River of Stars. Guy Gavriel Kay

ago. I said as much.”

      She had. Kai Zhen was aware that of the two of them she could be called the more mannish, direct. He was inclined to subtlety, observation, indirect action. Too female, if one followed the Cho Masters. But he had always argued (and believed) that at this court, at any Kitan court, mastery usually fell to the most subtle.

      Unless something like this morning happened.

      “It was the army, wife. Once Wu Tong’s generals failed to—”

      “No, husband! Once Wu Tong failed! And you were the one who placed the eunuch at the head of an army. I said that was a mistake.”

      She had. It was distressing.

      “He had won battles before! And is the most loyal ally I have. He owes me everything, will never have a family. Would you have preferred a commander who would claim all glory for himself? Come home seeking power?”

      She laughed harshly. “I’d have preferred a commander who’d bring proper weapons to a siege!”

      There was that.

      He said, hating the note in his voice, “It was that gardener! If he hadn’t been—”

      “It would have been someone else. You needed to denounce Wu Tong, husband! When we first heard of this. Before someone denounced you along with him.”

      Which is what had just happened.

      “And,” she added, the icy voice, “you needed to have the old man killed.”

      “He was leaving!” Zhen exclaimed. “It was aligned. He wants to retire. He can hardly see! Why risk a killing when it was falling to us?”

      He used us deliberately. He wasn’t capable of battling her in this mood. She was too fierce, he was too despairing. Sometimes a clash like this excited him, and her, and they would end up disrobed and entwined on the floor, or with her mounting and sheathing his sex while he leaned back in a sandalwood chair. Not today. She wasn’t going to make love to him today.

      It occurred to him—blade of a thought—that he could kill himself. Perhaps leave a letter asking forgiveness and pardon for his young sons? They might yet be allowed a life in Hanjin, at court.

      He didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t that kind of person. It crossed his mind that Yu-lan was. She could easily open her mouth right now, this moment, and tell him with her next words that he needed to die.

      She did open her mouth. She said, “There may yet be time.”

      He felt a weakness in his legs. “What do you mean?”

      “If the old man dies right now the emperor will need a prime minister immediately, one he knows, one capable of governing. He might then decide to—”

      It was occasionally a pleasure, a relief, something almost sexual, to see her err so greatly, be this far off the mark with the arrow of her thought.

      “There are half a dozen such men in Hanjin, wife. And one of them is Hang Dejin’s son.”

      “Hsien? That child?”

      His turn to laugh, bitterly. “He is almost my age, woman.”

      “He is still a child! Controlled by his father.”

      Kai Zhen looked past her then, out the window at the courtyard trees. He said, quietly, “We have all been controlled by his father.”

      He saw her hands clench into fists. “You are giving up? You are just going to go wherever they send you?”

      He gestured. “It will not be harsh. I am almost certain of that. We may only be sent across the Great River, home. Men return from banishment. Hang Dejin did. Xi Wengao did for a time. We have been exiled before, wife. That is when I devised the Flowers and Rocks. You know it. Even Lu Chen has been ordered freed this morning from Lingzhou Isle.”

      “What? No! He cannot …”

      She stopped, clearly shaken. He had told her about events this morning, his banishment, but not about this. His wife hated the poet with a murderous intensity. He had never known why.

      He grinned, mirthlessly. Strange, how it gave him pleasure to see her caught out. She was breathing hard. Not ice now. She was very desirable, suddenly, despite everything. It was his weakness. She was his weakness.

      He could see her register, after a moment, a change in him, just as he’d seen it in her. They were a match this way, he thought. They had carried each other to the brink of ultimate power. And now …

      His wife took a step towards him. She bit her lip. She never did that inconsequentially. Alone or among others, it had a meaning.

      Kai Zhen smiled, even as he felt his pulses change. “It will be all right,” he said. “It might take us a little time now, but we are not finished, wife.”

      “Someone else is,” she said. “You must allow me a death.”

      “Not the old man’s. I told you. It is too—”

      “Not the old man.”

      He waited.

      “The girl. Her letter started this.”

      He was startled, again. Stared at her.

      “She is a disgrace,” Yu-lan went on. “An offence to decent women. She offered to teach our daughter to write poetry!”

      “What? I did not know this.”

      “They met at a banquet. Ti-yu told her that poetry was no proper thing for a woman. The other one, this Lin Shan, laughed at her.”

      “I did not know this,” he said again.

      “And now … now she writes a letter that sends catastrophe to us!”

      That wasn’t entirely true, Kai Zhen thought, but his sleek, glittering wife had taken another step. Light fell upon her now.

      “Indeed,” was all he managed to say.

      “Leave this to me,” Yu-lan murmured. Meaning, he realized, many things.

      With those words she had come right up to him, not so much smaller that it was difficult for her to draw his head down with her slender hands. She bit his lip, the way she often did when they began. Often, she drew blood.

      “Here, wife? In our reception chamber?”

      “Here. Now. Please, my lord,” whispered his wife in his ear. Her tongue touched him. Her hands became busy, with him, with his clothing.

      Please, my lord. Across the courtyard, young and beautiful concubines, bodies washed and scented for him, were wailing for the fate that had overtaken all of them. The autumn light came into the room through the western windows. It had become late afternoon. It would be cold tonight in Hanjin.

      KAI ZHEN WOKE. It was dark. He realized he’d fallen asleep among the scattered pillows. He tried to rouse himself. He felt languid, eased. He had scratches on one arm. He felt them on his back as well.

      He heard a bird singing, a thin sound in the cold. The concubines were silent now. Yu-lan was gone. He knew what she had left him to do. She was making a mistake and he knew that, too. He just didn’t feel he could do anything about it.

      He was an immensely assured man, competent, calculating, subtle. There were only two people alive he felt he could not control.

      His wife, and an old, almost-blind man.

      He stood up, adjusted his clothing. The room needed lamps lit. The one bird continued to sing, as if bravely denying the cold of the world. He heard a discreet cough from a doorway.

      “Yes, enter,” he said. “Bring light.”

      Three servants came in, carrying tapers. They would have been waiting outside the chamber. They’d have stood there all evening if necessary. He was—he