“And the eunuch general?”
“Holed up in Bianliang, but who knows for how much longer given the size of his grudge against the Yuan. Apparently he’s bitter about the circumstances in which he lost his—well, you know.” Unexpected sympathy flashed over Zhu’s face. “I wouldn’t say he’s a fun person to be around, but he helped me. I’m grateful to him.”
Ma hit her. “He cut off your hand.”
Zhu smiled at her indignation. “Why should I hold that against him, if in the end we both got what we wanted? Even if it does mean you’re going to have to do my hair and tie my clothes and wash my left elbow for the rest of our lives.”
“Is that all your ancestor-given hand is worth? If you wanted to trade it in,” Ma said tartly, “he should have at least killed Chen Youliang as part of the bargain.”
“Ah well, you can’t have everything,” Zhu said philosophically.
News of Chen Youliang had reached them both. He’d ended up in Wuchang, upriver on the Yangzi, with a few men scraped together out of the Bianliang fiasco and a newfound hatred for both monks and eunuchs. Without the Red Turban name or popular support, he was barely more than a bandit leader. But everyone knew you underestimated Chen at your own peril.
On the other side of the bed, the Prince of Radiance smiled in his sleep. Almost involuntarily, Ma reached out and touched his smooth, warm cheek. It had been a long time since she’d slept in the same bed as a child; she was surprised at the power of her yearning to hold a little body.
Zhu said, “Fond of him already? He has to come with me to Jiankang, though.”
Ma drew the child into her arms, enjoying the soft feel of his skin against hers. “After that, let me look after him again.”
“It’s a good thing one of us is maternal,” Zhu said, and smiled wryly.
* * *
“Jiankang!” said Xu Da. He and Zhu sat on their horses and looked down at the city on the far bank of the Yangzi. The hill they had climbed was part of a tea plantation, with apple trees scattered here and there between the rows. The smell of the bushes wasn’t exactly like tea, but a distant cousin of it: unfamiliar in and of itself, but somehow bringing the thing to mind.
“The place where the dragon coils and the tiger crouches,” Zhu said, recalling long-ago history lessons. “The seat of kings and emperors—”
On Jiankang’s far side, bald yellow hilltops breached the afternoon haze like islands. The vast eastern lands of Madam Zhang. There, invisible in the distance, were her fertile fields; the canals and rivers and lakes. Shimmering mountains of salt, ships with their ribbed sails like cut-open lanterns, and then finally the sea itself. Having never seen the sea, Zhu thought of it as a river made endlessly wide: smooth golden waters stretching to the horizon, with storms and spears of sunshine racing across its face. To the north there was Goryeo and Japan; to the south, pirates and Cham and Java. And that was just the tip of the world—a fraction of the mysterious but perhaps one day knowable lands that filled the space between the four oceans.
Xu Da said, “This isn’t the end of it, is it? When we take Jiankang.”
“Do you want to stop?”
Apple petals fluttered down around them. On the river below, sails progressed as placidly as floating leaves. He said, “No. I’ll follow you, as far as you want to go.”
Zhu looked down at Jiankang, and thought of standing with the Abbot on that high-up terrace, staring with fascination and fear at the outside world. What she had seen had seemed so vast that it was strange to think it had only been the Huai plain. Even the person who had stood there had been different: not the person she was now, but someone living in the shadow of that hungry ghost, Zhu Chongba. Looking back she saw herself like a chick within an egg, not yet hatched.
Somewhere far away, flags banged. It sounded like the voice of Heaven itself. “Big brother, this is just the beginning.” Within her she felt a glorious, swelling sense of the future and all its possibilities. A belief in her fate that shone brighter and brighter until the darkest cracks of herself were split open by light; until there was nothing left inside her but that radiance that was pure desire.
She didn’t just want greatness. She wanted the world.
The breath she took felt like joy. Smiling with the thrill of it, she said, “I’m going to be the Emperor.”
* * *
Dusk fell while Zhu’s force was still picking their way down the steep road to the Yangzi River. Zhu had ridden ahead, and now when she looked back she saw the dark cliff face veined with flickering lantern-light. Perhaps that was what their own lives looked like from Heaven: tiny pricks of light, constantly blinking out and reappearing in the endless dark flow of the universe.
“Come, little brother,” she said to the Prince of Radiance, who was sitting quietly beside her on his pony. Even after days of travel his skin seemed to glow. Nothing surprised or stirred him as far as Zhu could tell, although sometimes gentle contemplation swept across his face like a rain shower seen at a distance.
They rode a short way to where a grove of weeping willows leaned over the water. Zhu dismounted and looked at Jiankang shining on the far bank. “Ah, little brother. After generations of struggle, we’re finally on the cusp of change. Your arrival promised the beginning of a new era, and over there in Jiankang—that’s where it will happen.”
The child dismounted his pony and stood silently beside her in the dusk.
Zhu said conversationally, “You told my wife Ma Xiuying that Prime Minister Liu was never going to rule.”
“Yes.”
“Liu Futong thought it would happen for him simply from the fact of having you,” Zhu said. “He borrowed your power to win him the people’s faith, and he thought that would lead him into greatness. But when it came down to it, he never wanted it enough.” Crickets chirred in the deepening gloom under the trees. “I don’t think Liu Futong was born with greatness in him. But that shouldn’t have mattered. If you want a fate other than what Heaven gave you, you have to want that other fate. You have to struggle for it. Suffer for it. Liu Futong never did anything for himself, and so when I took you away from him, he had nothing. He became nothing.”
The child was silent.
Zhu said, “I wasn’t born with the promise of greatness either. But I have it now. Heaven gave it to me because I wanted it. Because I’m strong, because I’ve struggled and suffered to become the person I need to be, and because I do what needs to be done.”
As she spoke she wrapped her hand around the hilt of her saber. It did need to be done; she knew that much. When there were two Mandates of Heaven in the world it was the fate of the old one to end, so the new era could be born.
And yet.
As Zhu stood there in the darkness, she thought of Ma holding the child, her face suffused with care for that small life. Ma, who had always urged her to find another way.
But this is the only way. Light from Jiankang’s distant torches gilded the river waves as they came in against the bank with a slow, regular slap. It’s the only way to get what I want.
For so long, she had chased greatness just to survive. But without Zhu Chongba, that reason no longer existed. With the sense of dredging up something she didn’t particularly want to look at, Zhu thought slowly: I don’t have to do this. I can leave, and go anywhere and be anything, and still survive—
But even as the thought came to her, she knew she wouldn’t give up greatness. Not for a child’s life, and not even to prevent the suffering of the people she loved, and who loved her.
Because it was what she wanted.
The rising moon lit the Prince of Radiance’s profile as he gazed out over the water. He was smiling. The moment felt like an indrawn breath: a stillness containing the inevitability of the outbreath.
This is what I choose.
His eyes still fixed on that distant shore, the Prince of Radiance said in his fluting, unearthly tones, “Liu Futong was never going to rule. But neither will Zhu Chongba.”
JIANKANG, FIFTH MONTH
Nearly two months after Jiankang’s second, more uneventful, capture by the Red Turbans, Ma received word that she should join Zhu in Jiankang. If you weren’t an army, it was only a few days’ ride from Anfeng. Crossing the Yangzi’s lazy summer flow, Ma marveled at the sight of a city verdant with foliage, its streets bustling with industry. Only here and there were still the burned buildings from Little Guo’s first attempt at an occupation. That already seemed a lifetime ago. The sun sweltered as she and Chang Yuchun, her escort, rode past thrumming oil mills and silk workshops and into the center. A clutch of modest wooden buildings crouched around the stone parade ground that was the sole remaining evidence of the ancient dynasties whose rulers had been enthroned there. Yuchun gave the buildings a jaundiced look and said, “Commander Zhu said he’s planning to build another palace. Something more fitting, with a nice stone wall and everything.”
Ma said, “Fitting—for the Prince of Radiance?”
An awkward expression flitted over Yuchun’s face. “Um.”
“What?”
“There was an acci— Well, anyway, the mourning period has finished. We observed a month. For—but we don’t call him the Prince of Radiance anymore. Commander Zhu gave him a proper temple name. I’ve forgotten it; you’ll have to ask him.” Catching sight of Ma’s face, the youth looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
The depth of Ma’s grief and anger surprised her. For all that the Prince of Radiance featured in some of her worst memories, it was only the most recent that came to her: the protectiveness that had risen up in her as she held that small warm body against her own. The thought that he had been dead for so long, without her even knowing, somehow made it worse.
She followed Yuchun numbly into a hall where Zhu stood in a group of men. Then everyone was gone and Zhu was alone in front of her with a serious expression. Apparently she knew better than to touch Ma right then, because she just stood there with her arms by her sides and her left hand open. What was that gesture? A plea for forgiveness, or simply an acknowledgment of Ma’s pain?
The witnesses gone, Ma’s tears overflowed. “You killed him.”
Zhu was silent. Ma, reading her face, exclaimed, “You don’t even deny it!”
After a moment Zhu sighed. “He served his purpose.”
“Purpose!” Without having consciously worked to fit the pieces together, Ma realized she already had the whole picture. “The only thing you needed him for was to hand you power. You had to make sure the people accepted you as our rightful leader. After that—anyone else would have still needed him for his Mandate, so they could rule. But you don’t need him for that, do you?” She said bitterly, “Because you have the Mandate, too.”
She felt a slap of satisfaction at Zhu’s surprise. “How did you—”
“He told me! He said that people with the Mandate can see the spirit world. And I already know you can see ghosts.” She flung the words at Zhu. “So what did you do, throw him in the river like an unwanted kitten?”
Zhu said, very controlled, “It was quick, if that makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t!” She thought of that brief moment of domestic joy she had felt that morning with Zhu and the child in her bed. Even that hadn’t even been real, because Zhu had known all along what she planned to do. She said painfully, “How is this better than anything Chen Youliang would have done? You said you’d be different. You lied to me.”
Zhu said, “I had to—”
“I know!” Ma screamed. “I know, I know! I know why.” She felt a sharp internal pain: her heart twisting into a thousand loops. “You say you want me for my feelings, my empathy. But when you did this, did you even stop to think about how it might make me feel to bear witness for what you think is justified? Or did you know, and not care that you were being cruel?”
Zhu said quietly, “I didn’t mean to be cruel. I’m different from Chen Youliang in that, at least. But I want what I want, and sometimes I’m going to have to do certain things to get it.” The uneven indoors light gave the hollows and points of her face the exaggeration of an actor’s mask. There was regret there, but it wasn’t regret for the child—but for Ma herself. “I promised you honesty, Ma Xiuying, so I’ll be honest with you. I’m not going to stop until I rule, and I’m not going to let anyone stop me. So you have two choices. You can rise with me, which I’d prefer. Or if you don’t want what I want—you can leave.”
Ma stared at her in anguish. In that ordinary, ugly little body was a desire so fierce that it scorched and blistered those who came near it, and Ma knew that pain was something she would have to endure over and over again for the transgression of loving and choosing Zhu. It was the price of her own desire.
For Zhu, Ma’s pain was worth it.
But for me, will it be?
* * *
The golden flags arrowed down Jiankang’s graceful avenues, coming together into that gleaming, pulsing point of light in the heart of the city. The palace’s parade ground glowed gold under the sun that beat down mercilessly on the roaring, cheering crowd.
Encased in golden armor, Zhu stepped out onto the top of the palace steps. The sight of her subjects filled her with an expansive tenderness, as of the man who looks down upon the world from a mountain and feels suspended within himself the fragility and potential of all that lies beneath. Alongside it was her awareness of all the suffering and sacrifices it had taken to get her here. She had been nothing, and lost everything, and become someone else entirely. But now there was no longer anything to be afraid of, and the only thing ahead of her was her shining fate, and joy.
She thought: I’ve been reborn as myself.
This time when she reached inside for the light, it came as naturally as breathing. The radiance rushed out of her: an incandescent flame burning from her body and armor, as though she had transformed into a living being of fire. When she looked down at herself, she was greeted by the strange vision of her missing right hand gauntleted in white fire. Apparently the flame followed the outline of what she thought her body was. Her phantom hand made visible as it burned with white fire and white pain. It seemed fitting.
Above the crowd’s heads, golden flags bore the city’s new name. Yingtian: a name that claimed its connection to Heaven. And Zhu herself was making that same claim with her own new name. The name of someone who refused any future other than one in which she made history; the name of one who would change everything. The greatest omen of a nation’s future.
As Zhu called down to those waiting faces, she heard her own ringing voice almost like a stranger’s. “Behold me as Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King. Behold me as the one who will lay waste to the empire of the Great Yuan, and expel the Mongols from this land of our ancestors, and reign in unending brightness!”
Remember me, and say my name for ten thousand years.
“Behold the Radiant King!” came the soaring response, and as the echoes faded the crowd fell to its knees with the long sigh of bodies folding upon themselves.
From that vast human stillness, a single person rose. A tremulous quiver went through the crowd. Zhu caught her breath in surprise. Ma Xiuying. She hadn’t seen Ma since that terrible conversation, days ago, in which Zhu had given her the ultimatum. Zhu hadn’t wanted to ask after her afterwards, in case it was true: that it had been their goodbye, and Ma had already left.
Ma was wearing red, the color of what had been en
ded so that Zhu could build the new. It felt like a castigation: Don’t forget. Her gold-embroidered sleeves draped nearly to the ground. Her upswept hair, as high again as her head, was crowned with hanging silk ribbons and golden threads that swayed as she walked. In silence she made her way between the bodies prostrated on the stone. Her skirts flowed behind her like a river of blood.
At the foot of the stairs, Ma knelt. She was all smoothness and softness in the pool of her madder-dyed silk—but under that surface she had her own kind of strength: a compassion as unyielding as an iron statue of the Goddess of Mercy. Zhu looked down at the naked line of Ma’s bowed neck, and her chest fizzed with oddly sharp relief and gratitude. It hurt in the way that pure beauty hurt. She had told Ma what she preferred, but she hadn’t realized how much she wanted it.
“This woman addresses the Radiant King.” Ma spoke strongly enough for the whole crowd to hear. For Heaven itself to hear. “I pledge to stand beside my husband for every step of his journey, even should it take ten years and ten thousand li. And at its end, when he begins his reign as the founding Emperor of our new dynasty—I will be his Empress.”
Zhu heard the unflinching demand in Ma’s voice: for Zhu’s own loyalty, and honesty, and difference. As Zhu stood looking down at her, she suddenly saw how their journey would go: Zhu’s desire propelling them higher and higher, until there was nothing left above them but the dazzling vault of Heaven. And for Ma every moment of that ascent would be compromise and heartache and the gradual erosion of her belief that there was always a kinder way. That was the price Ma would pay—not just for Zhu’s desire, but for her own. Because she loved Zhu, and wanted to see her rule the world.
Zhu’s heart ached. I’ll make it worth it, for both of us.
She looked out at the crowd, and tried with all her effort to impress the sight of them into her memory, so she might not lose it: Ma, and Xu Da, and her captains, and behind them the tens of thousands of others who would follow her, and die for her, until she achieved her desire. “My future Empress,” she called, and the words left her throbbing with the sweet potential of what was to come. “My brother commander, my captains; all my loyal subjects. The world is waiting for us.”
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