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“I must give thanks,” said Nihuang, “that his Majesty chose to send you and your soldiers as reinforcements.”
The bloodied ground stained the soles of their boots. As they strolled back to their tents they left behind them a red trail that smelled of sweat and iron and death: shed by the fallen, endured by the living. Xiao Jingyan felt a throbbing pain that spiraled down his temples and struck him across the brow like a lash of the whip, but he ignored it. Sometimes he even welcomed it as a distraction. “You know that I’m not close to most ministers in the court,” he replied. “So he would not object much when I made the request.”
Nihuang gestured for her men to wait outside her own commander’s tent, and for Jingyan to enter. She said, “No, indeed he wouldn’t. I’ve only been leading this army for three years, and between you and me we would never disobey.” The words rolled smoothly off Nihuang’s lips, coupled with a cool smile.
Of course they wouldn’t disobey, even if suspicion festered in the Emperor’s heart. That had already earned Xiao Jingyan his father’s simmering displeasure or else cool disregard, and Mu Nihuang—more discreet and well-behaved, more immediately burdened—a military post of high status and the continued elevation of the Mu household that she knew all too well relied on the Emperor’s whim. After all, we must follow his Way, Marquis Yan had remarked once to Jingyan, in a voice too flat and too dry to be anything else but a forced drought of feeling. He wasn’t often seen in court these days.
Inside the tent, the flushed light of dawn gave way to the glow of candle flames. They sat together, and welcomed the comfort of silence. The battle was over; Southern Chu had retreated. During their walk across the battlefield—to inspect the injured, to pay respects to the dead, to look for any clues that might, together with their scouts’ reports, provide greater insight into their opponent’s next move—they had already discussed the formations and maneuvers of the last night and concluded that their armies could rest for now.
Jingyan blinked slowly. After battle it often seemed that he was living through a fever dream, running on little else but sleeplessness and adrenaline, and in this moment with Nihuang at his side he could almost imagine a dream of the impossible, in which the dead had never died, and laughed as well as they had lived. Could imagine returning to Jinling with a pearl in hand, to find Xiao Shu burning bright with the fervor of life. I was going to play marbles with this, Xiao Shu might have said with a grin. But now that I look at it, it’s too lonely without any others alike in size and beauty. I’ll feel so inferior every time I take it out.
The ache in his head had lessened, overtaken by the ache in his heart.
“But your Highness,” Nihuang said suddenly, breaking the quiet, “in the future, you shouldn’t ask to come here so often. There are more borders of Da Liang that need better defense than my battle lines in the south.”
“I know,” said Jingyan. “I won’t ask next time. My chief concern is that one day the Emperor will decide reinforcements aren’t necessary, or send them too late.”
“That won’t happen,” Nihuang replied, her voice hardening. “I’m still settling into my position, and so unlike my father, I am less of a threat. I can’t afford to dwell on grudges; I have to see to my men and Qing-er.”
Old General Mu had not received his reinforcements in time and died from his injuries. How unfortunate this was, the Emperor had lamented. The great general who had commanded soldiers many thousands strong, who had carried an honorary royal title and been as indomitable a wielder of political influence as he was a bulwark of defense against foreign encroachment. What a loss! cried the Emperor. In the Emperor’s eyes, his tears had been real.
“I understand.” Jingyan exhaled softly. “You recall the issue I mentioned to you several months ago?”
Nihuang had been idly running her hands over the sheath of her sword, but now she stilled as if she had turned to stone, her eyes glittering like raw garnets. “Your aide’s returned?”
“Yes,” he said, and looked away.
Nihuang’s gaze burned into the side of his face, but he knew his refusal to say anymore was telling. “… So he was not successful,” she said at last, her voice low.
“I’m sorry.” Jingyan laced his fingers together tightly. When he glanced down, the skin around his knuckles had whitened with tension. “I should have waited to see if anything came of it, rather than raise your hopes earlier when I told you, and dash them now.”
Nihuang sighed. “How could you think you need to apologize?” she murmured. “You knew it’d be as important to me as it is to you. I knew the risks but I’ll be glad for any reason to hope, even if it amounts to little of substance.”
Jingyan laughed: a dull sound from a mind dulled by pain. “I think I hoped too much, and hung my heart on a fool’s errand,” he said. “Now I feel as if I’m staring down into a bottomless pit.” He had been gazing into that abyss for the better part of three years.
This garnered him a smile from Nihuang, sad though it was. “I’ve learned to set my expectations low, in the hope that I might be surprised with delight. If I expect too much, I may grow bitter with disappointment.”
“Really? Surely not Mu Qing?”
Her smile turned genuine, tinged with sweetness. “Oh, I’m relieved to hear you jest, even if it’s at Qing-er’s expense. You know what I mean.”
Yes, he knew what she meant: that vipers’ nest of Jinling, where the Crown Prince, ultimate winner of the struggle for the throne, would be at best a thief of virtue and at worst a paragon of vice. “Even so,” he said, “I can’t but think that one day I might know a minister who doesn’t bend to corruption. A court that knows the meaning of justice.” He did not speak of the Emperor his father.
“I never said there’s no hope,” said Nihuang. “Only that we can’t allow ourselves to become bitter, your Highness. We must endure.”
*
He had been told one of his soldiers insisted on seeing him, and had refused even to tell his superior officers why.
“He is an exemplary subordinate in all other matters,” the man’s lieutenant, Han Zhu, had said fretfully, “so your Highness, please understand why I thought I should at least pass this on—“
“That’s fine,” Xiao Jingyan had said. “I heard you want to speak with me,” he added, looking at the soldier. “Your name is Lie Zhanying?”
“Yes. Your Highness.” Lie Zhanying paid his respects, and said nothing more.
Xiao Jingyan gave Lieutenant Han a pointed look. Lieutenant Han was a smart man, so very soon thereafter they were left alone.
“You may speak,” said Jingyan.
Thin and sharp-featured, Lie Zhanying had barely grown out of boyhood. He wore a shirt with sleeves too long under his armor—the cuffs almost to his knuckles—and carried with him an air that spoke of decisiveness in thought and action. Yet he paused. He looked down, and curled his fingers into his palm. Finally he said, “Your Highness, when we were recently stationed in Bingzhou I came across an item while scouting the far perimeter… I don’t know the person it belonged to, but I was concerned and felt that only your Highness would know best how to deal with it.”
“If you explain so vaguely,” said Jingyan, “I won’t know what there is to be concerned about. Show me the item and we can continue.”
Lie Zhanying set his mouth in a thin line; and tugging his left sleeve, drew back the cuff from knuckle to forearm.
Then Xiao Jingyan had seen why Lie Zhanying had chosen to wear a shirt too large and long for himself. Glittering on his wrist—rescued from the dirt and debris of a forest floor, and somehow years before from a fiery fate in the midst of butchery—was the silver bracelet of a soldier from the Chiyan army.
Lie Zhanying said, his gaze lowered to the ground, “Your Highness. I had friends in the Chiyan army at Meiling too.”
*
They had endured for years, and Jingyan thought wearily of how they’d have to endure this state of affairs for their lifetimes, unless there was some weakness at which they could pry, or secret they could uncover. “I can only try,” he said. “It’s easier to bear when I focus on my duties.” Away from the court, he did not add.
Nihuang turned her helmet in her lap, staring down at its dirtied exterior. “Yes,” she said, “my responsibilities to the living… I also can’t fail to fulfill those, no matter what.” She patted her helmet once again, then set it to the side. “So this new aide of yours,” she continued. “He wasn’t successful, but what did he find out? Or did everything lead to a dead end?”
“I told you before that I sent him back to Bingzhou,” Jingyan replied. “Zhanying was supposed to revisit the merchants in the area and discuss other options for supplies if we have troubles there in the future. But it also allowed him to ask villagers about any notable incidents in the past few years. Wang Chuangzhu was a detachment cavalry officer, and I know he was shifted to the vanguard for better maneuverability before…”
“He would be serving with Nie-dage,” said Nihuang softly. “When they were… dispatched.”
“According to the Marquis of Ning.”
Nihuang glanced at him. “Yes,” she echoed, “according to our illustrious Marquis of Ning.” She smiled again; but it was no longer sweet, and did not reach her eyes. “Who was active in that area?”
“Bandits, two years ago,” said Jingyan, “who preyed on travelers near the place where he found Wang Chuangzhu’s bracelet. For it to be lost where it was makes me believe that someone was carrying it, if not wearing it, and might have dropped it when caught up in a fight.”
“Two years ago, but not now?”
“One of the jianghu sects nearby mobilized and drove them out, a small one called Qingxin.”
“Recently established?”
“No. Zhanying asked villagers and they told him Qingxin has a long history there. It’s never been a powerful group, though they’ve been establishing more alliances with those in the next province over, Langzhou.”
“What groups are those?”
Jingyan let out a dry laugh. “Princess, even the villagers don’t know. As far as they are concerned, the Qingxin members treat them well and they reciprocate, but their business is their own. Zhanying was still an outsider, and even if his questions sounded simple I think they were suspicious nonetheless. Since they give their favor to Qingxin, they won’t say anything if they don’t feel like it.”
“Then, your Highness,” said Nihuang airily, “the only sensible option is for you yourself to join, and learn what you can as a talented member of the sect.” Her eyes glinted bright with candle light, but her voice was wistful even in its teasing. In these times, they could never shed their names and titles and journey anonymously; they could not shed their burdens and fight for what was right without remembering the court of Da Liang. They could never go without the missing third member of their party, who had come up with the original plan.
No need to spend time thinking about our names, Xiao Shu had said with a snort. Isn’t it obvious? Nihuang will be Feng Huang, the majestic phoenix! I’ll be her disciple, Huo Ren, and you’ll be Shui Niu the water buffalo. You can carry our supplies.
No one called him that nickname now. So Jingyan bent his head, acknowledging the impossible wish with a crooked twist of his mouth, and went on: “Wang Chuangzhu was from Bingzhou, and his family lived about three days’ journey away in another settlement. Father and mother, and a younger brother and sister.”
“And what do you know about them?” asked Nihuang. She frowned, working her fingers over the edges of her armor.
The barest hearsay, or else mounds of upturned earth, tended to by no one. The battle at Meiling had been as vicious in its consequences as in its execution, and beyond Crown Prince Qi and the Lin family and faithful ministers of the court lay the grief and horror of those who had loved and been loved by seventy thousand soldiers, gone in an evening’s battle and judged as traitors.
Jingyan bit his lip, the taste of blood blossoming in his mouth. “They’ve died,” he said, “or else gone.”
*
He had sworn Lie Zhanying to secrecy, and told Lieutenant Han that he would be reassigning Lie Zhanying to investigate a possible supply smuggling case in Bingzhou. Lieutenant Han was a smart man, so he raised no objections to the personnel transfer and said nothing more.
His mother was a smart woman, and so was not silent. Upon his next visit, with news of the shiny, treacherous evidence brought to her, she caught her breath—and then let it go in a long sigh, her eyes shadowed with wariness. “Can you be sure this isn’t a trap?”
She didn’t specify who might set a trap, but Jingyan could think of many possibilities. “After speaking with Lie Zhanying, I don’t think so,” said Jingyan. “Mother, I know that you’ve chided me before for my quick judgment, but I think I can recognize sincerity from a guileless man.” He glanced at his mother, whose face was as placid as the undisturbed surface of a pond in winter. He wondered, not for the first time, how much she had witnessed and kept to herself, never unburdened, so that she could grant him some better peace of mind.
So Jingyan added, for levity’s sake, “Besides, you know me—I have personal experience.”
At this self-deprecation, the ghost of a smile passed over her lips. “I see you take my observations to heart,” she said. “My dear child, if you trust him, and you’re sure he is not being deceived… Then search if you must. But do not endanger the lives of others.”
*
Xiao Jingyan had never wanted to endanger the lives of others unless he was first willing to put himself in the line of fire, but now he thought it might have been egotistical of himself to assume that as the worst scenario. “His parents died soon after they received the news of Meiling,” he said. “The villagers said it was because of their old age, but also grief. His brother went to petition the local magistrate for an investigation, even if they knew it was a hopeless gesture, and was flogged for his troubles; the villagers said he died of his wounds because the magistrate kept him in prison until his sister begged for his release. She tended to them as they passed away, and buried them with her own hands. But she disappeared afterward, and no one knows where she went—or if she was taken.” He provided the litany of woes as tonelessly as Lie Zhanying had reported it to him, with eyes cast down to the ground. He could barely hear the sound of Nihuang’s breathing.
“If Wang Chuangzhu had somehow survived,” Nihuang muttered, “and made his way home to where he knew he could find refuge—and this was what he found…” She rose to her feet and turned away, her hands clasped tightly behind her back.
It was unfair, it was unjust, it was unacceptable; Jingyan felt bile well up in his throat. He choked it back down, the bitter medicine that reminded him of their reality. He was an unfavored prince and a known element at court; unless some outsider could stroll in and stir up the status quo like a peacock with showy feathers, how could he make a move without suspicion and scrutiny, the brother who had been closest to Prince Qi? Useless, useless, useless… three years ago, even then, he had been unable to do anything of worth.
Now? At the very least, he could deal with the magistrate. He’d asked Lie Zhanying to look into the man’s governance.
“Or maybe he’s not alive,” Nihuang continued. “Maybe he’s dead after all, just like—the others—and someone else wanted to find what proof of identity was available with”—she faltered, then forged on—“their remains, and give families some sense of closure. To honor comrades in arms. Because your Highness, it can’t be the case that every single soldier in the Chiyan army was killed. You know as well as I do that after battle we canvass the field for those alive that are injured, and that compared to the dead is not an insignificant ratio.”
“The Marquis of Ning would know that too, and plan accordingly,” said Jingyan. A sword in the gut. An knife to the neck. A shower of arrows. The Marquis of Ning was a smart man.
“And so would the Chiyan army,” Nihuang pointed out. “Why wouldn’t they do their best to survive?”
They didn’t speak of their hidden fear that the best of the best had not been good enough. “So here we are,” said Jingyan. “We don’t know if Wang Chuangzhu is dead or alive, we don’t know if another soldier came on his behalf, we don’t know if his last remaining family member is still alive, and we can’t track down the bandits and ask them if they remember anything about a failed attack years ago.” He thumbed at the guard of his sword, up and down in the sheath. Click, click, click.
“Leave it be.” Nihuang turned around to look at him, hair swinging in a swift arc. She bent down to pick up her helmet and tucked it under her left arm. “We can’t dig too much and attract unwanted attention to anyone who might’ve escaped. Show your hand, show your interest, and leave it be. One day, they’ll come to us. If that means five years, ten years, twenty years—we’ll wait. Their wish to live is worth more than our wish to know.” She angled her body toward the tent flap, signaling an end to their topic of discussion. There were other present concerns for her to address, and he knew Nihuang would need to confer with her own generals on Southern Chu.
Jingyan breathed in deeply, then out. Air hissed between his teeth. He stood, wincing at the soreness in his muscles, and was reminded suddenly of the fact that his head hurt from a scrape and not from his thoughts. Blinking furiously, he said, “Of course. I can’t disagree with that.”
“I know we won’t have many occasions to speak privately in the future,” said Nihuang, and extended her hands to him. “You have other duties. And I’ll be here, unless the Emperor summons me.” Here she would remain in control of the army of the South—which, if allied with any one prince, would center the Emperor’s cool eyes on the lucky one who had won the allegiance of the Mu household. Better, then, to show her neutrality. “But please remember,” she added, “that you aren’t alone.” In their devotion to the dead, in their love for the living, in their hope that the truth was not lost forever.
Jingyan took her hands in his with a firm grip, her calluses rough against his own. “And the same to you, Princess,” he replied.
“… Jingyan-gege,” she said softly. He startled, for Nihuang hadn’t called him by his real name in a long while, not even in the rare moments when others weren’t around to overhear. Nor was he prepared for what she said next. “Do you see him in your dreams?”
There were times when he wished he didn’t dream at all. Sometimes, he dreamed of Lin Manor falling away, the walls reduced to a latticework of gleaming white bones picked clean by the crows and the elements. Sometimes, he dreamed of Aunt Jinyang’s fury made manifest, and the sword she had taken to her own throat before the whole court: her last act of defiance against her imperial brother, because she had nothing left to lose.
Sometimes, he dreamed of fire, raging over the dead that littered Meiling’s freshly fallen snow.
“Nihuang,” he began, but words would not come to him. Her name sat strangely on his tongue, and she herself seemed to be slipping away from his grasp, transformed into a more distant, tearless, composed figure. He feared the day that they might meet and be less friend than acquaintance, with their past tucked away as grief entwined with love often was, so they could do more than survive—so that they could go on living. Nihuang, sometimes I think I see him when I’m awake. Sometimes I think I’m going mad.
“Yes,” Jingyan said.
She nodded, letting her hands fall to her sides; and then, unexpectedly, she smiled. “So do I,” she said. “He’s with both of us. Now, why don’t we see what we can do against our enemy on the battlefield?” A triangle of light blinded them as she raised the tent flap, a reddish pall cast upon their faces like a bloody veil. Out of the corner of his eye, Jingyan caught a glimpse of…
He blinked. The fiery ghost was gone, or had never been there. Jingyan wasn’t mad yet, even with his impossible dream.
So they walked on to face the new day together, and with them went the presence of Lin Shu’s absence: silent, vengeful, eternal.