Chapter 69: The Lord's Opinion |
The feast ended at the second hour past midday.
Elder Hua had set out the long tables in the commons with rice and the village's own salted fish and stewed greens with garlic, and the cooks had pressed enough rice wine from the autumn batch to fill twelve clay jars set under the eastern eave. Commander Xu sat at the elder's right hand at the head table, with Fei Liao at the elder's left. The militia captains and the cavalry captains and Administrator Wen sat at the second table. I sat at the third table with my four disciples, because the third table was where I belonged.
The elder gave a short speech. He thanked the Lord of the Western Reaches for the provisions and for the gentle hand the village had been given that morning, and he thanked Commander Xu for the bow she had offered. Commander Xu returned the speech with one of her own that was shorter and less ornamented. The village ate, the soldiers ate, and the cohort drank one cup each of the rice wine and were sober when the feast ended.
Preparations resumed in the afternoon.
The cavalry tended the horses at the western paddock. The Hekou militia checked weapons and oiled leather under the eaves of the temporary barracks the village had cleared for them. Administrator Wen's quartermasters counted the remaining rations and set aside the portions for the march. The scouts Commander Xu had sent out at the second hour returned at the fourth with maps of the lower Meishan road updated against what we had ridden through, and they sat with Fei Liao in his command tent to compare them against the maps Commander Xu had brought from the Outer Garrison.
I walked to the open ground past the southern pasture and looked at the Snare from a distance of fifty paces, only to confirm the five stones still sat flush with the earth and had not been disturbed by wind or animal. They had not. The cord scrape I had used to mark the chords was already half-blown away. By the third watch, the cord scrape would be gone entirely, and the only thing remaining would be five stones in the earth in a shape no one in this world could read except me.
I walked back to the village in the slanting late-afternoon light.
The cohort gathered at the eastern edge of the commons in the early evening, under the largest banyan tree in Chianji. The lanterns from the feast had been left in their branches, and the tables had not been broken down yet. Villagers were still around. Children ran between the table legs. Elders sat at the far end with the elder's wife pouring the second pressing of rice wine from earthen pitchers. A few militia men from Hekou had wandered over to join the village table.
Sun Hai was loud. He was on his fourth cup when I sat down at the end of the table, his cheeks red, telling a militia man from Hekou about the watchtower climb. Cao Yan was on his second cup, drinking it slow, watching the children at the next table without speaking. Lin Zhi had her cup in her hand but had not lifted it in some time. Mu Renshu had taken one cup at the feast and refused the second when it had been offered, and his cup sat in front of him with the wine line untouched.
A soldier came up to the table at the seventh hour past midday, wearing the green sash and the cavalry insignia. He bowed at the edge of the lantern light.
"Squad Captain Pei. Commander Xu requests your presence in her tent at the eighth hour."
"I will be there."
He bowed again and left.
Cao Yan looked at me over his cup.
"What does she want?"
"I do not know. We will find out."
I finished my wine and rose. The cohort watched me go.
Commander Xu's tent stood at the centre of the cavalry section, on a raised wooden platform that had been laid out the afternoon the column reached Chianji. Two cavalrymen stood at the front entrance with spears at rest. They saluted me as I approached. I returned the salute and they let me through without speaking.
I knocked on the wooden post inside the flap.
"Enter."
I went in.
Commander Xu sat on a low cushion at the eastern side of a low lacquered table, with one clay jar and one cup set on the lacquer and a second cushion placed beside hers. Her armor was off. She wore a brown under-robe with green trim at the collar, and her hair was down on her shoulders for the first time I had seen since I visited her in Lanyu. A single lantern burned on a stand at the western corner of the tent. The maps had been rolled and put away. There were no aides present.
She gestured for me to sit beside her.
I sat down next to her.
She poured wine into the cup, lifted it to her own mouth and drank half, then set it down between us and slid it to my side. The lacquer was old and dark and the cup left a faint wet trace where she had slid it.
I drank what was left and set the cup down on her side.
She poured again.
"How was your afternoon, Squad Captain Pei?"
"Quiet."
"The cohort?"
"They are well."
She lifted the cup, drank, and set it on my side. I drank, set it back. We passed it once more without speaking.
She had not yet asked the question she had called me here to ask. I knew it was coming, and she knew I knew, and we drank one more round of the cup before she set it down on her side of the table and looked at me.
"Are you all right, Pei Liang?"
"I am, Commander."
She did not speak for a beat. She refilled the cup, drank half, set it on my side.
"Are you truly all right, Pei Liang?"
I had reached for the cup. My hand stopped just short of the rim.
I set my hand back on the table, palm down, and looked at the lacquer for a beat before I spoke.
I sighed. The sigh was quieter than I had wanted it to be.
"I am not certain I should be forgiven, Commander."
She waited.
I took a slow breath and let it out before I spoke again.
"I had grown comfortable in Hekou the years after we joined the Western Reaches. I knew I should have acted against Pei Yan sooner, but I was hesitant to do so because she was family, and family isn't supposed to kill each other."
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She did not interrupt.
"The man I was in my first quarter at Hekou would have read the situation the day it began. The man I was in the autumn read it the day after the villagers died."
I picked the cup up. The wine was still warm.
"I do not know if a Squad Captain is owed the chance to get the edge back. I do not know what I am owed at all in the matter of forgiveness."
I drank. I set the cup down on her side.
She looked at me for a long beat. Her face did not change. I did not regret what I had said, and I did not feel relieved by saying it either.
She poured the last from the first jar into the cup and reached behind her cushion for a second jar from a small basket I had not noticed when I came in. She poured the second jar into the cup until it was full. She drank half. She set it on my side.
"When my husband died," she said, "I had been on the Border Campaigns with him for two quarters."
Her voice was her command voice when she began, the voice she used at the daily briefing, the voice she had used in the commander's hall at the Outer Garrison.
"He commanded a wing of cavalry under Commander Han of the eastern army. Three hundred horse, a baggage train, a doctor, four officers reporting to him. I was a Lieutenant on Han's staff. The campaign had gone well for two quarters. We had pushed the steppe raiders back to the line of the third river, and the plan was to hold that line through autumn and begin negotiations in the spring."
She lifted the cup, drank, and set it on my side.
"There was a fortified position at a place called Ningfeng that the raiders had taken in the late summer. A square stone keep with two outer walls and a garrison of two hundred raiders inside. My husband had been ordered to take it. The plan was a two-pronged assault, infantry up the southern road to draw the garrison's attention, cavalry striking the northern face when the infantry was committed."
She paused. The command voice eased.
"He told me the morning of the assault that he would come out unscathed. He had said it before every action of the campaign. Every time he had been right. I had no reason to disbelieve him. He was the best horseman the Western Reaches had, his men were the best-trained company under the Lord's banner, the plan was a good plan."
She looked down at the cup. She did not lift it on her turn.
"I believed him."
I waited.
She drew a slow breath.
"The infantry was slower up the southern road than the plan had assumed. My husband's cavalry struck the northern face at the appointed hour, and the garrison did not commit south because the southern road had not yet arrived. The two hundred raiders held both faces. My husband's three hundred horse were caught between the walls and the gatehouse with nowhere to wheel, and the raiders had archers on both walls."
She lifted the cup, drank, and set it down on her side without passing it back.
"I had been at Commander Han's tent when the rider came in with the report. I had seen the dust on the southern road three hours before the rider arrived. I had asked Han whether the infantry was on schedule. He had said yes. He had been wrong, and I had not pushed, because I believed that my husband would have made it out alive just as he had done so many times before. He and his men had escaped death at every turn, and even knowing that he was pinned, I hesitated to march our infantry as back up in case we needed them in reserve."
She closed her eyes for a beat. When she opened them, the personal register was still in her voice.
"My husband was hit by one arrow at the gatehouse. My husband was wearing the Western Reaches green that day and a steel helm with the gold edge of his rank. The arrow went through the gap at his throat below the helm. He bled out and died."
She poured. Her hand was steady on the jar.
"Seventy-eight of his three hundred died at Ningfeng. The men were dead because I had not pushed."
She drank, set the cup on my side. I lifted it and drank. The wine had gone a little sweeter from the second jar.
When she spoke again, the command voice was back.
"The Lord called me to Lanyu when the campaign ended. I went, in my dress armor, and I knelt in his hall and I offered him my life for the death of his brother. The Lord let me kneel for a long time. He did not speak. When he did speak, he told me he had read every report from the Border Campaigns, that he understood the chain of command and the limits of a Lieutenant's place, and that he forgave me. He told me to rise and to take Han's command at the eastern wing, because Han would be the one that would give his life for his poor judgement."
She paused. The command voice held, but her eyes were not quite the same.
"I have been Commander of the Western Reaches Army for eight years. Some years I think I learned what the Lord told me to learn. Some years I think I did not."
She drank and set the cup on my side. The cup was almost empty.
"The Lord's forgiveness gave me the strength to carry on."
She refilled the cup.
"Your failure was not only your own either, Pei Liang. It was our responsibility as well to protect your village. I was harsh on you, but only because I wished for you to learn that you cannot place the burdens of a village onto your shoulders. My husband placed the burdens of the army upon him as well, and he paid the price for it."
I sat with the cup in my hand and did not drink from it.
"Thank you for your words, Commander. And for trusting me with them."
She inclined her head.
Grief is a wound, and like any other wound it will scar. I do not have to carry it alone. I have Bolin and Suyin and the disciples with me, and tonight I have Commander Xu as well.
I drank what was left in the cup and set it down.
Then the piece I had missed came back to me. She had offered the Lord her life for his brother's death. Her husband had died at Ningfeng.
Her husband was the Lord's brother.
"You were married to the Lord's brother?"
"I was."
"That is why you are Commander."
"It is part of why. The other part is the campaign and the eight years. The marriage opened the door. The campaign earned the keep on the other side of it."
"So you were offering me a door at Lanyu?"
"I was offering you what I had been given. The door was not the only thing on offer. I would not have offered marriage to anyone I did not respect. I will not insult you by pretending otherwise."
I drank. The cup was almost empty again.
She turned to look at me. Her hair was down on her shoulders and the lantern light was on her cheek, and she did not look like Commander Xu right then. She looked like a woman, same as any other.
I thought about Suyin.
I did not think of Commander Xu as a substitute for that. I did not think of her as a competitor for that either. She was something else, in a different register that did not erase the first one or ask to. The army respected her, and I respected her too. I was loved by Suyin in the cosmic register, and I was respected and wanted by Commander Xu in the steady one, and both of those were real. Neither one cancelled the other.
She put her hand over mine on the table.
Her Qi flowed through her palm into the back of my hand, warm and steady. It was banked low, fully under her control. It did not feel anything like Suyin's. Suyin's Qi when she was open to me felt transformative, in a way I did not have words for, in a way larger than the words I would have used if I had them. Xu's was the steady warmth of a blanket laid across the cold places at the back of a hand.
"There is one more thing I wanted to tell you," she said.
"Tell me, Commander."
"The Lord wishes to meet with you when the campaign is over. He has asked me to invite you to Lanyu. The matter is one he wishes to discuss in person."
"Why?"
"You are the Squad Captain of the Cultivators of the Western Reaches. The Hekou academy is a matter the Lord wishes to discuss. Other matters, the Lord will name himself when he sees you."
"I accept the invitation."
"Good."
I drank what was left in the cup. The second jar was almost empty. The lantern was burning low, and the wick would need to be trimmed before another hour.
I looked at her hand on mine.
"I should not be in your tent at this hour with no aide present. People will talk."
She laughed.
"They will talk. Let them. The talk will be useful to you when you finally build the Sect you have been thinking about since the spring."
I did not lift my hand from under hers. I did not speak for a beat.
"You said the Lord would not like the idea."
"I did. That is what I told you at Lanyu."
"You did not say what you thought of the idea."
"I am saying that the Lord's opinion is the Lord's opinion. It is not the only opinion in the Western Reaches. It is not the only opinion in this tent."
She lifted her hand off mine, refilled the cup from the last of the second jar, and slid it to me.
"That is all I will say tonight, Pei Liang."
I squeezed her hand once, lightly, then let it go.
"Thank you, Commander."
"Go and rest well. That is an order."
"Yes, Commander."
I rose, bowed, and walked out of her tent into the camp.
The camp was quiet at the eighth hour past midday and into the night. The lanterns at the perimeter were burning low. The soldiers on watch were at their posts. The cohort was at their tents under the banyan tree. I walked past them without stopping and went to my own tent at the eastern edge of the cavalry section, went inside, closed the flap, and sat down on my cot.
I did not light a lamp.
She told me the Sect was the Lord's opinion. Not hers.
She told me the Lord wishes to meet with me at Lanyu when the campaign is over.
She told me her husband's death story. The Lord lost his only brother eight years ago.
She told me in the commander's hall at the Outer Garrison that the Meishan campaign could be a trap. The Lord ordered the march anyway. We are riding into it anyway.
She told me the Lord's opinion is not the only opinion in the Western Reaches.
I mulled over what she had said, trying to read between the lines. Why would Commander Xu verbalize the relevance of the Lord's opinion now? Even earlier in the meeting at the Outer Garrison, she foresaw that a trap was coming, and she marched anyway.
Finally, it clicked as I laid down.
The Lord may not be long for this world.