‘For once, my good General, I think you are wrong. I do not believe we can fight a contained war. Indeed, the Seven have known that for a long time now. Such a contest would spread. Spread until the Families faced the full might of the Above, for they would see it as a challenge; an attack upon their rights – upon their very existence as a class.’
Tolonen looked down, recalling the look in Lehmann’s eyes, the foul effrontery of Berdichev, and shuddered. ‘What then, Chieh Hsia?’ he said bluntly, almost belligerently. ‘Shall we do nothing? Surely that’s just as bad?’
Li Shai Tung lifted his hand abruptly, silencing him. It was the first time he had done so in the forty-odd years he had known the General and Tolonen looked back at him wide-eyed a moment before he bowed his head.
The T’ang looked at the staff he held. It was the very symbol of dependency; of how grief was supposed to weaken man. Yet the truth was otherwise. Man was strengthened through suffering, hardened by it. He looked back at his General, understanding his anger; his desire to strike back at those who had wounded him. ‘Yes, Knut, to do nothing is bad. But not as bad as acting rashly. We must seem weak. We must bend with the wind, sway in the storm’s mouth and bide our time. Wuwei must be our chosen course for now.’
Wuwei. Non-action. It was an old Taoist concept. Wuwei meant keeping harmony with the flow of things – doing nothing to break that flow.
There was a moment’s tense silence, then Tolonen shook his head almost angrily. ‘Might I say what I feel, Chieh Hsia?’ The formality of the General’s tone spoke volumes. This was the closest the two men had ever come to arguing.
The T’ang stared at his General a moment, then looked away. ‘Say what you must.’
Tolonen bowed deeply, then drew himself erect. ‘Just this. You are wrong, Li Shai Tung. Execute me for saying so, but hear me out. You are wrong. I know it. I feel it in my bones. This is no time for wuwei. No time to be cool-headed and dispassionate. We must be like the tiger now. We must bare our claws and teeth and strike. This or be eaten alive.’
The T’ang considered for a moment, then leaned further forward on his throne. ‘You sound like Han Ch’in,’ he said, amusement and bitterness in even measure in his voice. ‘He too would have counselled war. “They have killed me, father,” he would have said, “so now you must kill them back.”’ He shivered and looked away, his expression suddenly distraught. ‘Gods, Knut, I have considered this matter long and hard. But Han’s advice was always brash, always hasty. He thought with his heart. But I must consider my other son now. I must give him life, stability, continuity. If we fight a war he will die. Of that I am absolutely certain. They will find a way – just as they found a way to get to Han Ch’in. And in the end they will destroy the Families.’
Li Shai Tung turned to Shepherd, who had been silent throughout their exchange. ‘I do this for the sake of the living. You understand that, Hal, surely?’
Shepherd smiled sadly. ‘I understand, Shai Tung.’
‘And the Seven?’ Tolonen stood there stiffly, at attention, his whole frame trembling from the frustration he was feeling. ‘Will you not say to them what you feel in your heart? Will you counsel them to wuwei?’
The T’ang faced his General again. ‘The Seven will make its own decision. But, yes, I shall counsel wuwei. For the good of all.’
‘And what did Li Yuan say?’
Tolonen’s question was unexpected, was close to impertinence, but Li Shai Tung let it pass. He looked down, remembering the audience with his son earlier that day. ‘For your sake I do this,’ he had said. ‘You see the sense in it, surely, Yuan?’ But Li Yuan had hesitated and the T’ang had seen in his eyes the conflict between what he felt and his duty to his father.
‘Li Yuan agreed with me. As I knew he would.’
He saw the surprise in his General’s eyes; then noted how Tolonen stood there, stiffly, waiting to be dismissed.
‘I am sorry we are not of a mind in this matter, Knut. I would it were otherwise. Nonetheless, I thank you for speaking openly. If it eases your mind, I shall put your view to the Council.’
Tolonen looked up, surprised, then bowed. ‘For that I am deeply grateful, Chieh Hsia.’
‘Good. Then I need keep you no more.’
After Tolonen had gone, Li Shai Tung sat there for a long while, deep in thought. For all he had said, Tolonen’s conviction had shaken him. He had not expected it. When, finally, he turned to Shepherd, his dark eyes were pained, his expression troubled. ‘Well, Hal. What do you think?’
‘Knut feels it personally. And, because he does, that clouds his judgement. You were not wrong. Though your heart bleeds, remember you are T’ang. And a T’ang must see all things clearly. Whilst we owe the dead our deepest respect, we must devote our energies to the living. Your thinking is sound, Li Shai Tung. You must ensure Li Yuan’s succession. That is, and must be, foremost in your thinking, whatever your heart cries out for.’
Li Shai Tung, T’ang, senior member of the Council of Seven and ruler of City Europe, stood up and turned away from his advisor, a tear forming in the corner of one bloodshot eye.
‘Then it is wuwei.’
The small girl turned sharply, her movements fluid as a dancer’s. Her left arm came down in a curving movement, catching her attacker on the side. In the same instant her right leg kicked out, the foot pointing and flicking, disarming the assailant. It was a perfect movement and the man, almost twice her height, staggered backward. She was on him in an instant, a shrill cry of battle anger coming from her lips.
‘Hold!’
She froze, breathing deeply, then turned her head to face the instructor. Slowly she relaxed her posture and backed away from her prone attacker.
‘Excellent. You were into it that time, Jelka. No hesitations.’
Her instructor, a middle-aged giant of a man she knew only as Siang, came up to her and patted her shoulder. On the floor nearby her attacker, a professional fighter brought in for this morning’s training session only, got up slowly and dusted himself down, then bowed to her. He was clearly surprised to have been bested by such a slip of a girl, but Siang waved him away without looking at him.
Siang moved apart from the child, circling her. She turned, wary of him, knowing how fond he was of tricks. But before she had time to raise her guard he had placed a red sticker over the place on her body shield where her heart would be. She caught his hand as it snaked back, but it was too late.
‘Dead,’ he said.
She wanted to laugh but dared not. She knew just how serious this was. In any case, her father was watching and she did not want to disappoint him. ‘Dead,’ she responded earnestly.
There were games and there were games. This game was deadly. She knew she must learn it well. She had seen with her own eyes the price that could be paid. Poor Han Ch’in. She had wept for days at his death.
At the far end of the training hall the door opened and her father stepped through. He was wearing full dress uniform, but the uniform was a perfect, unblemished white, from boots to cap. White. The Han colour of death.
The General came towards them. Siang bowed deeply and withdrew to a distance. Jelka, still breathing deeply from the exercise, smiled and went to her father, embracing him as he bent to kiss her.
‘That was good,’ he said. ‘You’ve improved a great deal since I last saw you.’
He had said the words with fierce pride, his hand holding and squeezing hers as he stood there looking down at her. At such moments he felt a curious mixture of emotions – love and apprehension, delight and a small, bitter twinge of memory. She was three months short of her seventh birthday, and each day she seemed to grow more like her dead mother.
‘When will you be back?’ she asked, looking up at him with eyes that were the same breath-taking ice-blue her mother’s had been.
‘A day or two. I’ve business to conclude after the funeral.’
She nodded, used to his enigmatic references to business, then, more thoughtf
ully. ‘What will Li Shai Tung do, Daddy?’
He could not disguise the bitterness in his face when he answered. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘He will do nothing.’ And as he said it he imagined that it was Jelka’s funeral he was about to go to; her death he had seen through others’ eyes; her body lying there in the casket, young as spring yet cold as winter.
If it were you, my blossom, I would tear down Chung Kuo itself to get back at them.
But was that a deficiency in him? Were his feelings so unnatural? Or was the lack in Li Shai Tung, putting political necessity before what he felt? To want to destroy those who have hurt your loved ones – was that really so wrong? Was he any less of a man for wanting that?
Tolonen shuddered, the thought of his darling Jelka dead filling him with a strange sense of foreboding. Then, conscious of his daughter watching him, he placed his hands on her shoulders. His hands so large, her bones so small, so fragile beneath his fingers.
‘I must go,’ he said simply, kneeling to hug her.
‘Keep safe,’ she answered, smiling at him.
He smiled back at her, but his stomach had tightened at her words. It was what her mother had always said.
A cold wind was blowing from the west, from the high plains of Tibet, singing in the crown of the tree of heaven and rippling the surface of the long pool. Li Shai Tung stood alone beneath the tree, staff in hand, his bared head bowed, his old but handsome face lined with grief. At his feet, set into the dark earth, was the Family tablet, a huge rectangle of pale cream stone, carved with the symbols of his ancestors. More than half the stone – a body’s length from where he stood – was marble smooth, untouched by the mortician’s chisel. So like the future, he thought, staring at Han Ch’in’s name, fresh cut into the stone. The future… that whiteness upon which all our deaths are written.
He looked up. It was a small and private place, enclosed by ancient walls. At the southern end a simple wooden gate led through into the northern palace. Soon they would come that way with the litter.
He spoke, his voice pained and awful; like the sound of the wind in the branches overhead. ‘Oh, Han… Oh, my sweet little boy, my darling boy.’
He staggered, then clenched his teeth against the sudden memory of Han’s mother, his first wife, Lin Yua, sitting in the sunlight at the edge of the eastern orchard by the lake, her dresses spread about her, Han, only a baby then, crawling contentedly on the grass beside her.
Bring it back, he begged, closing his eyes against the pain; Kuan Yin, sweet Goddess of Mercy, bring it back! But there was no returning. They were dead. All dead. And that day no longer was. Except in his mind.
He shuddered. It was unbearable.
Li Shai Tung drew his cloak about him and began to make his slow way back across the grass, leaning heavily on his staff, his heart a cold, dark stone in his breast.
They were waiting for him in the courtyard beyond the wall; all those he had asked to come. The Sons of Heaven and their sons, his trusted men, his son, his dead son’s wife and her father, his brothers, and, finally, his own third wife. All here, he thought. All but Han Ch’in, the one I loved the best.
They greeted him solemnly, their love, their shared grief unfeigned, then turned and waited for the litter.
The litter was borne by thirty men, their shaven heads bowed, their white, full-length silks fluttering in the wind. Behind them came four officials in orange robes and, beyond them, two young boys carrying a tiny litter on which rested an ancient bell and hammer.
Han lay there in the wide rosewood casket, dressed in the clothes he had worn on his wedding day. His fine, dark hair had been brushed and plaited, his face given the appearance of perfect health. Rich furs had been placed beneath him, strewn with white blossom, while about his neck were wedding gifts of jewels and gold and a piece of carmine cloth decorated with the marriage emblems of dragon and phoenix.
At the foot of the coffin lay a length of white cotton cloth, nine ch’i in length, Han Ch’in’s own symbolic mourning for his father – for tradition said that the son must always mourn the father before he himself was mourned.
Li Yuan, standing at his father’s side, caught his breath. It was the first time he had seen his brother since his death, and, for the briefest moment, he had thought him not dead but only sleeping. He watched the litter pass, his mouth open, his heart torn from him. Merciful gods, he thought; sweet Han, how could they kill you? How could they place you in the earth?
Numbed, he fell into line behind the silent procession, aware only vaguely of his father beside him, of the great lords of Chung Kuo who walked behind him, their heads bared, their garments simple, unadorned. In his mind he reached out to pluck a sprig of blossom from his brother’s hair, the petals a perfect white against the black.
At the far end of the long pool the procession halted. The tomb was open, the great stone door hauled back. Beyond it, steps led down into the cold earth.
Most of the bearers now stood back, leaving only the six strongest to carry the litter down the steps. Slowly they descended, followed by the officials and the two boys.
His father turned to him. ‘Come, my son. We must lay your brother to rest.’
Li Yuan held back, for one terrible moment overcome by his fear of the place below the earth. Then, looking up into his father’s face, he saw his own fear mirrored and found the strength to bow and answer him.
‘I am ready, father.’
They went down, into candlelight and shadows. The bearers had moved away from the litter and now knelt to either side, their foreheads pressed to the earth. Han lay on a raised stone table in the centre of the tomb, his head to the south, his feet to the north. The officials stood at the head of the casket, bowed, awaiting the T’ang, while the two boys knelt at the casket’s foot, one holding the bell before him, the other the hammer.
Li Yuan stood there a moment at the foot of the steps, astonished by the size of the tomb. The ceiling was high overhead, supported by long, slender pillars that were embedded in the swept earth floor. Splendidly sculpted tomb figures, their san-t’sai glazes in yellow, brown and green, stood in niches halfway up the walls, candles burning in their cupped hands. Below them were the tombs of his ancestors, huge pictograms cut deep into the stone, denoting the name and rank of each. On four of them was cut one further symbol – the Ywe Lung. These had been T’ang. His father was fifth of the Li family T’ang. He, when his time came, would be the sixth.
A small table rested off to one side. On it were laid the burial objects. He looked up at his father again, then went over and stood beside the table, waiting for the ritual to begin.
The bell sounded in the silence, its pure, high tone like the sound of heaven itself. As it faded the officials began their chant.
He stood there, watching the flicker of shadows against stone, hearing the words intoned in the ancient tongue, and felt drawn up out of himself.
Man has two souls, the officials chanted. There is the animal soul, the p’o, which comes into being at the moment of conception, and there is the hun, the spirit soul, which comes into being only at the moment of birth. In life the two are mixed, yet in death their destiny is different. The p’o remains below, inhabiting the tomb, while the hun, the higher soul, ascends to heaven.
The officials fell silent. The bell sounded, high and pure in the silence. Li Yuan took the first of the ritual objects from the table and carried it across to his father. It was the pi, symbol of Heaven, a large disc of green jade with a hole in its centre. Yin, it was – positive and light and male. As the officials lifted the corpse, Li Shai Tung placed it beneath Han’s back, then stood back, as they lowered him again.
The bell sounded again. Li Yuan returned to the table and brought back the second of the objects. This was the tsung, a hollow, square tube of jade symbolizing Earth. Yang, this was – negative and dark and female. He watched as his father placed it on his brother’s abdomen.
Each time the bell rang he took an object from the tabl
e and carried it to his father. First the huang, symbol of winter and the north, a black jade half-pi which his father laid at Han’s feet. Then the chang, symbol of summer and the south, a narrow tapered tablet of red jade placed above Han’s head. The kuei followed, symbol of the east and spring, a broad tapered tablet of green jade, twice the size of the chang, which was laid beside Han’s left hand. Finally Li Yuan brought the hu, a white jade tiger, symbol of the west and autumn. He watched his father place this at his dead brother’s right hand, then knelt beside him as the bell rang once, twice, and then a third time.
The chant began again. Surrounded by the sacred symbols, the body was protected. Jade, incorruptible in itself, would prevent the body’s own decay. The p’o, the animal soul, would thus be saved.
Kneeling there, Li Yuan felt awed by the power, the dignity of the ritual. But did it mean anything? His beloved Han was dead and nothing in heaven or earth could bring him back. The body would decay, jade or no jade. And the souls…? As the chant ended he sat back on his haunches and looked about him, at stone and earth and the candlelit figures of death. When nothing returned to speak of it, who knew if souls existed?
Outside again he stood there, dazed by it all, the chill wind tugging at his hair, the afternoon light hurting his eyes after the flickering shadows of the tomb. One by one the T’ang came forward to pay their respects to his father and once more offer their condolences, the least of them greater in power and wealth than the greatest princes of the Tang or Sung or Ch’ing dynasties. Wang Hsien, a big, moon-faced man, T’ang of Africa. Hou Ti, a slender man in his forties, T’ang of South America. Wei Feng, his father’s closest friend among his peers, T’ang of East Asia, his seemingly ever-present smile absent for once. Chi Hu Wei, a tall, awkward man, T’ang of the Australias. Wu Shih, T’ang of North America, a big man, built like a fighter, his broad shoulders bunching as he embraced Li Yuan’s father. And last Tsu Tiao, T’ang of West Asia, the old man leaning on his son’s arm.
‘You should have stayed inside,’ Li Shai Tung said, embracing him and kissing his cheeks. ‘This wind can be no good for you, Tsu Tiao. I thought it would be sheltered here with these walls.’
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