River of Stars. Guy Gavriel Kay

wine!”

      “It will be brought for you,” Wengao replied gravely. “My doctors have advised that tea will serve me better at this hour of the day. I sometimes pretend to heed them.” He glanced briefly at his girl. She nodded, and headed back towards the house.

      “Probably serve me better too.” Chen laughed. He turned. “I believe this is Court Gentleman Lin Kuo? Your late wife was a distant kinswoman of mine.”

      “She was, honourable sir. You are gracious to recall it and to know me.”

      “Hardly so!” Chen laughed again. “They were the better family in Szechen. We were the poor-but-earnest scholars in training.”

      Not true about his family, Wengao knew, but typical of Chen. He made the other introduction himself.

      “And here is Miss Lin Shan, daughter of Master Lin and his late wife. He has brought her to see the peonies.”

      “As well he should,” said Chen. “The splendour of the flowers needs no further adornment, but we cannot have too much of beauty.”

      The father looked amusingly happy. The daughter …

      “You are too kind, Master Lu. It counts as a poet’s lie to suggest I have any beauty to add to Yenling in springtime.”

      Chen’s smile became radiant, his delight manifestly unfeigned. “So you think poets are liars, Miss Lin?”

      “I believe we have to be. Life and history must be adapted to the needs of our verses and songs. A poem is not a chronicle like a historian’s.” She looked at Xi Wengao with that last, and allowed herself—for the first time—a shy smile.

      We. Our.

      Wengao looked at her. He was wishing, again, that he was younger. He could remember being younger. His knees ached. So did his back, standing. He moved to sit again, carefully.

      Lu Chen strode to the chair and helped the older man. He made it seem a gesture of respect, courtesy to a mentor, not a response to need. Wengao smiled up at him and gestured for the other two men to sit. There were only three chairs, he hadn’t known the girl was coming.

      The girl was astonishing.

      He asked, because he couldn’t help himself, though it was too quick, “Old friend, how much time do we have with you?”

      Chen didn’t let his smile fade at all. “Ah! That depends on how good the wine proves to be when it arrives.”

      Wengao shook his head. “Tell me.”

      There were no secrets here. The two Lins would know—everyone knew—that Chen had been banished to Lingzhou Isle. It was said that the deputy prime minister, Kai Zhen—a man Wengao despised—was in charge of these matters now, as the prime minister aged.

      Wengao had heard it said there were a dozen kinds of spiders and snakes on Lingzhou that could kill you, and that the evening wind carried disease. There were tigers.

      Chen said quietly, “I imagine I can stay one or two nights. There are four guards accompanying me, but as long as I mostly keep moving south, and offer them food and wine, I believe I’ll be permitted some stops to visit friends.”

      “And your brother?”

      The younger brother, also a jinshi scholar, had also been exiled (families seldom escaped), but not so far, not to where he’d be expected to die.

      “Chao’s with his family at the farm by the Great River. I’ll go that way. My wife is with them, and will stay. We have land, he can farm it. They may eat chestnuts some winters but …”

      He left the thought unfinished. Lu Chao, the younger brother, had a wife and six children. He had passed the examinations startlingly young, ranked third in the year his older brother was first. Had received the honours that came with that, held very high office, served twice as an emissary to the Xiaolu in the north.

      He had also remonstrated steadily, speaking out at court and in written memoranda against the New Policies of Hang Dejin, arguing carefully and well, with passion.

      You paid a price for that. Dissent and opposition were no longer acceptable. But the younger brother wasn’t the poet and thinker who had shaped the intellectual climate of their day. So he had been exiled, yes, but would be permitted to try to survive. Like Wengao himself, here in his own garden in his own city. Undoubtedly, Kai Zhen would congratulate himself on being a compassionate man, a judicious servant of the emperor, attentive to the teachings of the Masters.

      Sometimes it was difficult to escape bitterness. They were living, Wengao thought, schooling his features, in a terrible time.

      His guest said, changing the mood, turning to the girl, “As to poets and lies, you may be right, Miss Lin, but would you not agree that even if we alter details we may aspire to deeper truth, not only offer falsehoods?”

      She flushed again, so directly addressed. She held her head high, though. She was the only one standing, again behind her father’s chair. She said, “Some poets, perhaps. But tell me, what man has written verses about courtesans or palace women happy in themselves, not wasting away or shedding tears on balconies in sorrow for vanished lovers? Does anyone think this is the only truth for their lives?”

      Lu Chen thought about it, giving her his full attention. “Does that mean it is not a truth at all? If someone writes of a particular woman, must he intend her to stand for every single one?”

      His voice in debate was as remembered, crisp and emphatic. Delighted to be engaged, even by a girl. Thrust and counter-thrust, as with a sword. No one at court knew how to use a sword any more. Kitai had changed; men had changed. This was a woman debating with Chen, however. You had to remind yourself it was a girl, listening to her.

      She said, “But if only the one tale is told, over and over, no others at all, what will readers decide is true?” She hesitated, and Wengao caught what must—really?—be mischief in her eyes. “If a great poet tells us he is at the Red Cliff of a legendary battle, and he is, in fact, fifty or a hundred li upriver, what will travellers in a later day think when they come to that place?”

      She lowered her gaze and clasped her hands demurely.

      Wengao burst out laughing. He clapped in approval, rocking back and forth. It was well known that Lu Chen had indeed mistaken where he was, boating on the Great River with friends on a full moon night. He’d decided he and his companions had drifted under the cliffs of the famous Third Dynasty battle … and he’d been wrong.

      Chen was grinning at the girl. He was a man who could be moved to passionate fury, but not by a conversation such as this. Here, playing with words and thoughts, he was in his element, and joyous. You could almost forget where he was going.

      One or two nights he’d said he could stay.

      Chen turned to the father, who was also smiling, though cautiously. Lin Kuo would be ready to beat a retreat. But Chen bowed to him, and said, “I honour the father of such a daughter. You will be careful in how she is wed, Court Gentleman?”

      “I have been, I believe,” the other man said. “She is betrothed to Qi Wai, the son of Qi Lao. They will be wed after the New Year.”

      “The Qi family? The imperial clan? What degree of relationship?”

      “Sixth degree. So it is all right,” said the father.

      Within five degrees of kinship to the emperor, imperial clan members could marry only with permission of the court office in charge of them. Outside that degree, they led a more normal life, though could never hold office, or take the examinations, and they were all required to live in the clan compound in Hanjin beside the palace.

      Imperial kin had always been a problem for emperors, especially those not entirely secure on the Dragon Throne. Once, the nearer males in line might have been killed (many times they had been, in wide, bloody reapings), but Twelfth Dynasty Kitai prided itself on being civilized.