only because he’d thought it would make him as angry as he needed to be. But now there was no need for anger: everything was already in motion, and it would unfold regardless of what Ouyang did or felt. If he knelt now, it would be because he wanted to. The thought filled him with hot shame.
He said, low, “Do you want me to?”
Esen’s cup of wine sloshed onto the table. When he glanced up at Ouyang it was with a sick, hungry look that pulled between them like a physical connection. Ouyang heard Lord Wang’s voice: You and Esen are two unlike things. Like and unlike: the tinder and the spark.
But then Esen’s gaze dulled, and he looked back at his wine. “I apologize. I gave you liberty to be honest with me a long time ago.”
Ouyang’s churning emotions made him feel like a sailor on a typhoon-tossed ship, clinging to every moment of life while knowing there was nothing for him beyond the blackness of the deep. He said woodenly, “You’re the Prince of Henan. Don’t apologize.”
Esen’s mouth thinned. “Yes, I am.” Spilled wine spread on the table between them. “Go. Get some sleep. Be prepared for our departure.”
Ouyang withdrew and made his way to his own residence. Absorbed in painful thoughts, it was an unpleasant surprise to look up and find Shao and a handful of his battalion commanders waiting for him in his reception room.
“What is it?” He spoke in Han’er, since all those waiting were Nanren. The language never ceased to feel strange to his tongue. It was only another thing that had been stolen from him.
Commander Zhao Man, whose filigreed drop earrings lent a certain delicacy to an otherwise thuggish appearance, said, “General. Is it true Lord Wang will be accompanying us?”
“I was unsuccessful in dissuading the Prince from the idea.”
“He’s never come out before. Why now?”
“Who knows the workings of Lord Wang’s mind?” Ouyang said impatiently. “It can’t be helped; we will have to accommodate him.”
Shao said, “Lord Wang is dangerous. What happened to Altan—”
“It’s fine,” Ouyang said, holding Shao’s eyes until the other looked away. “The Prince stripped him of most of his power even here in Anyang. With regards to the military, he has none. What threat is he to me?”
“Lord Wang is no fool,” someone else muttered.
“Enough! Having him with us or not has no bearing on the situation,” Ouyang said, scowling, and left them muttering. He couldn’t bring himself to care about Lord Wang. All he could do was keep moving forwards under the assumption of success. Dwelling on what might be, or what could have been, was the path to insanity. For a moment he had a sense-flash of Esen—not one particular memory, but something stitched together from every moment they had spent together: the feel of his body, his particular smell, his presence. It was intimate and completely false, and it was all Ouyang would ever have.
* * *
Bianliang, on the doorstep of the Yuan’s northern heartlands, was a mere three hundred li south of Anyang. There were no mountains on the way, nor treacherous river crossings. A determined Mongol with several horses in his string could have covered it in a day. Even for an army it should have been completely straightforward. Ouyang surveyed the battalion’s worth of supply wagons mired axle-deep in the bog and thought: I’m going to kill him.
“This has gone on long enough!” Esen said, when Ouyang told him during their nightly debrief. He spat out the shell of a roasted melon seed as though aiming it at Lord Wang’s head. “Oh, I know you warned me. More fool I am, to hope against hope for a change in his nature, that he might actually try to be useful. Better had I wished for horses to fall from the sky! This is only what I should have expected all along: that he should try to bother me to death.” He leapt to his feet and stood before his father’s sword on its stand, which he bade the servants put out every night when they erected his ger. “What should I do?”
It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was asking Ouyang or his father’s spirit. Ouyang, who wanted nothing less than for Chaghan’s spirit to give its opinions, said shortly, “Punish him.”
As he said it, he was startled by an internal feeling that was like a bell being rung by the vibration of its likeness far away. He remembered kneeling before Esen, seeking to be humiliated so that his hate
could fuel what he needed to do. The only point to Lord Wang’s pranks was to seek his own humiliation at Esen’s hand. Ouyang thought uneasily: But if that’s the case—what does he need to do?
Esen stalked over to his door guards and issued curt instructions. Ouyang put aside his bowl of noodle and mutton soup and rose, intending to leave, but Esen returned and pressed him back down. “Stay.” He wore an uncharacteristically vicious look. Another might think it the look of someone girding for battle—except that Ouyang, who had actually seen Esen before battles, knew it was worse. There was something of Chaghan in the expression, as if Esen had actually succeeded in calling up that angry old spirit. “Let him have you witness his shame. Is it not your army too?”
“He won’t thank me for it.” We’ve both seen each other’s humiliations.
“He won’t thank me for what I’m about to do, either.”
Lord Wang came in a few moments later. Two weeks on the road had turned his milky indoors complexion the color of an etiolated bamboo shoot. He sank onto the tiger-skin rug, giving Ouyang a poisonous glance as he did so, then said in a coquettish tone designed to infuriate Esen, “Do give me a drink, dear brother. It will soften the impact of the splendid berating I can see you’re about to deliver. Or have you and your lapdog drunk it all already?”
“Wang Baoxiang,” Esen said savagely.
“Brother!” Lord Wang clapped. “Congratulations! You’ve captured his tone exactly. Ah, it’s like hearing our father’s spirit. What have we been mourning him for when he’s right here with us? Look: you’ve given me chicken-skin.”
“Is this your whole purpose for being here? So you can prick me with your petty inconveniences?”
Lord Wang sneered. “Far be it for me to disappoint your expectations.”
“I don’t—you’ve well earned my distrust!”
“Ah, of course, I forgot. Since you managed to be the perfect son, there was no reason why I couldn’t have been too. How selfish and willful of me to deny our father that satisfaction. Did I not do all my wickedness deliberately, out of love of seeing him hurt? How I must have wished for his death!”
Esen regarded him coldly. “Wang Baoxiang, I will not tolerate your interference in the operations of this army. Let this be your warning.” He called, “Enter!”
The two young guards came in, their arms filled with books. Without changing expression, Esen plucked a book from the nearest guard and tossed it into the fire. The guards began feeding the books in one by one. The sacred hearth flames rose up, whirling the ash, and the ger filled with the smell of burning paper. Ouyang saw Lord Wang’s face drain of blood. It was such a drastic reaction that Ouyang was reminded of the stricken look of the first man he had ever killed.
Lord Wang said, terrible, “I see you have our father’s cruelty in you, too.”
A commotion outside startled them, and an attendant burst in. He made an anxious reverence and stammered, “Prince! Please come! Your favorite horse—it is—”
Still white-lipped, Lord Wang gave an ugly laugh. “His horse! Oh, the pity.”
“If you dare have—!” Esen, already snatching up his cloak, directed a sick look of suspicion at Lord Wang.
“What, brother? Been cruel too? Rest assured: if I wanted to hurt you, you’d know.”
His face pinched in fury, Esen turned and ducked out. The guards followed. Ouyang and Lord Wang were left alone with the books softly collapsing in the fire, the horse screaming in the distance.
Ouyang watched the firelight playing off Lord Wang’s downturned face. There was a strange, ill satisfaction there, as if Esen had proved something Lord Wang wanted—but in having proved it, had killed some other part that was still holding out hope.
Lord Wang hissed, “Get out.”
Ouyang left him staring down at his burning books. It was a pitiful sight, but Ouyang’s guilt had nothing to do with Lord Wang. It was Ouyang’s betrayal that had turned Esen’s pure-heartedness into something capable of cruelty and suspicion. For so many years Ouyang had viewed Esen’s uncomplicated joy in life with jealousy and admiration and scorn and tenderness, and now it was gone.
* * *
It had been a grim morning, and everyone knew they would likely be halted the rest of the day due to the Prince of Henan’s bad temper. The horse had died—a twisted intestine—and Esen had spent the hours afterwards furious and grieving. Despite his suspicions of Lord Wang, the illness had already been verified in autopsy: it was simply one of those things that happened.
“Why should a man cry that much over a horse?” Shao said, flipping a black weiqi piece across his knuckles. They were in Ouyang’s ger. Outside, befitting the mood, it was raining.
“His father gave it to him,” Ouyang said, placing his own white stone. He hated speaking about Esen to Shao, as if Esen were only an enemy. He made himself do it anyway. He had the image of his relationship to Esen being a thin strip of metal that Ouyang was deliberately bending back and forth. Each time it bent, it hurt. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt after it finally snapped, but Ouyang couldn’t make himself believe it.
Shao said, “Where are the others? They’re late.”
As if on cue, the flap lifted in a gust of wet rain and Commander Chu ducked inside. Without preamble he said, “General: Zhao Man is missing.”
Ouyang looked up sharply. “Details.”
“Nobody in his command has seen him since last night. He appears not to have slept in his ger.”
“Deserted?” Shao asked.
“Could be, sir.” Chu jumped as the flap opened again and admitted the other battalion commanders. They came and knelt around the forgotten game of weiqi, which Shao had been winning.
Commander Yan said, “General. Is it possible he spoke?”
“To whom, and for what?” Shao snapped. “Unlikely.”
“Even so, we need to consider the worst-case scenario.”
“Clearly the worst-case scenario hasn’t occurred, if we’re sitting here talking about it,” Ouyang said. He spoke quickly, convincing himself as much as the others. “Isn’t the point of speaking to be rewarded? Why would he desert with nothing but the clothes on his back? No. Tomorrow we’ll find him fallen from his horse somewhere; that’s all there is to it.”
Shao said, “We continue.”
Commanders Chu and Geng nodded, but Yan and Bai exchanged glances. After a moment Yan said, “Respectfully, General, I’m not convinced. You may be correct, but the uncertainty concerns me. More and more there are things we don’t know about this situation. How can we proceed with confidence?”
Commander Bai said in his scratchy voice, “I agree with Yan. We should wait.”
“No; it’s too late for that,” Ouyang said, noticing the glances the others exchanged as he said it. It was the careful way people treated someone gripped by an idea to the point of acting past all rationality. “If there are those who do not wholeheartedly believe in the success of the endeavor, you may disengage from it. In the event of failure you will not be mentioned. I ask only your silence.”
Yan and Bai looked at each other again, and then Yan said, “I see no benefit in us speaking of it.”
“So then we part ways,” Ouyang said, turning back to the game.
“Be well and have success, General,” said Yan, rising and bowing. “I hope for your sake I’m wrong.”
Ouyang placed another stone without really seeing it, and was aware of Shao pursing his lips in dissatisfaction. He thought Shao might argue with him, but after a moment he placed a stone without saying anything. Ouyang, looking down at the board, felt a creeping suffocation. Shao’s black pieces were throttling the white, pressing ever inwards in a spiral that left no place for escape.
* * *
Ouyang looked furiously at the bodies. Yan and Bai had been discovered that morning in Yan’s ger, lying in puddles of their own vomit. Despite his anger he kept his face carefully blank. He was conscious of Shao hovering in the penumbra of his peripheral vision.
&
nbsp; “What’s the cause of this?” Esen demanded, equally furious. The deaths of men in battle never affected him, but death within his own camp—after a night spent watching his beloved horse die in agony—had made him raw. He turned a hard look upon Lord Wang, who had been drawn like a floating gerfalcon to the sight of prey below.
Mustering blandness, Ouyang said, “We’ve lost a few men lately from a particularly virulent strain of illness from bad food. We had thought the source identified, but it may be that some tainted products remain. The fact that Yan and Bai died together, after eating and drinking, suggests a common cause.”
Esen shook his head impatiently. “Coming so shortly after the disappearance of Commander Zhao? It can’t be a coincidence. Call the physician!”
The physician arrived and knelt by the bodies. He had recently replaced an older man in the position, and was familiar to Ouyang only by sight. With a sinking heart, Ouyang saw that the man worked methodically, indicating some experience. Shao, no fool, would have used an uncommon poison, knowing that only court physicians made that subject their specialty. But it was a gamble Ouyang wouldn’t have made himself. He thought grimly: all that has been traded is the uncertainty of Yan and Bai’s silence with the uncertainty that their bodies will speak for them.
As the physician rose from his examination, Ouyang felt a chill at the sight of Lord Wang watching him with an ironic pinch on his thin mouth, as of a man receiving his validation of something already known but not desired.
“Esteemed Prince.” The physician made a reverence to Esen. “Based upon my examination, I believe these deaths to be natural.”
Esen frowned. Beneath his mask of control, Ouyang felt surprised relief. Shao, at his side, breathed out. But not in relief. No, thought Ouyang: it was the satisfaction of having one’s foolhardy assumptions validated. Shao had never doubted at all.
The physician continued, “I can find no traces of foul play, of violence or poison. It may be as the General guessed. The symptoms are consistent with a rapid illness of the kind commonly caused by bad food.”
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