‘And yours, Knut,’ he answered softly, straightening up. ‘But come. You’ve waited far too long already.’
Chung Hu-Yan turned, facing the T’ang again. He bowed low, going down onto his knees and pressing his forehead briefly against the tiled floor. Then he stood and walked slowly into the Hall. The General moved forward, following him. Beneath the great lintel he halted and made his own obeisance to the T’ang, the whole of the honour guard behind him making the gesture at the same moment, then rising when he rose. But when he moved forward again they stayed where they were. No one – not even a member of the honour guard – was allowed into the Hall without the T’ang’s express permission.
At the foot of the steps Tolonen paused, the Chancellor to the left of him, others of the T’ang’s retinue gathered to the right of the Dais.
‘Chieh Hsia,’ he said, making his k’o t’ou a second time.
The literal translation of the Mandarin was ‘below the steps’, but the phrase had long acquired a second, more important meaning – ‘Your Majesty’. It dated from those ancient days when ministers, summoned to an audience with the Emperor, were not permitted to address the Son of Heaven directly, but spoke through those officials gathered ‘below the steps’ of the high-raised throne.
The T’ang rose from his throne and started down the broad steps of the Presence Dais.
‘Knut. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.’
Li Shai Tung was wearing his official robes; long, flowing silks of pale gold, trimmed with black, and honey-coloured boots of soft kid. His fine grey hair was pulled back severely from his forehead and bound tightly at the back of his head. He wore a simple necklet of gold, and, on the fingers of his right hand, two rings; the first a simple band of thin white gold, his dead wife’s wedding gift; the other a heavier, thicker ring of black iron, bearing on its face a silvered miniature of the Ywe Lung, the seal of power.
Li Shai Tung was a tall man; as tall as his General, but willowy. He came down the twelve steps briskly, his movements lighter, more energetic than one might have expected from a man of sixty years. It was often said that the T’ang moved like a dancer, elegantly, powerfully – and it was so; his athletic grace a result of the rigorous training he put himself through each morning. But there was also a dignity to his bearing – an authority – that only those born to rule seem to possess.
Facing his General, he reached out to touch Tolonen’s arm, his pale, lined face breaking into a smile. Then the hand fell back; moved to touch, then stroke, his long but neatly trimmed beard. ‘I’ve been kept busy, Knut. This matter of the vacancy. Four families have petitioned me for the appointment. I have been seeing the candidates this very morning.’
‘Then what I have to say will be of interest, Chieh Hsia.’
Li Shai Tung nodded, then looked about him. Beside the Chancellor there were a dozen others in the Hall, members of his private staff. ‘How confidential is this matter?’
The General smiled, understanding. ‘It would not do for all to know it yet.’
The T’ang smiled back at him. ‘I understand. We’ll speak alone. In my grandfather’s room.’ He motioned to his Chancellor. ‘Hu-Yan. You will stand at the door and make certain no one disturbs us until we are done.’
They went through, into one of the smaller rooms at the back of the Hall. The T’ang pulled the doors closed behind him, then turned, looking at Tolonen, his expression unreadable. He crossed the room and sat beneath the twin portraits of his grandfather and Wen Ti, motioning for his General to come to him.
‘Sit there, Knut. Facing me.’
Tolonen did as he was bid, yet he felt awkward, being seated in his T’ang’s presence. He looked at the nearby fire and unconsciously put out one hand towards its warmth.
The T’ang smiled, seeing the gesture. ‘You have something new, then? Something more than when we last spoke?’
‘Yes, Chieh Hsia. I know who ordered Lwo Kang killed.’
The T’ang considered. ‘Enough to prove this thing in law?’
The General nodded. ‘And maybe cause the fall of a Great Family.’
‘Ah…’ Li Shai Tung looked down, into his lap. ‘Then the Minister is involved in this?’
Tolonen leaned forward and passed across the file, leaving the other papers in his lap. ‘It is all in there, Chieh Hsia. All the evidence. Trading connections. Payments and names. Who was used and when. Yang Lai, Fu Lung Ti, Hong Cao, Cho Hsiang – a whole network of names and dates, connecting all the levels of the thing. It was well orchestrated. Too well, perhaps. But we would never have made these connections unless my man DeVore had followed his nose. Wyatt was the hub – the centre of this web of dealings.’
The T’ang nodded, then looked down at the document.
For the next fifteen minutes he was silent, reading. Then, finished, he closed the file and looked up. ‘Yes,’ he said softly, almost tiredly. ‘This is good, Knut. This is what I wanted. You have done very well.’
The General bowed his head. ‘Thank you, Chieh Hsia. But as I said, the praise is not mine. This is Major DeVore’s work.’
‘I see.’ The T’ang looked back down at the document.
‘Then I shall see that the Major is rewarded.’
‘Thank you. And the Minister?’
Li Shai Tung gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Heng Chi-Po is a careful man, as this document bears out. Though the finger points at him, at no point does it touch.’ He shook his head. ‘No matter the weight of circumstantial evidence, we have nothing substantial.’
‘Yet it was he who warned Yang Lai. Who sent the message.’
‘Maybe so. But it would not hold. Assumptions, that’s all we have when it comes down to it, Knut. Junior Minister Yang Lai is missing and the message card Pi Ch’ien held onto was blank. It is not strong evidence.’
The General was quiet a moment. It was true. The message card that Pi Ch’ien had carried from Minister Heng to Yang Lai was worthless as evidence, the message it held having decayed within thirty seconds of Yang Lai activating it with his thumbprint.
‘Then you will do nothing against him?’
The T’ang nodded. When he spoke again he was more reserved, more formal than before. ‘You must understand me in this, Knut. If I had a single item of evidence against him – however small – I would break the man, and do it gladly. But as it is…’ He spread his hands expressively. ‘It would not do to accuse one of my own Ministers without irreproachable evidence.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good.’ The T’ang leaned forward, his dark eyes staring intently at his General. ‘For now, we’ll take Wyatt, and any others that can be traced through him. Lehmann, perhaps, and that foul creature, Berdichev. But before we do, make sure there’s not a possibility of doubt. We must act from certainty. Chung Kuo must see us to be correct – to be perfectly justified in our actions. I want no trouble in the House because of this.’
The General bowed his head, keeping his thoughts to himself. In this the T’ang was right. Things had changed subtly in the last ten years. More power than ever before lay in the hands of men like Lehmann. They had money and influence and a vote in the House at Weimar. And though the House was subject to the will of the Seven, it did not do to exercise such power too frequently. The illusion of cooperation – of an independent House, working hand-in-glove with the Council of the Seven – needed to be preserved. In that illusion lay the basis of lasting peace.
Was that, then, the truth behind all this? Tolonen asked himself. The real reason for Lwo Kang’s death? Was it all an attempt to force the hand of the Seven? To make it show its true power openly and without veils before the world? To set House against Seven and force the people to a choice? If so, he understood the T’ang’s caution.
He looked up again, meeting the T’ang’s eyes. ‘It is a loathsome business, ours, Chieh Hsia. We must deal fairly, honestly, with cheats and scoundrels.’ He sighed bitterly. ‘Those cockroaches are all bows and fair words to our fa
ces, yet beneath that outward show they seethe with subterfuge. They smile but they want us dead.’
The T’ang smiled sadly. ‘Yes, Knut. Yet such is the way of this world. So men are. So they act. And that itself is reason enough for the Seven, neh? Without us where would be the peace our father’s fathers worked for? What would happen to the City of Ten Thousand Years they built? We know, you and I. The barbarians would tear it down, level by level, and build some cruder, darker thing in its place.’
Tolonen tilted his head, agreeing, but he was thinking of the giant, Karr, and of the Pit below the Net where life was fought for openly, beneath the acid glare of brilliant lights. He was a cleaner kind of beast. Much cleaner than Lehmann and his like. For once the Major had been wrong – he had seen that instantly. There was honour in how a man behaved, even beneath the Net. Karr and the dead man, Chen, they were killers, certainly, but weren’t all soldiers killers when it came to it? How you killed, that was the important thing. Whether you faced your adversary, man to man, letting the contest be decided on strength of arm and skill, or whether you skulked through shadows like a thief to slip a poisoned blade into a sleeping back.
Yes, he thought, in truth I should hate the indirectness of all this; the masks and the tricks and the unending layers of intermediaries. Yet I’ve been trained to indirectness – to be as cunning as the men I fight.
‘As far as Wyatt is concerned, I’ll have the warrant signed before you leave. Is there anything else, Knut?’
‘There are two further matters, Chieh Hsia.’
‘Well?’
‘The first is a request.’ The General handed his T’ang one of the papers. ‘In a week Han Ch’in, your eldest son, is sixteen and becomes a man. It is my wish to give him something appropriate.’
Tolonen fell silent, watching as Li Shai Tung unfolded the silk-paper deed of ownership. After a moment the T’ang looked up, a surprised smile lighting his features. ‘But this is too much, Knut, surely?’
The General bowed his head. ‘Han Ch’in will be T’ang one day. And though he has the freedom of your stables, Chieh Hsia, I felt it time he had his own horse. Through horsemanship one learns command.’
The T’ang was still smiling. A horse was a princely gift. There were two thousand thoroughbreds at most in the whole of Chung Kuo. To purchase one would have cost even a fabulously rich man like the General more than he could easily afford. Li Shai Tung looked at Tolonen a moment longer, then did what he rarely did and bent his head. ‘Then it shall be so, old friend. My family is honoured by your gift. And Han Ch’in will be delighted.’
The General lowered his head, his face burning with pride and pleasure. Across from him the T’ang folded the paper again. ‘And the second matter?’
‘Ah… That is a gift to myself He hesitated, then handed the second of the papers over. ‘There is a man I want to use. His name is Karr.’
That evening, Under Secretary Lehmann summoned all those delegates and representatives sympathetic to his cause to a suite of rooms in the penthouse of the House of a Thousand Freedoms in Weimar. There was a brooding silence in the long, packed room. Lehmann sat in his chair, one hand tugging distractedly at his pigtail, a copy of the warrant open on the desk before him, an expression of sheer disbelief and outrage building slowly in his face.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said finally, his voice soft, controlled. Then he picked the paper up and held it out to the rest of them. ‘Does anyone here believe this?’
There was a deep murmur of denial and a shaking of heads.
‘But there must be some kind of evidence, Pietr. Even the T’ang would not dare to act without clear evidence.’
Lehmann laughed sourly, then turned slightly in his seat and looked across at the delegate who had spoken, a tall, heavily built Hung Mao in a pale green pau. ‘You think so, Barrow Chao? You think the small matter of evidence will stop a T’ang from acting?’
There was an indrawing of breath in some quarters. A T’ang was a T’ang, after all. Lehmann saw this and made a mental note of those who had seemed outraged by his words, then pressed on. He stood up slowly and came round the table, facing Barrow.
‘I’ve known Edmund Wyatt all my life, Chao. I knew him as a child and I’ve been honoured to know him as a man. I can vouch there’s no more honest man in the Above, nor one with less malice in him. For Edmund to have done what this says he did… Well, it’s laughable!’
He was facing Barrow now, only an arm’s length from him. Barrow shrugged. ‘So you say, Pietr. And before today I would have said the same. But I repeat, the T’ang must have evidence. And not just any evidence, but proof positive. He would be mad to act without it.’
‘Maybe,’ Lehmann said, turning aside. ‘But maybe not. Just think about it. In the last five years this House has won more freedoms than in the whole of the previous century. We managed to extend the boundaries of trade and win huge concessions in respect of legitimate research and development. In doing so we brought a refreshing and much-needed breath of change to Chung Kuo.’
There were murmurs of agreement from the delegates. Lehmann turned back, facing them.
‘Change. That’s what the Seven hate above all else. Change. And in the last three years we have seen them act to kill those freedoms we so rightly fought for. At first covertly, with whispered words and meaningful glances. Then with “gifts” for those who would be their friends. Finally, through the alternatives of patronage or the turned back.’
There were nods of angry agreement, the agitated whisper of silks as the delegates turned to talk amongst themselves. There was not one here who hadn’t suffered from the backlash. Not one who, as an advocate of change, however limited, had not found himself ‘out of favour’ and thus out of pocket.
Lehmann waited for things to quieten, then smiled tightly. ‘But that was only the start of it, wasn’t it? Having failed to check things by covert means, they decided to be more direct. Ministerial appointments, previously and rightly determined by family connections and the common-sense measure of financial power, were suddenly made on some nebulous sense of New Confucian worthiness.’
There were guffaws of laughter at the look of utter disgust on Lehmann’s face.
‘Worthiness… Well, we all know what that really means, don’t we? It means a new breed of Minister, as efficient as a GenSyn domestic and every bit as limited when it comes to making a real decision. But we knew what they were from the first, didn’t we? Dams set up against the natural flow. Mouthpieces for the Seven, programmed only to say no to change.’
Again there was a murmur of agreement; but louder this time, more aggressive. Lehmann raised his hands, palms outward, begging their silence, then nodded his head slowly.
‘We know their game, neh? We understand what they are trying to do. And we all know what has been happening in the House this last year. We’ve seen to what lengths they’ll go to oppose change.’
It could not be said openly, but all there knew what Lehmann was implying. From the first days of the House the Seven had always maintained a small but influential faction there – men whom the T’ang ‘kept’ for their votes. Such men were known as tax – ‘pockets’ – and, historically, had served a double function in the House, counterbalancing the strong mercantile tendencies of the House and serving as a conduit for the views of the Seven. In the past the Seven had chosen well: their tat had been elderly, well-respected men, charismatic and persuasive – their tongues worth a dozen, sometimes as many as fifty votes. As agents of consensus they had proved a strong, stabilizing influence on the House. But with the new liberalization things had slowly changed and their influence had waned. For a long while the Seven had done nothing, but in the past twelve months they had bought their way heavily and indiscriminately into the House, trading influence for the direct power of votes.
Now there was a new breed of ‘pocket’: brash young men who owed their wealth and power not to trade or family but to their sudden elevation by the Seven. Rival
candidates had been paid off or threatened. Elections had been rigged. Campaign money had flowed like the Yangtze flood. Of the 180 delegates elected to the House in the last six months alone, more than two-thirds had been tat.
The effect had been to crystallize the factions in the House, and to radicalize the demands for changes to the Edict of Technological Control – that keystone in the great wall of State or, as some saw it, the dam restraining the gathering waters of change.
‘Change will come,’ Lehmann said softly, ‘whether they wish it or not. Change must come. It is the natural order of things. They cannot build a wall high enough to contain it.’
Lehmann paused. There was a noise at the doorway as some of the men gathered there moved aside. Edmund Wyatt pushed through.
‘I heard you wanted me, Pietr,’ he said, then looked around, seeing how everyone was suddenly watching him. He dropped his voice. ‘What is it?’
Lehmann took his arm, then led him across to the chair and sat him down.
‘General Tolonen was here. He brought a copy of a warrant.’
Wyatt looked blankly back at Lehmann. ‘So?’
There was a strong murmuring from the men in the room. Lehmann looked back at them triumphantly, then turned to Barrow. ‘There! There’s your proof, surely, Barrow Chao? Was that the reaction of a guilty man?’
Behind him Wyatt laughed. His cheeks were pink with embarrassment. ‘What is it, Pietr? What am I supposed to be guilty of?’
Lehmann looked down at the paper in his hand, hesitating, then handed it across. For a moment Wyatt was silent, his right hand holding down the paper as he read. Then he looked up, a startled expression in his eyes. ‘I… I don’t believe it.’
Lehmann had gone round the back of him. Now he stood there, leaning over Wyatt but looking up at the other men in the room as he spoke.
‘It’s what it appears to be. A warrant. Signed by the T’ang himself. For your arrest, Edmund. For the murder of Lwo Kang.’
Wyatt turned and stared up into his face. His bewilderment, his total incomprehension were there for everyone in the room to see. ‘But it can’t be, Pietr. I mean, I never…’
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