Guy Kay - Under Heaven

Which formality, given where she was just then, and what she now resumed doing, was remarkable.

He reached down and drew her up (she was so small), and laid her upon her back, and shifted above her. She began, shortly thereafter, making small sounds, and then more urgent ones, and then, some time after, with the bird still singing outside, she said, halfway between a gasp and a cry, “Did you learn that in the North District?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I like it.”

And twisting her body the way he’d seen her do springing up a wall in Chenyao or fighting assassins alone with two swords, she was above him again. Her mouth found his, and she did something with her teeth that made him realize, suddenly, that it hadn’t been any fox-woman he’d been dreaming about so vividly those nights on the road from Chenyao. It had been her.

The strangeness of the world.

There was a brightness growing within him, vivid as the first spring flower against snow, and a sense that this was all deeply undeserved, that he was not worthy of such a gift.

There was also now—and Tai would not let himself turn away from it—a farewell taking place inside himself, a painful one: to green eyes and golden hair, music, and her own courage.

You were surely allowed to remember these things? It would be wrong not to remember, Tai thought.

Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came.

You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed.

The Second Son of General Shen Gao crossed a bridge over the Wai River and reached his home on the same day that An Li, usually named Roshan, died at the hot springs retreat of Ma-wai, not far from Xinan.

Roshan, known to be unwell, did not die of the sugar sickness. He was murdered by a servant while he rested after taking the healing waters. The servant had been instructed to do this, and provided with a weapon, by An Li’s eldest son. An Rong disagreed with certain of his father’s policies and was impatient by nature.

The servant was executed. A man may agree to become an instrument of violent death in pursuit of rewards. These rewards are not invariably forthcoming.

Much farther north on that same day, in the grey hour before sunrise, Tarduk, the son and heir of the Bogü kaghan, was killed by a wolf in his yurt.

No dogs had barked, none had signalled in any way that a wolf had entered the campsite where the heir and some of his followers were in the midst of a hunt. Tarduk had time to scream before his throat was torn open. The wolf was struck by at least two arrows as it fled through the rising mist.

None of the dogs went after it.

Conjunctions of this sort—events occurring at the same time, far apart—are seldom perceived by those living (or dying) through the moments and days involved. Only the patient historian with access to records is likely to discover such links, reading diligently through texts preserved from an earlier time and dynasty. He might take a scholar’s pleasure, or be moved to reflection, considering them.

The conjunctions found do not always mean anything.

The timing of such moments doesn’t necessarily change the course of history, or throw illumination backwards upon how and why men did what they did.

The prevailing view of scholars was that only if it could be shown that events emerged from the same impulses, or if a significant figure came to know what had happened elsewhere, and when, did it become important to record such links in the record of the past.

There were some who suggested otherwise. Theirs was a view that held the past to be a scroll wherein the wise, unrolling it, could read how time and fate and the gods showed intricate patterns unfolding, and patterns could repeat.

Still, it is likely that even those of this opinion would have agreed that Shen Tai—that son of General Shen Gao, returning home—was not important enough in those early days of the An Li Rebellion for his movements to be part of any pattern that signified.

Only a tale-spinner, not a true scholar—someone shaping a story for palace or marketplace—would note these conjunctions and judge them worth the telling, and storytellers were not important, either. On this, the historian-mandarins could agree.

Shen Tai hadn’t even passed the examinations at that point! He had no formal status, in fact, though any fair-minded chronicler had to give him credit for courage at Kuala Nor, and the role his Sardian horses eventually played.

His mother and Second Mother were in Hangdu, the prefecture town. They had taken a cart to buy supplies, Tai was informed by the household steward. The steward kept bowing and smiling as he spoke. You could say that he was beaming, Tai thought.

Yes, the steward said, Youngest Son Chao had escorted them, with several of the bigger servants carrying heavy staves.

No, trouble had not yet reached their market town in any serious way, but it was always best to be careful, Master, was it not?

It was, Tai agreed.

The steward, and the household servants piling up behind him in the soon-crowded courtyard, were clearly moved by the return of Second Son. Tai felt the same way himself. The creak of the gate was a sound that might make him weep if he wasn’t careful.

The paulownias shading the walkway still had all their leaves. Autumn was not yet fully upon them. The peaches and plums had all been picked, he was informed. The family was being diligent about that this year. The Lady and Second Lady were supervising the preservation of the orchard’s fruit against winter and a possible shortage of food.

Tai reminded himself that he needed to get to Hangdu as well. A man named Pang, one-legged. Owed money for supervising a hidden supply of grain. Liu had told him that.

Liu would be buried here by now.

He went through the compound and into the garden, carrying wine in an agate cup. He went past the pond where he’d spent so much time with his father, watching Shen Gao toss bread for the goldfish. The fish were large and slow. The stone bench was still here. Of course it was. Why should such things change because a man had been away? Were two years any time at all?

For human beings they were. Two years could change the world. For stones, for trees growing leaves in spring, dropping them in autumn, two years were inconsequential. A stone in a pond makes ripples, the ripples are gone, nothing remains.

When those one has loved are gone, memories remain.

Tai walked through the orchard and he came to the elevated ground where the graves were, not far from where their stream flowed south to meet the Wai and be lost.

There was a new mound for Liu. No marker above it yet, no inscription considered and incised on stone. That would come after a year had passed. No time at all for trees or stone or the circling sun, a single year. But who knew what it would bring to men and women under heaven?

Not Tai. He had no gift of sight. He was not, he thought suddenly, a shaman. He flinched, wondered why that image had come to him.

He stood before his father’s grave. It was peaceful here. The ripple of the stream, some birds singing, wind in leaves. Trees shaded the place where his family lay and would lie, where he would one day rest.

He set down his cup and knelt. He bowed his head to touch the green grass by the grave. He did this three times. He stood, reclaiming the cup, and he poured the libation on the ground, for his father.