River of Stars

From up here he could indeed see the dusty road both ways, north and south. There was a dense wood to the east and a smaller stand of oak trees on the west side of the roadway. Ziji sank down beneath one of those oaks, after guiding the donkeys into the shade. He liked animals, and he knew they were suffering.

He’d heard a wandering holy man, one of those from the high plateaus of Tagur (which had once been an empire, some said), preaching back home to a ragged crowd that if a man behaved badly in life he would return as an animal of some kind, to make amends for his errors. Young Ziji didn’t exactly believe it, but he did recall the simple piety of that man in his dark-red robe, and he treated his animals as well as he could to this day. They didn’t mumble and plot against you, he thought.

He remembered something. With an effort and a curse, he made himself get up and pull back the cloth from the three birdcages. The cages were made of beaten gold, studded with gems, far too valuable to be exposed, but there was no one up here to see, and the birds were at risk of dying under covers in this heat. They weren’t going to sing, not in cages at midday.

Before going back to his tree past sprawled, exhausted men (some were already asleep, he saw) Ziji stepped into the road again, in the brutal sun, and looked both ways.

He swore viciously. The magistrate glared at him, in mid-swig from a water flask. The very refined magistrate of Hsiang Prefecture didn’t like soldiers’ language. Well, fuck you with a shovel, Zhao Ziji thought. You don’t like the way soldiers talk, you try getting yourself to the river without them!

And without dealing with the imminent arrival of another party from along the road behind them. They hadn’t been able to see them while on level ground. Up here they could. That was why a fucking soldier had waited until they’d reached this point to stop.

He rasped an order for one of his men to cover the cages. Those coming up to the long slope, openly, on a midday road, were almost certainly another party of merchants, but merchants could whisper of gilded, gem-covered nightingale cages as readily as anyone.

The other party showed a natural anxiety as they reached the point on the upward slant of the road where a dozen or so men could be seen sitting or lying among trees by the path.

Ziji had gone back to sitting against an oak. His short sword was hidden beneath his long, loose tunic. He was aware that the other soldiers in their party, unhappy as they were, were also disinclined to be killed, and would be alert. But then the magistrate stood up, officious and foolish, and sketched a bow that proclaimed, for anyone who knew enough to recognize it, that he was no humble merchant on the road.

“Greetings to your company. Have you any wine with you?” he asked.

Ziji winced, barely restrained himself from swearing.

“None!” exclaimed the leader of the other party. “None at all! We have nothing you might wish to steal! You would not kill men for water!”

“It has happened.” The magistrate chuckled, thinking himself witty.

“There’s a stream not far ahead!” cried one of the other party. “It hasn’t dried up! You need not—”

“We mean you no harm,” Ziji said from where he sat.

The other party, six men, country folk, were carrying their goods on their backs, not even a single donkey with them. Ziji added, “Take the other side of the road. There is shade enough for everyone. We’ll be on our way soon.”

“Going to the river?” the other leader asked, less anxious now. He was neatly shaven, older than Ziji, spoke roughly but not rudely. Ziji hesitated. He didn’t want companions—it would be too easy for their deception to be revealed, and any talk of who they were or what they carried was dangerous.

“We are,” said the magistrate officiously. He was irritated, clearly, that Ziji was the one addressed. “I believe it is two or three days from here,” he added.

The other group had begun crossing to the far side of the road, into the shade there. Their leader lingered a moment, sweating, as they all were, his tunic blotchy. He spoke to Ziji again, not the magistrate. “We’re not going so far. We’ve hemp clothing for the village up a bit and the silk farm by it.”

Peasant clothes. They wouldn’t get much for them, but in hard times you did what you could.

“Those who spin silk wear hemp,” Ziji quoted.

The other man spat in the roadway. “Truth there,” he said.

He crossed to join his own party. Ziji saw his soldiers watching them closely. He was pleased with that. Fear of death could make a man sharper, even when he was dulled by heat and weariness.

A little later, as Ziji was beginning to think of rousing his party and carrying on, they saw the next figure approaching along the slope.

This one was alone. A young man under a rice farmer’s straw hat, shirtless in the burning sun, carrying two large, covered buckets, one at each end of a pole across the back of his exposed neck. Despite the weight he strode steadily uphill with the vigour of youth.

Being alone, he was an obvious target. On the other hand, he clearly had nothing worth taking, and bandits tended not to disrupt the peasants, lest the villagers turn against them and help the militia. For the most part, officers of the law were more hated in these days of taxes and conscription for the war in the northwest than those who preyed on merchants and travellers.

Ziji didn’t stand up. He realized, however, that his mouth had begun to water at the sight of those buckets.

“You have wine to sell?” cried one of his own soldiers, rashly.

“Not to us he doesn’t!” Ziji rasped.

There were old tricks on the road, and he knew enough of them.

“I do not,” said the young man loudly as he crested the hill. “These are for the silk farm. I do this every day, they pay us five cash for each bucket.”

“We will save you the walk, however far it is. We’ll give you ten cash right here,” said the magistrate eagerly. He was on his feet.

“We will not!” said Zhao Ziji.

He also stood up. It was difficult, what he was doing. He could almost taste that wine, the sweetness of it.

“Never matters what you will or what you won’t,” the shirtless peasant said stubbornly. “They are expecting me at Risheng’s and they pay me. I give these to you I lose their business and my father beats me for it.”

Ziji nodded his head. “Understood. Carry on, lad. Good fortune to you.”

“Wait!”

It was the other party’s leader, emerging from the trees across the road. “We will give you fifteen cash for one bucket. You carry the other to the silk farm and give it to them for free. You come out ahead, they get a bucket of wine for nothing. Everyone is happy!”

“We aren’t!” cried the magistrate loudly. Ziji’s men were muttering.

The boy with the wine hesitated as the leader of the other merchants came up to him. Fifteen cash was a great deal to pay for a bucket of country wine, and his load would be lightened for the rest of a very hot day. Ziji saw him wrestle with this.

“I don’t have a ladle,” the boy said.

The merchant laughed. “We have ladles, that’s no matter. Come, take my money, pour us wine. Divide what’s left in the two buckets and ease your walk. It’s going to be hotter this afternoon.”

That was true. And the right thing to say, Ziji thought. He was dying for a drink, but he didn’t want to die drinking it, and he knew too many stories.

“We’ll give you twenty cash!” the magistrate cried.

“We will not!” Ziji snapped. This was overriding his authority and he couldn’t allow it. “We aren’t buying.” Broke his heart, almost, to say the words.

“These offered first, anyhow,” the young man said (he wasn’t a merchant, clearly). He turned to the others. “Right, then. Fifteen cash in my palm and you get one bucket.”

It was done quickly. The other merchants came out from the trees as their leader counted coins for the wine seller. Ziji was aware of two things. Extreme thirst, and hatred coming at him like a second blast of heat from his own party.

The other merchants unhooked a bucket from the pole, removed the lid right in the road, which was foolish, Ziji thought. They began taking turns with a long-handled ladle. With the bucket’s cover off, you could smell the sweet, pale wine. Or maybe that was his imagination.

With six men drinking quickly (too quickly, Ziji thought, on a hot day) it was finished in no time. The last man raised the bucket with two hands and tilted it to his face. Ziji saw wine dribble down his chin. They didn’t even pour an offering for the spirits of this place.

Ziji wasn’t happy with any of this. Being a leader wasn’t always as pleasurable as it was thought to be, he decided.

Then, as the wine seller carefully counted again the coins he’d been given, Ziji saw one of the men from the other merchant party slip behind the seller and, laughing, remove the top of the second bucket. “Five cash for five scoops!” he cried, and dipped the ladle.

“No!” the boy cried. “That isn’t what we said!”

The laughing merchant picked up the heavy, now-open bucket and ran awkwardly with it towards the woods. Some wine sloshed out, Ziji saw wistfully. “Give him ten coins!” the man yelled over his shoulder. “More than he deserves!”

“No!” the wine seller shouted again. “You are cheating me! I’ll have my family watch for you on the way back!”

That was a real threat, Ziji thought. Who knew how many were in his family, how many friends they’d have, and these merchants would have to head home this way. Indeed, they were going to the same silk farm the wine seller was. The man running with the bucket had made a mistake.

“Bring it back!” their leader cried, obviously coming to the same conclusion. “We won’t cheat him.”

We won’t risk cheating him, was more like it, Ziji thought sourly. He noticed the running-away fellow take a quick drink from the second bucket. Now he reluctantly brought it back from the shade of the woods—where they should have been drinking, slowly and out of the sun, all along.

“Just one more scoop!” he said, dipping his ladle again.

“No!” cried the boy again, rushing up and slapping the ladle from the man’s hand. It fell into the wine; he pulled it out and threw it angrily away.

“Leave him alone,” said the leader. “We are honest men, and I don’t want a party lying in wait when we come home tomorrow!”

There was a short silence.

“Twenty-five cash for what’s left of that bucket!” Ziji’s magistrate cried suddenly. “I have it in my hand!”

The boy turned to him. It was a ridiculous sum. It marked them as carrying more money than was safe, if they could be this extravagant.

But Ziji was really very thirsty now and he had noticed something. It had been possible the second bucket was poisoned, the first one being a ruse, kept clean. But a man had just drunk from it and was standing in front of them, laughing, pleased with himself.

“Yes, we’ll give you that,” Ziji said, making a decision.

He didn’t want his own men killing him, and he really wanted a scoop or two of wine. He added, “And tomorrow you can carry two buckets to the silk farm and offer them for nothing instead of ten cash. They’ll forgive you, and you know it. And you get to turn back right now and go home.”

The boy stared at him. Then he nodded. “All right. For twenty-five. Cash first.”

Ziji’s men let out a cheer. First happy sound all day, he thought. The magistrate hastily reached inside his robe and counted out coins (showing too heavy a purse in the process). The others all stood up and were watching as he dropped the money into the wine seller’s palm.

“Bucket’s yours,” the boy said. “Well, the wine is. I need the bucket.”

One of Ziji’s soldiers picked it up and, showing more good sense than the other merchants had, carried it to their shade. Another rushed for two ladles from the gear on one of the donkeys. They crowded around the bucket.

With a leader’s almost inhuman restraint, Ziji stayed where he was. “Save me two scoops at the end,” he called. He wondered if that would earn him any goodwill.

He wondered if they’d save him the two scoops.

The other party retreated across the roadway, chattering loudly and laughing—there had been an adventure here, and they’d drunk wine very fast. They would probably sleep now, Ziji thought.

The wine seller moved away from both groups and found some shade, waiting for his bucket. His day had just been made easy. He could turn around and go home.

Ziji watched his men around the wine, drinking too quickly. The magistrate, predictably, had just taken a third scoop. No one was going to gainsay him. Except Ziji, perhaps. Reluctantly, he stood up. He’d have been happier if they’d done it properly and carried the bucket over to their leader with the two last scoops.

He sighed. Things were seldom done properly these days. It was a sad world in which they lived. He glanced across the road to the woods on the other side.

All six merchants were walking into the roadway. Three carried swords. Two held their walking staffs as weapons now. The wine seller rose to his feet. He crossed towards the other merchants, not hurrying. One of them handed him a short bow and a quiver of arrows. The man was smiling.

Ziji opened his mouth and shouted a warning.

In that same moment the magistrate toppled heavily into the grass. An instant later another of Ziji’s men did the same. Then a third.

In an alarmingly short interval they were all sprawled on the ground, as if drugged. Of course drugged, Zhao Ziji thought. He was facing seven men alone.

“This isn’t worth dying for,” said the young wine seller gently.

He seemed to have taken the lead here, improbably. His bow was trained on Ziji. He added, “Although, if you insist, or feel there is no reason to go on living, I will kill you.”

“How …?” Ziji stammered.

“With an arrow!” The clean-shaven man who had appeared to lead the merchants laughed.

“No, Fang. He means how was it done. He is a thinking soldier. Some of them are.” The shirtless wine seller’s manner had changed. He didn’t seem so young any more.

Ziji looked at them. He’d had none of the wine but felt lightheaded, dizzy with fear and dismay.

The young one said, “Two ladles. Shanbao powder in the second one when Lao brought the bucket back and dipped it but I didn’t let him drink. Remember?”

Ziji remembered.

He said, “How … how did you know?”

The wine seller—who wasn’t really a wine seller—shook his head impatiently.

“Really? There’s a party from Hsiang on this road every summer, heading for the capital. Kai Zhen’s gifts. You don’t think country people are smart enough to realize that? That they might let us know when you set out, how many, how you are dressed? For a small share of what we take? And to get at the minister who created the Flowers and Rocks program that is killing people and destroying the countryside to build a garden in Hanjin?”

So much for disguises, Ziji thought. He tried to think of a threat that would mean anything to these men. He took a moment, but nothing came to him.

“You might as well kill me,” he said.

The men in the road grew quiet. They hadn’t expected that. “Truly?” said the wine seller.

Ziji nodded towards the magistrate. “I assume they are drugged, not dying? That one will blame me when he wakes up. The prefect will believe him. He’s a ranking civil servant. I’m just—”

“A soldier,” said the young man. He looked thoughtful now. “He doesn’t have to wake up.”

He swung his bow over and trained an arrow on the magistrate in the grass.

Ziji shook his head. “Don’t. He did nothing wrong. This was my error. We don’t drink that wine, you wouldn’t have attacked twelve with seven.”

“Yes, we would,” the man with the bow said. “Half of you dead with arrows before we’d fight, and that half would all be soldiers. The others are useless and you know it. Tell me, do you want him dead?”

Ziji shook his head. “It does nothing for me, and he’s only greedy, not evil.”

“They’re all evil,” said one of the outlaws. He spat. The wine seller said nothing.

“Besides,” Ziji added, “any of them will tell the same story, and it was my job to stop them from drinking that wine.”

“We can kill them all.” Not the wine seller, one of the others.

“No,” said Ziji. “Just me. My price to pay. I might be executed if I go back, anyhow. May I have a moment to pray?”

The wine seller had an odd expression on his face. He looked young again. He was young. “We don’t need to kill you,” he said. “Join us.”

Ziji stared.

“Think about it,” the young one went on. “If you are right, you have no future in that prefecture, or in the army, and you may be executed. There’s at least a life with us.”

“I don’t like it,” said one of the others.

“Why?” said the young one, his eyes still on Ziji. “This is how I joined you, back when. And how did you come to be one of the Marsh Outlaws, Kui? Wandering through villages asking for honest work?”

There was laughter.

At least he knew who these were now, Ziji thought. The Outlaws of the Marsh were the largest bandit group in Kitai south of the Great River. Every year there were urgent requests to Hanjin to send an army to deal with them. Every year these were ignored. There was a war being fought: the southern prefectures were expected to deal with local bandits themselves.

It was all true, Ziji thought: he had no life left at the barracks. Either because he’d be executed, or beaten and jailed by an enraged prefect, or simply because he’d never be promoted now. He’d probably be sent to the war.

He said that. “I could go fight the Kislik.”

The other man nodded. “They’ll likely send you there. They need soldiers. You did hear about the disaster?”

Everyone had heard. It wasn’t a new story. A deep thrust ordered north through the desert, aimed at Erighaya, horses and foot soldiers, far into enemy lands, then halted outside the walled Kislik city because—amazingly—they hadn’t brought siege engines. They’d forgotten them. No one had checked. It was madness, an utterly improbable tale, and it was true.

What sort of army could do that? Ziji had wondered when the news reached their barracks. Kitai had ruled and subjugated the whole world once. Rulers from all over had sent them gifts, horses, women, slaves.

Their northwestern army’s supply lines had been severed behind them. Over half their soldiers had died on the retreat from Erighaya. Almost seventy thousand men, Ziji had heard. A terrifying number. They had killed their commanders on the way south, it was reported. Eaten them, some said. Starving men in a desert, far from home.

And Deputy Prime Minister Kai Zhen, in overall command of that campaign, was receiving birthday gifts from all over Kitai, timed to arrive at court this autumn.

“Don’t go back,” said the young man with the bow. “We can use good men. The emperor needs to be made aware his servants and policies are evil and incompetent.”

Zhao Ziji looked at him. A life, he thought, could change quickly. It could turn like a water wheel on some isolated hilltop in summer heat.

“That’s what you are doing?” he said, perhaps too wryly for someone facing an arrow. “Sending memoranda to the emperor?”

“Some go into the woods for money. Food. Some for a life of freedom. Some like to kill. I’m … some of us are also trying to say something, yes. Enough voices, we might be heard.”

Ziji looked at him.

“What is your name?” He wasn’t sure why he asked.

“Ren Daiyan,” said the other, promptly. “They call me Little Dai.”

“You aren’t so little.”

The other man grinned. “I was young when I started, west of here. And besides, I have a small cock.”

The others burst into laughter. Ziji blinked. A strange sensation came over him.

“Is that so?” he said.

“Of course not!” one of the outlaws cried. Someone made a loud, crude jest, the kind Ziji knew from soldiers in barracks too long without women.

Something altered inside him, as if a key had turned in a lock. “I’m Zhao Ziji,” he said. And, for the first time in his life, added, “They call me Ziji Shortcock.”

“Truly? Ho! We were born to be companions then!” cried the man named Ren Daiyan. “To seek women and wine and live forever!” Words from a very old song.

In the laughter that followed, Zhao Ziji stepped into the roadway and became an outlaw.

He felt, astonishingly, as if he were coming home. He looked at the young man—Ren Daiyan was surely ten years younger than him—and knew, in that same moment, that he would follow this man all his life, until one or the other or both of them died.

CHAPTER IV

She has made herself wait before trying again, striving for inner harmony, sitting very still at her writing desk. The first three attempts at the letter have been unsatisfactory. She is aware that tension, fear, the importance of what she is writing are affecting her brush.

That must not be permitted. She breathes deeply, eyes on a lotus tree she’s always liked in the courtyard. It is very early morning, autumn. Outside her window the compound is quiet, even with the extreme crowding in the space assigned the imperial family members.

She is alone in their house. Her husband is away, north, in search of steles to buy or transcribe, bronzes, artifacts for their collection. It is a collection now; they are becoming known for it.

Qi Wai is travelling near the border again, towards the lands possessed (for a long time now) by the Xiaolu. It ought to be all right. They are at peace—a peace they buy each year. Her husband’s father has told them that most of their silver comes back in trade at the authorized border trading towns. He approves of the payments, though if he did not he wouldn’t say so. Members of the imperial family live watched, careful lives.

In dealings with the Xiaolu, the Kitan emperor is still the “uncle,” the emperor of the Xiaolu is his “nephew.” The uncle kindly gives “gifts” to the nephew. It is a fiction, a courtly lie, but lies can be important in the world, Lin Shan has come to understand.

The world is a terrible place.

She chides herself, inwardly. Bitter thoughts will not bring calm. She ruined her first attempt at the letter not only with an anxious brush but with a tear that fell on the page, making the strokes for the word councillor blur and run.

On the desk are the Four Treasures of the Room of Literature: ink stone, ink stick, paper, brushes. Her husband brought her back a red ink stone, offered it as a gift at the New Year’s Festival. It is beautiful, old, Fourth Dynasty, he thinks.

For this letter, though, she is using her own first ink stone, from childhood. The one her father gave her. There might be, she thinks, some magic residing in it, a spiritual power to make the ink it grinds more persuasive.

She needs it to be, or her heart will break.

She takes up her stick again, pours water from the beaker into the ink stone’s hollow. Gestures she has performed all her life, rituals by now. She grinds the black ink stick into the stone, using her left hand as she has been taught (by her father).

She knows exactly what she wants to say in this letter, how many characters, how much ink she needs. You always grind a little more than you need, she has been taught (by her father). If you are forced to grind again, in order to finish, the texture at the end of your writing will be different from the beginning, a flaw.

She sets the ink stick down. Lifts the brush in her right hand. Dips it in the ink. She is using the rabbit’s-hair brush for this letter: it makes the most precise characters. Sheep’s hair is more bold, but though she needs the letter to seem confident of its virtue, it is still a plea.