The Embers of Heaven. Alma Alexander

abilities.

      That had been the principle of the thing. Iloh had not stopped thinking of people as a flock of sheep that needed a shepherd’s hand to guide them – but it would be a different kind of shepherd. It would have to be one of the sheep themselves, raised to the high place. One of the people.

      Baba Sung had learned his lesson from the first time he had tried to wage revolution – and the next time he had a warlord of his own to wage his battles. Shenxiao was a skullfaced, whippet-thin man who dreamed, ate, lived and breathed army. Shenxiao and Baba Sung, together, might have been a formidable force – but Baba Sung had burned his candle at both ends and it became tragically clear that his race was run. He died a relatively young man, perished on the burning flame of his own bright spirit, leaving behind a legacy that took root in the popular mind: be a nation again.

      And it seemed that it might have been possible. But as with every prophet there were always many who came in his footsteps ready to interpret his words. Shenxiao was one. Iloh, although still very young, was another. For a while they had worked together, yoked under that last will and testament of the founder of the Republic. But then Shenxiao made a sharp turn to the right, the People’s Party reacted by veering to the left, the traces broke and the alliance died hard.

      In the beginning, the People’s Party was small, and led by the young and the inexperienced, advised by a handful of older intellectuals who shared their ideals. But it was the youth and the vigour of it that swept it to power, its principles proselytised as only the young and idealistic could do, and the party’s numbers swelled from hundreds to thousands, and then hundreds of thousands. With its plain principles, pure from the well of idealism and not yet tainted by the thin poison of politics, it quickly attracted a membership that ranged from university students and office workers to the stevedores and factory workers and tillers of soil. There appeared to be something of value in the party’s manifesto to a plethora of different kinds of people, giving the seal of its name an odd authenticity. The People’s Party quickly became a force to be reckoned with.

      Iloh was one of many, in the beginning – a group of young cadres who had been given tasks instrumental to the birth of the People’s Party. In a handful of short years the many were whittled down to a few, and Iloh, inevitably, was among them – even if he had not played a pivotal role in the founding of the Party, his passion and his dedication to his chosen cause would have set him apart. The first time he met General Shenxiao face to face, he was no more than a Party secretary – one of a delegation, keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut and learning the ropes. The second time, Iloh had been given a place at the discussion table – still a junior, but one who had been tapped for rapid advancement. The third time, some three years later and with an unbroken and unblemished record of service at government level under his belt, he was the delegation leader, in command, no longer just a silent participant.

      ‘It was Baba Sung’s own idea,’ he said at one of the meetings on that third occasion, when the topic of discussion had been land reform. ‘But equal distribution of land does not have strings. You are still pandering to the land-owners, and the workers at the very bottom, who work their way to an early grave, still get nothing except perhaps a tiny reduction in taxes – and even that is only on paper, and if their landlord wants to ignore it he can.’

      ‘You are young,’ Shenxiao said, his lips parting in a thin, skeletal smile. ‘You have still to understand why we sit here today. Baba Sung never said that land should be taken from those who have worked so hard to gain it…’

      ‘Their ancestors might have worked hard,’ Iloh said. ‘For many the land is simply inherited, a part of their patrimony, something they feel entitled to. Whether or not it’s justifiable.’

      ‘…and summarily handed over to the barefoot peasant who has done nothing to deserve it except exist,’ Shenxiao finished, as though Iloh had not spoken at all.

      ‘But you say in public that the barefoot peasant will get that land,’ Iloh said. ‘You promise this.’

      ‘Yes, and so long as the promise hangs there, all golden and shining like a riddle-lantern at Lantern Festival, everything is peaceful and calm. If they can guess the riddle they can have the land, but in the meantime let those who know what to do with it have a hand in controlling it. We need a lot of people fed – that happens when there are large fields and large harvests. Not when every small landgrubber plants a few stalks of wheat for himself.’

      ‘You are betraying the founder of your own party,’ Iloh said passionately. ‘Do you know what they are saying, out in the country? “The sky is high and Shenxiao is far away.” They used to say that about the emperor. You are no different than that leech on society, and Baba Sung himself said that the Empire had to go.’

      ‘Even Baba Sung knew better than that,’ Shenxiao said. ‘He too was young once, that is true, and some of his ideas were those of a young man – but he grew up, and he grew wiser. A man who does not in his youth believe that the world needs to be changed is heartless, and has no feelings. But if a man has not learned by the time he is forty that it is impossible to swap an old world for a new one like a lamp on New Year’s Day, that it is only possible to change the shape of the world so that one can find a higher place to stand within it – that man is a brainless idiot.’

      Iloh had said nothing out loud, but his eyes, resting on Shenxiao, were eloquent. You are wrong.

      They had not met again, face-to-face. The relationship between the two parties continued to deteriorate. On the face of it, Shenxiao’s people, known as the Nationalists, had put an end to the chaos of the warlord years and had placed a central government in power once again, giving the people somewhere to look up to, a familiar situation where right underneath the Gods there was a place for the man the Gods had chosen to lead the nation – and everyone else had only to follow where that chosen man led.

      But the Nationalists ruled with force of arms – with war clubs and with guns. Accession to positions of power, promised on the basis of merit alone, quickly devolved into a corrupt system where family or cronies were installed in places where they would be useful to those who wielded real clout. The government that had been Baba Sung’s legacy and which had been welcomed like the sunrise of a new day became endured, then disliked, then distrusted, and finally hated. The rich landowners and the city bankers and businessmen still had their weight behind Shenxiao and his clique. The rest of the people – the peasants in the countryside, the workers in industry and in service, the young intellectuals of the cities – had increasingly begun to put their faith not so much in the People’s Party but in the hands of a young man called Iloh who travelled the country and who spoke to them of equality, and of power, and of peace.

      But Shenxiao held the army, the weapons, the metaphorical high ground. When Iloh and his people became too dangerous for Shenxiao to continue to even pretend to work together with them, he manufactured an incident in the city of Chirinaa, where the unions were strong, where the People’s Party was known to be winning the battle for the people’s hearts and souls. Blood flowed in the streets of the city, and Shenxiao made certain that fingers were pointed away from him, straight at Iloh and his ‘shadow cabinet’.

      Those of the People’s Party who had still held positions of relative power inside the government machinery of Shenxiao’s party were summarily purged – arrested, imprisoned, executed. The alliance was over. Before the year was out, the People’s Party had gone to ground, and into hiding. Their leaders were marked men, and hunted.

      Iloh had been one of them. He had married Yanzi less than a year before, and now, with his wife pregnant with their first child, he had to flee into the hills or face prison – or worse.

      Yanzi was adamant that she would stay behind, in the city.

      ‘You can’t stay down here alone! It’s dangerous! They know who you are, where to find you…’ Iloh had argued, pleaded, begged.

      ‘What do you think they would do?’ Yanzi said, her voice sweet reason. ‘I am a pregnant woman. If they touched me they would have their own people turn on them – some things are sacred, and if you foul them you are tainted by it forever more. And here I can be of