"Your Excellency? Is this what it has come to?"
It wasn't, and he knew it—he had to know it, to see something on her face, in her bearing, of the confusion of humors within her. “I'm sorry,” she said, finally. “But it's been a long time."
"It has.” Was the quiver in his voice bitterness, or regret? She'd never been able to read him properly; she, the physician, the empath, the one who could always know what her students were thinking, who could always open the book of their lives with the mere touch of her hands.
"Why did they send you? There are many Princes, and even more censors."
The Prince did not speak for a while. Their path crossed the Pavilion of the Nesting Phoenix, where the hum of the alchemists’ machines made the slats of the floor tremble underfoot. “They could have sent someone else,” he said, with something like a sigh. “But I asked."
The shock of his answer was like cold water. “You—"
The Prince shook his head. Before them stretched the Corridor of Stone, and the rows of holding cells, all doors half-open—save one. “I wanted to see how you were, Yue."
The hint of hunger in his voice made her uncomfortable—as if something were not quite right with the world. He had always sought what he needed, taken what he wanted; but never had he let protocol lapse, except for that one unguarded moment after the Edict. “As well as can be,” she said, carefully. “I trust you are well."
The Prince did not look at her. “I have three wives, and have been blessed with seven sons and three daughters."
That was no answer. “I see,” Shinxie said. She laid her hand on the door, wondering why she felt so empty inside. “Let's see him, shall we?"
* * * *
Gao's eyes flicked up when they entered, but he showed the Prince even less interest than he'd shown Shinxie. The Prince, if he was angered by this lack of protocol, showed nothing—sitting cross-legged on the floor with Shinxie by his side.
"Gao Tieguai,” the Prince said. “Do you know why I am here?"
"This humble person would not presume,” Gao said. His face was blank, the second-skin like gleaming cloth over his features. “Your Excellency.” He used the wording and tone suitable for addressing a high-ranking member of the Imperial Court.
"Deference,” the Prince said, as if pondering a particular problem. “That's something to work with."
Gao bowed his head. “I assume you'll ask me the same question the Honored Abbess did."
The Prince inclined his head, looking at Gao. “No,” he said, finally. “The wise man knows better than to travel well-worn roads. I'd find nothing more than she did."
"Enlighten me,” Gao said, gravely.
"I'll give you a variant on the warning she's already given you, no doubt,” the Prince went on, as if this were nothing more than a polite conversation. “A delicate balance maintains us all bound to each other: the workers in the factories, the merchants in their skiffs, the alchemists at their machines, the Emperor on his throne. You—upset this, Gao Tieguai."
"Because I fit nowhere?"
The Prince made a quick, dismissive gesture with his hands. “Everyone in White Horse is as you once were,” he said, bending toward Gao Tieguai, as if imparting a particular secret between equals. “Dreamers. Troublemakers. Rebels who flee Earth, finding no other choice but to leave the world behind. So long as you bend your mind to transcending, you'll not upset anything. So long as your voyage is without return. Do you understand, Gao?"
"You are mistaken,” Gao said. His face had not moved. “If I truly wanted to cause unrest, I could not have returned."
"I know what you told her,” the Prince said. “About desire and care. I don't believe it."
"Whether you believe it or not will change nothing to what is.” Gao spread his hands. “Consider dandelion seeds, Your Excellency. They go where the wind blows them, take root where the Earth welcomes them. If they flower in the cracks of some high mountain, it's not because they chose to ascend the mountain, or because they love heights."
The Prince pondered this for a while. Gao did not move; and Shinxie could feel his presence, the humors he radiated, like a weight on the palms of her hands—calm and balanced, so unlike the Prince's fierce, stormy aura.
Finally the Prince said, “Chance? I find it too convenient that you, of all people, should return."
"As you said—” Gao shook his head—"many people like me came to White Horse. You try to read too much into events."
The reproach was almost palpable, to a man whom only the Emperor or the Grand Secretary were in a position to correct. Surely the Prince would not tolerate it? But he merely shook his head, as if amused. “I see. If that is the way the game must be played, it would be inappropriate of me to refuse. Thank you for your answers, Venerable. I trust we will speak again."
Gao inclined his head; but it was Shinxie's gaze that he met when he looked up again. His presence was in his eyes, in the light the faceted covers caught and broke into a thousand sparkles. On impulse, Shinxie reached out to touch him—and stopped herself just before she breached his privacy.
Gao made a slow, graceful gesture, inviting her to go on. “There is no shame in this,” he said.
His second-skin was metal-cold, as if remembering the frosty touch of Heaven—but then her implants connected, and all she could feel was the maelstrom of humors within him: fire and earth and water and metal and wood, generating each other, extinguishing each other in an endless dance, everything in perfect balance, no one humor dominating the others, no one feeling distinguishing itself from the endless cycle. He cared for nothing; loved nothing and no one; and even his courtesies toward her or the Prince were nothing more than bare civilities, doled out on a whim.
"I see,” she whispered, standing on the edge of the abyss—feeling the wind howling in her ears, the cold that traveled up into her belly. “Thank you."
Back in the Corridor of Stone, the Prince turned to Shinxie, who had not said a word. “So?” he asked.
"Are you asking for my opinion?” Shinxie said.
The Prince made a quick, annoyed gesture with his right hand. “Who else would I ask?"
"When I touched him—” Shinxie shivered—"I knew that he was right. He's brought all five humors into perfect balance; he is one with the world. He feels nothing.” Nothing stuck out from the morass within him; nothing ever would. Her first instinct when she had seen him had been correct: there was no descent. The Transcendents, their bodies changed by the alchemists, their minds shaped by the teachers and their hours of meditation, were everything they had been molded into: beings who no longer had their place on Earth, who no longer belonged in the cycle of life and death and rebirth.
The Prince walked ahead of her, in perfect control of protocol. He did not look back. “I don't believe that,” he said.
He didn't trust her, then—but he had made it clear what he thought of White Horse. “Even if you didn't,” Shinxie said, wearily, “what does it change? He only indulges us by staying here."
"Exactly,” the Prince said. “If he is innocent, then we have no right to take his life. But, if he turns out to be a danger to the Emperor's mandate ... then we'll take what opportunity we can to strike at him."
Shinxie nodded—it made sense, although he was wrong about Gao. But, clearly, she would not dispel his worries on her own.
"What you told him about White Horse...” she said, slowly, carefully.
The Prince made a quick, stabbing gesture with his hands, in a swish of silk. “Don't be a fool, Yue. What I told him clearly doesn't apply to you."
Didn't it? Wasn't she, too, a dreamer, a troublemaker? Not all troubles were political, and the prolonged affair of a minor official with an Imperial Prince had disrupted enough of the Court's protocol. And who but a dreamer would remain for so long in exile?
The Prince, though he was insensitive to humors, must have felt her hesitation. “Yue,” he said, turning so that his gaze met hers—his whole body softening to
the pose between a man and his concubine. “Every place must have its hierarchy of officials in charge—someone to wield the authority of the Court. And to impose order on chaos requires higher discipline than living in the midst of order. You're no troublemaker."
Just a jailer for a jail, Shinxie thought—and, suddenly, she wasn't sure she'd be able to contain her bitterness. To see him there—unchanged, radiating his usual, careless ease, the silk robes as out of place in the monastery as a scholar in the fields—bothered her more than she'd thought it would.
"No,” she said, finally. “I'm no troublemaker."
* * * *
That night, Shinxie could not sleep. Confused memories of the Imperial Court mingled in her mind with the monastery—the quiet of the meditation hour mingling with the gongs announcing the Tianshu Emperor's arrival, and the hum of the alchemists’ machines becoming deeper and stronger, a memory from the huge contraptions at Pavilion of Going to War, hammering men into the elite of the army, with the ring of metal on metal, and the hiss of fire meeting water, and the thud-thud of metal striking earth...
She sat up with a start, an uneasy feeling of loss clenching her chest like a fist of ice. There was nothing around her but silence.
She got up, and stared for a while at the four chests that held her clothes—a vanity from her court days that she'd kept even here, at White Horse, where the only dress was white robes for alchemists, brown for teachers, and grey for students. Then she laid the palm of her hand on the Autumn chest, and pulled out a robe of silk embroidered with three-clawed dragons, watching it flow in her hands like sunlit water.
The Prince had seen her in this, once—with ceruse whitening her face, and her lined eyebrows joining in the shape of a moth. In another lifetime, he had asked for her in his chambers, and bent toward her as he served her tea, his lips wide and inviting in the shadows. He had—
Slowly, she folded the robe back inside the chest, and went for a walk.
In the Hall of Cultivating the Body and Mind, the students all sat in meditation, cross-legged on the ledge that ran along the walls. Their eyes in the darkness were wide open, the facets catching and reflecting moonlight—their faces slack and smooth, though she could still feel the faint threads of emotion radiating from them, as if they were all sleeping. Dreaming.
Dreamers. Troublemakers. Was that all White Horse was to the Flowering Empire: a regulator, an escape valve—a place where the alchemists would take those who had erred, who could still err, and mold them into people who could no longer care enough to be a threat? And—if she searched her heart and mind long enough, would she remember that, when she sent them upward into Penlai Station, she saw them as already dead?
"You look troubled,” a voice said behind her.
Her heart leapt, painfully, into her throat. She turned; but even before she did, she knew whom she would see.
Gao stood where, a moment before, there had been only emptiness. She couldn't see the singularity that had brought him here; but, of course, they closed quickly. “Aren't you supposed to be in your holding cell?” Shinxie asked, but the heart wasn't in it.
Gao bowed his head, gravely. “And aren't you supposed to be in bed?"
"My own business,” she said. She should have been irked, but his presence—his utter lack of salient emotions—was potent, a balm to her troubled spirits. “Just as being troubled is my own business."
"Remorse,” Gao said, thoughtfully. His eyes seemed reflections of the students', blank and unmoving and utterly unreadable. “Regret. Lust."
Of course, he too could read humors.
"Not lust,” Shinxie said, with a quick shake of her head. She should have told him—something else. To go back to his cell, perhaps? But, when no locked door would hold him, did that rigmarole still have any sense?
"No,” Gao said. “Not lust. Love. Perhaps it's worse."
"There are those,” Shinxie said, stiffly, “who'll tell you that love holds up the world."
"The followers of the Crucified Man?” Gao's hands moved, slightly. “Perhaps, in some other world, that is an inalterable truth—perhaps love does keep Earth under Heaven and the world on its axis. But consider—” He paused for a moment—not because he hesitated, Shinxie suspected, but solely for effect. “You long for this man, even now, even after so many years. You humiliate yourself for him. You would die for him. Perhaps, given enough time, you might even kill for him."
"That's nonsense,” Shinxie said, abruptly. “I wouldn't do anything for him."
"Really? If he told you, tomorrow, that you could come back as his concubine, what would you do?"
She thought about it for a while. There was something about him that compelled honesty—or perhaps it was merely that she was tired of lies, hidden beneath the thin coat of makeup that was protocol. “I don't know,” she said.
"That's what's wrong,” Gao said. “By your love, you set him apart from other men."
"Do you believe that nonsense, then, that all men are equal?” Shinxie asked.
"All men are,” Gao's lips stretched into what might have been a smile. “All men are born of a woman's womb: the Emperor, the laborers; even the foreigners. They do not choose the circumstances of their birth; but, sometimes, they may alter the course of their lives. And, of course, we die, all of us, at a time that is seldom of our own choosing."
Shinxie shivered. “I did not come here to listen to philosophy."
"As you wish,” Gao said. “I merely wished to point out some facts to you."
"Wished?” Shinxie said. “You have none of those, I'd have thought."
"No,” Gao said, finally.
"Why are you here?” Shinxie asked, again. “Surely not for the pleasure of talking about my private life, Gao. Surely not for angering the Sixth Prince."
"I know the Sixth Prince,” Gao said. “I know what he will do, and that is of little interest to me."
"I thought knowing everything was wrong."
"Some things you can know,” Gao said.
She looked at him; at the expressionless face, the aura that was perfectly in balance. “Why are you here?"
"You know,” Gao said, gravely.
She had heard his explanation about the dandelions—about going where the wind would carry them, flowering where the earth would have them. “No,” she said. “If you came by whim, why aren't you leaving?"
"I might,” Gao said. “Who knows what I will do tomorrow?"
"There is something, isn't there?” she asked. But, looking into the glint of his facets, feeling the perfect, oppressing balance of his elements, she knew that she was wrong, that the Prince was wrong: there was nothing more to him than this. He was the clouds, he was the storm: here one day, gone the next. He cared not about what he brought with him, or about what the Prince would do.
Oh, Celestials, she thought. What have we wrought here, in White Horse?
* * * *
The Sixth Prince came into Shinxie's office two days later, looking pleased with himself—like a tiger who has just successfully stalked a man. He settled himself near the door, waiting for her to finish reading Fai Meilin—an unnerving presence at the edge of her field of vision.
Fai Meilin's aura was more subdued than usual, with none of the water that usually dominated her thoughts. She submitted herself meekly to Shinxie's examination, uncaring of the presence of a man in the room; and bowed to Shinxie when she was finished.
"Soon,” Shinxie said. “One or two weeks, I'd think, if you keep this up."
Fai Meilin nodded, distantly—she had already reached the stage where it didn't truly matter anymore.
When she was gone, the Prince detached himself from the wall. “Come with me, Yue.” He sounded almost eager, his aura roiling with fire. “I've found a way."
"A way?” Shinxie asked.
"A way to solve our problems,” the Prince said, with a stab of his hands. “A way to beat him on his own ground."
"Gao Tieguai?” Shinxie said. “Your Excelle
ncy, I humbly submit you are mistaken. I spoke with him two days ago—” she stopped then, but the Prince didn't question her further—"and I don't think he would do anything to harm the Flowering Empire.” He wouldn't do anything, just drift through the monastery until he left—staring at students or at buildings with no real interest, as if knowing already how unreal all of this was, all bound to crumble.
The Prince's aura roiled more strongly, fire taking true precedence over the other four elements. But then he seemed to remember who he was talking to, and—for a bare moment—remorse and affection filled his eyes. Shinxie's heart tightened.
"Yue,” he said. Unexpectedly, he stopped, facing her equal to equal—her eyes tingled with unexpected tears. “He may well be. I trust you, but I have to be sure. I can't face His Imperial Majesty without being sure. This goes higher than what's between us."
"I see,” Shinxie said, slowly.
"You do?” the Prince looked at her for a while. “Don't worry. It will soon be over—and then we'll see. Perhaps you don't need to be at White Horse anymore. There are far better places in your future. In our futures."
If he told you, tomorrow, that you could come back as his concubine, what would you do?
He took her, not to the Hall of Cultivating the Body and Mind, but to the World of the Celestials, one of the smallest courtyards in the monastery. On the short flight of stairs that led up to the Memorial Pavilion, Gao stood waiting for them, surrounded by a handful of Imperial soldiers.
Other soldiers were moving toward them, escorting two prisoners, their shoulders weighed under the metal frame of a cangue.
Shinxie looked from the prisoners to the Prince—and to Gao, whose face still had not changed.
The Prince said to Gao, when they reached the dais. “You'll know who they are."
The prisoners—a young man and middle-aged woman, their faces thin, emaciated —were forced to kneel. Their cangues were removed; they kept their gazes to the ground, not daring to look up at the Prince.
"Enlighten me,” Gao said. He had not moved.
"Gao Yuhuan, Gao Jiajin,” the Prince said. His voice, too, was low and even. “Your wife and son."
Asimov's SF, February 2010 Page 12