by Daniel Fox
There would be warriors all around these now, hands openly on tao-hilts, distrust openly on their faces. Arrows nocked to bowstrings. Biao need only concern himself with what the men brought: news, a request, a summons perhaps except that he would not go. The people here—his people now, he liked to think, he wanted them to think—would not let the soldiers take him.
Biao rose to his feet, went out, left his patient with Yu Shan.
Said, “Well, what? The swifter you name your errand, the swifter you can be away again.”
From the shifting unease on their faces, they wanted nothing more. The clansfolk around them were standing very close, and there were naked blades playing with the sunlight. But the soldiers were stubborn, they were dutiful. Their captain said, “Master Biao, we have been sent to fetch you back to Taishu-port, to the palace.”
That was more or less what he had expected. Their disappointment could wait a little; let them gather slowly that he wasn’t coming. He said, “Who sent you?”
“The dowager empress.” That was honest, and should make it easier to refuse. The empress had no particular authority on Taishu. Of course she had the weight of years and experience, widow of one emperor and mother of another; of course her words mattered and her wishes commanded men—but not in opposition to her son’s words and wishes, not anymore. And not so much in the mountains here. The clans were independent-minded. They knew the emperor, some of their own had fought with him. He had both their allegiance and their loyalty. His mother might be twice an empress, might have jade in her own blood to make her so tough and let her live so long; she was still a stranger from far and far away, they knew nothing of her, they owed her nothing.
They would not let soldiers take their doctor.
Biao was confident of that.
He said, “I cannot come, these people need me here; but why does the empress want me? Is she ill? She has doctors of her own,” whom she had haled with her all the way from the far north. She would have better reasons to trust them than him.
“The empress is eternal.” Which was obviously not true, not even emperors were eternal. Though the boy Chien Hua was doing his best to perpetuate the myth, surviving wars and assassins, recovering from lethal wounds, having knife blades break against his imperial green hide.
A captain of the military must know that his old woman would not live forever. His meaning was plain; he meant the empress is well, and does not need your doctoring. So, then …?
Biao waited. Soon enough the man went on. “She doesn’t want you for herself, and it isn’t you she wants. You have a thing of magic, she has heard, a tiger-skin that heals …”
Of course she had heard. Biao had sent messages himself, to alert the palace to this wonderful thing, and whose hands held it safe. He wanted it written and known. “In the right hands,” he said gruffly, “it will heal, yes.” That was nonsense too, his hands held no gift. But the skin was his, he felt somehow that he had earned it; he would not part with it. Nor would the clansfolk. He and the skin were one. The soldiers would not be let leave with either one of them. Already he could see blades being raised with purpose.
He made a little sign with his hands, gently now, gently. “If not for herself, what use does the empress have for my tiger-skin, or me? It is not a trophy, to hang unused in a palace hall.”
“The emperor’s favorite, Mei Feng, is sick. Sick to death, most likely; and likely to lose the emperor’s baby, if it has not already died inside her. The empress will do anything to save that child.”
Naturally. And the emperor would do anything to save Mei Feng, only that he hadn’t thought of this. Or else thought of it and dismissed it. That seemed less than likely, except …
Biao said, “There is a skin in the palace already. Yu Shan told me he had seen it there.”
“That has been tried. Mei Feng has lain beneath it for two days, two nights together, and she only grows worse.”
The emperor would be despairing, surrendering to fate, watching his beloved die and believing in nothing anymore. The empress would be despairing and clutching at straws. Sending for anyone, anything that might promise hope. It was the difference between youth and age; Biao recognized it intimately.
A blade had broken on the emperor’s back, and still he doubted. He was all boy yet; it was a weakness, open to exploit. Biao was talking already, and somehow not bluffing for a wonder, speaking perfect truth. “I don’t know why the palace skin would not be effective, unless it is simply too old. Or not genuine, perhaps that, not a true stone tiger.” No bluff now about the needed hands of a healer. He was on safe ground, and meant to stay there. “Mine is … assured. And people rise up better than they were. I cannot promise that it will heal Mei Feng, or her baby; it may be too late already. You should have come to me sooner. Still, I am willing to make the attempt.” He was surprising no one, gratifying no one. Of course he would go, for the emperor’s favorite. He must go. There was no choice in the world.
“No,” said a voice at his back.
That was Yu Shan: risen from Siew Ren’s bedside—like the emperor, Biao thought, rising from Mei Feng’s bedside, that must be as rare as this—to stand four-square in the doorway of the hut behind them, blinking at the sun, his arms spread across the open entrance and his immaculate strong body like a locked gate, you shall not pass.
“No,” he said again, “you can’t take it. Not to the city. Siew Ren needs it here.”
It was true. And so were the soldiers’ hands on their weapons true, and so were the clansfolk’s blades rising again, the glitter of arrowheads in the sun. So was the foretelling stink of blood in the air, that was very true.
Biao said, “I will come back. A day’s journey to the palace, a night’s sleep for Mei Feng beneath the skin, a day’s journey back here again,” he had almost said back home. “I’ve been gone that long between one valley and the next. Siew Ren will be fine until tomorrow night.”
It was true, not a word of a lie; but Yu Shan saw too truly. He said, “What, you think one night will cure her? And her baby too? There is magic in your tiger-skin, but not that much, Master Biao. I think perhaps less with every day, I think it’s fading. Failing.” And then again, “No. Do you think they will let you go, if you can help Mei Feng? They will keep you there however long it takes: days, weeks. Until the baby’s born, and later too. You know they will.”
True, and true again. Yu Shan gave him nothing to deny. Until right at the last, the boy overran himself in his enthusiasm. He said, “I won’t let you take the skin. I won’t let you go.”
“Oh, and what, will you outspeak the emperor? These men speak for him,” even if he didn’t know it yet, if his mother hadn’t told him. “Is your voice stronger?”
A momentary hesitation, then Yu Shan said, “My voice is nearer. My voice is here.”
“And so is the emperor’s, through these men.”
“If they try to take you away …”
“What, will you kill them all? You could, of course. And what will the emperor do then?”
“These come from his mother.”
“They do,” and they were looking frightened in that dangerous way that reaches for weapons. Biao tried to still them with the same gesture he had used before to the clansfolk, gently, gently, let the wise solve this with words. “And do you not think perhaps his mother will speak to him about it, if her men don’t return to her with the skin—and the doctor, yes—who might cure his beloved? If they don’t return at all? Yu Shan, be sensible. I have to go; you have to let me go,” as though he had any voice in this at all.
“No …” But he was weakening, he was ready to be persuaded.
“I will go; I will come back. I will bring the skin back. I have promised.”
“How?”
“I will bring Mei Feng back too.” It was that easy, in the end. “She was happier anyway, when she lived out here with you. I will wrap her in the skin and fetch her back to the mountains, and then everybody will do well,” and h
e would have one more coin to bargain with, a golden coin, jade-bright as a tiger’s eye.
six
here needn’t be trumpets. Nor fireworks, though there were in fact fireworks almost every night now. They were gaudy and welcome and superfluous.
Triumph could be a quiet thing, Chung had learned. It could be what came after the fireworks, in the absence of trumpets. Slipping into his bed, into his heart; a whisper in his ear, a hidden touch in the dark, contentment. Contentment could be triumph, indistinguishable.
Shen had come to him—across a dragon-guarded sea, through a war-shattered city, along a typhoon-wreaked valley: Chung could make that a march of heroes, privately in his head, if he wanted to—and it might have been triumph enough, something to be treasured.
More than that, though, Shen had stayed with him. The battle might be over, but not the war; there were still two armies in the land. There was Santung-city to be made strong, to be defended. There was a new governor in need of good advice, good soldiers. There were daily patrols and nightly raiding-parties sneaking out to confront Tunghai’s rebels: to harry, to drive off, to destroy.
That above all, actual fighting. Chung had not realized how much fighting there would still be, between two armies caught in an inglorious deadlock. The one not quite besieged, the other not quite defeated, loyalties uncertain on both sides. Every day there were lines of men on either bank, heading out beyond known perimeters, dragging wearily back with wounded and with prisoners, reports.
Shen could be a part of that, rising into fame. He should be, for reasons that were as obvious to Chung as they were to him, even before he spelled them out in brutal, painful detail. Fighting was what he did, it made the definition of the man he was; his shoulder was healed well enough to be disregarded, if not quite depended on; his skills and temper would make him genuinely useful to the governor and hence to the emperor. In his own mind he was wasted here, useless to anyone but Chung.
And yet, he chose to stay. Here on this little river island, isolated from the real army and the real war. Avoided, indeed, by everyone outside their own small band of artificers. Condemned as crazy, dangerous, likely to explode at any moment.
Food and other supplies were left on the bank by the footings of the bridge. If there was a message, it was a bold soul who would cross the water to deliver it. Messages were few, in any case, and mostly variations on Please don’t do that.
Which made Chung smile when Shen laughed raspingly, before he rolled the paper into a twist around black powder to make another fuse.
Isolation draws men tight together, where it doesn’t tear them apart. No one had to stay, but few were leaving; the core of Chung’s little team was still those rebels who had surrendered to the emperor, unless it was to Yu Shan, unless it was to him.
Santung could not be defended, that was known. It was Chung’s task, almost his self-appointed task, to prove it untrue.
This steep-sided valley was his proving-ground. Water and mud and stone, river and rain and ruined paddy, broken walls and crumbling terraces: it was his entirely, while he learned the possibilities of what he had to play with.
If he succeeded, the world would call that his triumph, and be wrong.
This was his triumph, this man at his side who shared his hopes and ideas, his failures and losses, his meals and his bedroll and his dreams.
WHAT WAS coming up the river now, that was a procession, almost a circus. Not a triumph.
Chung stood on the island’s downstream peak, below the bridge, with Shen beside him and his men packed close behind, all their attention on the succession of boats that rowed blazingly, blaringly against the current to come to them.
Chung had fireworks; the boats had trumpets. Again and again they sounded across the water, proclaiming all the yellow in the canopies and pennants, in the costumes of the men who rowed and the soldiers who stood on guard at prow and stern.
Privately, Chung thought there was perhaps a little too much yellow. After spending time at court, time with the emperor himself, a lot of time squatting in corners waiting for Mei Feng’s summons, he had some sense of propriety. A governor was the emperor’s representative, speaking with his voice and authority—but yellow was the emperor’s own color, which made it some kind of sacred, and a mortal man ought to be more careful.
A mortal man with only half an army, especially so, when he had enemies in the country all around.
Unless Chung could compensate for those absent soldiers and more. Rewrite the rules of war, almost. In his bleak times, untriumphant, he felt he was being asked to do just that.
And here came Ping Wen now, to review his progress.
He didn’t feel ready at all.
“You’re ready,” Shen murmured at his elbow. “We will show him wonders, you and I.”
“Well, not that,” Chung said. At the second attempt, touching dry lips with a dry tongue. “Something, though, at least we have something to show him.”
· · ·
PING WEN stepped ashore on the river’s bank, not on the island. Landing directly from a boat was always awkward, always graceless. All the traffic came and went by river now that the road was so chewed up and the slope above so dangerous, but almost always with this little hiatus, a step aside onto the bank and so over the bridge.
Or not. For most traffic, the step ashore was already too close to the foolhardy with their flashes and bangs and fires. Bundles and barrels could be left there on the bank, moorings hurriedly slipped and boats away on the rapid current.
Not today. Drums and trumpets and flags, and a slow assembly; Chung sent his men to their places, while he and Shen climbed to the high arch of the bridge.
They had discussed this, of course: how to greet the governor, what the protocols should be. Whether a governor ranked higher than a general, when both ranks dwelled in the same body.
They had discussed it and not agreed, could not agree. In the end Shen wouldn’t talk about it anymore, so Chung was stranded in his uncertainty.
In the end, now, he realized that he was going to do exactly as Shen did: which was no doubt exactly what Shen had wanted all along.
PING WEN saw them waiting, and understood that to be for him; understood the ground they met on, the narrow span of it and all the uncertainty beneath; chose to leave his retinue and come alone up the steep boards of the bridge, to that apex where they stood.
Possibly he expected them to greet him on their knees, kowtowing, striking their heads off those same boards.
Possibly, then, he was disappointed. Shen stood erect and greeted him with a low and soldierly bow, an officer to his commander, no more than that. Chung had been a little distracted, thinking that Ping Wen was quite definitely wearing too much yellow; there was hardly room for any color else.
But the emperor was far away, and this man held all the power of his office. Chung was only a fraction late in bowing; and then, wondering what next, he was delighted by his joy, his triumph, Shen.
Who paced slowly backward before the governor down the difficult slope of the bridge, drawing Chung along with him with not a touch, not a glance, only a perfect trust. So they became Ping Wen’s forerunners, his bannermen, while they remained still utterly in possession of what was theirs, like a gate closed against him: a gate that opened only at their own choosing, at the foot of the bridge, as they stepped one either side and bowed again, scrupulously low, not so much soldiers now as hosts welcoming a guest. At their invitation, on their sufferance.
PING WEN must have hated that, and could speak not a word against it.
IN HIS train came functionaries and guards, but Ping Wen was all that mattered here. Ping Wen and his satisfaction. However much they might play with protocol and take advantage of any ambiguity, Chung really did want to keep what he had here. His little platoon, his machinery, his island. His fireworks. His Shen. His entire triumph, he wanted to preserve it all intact, and Ping Wen’s favor was his only means to do that.
Shen was a
head of him, literally at least: gesturing the governor toward the new machines, cautioning him away from black oil and powder, showing him prepared pots with their fuses. Explaining how the machines worked, with all their ropes and tethers. Wafting a hand at the men standing by, crews eager to work.
Casting a swift glance back at Chung, this is your triumph, do you want me to steal it all?
It wasn’t stealing, if he made a gift of it.
Even so, Chung stepped forward to join them, to stand at Ping Wen’s other elbow and say, “We are ready to demonstrate what we’ve achieved, my lord governor.” Shen was calling him my lord general; it was almost wonderful how they made a matched pair, how they divided duties naturally between them. “Um, the process is not entirely without risk,” indeed the lord governor’s lordly yellow slippers were standing in a black stain on the rock that even scrubbing had not been able to shift, where an early experiment had gone catastrophically wrong and nearly killed them all. Who knew that a half-filled pot, a leaking pot would be more deadly than a full one? There seemed no reason to it. “It might be wiser for your excellence to remove to the farther end of the island,” beyond the stone bridge-footings, where his entourage awaited. “Or even perhaps to view from the bank?” Send him over the bridge, remove this tall watchful terrifying man from Chung’s territory altogether, let him not threaten the triumph …
“I am a soldier,” Ping Wen said, mildly aligning himself with Shen instead of Chung. “Where my men stand in danger, so do I.” Chung felt an urge to say they are my men, or else we are all the emperor’s men, you too—but fortunately he was not quite such a fool as that. Besides, Shen knew, and was frowning at him mightily. “I will watch from here, if I am not in the way of your work.”