General Ouyang’s army crested in front of them like a wave about to break. Just as Zhu kneed her horse around, she saw a flash of his beautiful, hard face. The connection between them keened. As with any two like substances that had touched, she and the eunuch general were entangled—and no matter how far apart they might range, she knew the world would always be trying to bring them back together. Like belongs with like.
In what circumstances, she had no idea, but she knew: whatever General Ouyang’s dreaded and desired fate was, he still had enough of its path left to travel that they would meet again.
Goodbye, she thought to him, and wondered if he was alive enough inside to feel that tiny message. For now.
Turning to her men, she shouted, “Retreat!”
* * *
Zhu pushed them hard for two hours, then called the halt. General Ouyang hadn’t pursued them, even though he could have caught up with her trailing infantry units easily enough. It was only because he’d had better things to do, but she sent him a small thought of gratitude anyway.
She dismounted awkwardly and went over to Xu Da as he lifted the Prince of Radiance from his horse. Xu Da wore a ginger look that she understood perfectly. There was something about the child that provoked unease. It was like seeing someone’s knee bending the wrong way. Even now, despite everything that had happened inside and outside Bianliang, the Prince of Radiance still wore that same graceful smile.
Prime Minister Liu came over, limping from exhaustion. His robe was stained and disheveled, and his white hair was coming out of its topknot. He seemed to have aged ten years since Zhu had seen him last. She thought with some humor: Probably so have I. “Greetings to the Prime Minister,” she said.
“Commander Zhu! It’s thanks to you that I was prepared for that traitor Chen Youliang.” The Prime Minister all but spat Chen’s name. “As soon as he saw those ships, I knew his intention: he was going to betray me that very instant. He was going to take the Prince of Radiance and flee! But I beat him to it.” He laughed harshly. “I opened those gates myself, and I left that betraying piece of dog shit to his fate. May those Hu bastards kill him painfully so he can eat bitterness in hell and all his future lives!”
Zhu had a refreshing vision of how Chen must have looked when he realized he was alone inside Bianliang with an army pouring in on top of him. She said, “He must have been very surprised.”
“But you—you were always loyal.” The Prime Minister’s glance skittered to Zhu’s right arm. “None of those other commanders knew the meaning of loyalty and sacrifice. But you sacrificed yourself to the eunuch general so we could take Bianliang. And just then, you waited for me. Ah, Zhu Chongba, what kind of reward can there be for a person of such quality as you?”
Zhu looked into the Prime Minister’s rheumy, bitter eyes and felt a peculiar impulse to absorb every detail of him. She took in his bluish lips and papery old man’s skin; the coarse white hairs on his chin; his cracked and yellowing fingernails. It wasn’t because she cared, she thought. It was only a reflexive acknowledgment of someone else who had desired.
But for all the suffering the Prime Minister’s desire had caused, in the end his desire had been curiously fragile. He had let go of it without even realizing.
Zhu took the small knife from her waist. Her left hand was useless for the battlefield, but perfectly adequate for the single backhand stroke that cut the Prime Minister’s throat.
The Prime Minister stared at her in surprise. His mouth formed inaudible words, and the scarlet blood bubbled up until it overflowed and ran down to join the thick stream from his neck.
Zhu told him calmly, “You never saw what I am, Liu Futong. All you saw was what you wanted to see: a useful little monk, willing to suffer for whatever purpose you put him towards. You never realized that it wasn’t your name they were going to call, exhorting you to reign for ten thousand years.” As the Prime Minister fell facedown in the dirt, she said, “It was mine.”
22
BIANLIANG
Ouyang led his army back to Bianliang at a walk. A black pall of smoke hung sullenly over the city, and its gates hung open in a perverse invitation to entry. When midday had passed Ouyang had been convinced that the young monk had failed, and it hadn’t been much of a surprise. Even with his own contribution, what chance had such a plan ever had? He could only suppose that its success had been the mysterious action of Heaven granting Zhu Chongba his fate.
A messenger met them halfway. “General! General Zhang has Bianliang under control, but the rebel Chen Youliang has escaped through one of the northern gates and is currently fleeing with several hundred men. General Zhang asks if he should pursue?”
Ouyang was suddenly sick of everything. It was strange how, having struggled against the rebels his whole adult life, all it took was an instant for them to cease to matter. “No need. Tell him to make his priority clearing and securing the city.”
Later, when he passed Zhang’s guards at the central southern gate and came into the city, the work of clearing was well progressed. He found the other general overseeing his troops as they went through the piles of dying rebels, killing them where they lay.
“That went easier than expected,” Zhang said, smiling in greeting. “Did you know they’d open that western gate from the inside?”
“I did have a small conversation with one of the rebel commanders last night, though I wasn’t sure if it would work out as planned.”
Zhang laughed. “That one-armed monk in charge of their outside forces? How did he manage to influence what happened inside?”
Ouyang said sourly, “Heaven smiles upon him.”
“Ah well, maybe he earned his luck through prayer and virtuous works. Although—he can’t be a real monk, can he?”
“Oh, he is. I destroyed his monastery.”
“Ha! To think that years later you would be working together. You never can tell when people will come in handy, can you? I’ll have to tell Madam Zhang to keep an eye on him in the future. I suppose if you hadn’t had us here, he could have mounted a flank attack while you faced the rebel forces out of Bianliang. In that case he might have stretched you quite well.”
“Then I particularly owe you my thanks for being here.” Ouyang tried to smile, but it felt dead on his face. “And I have need of you yet.” He touched his horse forwards. “Come. Let’s not keep the Prince waiting.”
* * *
The Yuan’s governor of Bianliang had made little use of the old palace, which lay inside its own wall in the center of the city. Obsessed with the symbolism of taking their historic throne, the rebels had ended up occupying nothing but ruins. There was no regaining the past, Ouyang thought bitterly. He knew that as well as anyone.
The red-lacquered palace gate, for centuries the sole passage of emperors, hung from its hinges like broken wings. Ouyang and Zhang rode through and gazed upon the blackened earth of the once-magnificent gardens. The wide imperial avenue arrowed before them. At its end, floating atop marble stairs, rose the Emperor’s pavilion. Even a century after its last inhabitant’s departure, the milky facade had a luster; the curve of its roof glittered like dark jade. On those shining white steps, dwarfed by the scale, stood the Prince of Henan. Esen’s face was flushed with triumph. The warm spring wind swept his loosened hair to the side like a flag. Arrayed before him on that vast parade ground were the assembled troops of Henan, with Zhang’s men behind. Together they made a great murmuring mass, victorious in the heart of that ancient city.
As soon as he saw Ouyang approaching, Esen called out, “General!”
Ouyang dismounted and made his way up the steps. When he reached the top Esen grasped him warmly and spun him around so they looked together upon the massed soldiers beneath. “My general, look what you’ve given me. This city, it’s ours!” His joy seemed to expand past the bounds of his body and into Ouyang’s own. Ouyang was captured by it, vibrating helplessly with it. In that moment Esen seemed breathtakingly handsome: so much so th
at Ouyang felt a sharp ache of incomprehension. That someone this perfect, so alive and so full of the pleasure of the moment, could be. It hurt like grief.
“Come,” Esen said, pulling him towards the hall. “Let’s see what they were so eager to die for.”
Together they crossed the threshold into the cavernous dimness of the Hall of Great Ceremony. A shadow drifted in behind them: Shao. Opposite the main entry, another set of doors opened to a bright white sky. Atop a short flight of stairs at the end of the hall, dingy in the shadows, was the throne.
Esen said, puzzled, “That’s it?”
That seat of emperors, the symbol that the Red Turbans had so desperately sought, was nothing but a wooden chair scabbed with gold leaf like the fur of a mangy dog. Ouyang, watching Esen with an ache in his heart, realized afresh that Esen had never been able to understand the values that made other people’s worlds different from his own. He looked but couldn’t see.
The light at the door dimmed as Lord Wang swept in. His beautifully tooled armor was as pristine as if he had spent the day in his office, although under his helmet his thin face was even more drawn than usual.
As if hearing Ouyang’s thoughts, he said scathingly to his brother, “You betray your ignorance in less than a sentence. Can you really not comprehend what place this city occupies in their imagination? Try, though! Try to imagine it at its peak. Capital of empire; capital of civilization. A city of a million people, the mightiest city under Heaven. Daliang, Bian, Dongjing, Bianjing, Bianliang: whatever its name, a city that was a marvel of all the world’s art and technology and commerce, inside these walls that withstood millennia.”
“They didn’t withstand us,” Esen said.
Through the back doors, far away and far below, Ouyang thought he could see the northern edge of the ruined outer wall. It was so distant it was almost one with the line where the silver floodwaters merged into the same-colored sky. He couldn’t imagine a city so large it could fill that space, the empty breadth encompassed by those ruined walls.
Lord Wang’s lip curled. “Yes,” he said. “The Jurchens came, and then we did, and between us we destroyed it all.”
“Then they must have had nothing worth keeping.” Esen turned his back on his brother, strode out the back doors and vanished down the steps.
Lord Wang had a still, bitter expression. He seemed lost in thought. The lord’s thoughts might have been opaque to Ouyang, but his emotions never were. It was probably the only way in which he resembled his brother. But whereas Esen never saw any point in hiding what he felt, it was as though Wang Baoxiang felt so intensely that despite his best efforts to conceal them, his emotions always penetrated the surface.
Lord Wang suddenly looked up. Not at Ouyang, but past him to where Shao had taken a leisurely seat on the throne.
Shao met their eyes coolly, his naked dagger in his hand. As they watched, he scraped the throne’s flaking gold leaf into a cloth. For all that the movement was casual, he never took his eyes off them.
A flicker of contempt crossed Lord Wang’s face. After a moment he turned without further comment, and made his way down the back steps in the direction his brother had taken.
As soon as he was gone, Ouyang snapped, “Get off.”
“Don’t you want to know what it feels like to sit up here?”
“No.”
“Ah, I forgot.” Shao spoke so flatly it verged on rudeness. It seemed, at that moment, that his true voice emerged. “Our pure general, free of the base cravings for power and wealth. Who has none of the desires of a man, save one.”
They stared coldly at each other until Shao tucked the cloth away, rose without haste, and went out through the great front doors to the parade grounds. After a long moment, Ouyang followed.
* * *
Esen stood at the broken end of a marble causeway, looking out. He assumed there had been a pavilion there once, suspended above the lake. Now there was no lake. There was not even water. In front of him the ground burned as pure red as a holiday lantern. A carpet of strange vegetation stretched as far as his eye could see. The palace walls were out there somewhere, hidden by a lingering haze, but instead of stone ramparts Esen only had the impression of something very bright and very distant: the shimmering floodplain, or perhaps the sky.
“It’s a kind of shrub that normally grows near the sea.” Baoxiang came up beside him. For the first time in a long time Esen didn’t feel rage upon seeing him. It felt as though they were floating in this strange place, their enmity washed away on a tide of memory. Baoxiang followed Esen’s gaze outwards. “These were the imperial gardens during the reign of the Northern Song. The most beautiful gardens in history. The imperial princesses and consorts lived here in jade pavilions, surrounded by perfection. Lakes with rainbow bridges; trees that blossomed as thick as snow in the spring, and as golden as the Emperor’s robes in autumn. The Jurchens deposed the Song, but at least their Jin Dynasty recognized beauty, and preserved it. Then the first khan of our Great Yuan sent his general Subotai to conquer the Jin. Subotai had no use for gardens, so he drained the lake and cut down the trees with the idea of turning it into pasture. But no grass ever grew. It’s said that the tears of the Jin princesses salted the ground, so the only thing that can grow here is this red plant.”
They stood there silently for a moment. Then Esen heard the screams.
He already had his sword in his hand when Baoxiang said, “It’s too late.”
Esen stopped dead. Cold terror crushed his chest. “What have you done.”
Baoxiang gave him a twisted, humorless smile, and for some reason there seemed to be hurt in it. Outlined there against the bloodred landscape, the silver detailing of his helmet and armor were burnished with crimson. “The men loyal to you are dead.”
Esen’s rage crashed back into him. He lunged and slammed Baoxiang against the marble railing. Baoxiang’s back met it with a crack as Esen shoved his forearm against his throat; the silver helmet went tumbling over the side.
Baoxiang coughed, his face reddening, but he maintained his composure. “Oh, you think—? No, brother. This isn’t my plot against you.”
Esen, wrenching himself around in confusion, saw movement within the doors of the great hall. A figure descended the steps, armor covered in blood, his sword in his hand.
“No,” said Ouyang. “It’s mine.”
* * *
Ouyang came down the steps with Shao, Zhang, and the other Nanren battalion commanders behind him. He let them surround and separate Esen and Lord Wang. Esen stared at Ouyang in stunned silence, Shao’s sword at his throat. His chest rose and fell quickly. Ouyang felt those breaths like the hammering of an iron spike through his own chest: an agony in the very quick of him. When he finally tore his eyes away from Esen, it felt like ripping out a piece of himself.
Zhang was holding Lord Wang. The lord, composed despite the hectic flush coloring his cheeks, met Ouyang’s eyes with a slitted, wary gaze. A bead of blood welled on his neck above Zhang’s blade. Scarlet against his pale skin, it drew Ouyang’s eye: he saw the flutter of pulse in the bluish hollow of the throat, the bared ear with its dangling earring—
Lord Wang gave a biting smile.
Zhao Man’s filigreed earring, gleaming in the flat white light, at Lord Wang’s ear. Commander Zhao, who had been found by someone else the night he walked into the Prince of Henan’s ger to betray them.
Into the terrible stillness, Ouyang said, “You knew.”
“Of course I knew.” Despite his uncomfortable position, Lord Wang managed diamond-edged disdain. “Didn’t you listen when I told you like knows like? You hid behind that beautiful mask, but I saw you. I knew what was in your heart long before I saw your—” He bit down on a word, then continued, “Were you really fool enough to think your success was due to good luck and your own capabilities? You can’t even control your own men. Commander Zhao ran to my brother to tell of your treachery, and the only reason he didn’t succeed was because I was there
to stop him. And when you poisoned your own commanders—no doubt because they lost trust in you—that physician would have told the truth had I not guided his tongue.” A spasm of detestation crossed his face. “No, indeed, General: not luck. Any success you have is due to me.”
Next to him, Esen made a dreadful, choked sound.
The color drained from Lord Wang’s cheeks. But he said unflinchingly, “I’m not Chaghan’s true son. You have no blood debt against me.”
Ouyang clenched the hilt of his sword. “Perhaps I’d like you dead anyway.”
“For the sin of understanding you? Even if it could not be him,” Lord Wang said, “you would think you would be grateful for one person in the whole world to do so.”
Agony lanced through Ouyang. He looked away first, hating himself. He said harshly, “Go.”
Lord Wang shrugged away from Zhang and turned to Esen. Raw emotion showed on those strange features that were a mixture of Mongol and Nanren. And perhaps Lord Wang had spoken truly when he claimed his likeness to Ouyang, because at that moment Ouyang understood that emotion perfectly. It was the wretched, propulsive self-hate of someone determined to travel the path he had chosen, even in the knowledge that its end holds nothing but ugliness and destruction.
Esen’s jaw was clenched and the tendons stood out in his neck, but he didn’t move as his brother leaned in close. The emotion that Ouyang had seen had already vanished. In the tone of someone feeding an audience’s eager contempt, Wang Baoxiang said, “Oh, Esen. How many times you imagined my betrayal. How willing you were to think the worst of me. Why aren’t you happier? I’m just being who you’ve always thought I was. I’m giving you the ending you believed in.” He lingered for a moment, then pulled back. “Goodbye, brother.”
* * *
She Who Became the Sun Page 38