Guy Kay - Under Heaven

Some time later—the passage of time that night is blurred—Hwan had come with another message, this one addressed to her.

He might so easily have waited until morning. That would have made all the difference. Or the note might not have reached her at all.

It had been carried by Qin, the crippled beggar in the street.

She understood, and it humbled her even now, that he had entrusted it to no one. Had paid coins to a drunken tradesman (and why had he been in the street, passing by, so late?) to carry him— carry him—all the long way around to the front gates of the compound. And he’d stayed there, painfully on his feet, banging at the gates and shouting, until someone had sleepily, angrily come.

And then he’d demanded, loudly, fiercely, without backing down, that Hwan be brought to him, and no one else but Hwan.

And, improbably (another source of fear in her imagining those moments), they hadn’t beaten him and turned him away. Hwan, awake since the master had ridden out, had come to see what the disturbance was.

The disturbance.

He had accepted the note, hand passing it to hand, and brought it to her. Immediately, not waiting for morning. Perhaps he’d known she’d be awake. Perhaps he’d been frightened. She’s never asked, though he’s been with her all the way here, to Chenyao.

So has Qin.

She can’t say with certainty why she kept them with her, but it had seemed proper, it had seemed … needful. As she’d read Tai’s note, Rain felt some inner imperative overtaking her.

Possible danger. Be very alert , he’d written.

Alert meant remembering Zhou’s face as he read the summons from the palace, as he burned it, as he went away. No good night, or goodbye.

You could describe the first minister in many ways, but he had never been a coward—and he’d looked afraid that night. And Rain had already had enough of a feeling of danger to have hidden jewels in the garden.

It had been enough—she remembers now, in Chenyao, middle of another night, late summer. All these things together, and a sense (her mother had also had it) of when something decisive needed to be done.

Decisive. There’d been only one action she could take. Like a gambler throwing dice in a late-night game in the pleasure district, staking everything he owned.

She’d been a little unkind to Hwan then, trading upon his love for her, the love she’d nurtured for her own reasons. On the other hand, she’d almost certainly saved his life.

Her instructions had been precise, much more assured than she’d felt. Inside, she’d been terrified. He was ordered to go out the gates alone. He was to find a sedan chair in the streets of the ward—there were always one or two of them, even late at night, bearers ready to carry someone to an assignation, or home from one.

He was to get the beggar, Qin, into that sedan chair, and lead it around to the back of the property.

Hwan’s eyes had widened, she remembers.

He was to do this immediately, she’d said coldly, or never find favour in her sight again. If he did do this, she’d said, looking straight at him by the light of the lantern, wearing her night robe, he would find very great favour.

He’d left to do as she’d said.

She rose and dressed by herself, moving quickly now that a decision had been made, as if speed could overmaster second thoughts. The gods alone knew what was to come, but if she was wrong about this she was unlikely to live through the day.

She took more gems from the chest in the room. There was no point leaving them. She walked back alone through the vast and silent garden, past the lake and isle and the small, moored boats and the bamboo grove and the grassy space where Wen Zhou had played at games with others of the court. The path wound through night flowers. She breathed their scent.

She came to the gazebo, found the tree where she’d hidden that small bag. She claimed it (dirtying her hands) and then she climbed the wall herself, using the elm tree at the eastern end.

She’d learned how to climb as a girl in Sardia, had been good at it, better than most boys, treating a skinned knee or elbow as a mark of honour. She still has a scar on her left knee. There’d been little call for climbing in the North District, or here at the compound, but some things the body remembered.

The two Kanlins appeared out of shadow as she dropped down into the street. She hadn’t doubted for a moment that they’d be there.

“I am leaving now,” she said. “Because of the message you brought. Will you stay with me?”

They had stayed with her.

They’d done more than that, through the flight west. For one thing, it was the Kanlins who had gotten them out of the ward in the night. No gate official was going to deny them. It brought bad luck, at the very least. The understanding was, if the black-clad ones were abroad they had reason to be, and so did those they were escorting. That was the way of things.

Because of this, they’d made it all the way across Xinan and to the western gate, were right there before curfew’s end opened the city. While they waited for sunrise and the drums Rain had Hwan arrange a carriage, and two good horses for the Kanlins.

With the coming of morning they were out of Xinan, moving along the western road against the flow of traffic coming in with goods for the markets. They bought food as they went, wine, millet cakes, dried meat, peaches. Hwan had brought cash. She didn’t ask where he’d gotten it. Her jewels weren’t going to help until they reached a market town. You didn’t buy boiled eggs or barley cakes with amber earrings set in gold.

She was to understand later that they had been able to leave the city only because they’d moved so quickly, were out and going west before word spread of the disaster at Teng Pass. And with it, tidings of the emperor’s flight.

Later that day the capital learned of these events, and Ma-wai, and panic erupted in the city, choking every gate and every road with terrified people in flight.

Rain and her party had left the imperial road by then. She’d decided there were too many people who might know her at the well-known posting inn on the road. It was used by the court, which meant by people who might have visited the Pavilion of Moonlight Pleasure House.

They branched off, found another east-west road, kept going all day along that. Stopped the first night at a small inn near a silk farm.

Rain never knew it, no one can ever know such things, but had they stayed on the imperial highway, stopped at the posting inn that first night, her own life, and the lives of many others might have been different, going forward.

This is a reason why we sometimes feel as though existence is fragile, precarious, that a random wind can blow, changing everything. They might have gone to the inn on the imperial road—it was an impulsive thought to leave the road. She might not have been able to sleep, could easily have risen to walk in the garden late, and seen two men in conversation on a bench under a mulberry tree …

THE KANLINS KEPT THEM moving quickly, staying on secondary roads. They changed horses each day until horses became hard to come by. One evening a discussion was started, courteously, by the older of the two. His name was Ssu Tan. They wished to know whether she intended to continue west, or planned to go south, or even north. A perfectly good question.

But it meant she needed to have an idea where she was going.

She’d chosen Chenyao, told them so that night, as much to name a destination as anything else. It was close, by then, large enough to let them melt into the city, sell some jewels. It had roads leading in all directions, was accustomed to travellers coming through, often from far away.