Under Heaven (20 page)

signify
. And, sister, you will always remember that you represent this family, not only yourself, in everything you do. Do you understand?"
And a third time Li-Mei nodded her head.
"Say it," her brother commanded.
"I understand," she said, as clearly as she could manage. Six years old, mud and overripe fallen fruit on her face and hands and clothing. Representing her family in all she did.
He stared at her a moment, then rose with another grunt and walked from the orchard down the long row. He wore black, she remembers now. Unusual for a nineteen-year-old, bordering on presumption (no red belt, mind you), but Shen Liu was
always
going to pass the exams, all three levels, and become a mandarin in the palace in Xinan. Always.
Tai came into the orchard a little later.
It was a certainty that he'd waited for Liu to come and go, as a second brother should. The images of that day are piercingly sharp, a wound: she is equally certain, thinking back, that Tai knew pretty much exactly what Liu had said to her.
She was sitting up still, so this time she saw her brother's approach. He smiled when he drew near, she'd known he would smile at her. What she hadn't expected was that he'd be carrying a basin of water and a towel. He'd guessed she'd have been lying on muddy ground.
He sat down next to her, cross-legged, careless of his own clothing and slippers, and placed the bowl between them, draping the towel elaborately over a forearm, like a servant. She thought he'd make a funny face to try to make her laugh, and she was determined not to laugh (she almost always did), but he didn't do that, he just waited. After a moment, Li-Mei dipped her cupped hands and washed her face and hands and arms. There was nothing she could do about her specially made dance costume.
Tai handed her the towel and she dried herself. He took the towel back and set it aside, tossing the water from the basin and putting that beside him, as well.
"Better," he said, looking at her.
"Thank you," she said.
She remembers a small silence, but an easy one. Tai was easy to be with. She'd worshipped both her older brothers, she recalls, but Tai she'd loved.
"I fell," she said.
He didn't smile. "I know. It must have felt awful. You would have looked forward so much to dancing."
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He said, "It was very good, Li-Mei, until the wind picked up. I started worrying when I felt it."
She looked at him.
"Perhaps ... perhaps next time, maybe even tonight ... you might do it inside? I believe that is a reason dancers dislike performing out-of-doors. Any breeze affects how their clothing flows, and ... they can fall."
"I didn't know ... do they prefer inside?"
"I know it for certain," her brother said. "You were very brave to do it in the courtyard on an autumn morning."
She'd permitted herself to briefly claim the notion she'd been brave. Then shook her head resolutely.
"No, I just did it where mother and the drum man decided. I wasn't brave."
He smiled. "Li-Mei, just saying that makes you honest and brave. And that would be true, it
will
be true, when you are twenty-six, not six. I am proud of you. And father was. I saw it as he watched. Will you dance again for us. Inside? Tonight?"
Her lip quivered. "He was ... father was almost laughing."
Tai grew thoughtful. "Do you know a truth about people? When someone falls, if they don't hurt themselves, it
is
funny, little sister. I'm not sure why. Do you have an idea?"
She'd shaken her head. She didn't know why it was funny, but she remembered giggling when Chao toddled and toppled into leaves.
Tai added, "And father didn't laugh. He was afraid for you at first, then afraid he would hurt your pride if he smiled, so he didn't."
"I saw. He was holding it back. He covered his mouth with his hand."
"Good for you, seeing that. Yes. Because he'd been very proud. He said he hopes you'll try again."
Her lip wasn't quivering any more. "Did he? Truly, Tai?"
And Tai had nodded. "Truly."
She still doesn't know, to this day, if that last
was
the truth, but they'd walked out of the orchard together, Tai carrying the basin and the towel, and she'd danced for them again that night (the dancing costume hurriedly cleaned), among carefully spaced lanterns in the largest reception room, and she hadn't fallen. Her father had smiled throughout, watching her, and patted her cheek when she came over to him after, and then he had stood up and bowed formally, without laughing at all, and given her a string of copper coins, the way one paid a real dancer, and then a sweet from one of his pockets, because she was six years old.
IF SHE WERE TO ADDRESS within herself--or explain to someone who might ask and have any claim to an answer--a few of the very great differences between her older brothers, Li-Mei thinks, those long-ago conversations in the autumn orchard would do well enough.
Liu had told her--that day, and endlessly after, in person and in letters from Xinan--that she represented the family in all she did. She accepted it as true: for her, for any woman or man. That was the way of things in Kitai. You were nothing in the empire without a family behind you.
But she is beyond the empire now. The nomads, with their strings of long-maned horses and huge wolfhounds and their primitive yurts and harsh-sounding language ... don't
know
her family. Her father. Don't care at all about that. They don't even know--the thought comes hard to her--that she's part of the Shen lineage. She's been named as one of the imperial dynasty. That is how the Bogu see her, that's why they look so proud, glancing at her as they ride by.
The honour of it eludes her, just now. She is the embodiment of a smug deception and of her brother's cold ambition. And no one at home by their small stream will ever see her again.
She wonders, controlling emotion, if a letter will even reach her mother and Second Mother, if she sends one, or a dozen, with Bogu riders to the trading place by the river's loop in spring.
Tai had called her brave, had repeated over and again how clever she was, growing up, how both these things would help her in life. She isn't so sure any more. He wouldn't have been lying, but he might have been wrong.
Bravery might mean only that she doesn't weep at night, or insist on hearing the same interminable lament as they travel, and Li-Mei has no idea at all how
cleverness
might play out for the second or fifth wife of the kaghan's heir.
She doesn't even know what number she'll be.
She knows nothing of the man she's travelling to wed--whose bed she'll share, if he even chooses. In her carried litter, Li-Mei draws a deep breath.
She can kill herself. That has been done by women married in this fashion. It is considered a disgrace, of course. She isn't sure she cares. She can decide to cry and mourn all the way north, and after they arrive.
Or, she can represent her father's bright, tall memory, and the version of herself Tai has held up like a bronze mirror all her life. The version of Shen Li-Mei that an aged empress had loved and trusted in her own exile after the Precious Consort came and bewitched with music and wit and beauty, changing the world.
A woman
could
change the world.
And Li-Mei is not the first woman to be exiled from her life and home, through marriage, through the ending of marriage, through someone's death, through birth, through the inability to bear a child ... in one hard way or another.
She hears shouted orders. She recognizes some words by now, having paid attention. They are finally stopping for the night. The approach of summer on the steppe means very long days.
The routine has been established: the two princesses remain in their litters while their yurts are prepared. They step out when summoned and proceed directly into the yurts where a meal is brought to them. After, they are readied for bed by their women, and they sleep. They rise so early that, even nearing summer, there is sometimes frost on the grass, or a mist rising.
In the litter, as it is set down, Li-Mei makes a face. It is somewhat childlike, in fact, although she wouldn't like to be told that. She pushes bare feet into slippers.
She draws back her curtain herself--all the way this time--and she steps outside into evening light and the dusty wind of the wide steppe.
The grass around her, the world, is green as emeralds. Her heart is beating fast. She hopes no one can tell that.
One of her litter-bearers cries out, startled. A rider turns at the sound, sees her standing there and comes galloping back through the tall grass: the same one who glanced at her before. He swings off his horse before it has even stopped, hits the ground smoothly, running then slowing, an action done half a thousand times, Li-Mei thinks.
He comes up, anger and urgency in his face. He speaks fiercely, gesturing at the litter for her to re-enter, no ambiguity in the message though she doesn't understand the words.
She does not move. He says it again, same words, more loudly, same harsh, pointing gesture. Others have turned now, are looking at them. Two more riders are coming quickly from the front of the column, their expressions grim. It would be wisest, Li-Mei thinks, to go back into her litter.
She slaps the man in front of her, hard, across the face.
The impact stings her hand. She cannot remember the last time she struck someone. She cannot remember ever doing so, in fact.
She says, enunciating clearly--he will not understand, but it doesn't matter: "I am the daughter of a Kitan general, and a member of the imperial family of the Celestial Emperor Taizu, Lord of the Five Directions, and I am bride-to-be of the kaghan's heir. Whatever rank you hold, any of you, you will listen to me now. I am
done
with staying in a litter or a yurt all day and night. Bring me someone who understands a civilized tongue and I will say it again!"
It is possible he might kill her.
She may be standing at the edge of night here, of crossing over. His shame will be very great, struck by a woman.
But she sees indecision in his eyes and relief floods through her. She is not going to die in this evening wind, they have too much vested in her coming north to this marriage.
He had looked so proud moments before, riding past, gazing at her. With nothing but instinct as her guide, Li-Mei steps back, places her feet together, and bows, hands formally clasping each other inside the wide sleeves of her robe.
Straightening, she then smiles, briefly, royalty condescending to ease a hard moment.
Let them be confused, she thinks. Let them be uncertain of her. Showing anger and independence, then courtesy and even grace. She sees that the curtain of the other princess's litter (the real princess) has been pulled slightly back. Good. Let her watch. At least the idiotic song has stopped.
Li-Mei hears birds; they are passing overhead, in great numbers. There is a lake nearby. That will be why they've chosen this place to stop for the night.
She points to the water. "What lake is that? What is it called in your tongue?"
She looks at the man in front of her. The other two have reined up by now, have remained on their horses, visibly uncertain as to how to proceed. She says, "If I am to live among the Bogu, I must learn these things. Bring me someone who can answer!"
The man in front of her clears his throat and says, amazingly, "We name it Marmot Lake. There are many of them here. Marmots, their burrows on the hills, other side."
He speaks Kitan. She raises her eyebrows and favours him--again, keeping it brief--with a smile.
"Why did you not tell me you spoke our language?"
He looks away, manages a shrug that is meant to be disdainful, but fails.
"You learned it trading by the river's loop?"
He looks quickly back at her, startled (but it wasn't a difficult surmise).
"Yes," he says.
"In that case," she says, coldly now, "if you have anything to say to me, including requests I may or may not agree to, you will say it from now on in the language I know. And you will tell the others what I said to you just now. Do you understand me?"
And, gloriously, after a short pause, he nods.
"Tell them," she says, and she turns her back on them to look east towards the lake and the birds. The wind is tugging at her hair, trying to pulls strands of it free of the long pins.
There is a poem about that, the wind as an impatient lover.
She hears him clear his throat again, then begin to speak in his own tongue to the riders who have gathered.
She waits for him to finish before she turns back, and now she gives him something, gives it to all of them. "I will be trying to learn your language now. I will have questions. You must show me the riders who know Kitan. Do you understand?"
He nods again. But, more importantly, one of those on horseback lifts a hand, as if asking permission to speak (which is proper!) and says, "I speak also your tongue, princess. Better than this one." He grins, crooked-toothed. An edge of competition here. He is a bigger man.
And Li-Mei sees, with pleasure, that the one standing before her looks angrily at the new claimant. She smiles at the one on the horse this time. "I hear you," she says, "though I will form my own conclusions as to whose speech is best among those here. I will let you all know, after I've had time to judge."
They must be played, she thinks, kept in balance, the men here. Any woman from the Ta-Ming knows something of how to do that. Meanwhile, this is useful, the first good thing in who knows how long. All her life she has been known for asking questions, and now she might find some answers here.
She needs to learn as much as she can about the man she's marrying and the life of women on this steppe. If existence is to become a dark horror, she
will
end it herself. But if days and nights can be shaped in any way here beyond the Wall and the known world, she has decided to try. She is trying now.
She looks at the one standing before her. "Your name?" She keeps her tone and bearing imperious.
"Sibir," he says. Then adds, "Princess." And inclines his head.
"Come with me," she says, bestowing this upon him as a gift for the others to see and envy, "while they put together the yurts. Tell me where we are, how far we have yet to travel. Teach me the names of things."
She walks away without waiting for him, going towards the water, out of this jumbled column of riders and litters and disassembled yurts. The long sun throws her shadow ahead of her.
Be imperial
, she reminds herself, head high. The sky, she thinks, is enormous, and the horizon (the horizon she is married to) is astonishingly far. Sibir bestirs himself, follows quickly.