Guy Kay - Under Heaven

A short silence. Then Zian shook his head. “It may be arrogant of me, a delusion, but I believe I can do more good with the emperor. The … father-emperor.”

“Taizu can’t keep up with us.”

“Of course not. But he will be grieving, and he has only that fool of an alchemist with him, and soldiers. He has a long way to go and the roads are hard. Heaven’s way is bent like a bow now. Perhaps an old poet can help.”

“You aren’t old.”

“Tonight I am.”

There was a silence in the garden, and then Tai heard the poet speak again, offering him a gift:

Tai said nothing for a time. He was moved, and very tired. The wine, the words, the stillness. “I will see you again?”

“If heaven allows. I will hope so. We’ll drink good wine in another garden, listening to pipa music.”

Tai drew a breath. “I will hope so. Where … where will you be?”

“I don’t know. Where will you be, Shen Tai?”

“I don’t know.”

Ye Lao, once under-steward to the Beloved Companion Wen Jian, was now principal household steward to the honourable and distinguished Master Shen Tai (son of the famous general). This meant, of course, that he was burdened with formal responsibility for Master Shen’s quite substantial compound in Xinan in extremely uncertain times. Household stewards, without exception, preferred certainty.

Ye Lao had never endured a major rebellion or the arrival of angry soldiers in any city or palace he’d known. You heard tales about such times, you didn’t live through them—if the gods in the nine heavens were kind.

They weren’t always kind, of course.

Being quite good at his job, and priding himself on it, Lao refused to allow himself to be unduly frightened or flustered (and, most definitely, did not permit the household servants to see a hint of such feelings in him) until the army of An Li was actually sighted at the eastern gates of the city, seven days after the emperor and a handful of the court had fled.

At that point, as rebel soldiers began pouring into Xinan, and reports of shocking conduct reached Master Shen’s compound, Ye Lao found himself becoming slightly perturbed. The jackals were in the city , someone quoted, the dragons were in the wild .

Xinan was left open for Roshan, of course: only fools would close city gates when there were no soldiers to defend them. But this courtesy had not induced any immediate limiting of violence.

One expected, in the usual way of soldiers arriving in a civilized place, a certain amount of intoxication, destruction, looting, even killing, unnecessary though it was.

It was undoubtedly wisest to keep women out of sight, and hope the poor girls in the pleasure districts proved equal to the task of assuaging a drunken army.

About half a million citizens of Xinan had, if widespread reports were accurate, chosen to flee ahead of the rebels. They’d streamed out in all directions, trampling each other in their haste. Some had even gone east, right into the approaching storm, probably towards country homes and family, hoping to scurry north and south around the advancing army and get back to their farmland roots.

Most of those escaping went west or south. A certain number were reported to be making their way north, once word arrived that the new emperor, Shinzu (it was a difficult idea, a new emperor), was rallying the Ninth Dynasty there.

In Ye Lao’s view, most of the people in flight were making a mistake.

Unless they had family in the country with room for them, an actual place to go, starvation outside Xinan was a real possibility. In fact, with so many on the move it was hard to imagine how they could all be sheltered and fed, even with family waiting.

It was assumed by those who stayed that An Li and his sons intended to establish themselves in the Ta-Ming Palace, and would therefore act in a manner befitting a self-proclaimed new dynasty.

There would be some measure of undisciplined behaviour, but that would surely be brought under control, and life in the capital would resume in acceptable fashion.

With this underlying thought in Xinan, one that he shared, it was profoundly shocking for Ye Lao to learn of wanton slaughter in the palace from the first hours, and continuing.

There were public executions in the square before the Ta-Ming’s walls. It was reported that the hearts of dead members of the imperial family were being ripped out and offered as a sacrifice to the ghost of An Li’s slain son. It was said that some were executed by having the tops of their heads ripped off with iron claws.

Bodies were piled in the square and it was forbidden to claim them for burial. Huge bonfires were built and men and women were burned with black, choking smoke rising, and an appalling stench. It was barbarous, in Ye Lao’s view.

All mandarins found, even newly graduated lowly officials, were killed within the Purple Myrtle Court, if they hadn’t had the foresight to discard their robes and belts and hide themselves in the city, or flee.

The women of the palace were, report had it, being fearfully abused. Many of Taizu’s concubines and musicians were being shipped in wagons, as slaves, back towards Yenling and the rebel soldiers left behind there. Roshan knew what needed doing, to keep an army happy.

There was a widespread smashing-in of private gates, almost at random, as inebriated soldiers crashed through, spilling destruction and death. Not all of Xinan’s wives and daughters—or younger boys—were successfully hidden.

There were fires everywhere in those first days.

You risked your life walking the streets in search of food. The markets were closed. Bodies lay among refuse and wild animals, smoke and yellow dust, and the smell of burning.

Word was conveyed by military heralds moving through the city that anyone offering to the new dynasty’s illustrious leaders the whereabouts of children or grandchildren of Taizu—once emperor, now unmasked as a coward and having lost the mandate of heaven—any such information would be met with a reward and formal assurances of household safety.

What followed was ugly, as the hiding places of Taizu’s many offspring and their children (often very young) were promptly reported, their disguises revealed. These helpless, hapless princes and princesses were, every one of them, brought to the bonfires before the Ta-Ming walls and beheaded.

Steward Ye Lao’s distaste for such conduct was beyond his capacity to express. This man, An Li, had proclaimed himself an emperor? Successor to nine dynasties of glory in Kitai? Men, Lao thought grimly, were no better than beasts, they were wolves or tigers.

He kept his head up and his ears open, gathered what information he could, and ensured that the household of Master Shen remained as orderly as possible, under trying conditions. Some of the staff had fled in the first days but most had nowhere to go and had stayed, fearfully.

There was a private well in the second right-side courtyard of the compound, a pleasing indication of its importance. Lao arranged for every bucket and pail on the property to be filled and kept in readiness, should the fires one could see everywhere now reach them. He had linens soaked in water every morning.

Food was a difficult matter, but not yet impossible. After ten days Roshan allowed the markets to reopen, for those brave enough to venture forth, either to sell or to buy.