Under Heaven. Guy Gavriel Kay

       ALSO BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY

       About the Publisher

       Maps

       PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

       The Imperial Family, and Ta-Ming Palace mandarins

      Taizu, the Son of Heaven, emperor of Kitai

      Shinzu, his third son, and heir

      Xue, his thirty-first daughter

      Wen Jian, the Precious Consort, also called the Beloved Companion

      Chin Hai, formerly first minister, now deceased

      Wen Zhou, first minister of Kitai, cousin to Wen Jian

       The Shen Family

      General Shen Gao, deceased, once Left Side Commander of the Pacified West

      Shen Liu, his oldest son, principal adviser to the first minister

      Shen Tai, his second son

      Shen Chao, his third son

      Shen Li-Mei, his daughter

       The Army

      An Li (“Roshan”), military governor of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts

      An Rong, his oldest son

      An Tsao, a younger son

      Xu Bihai, military governor of the Second and Third Districts, in Chenyao

      Xu Liang, his older daughter

      Lin Fong, commander of Iron Gate Fortress

      Wujen Ning, a soldier at Iron Gate

      Tazek Karad, an officer on the Long Wall

       Kanlin Warriors

      Wan-si

      Wei Song

      Lu Chen

      Ssu Tan

      Zhong Ma

       Artists

      Sima Zian, a poet, the Banished Immortal

      Chan Du, a poet

       In Xinan, the capital

      Spring Rain, a courtesan in the North District, later named Lin Chang

      Feng, a guard in the employ of Wen Zhou

      Hwan, a servant of Wen Zhou

      Pei Qin, a beggar in the street

      Ye Lao, a steward

       Beyond the borders of Kitai

       West

      Sangrama the Lion, ruling the Empire of Tagur

      Cheng-wan, the White Jade Princess, one of his wives, seventeenth daughter of Emperor Taizu

      Bytsan sri Nespo, a Taguran army officer

      Nespo sri Mgar, his father, a senior officer

       North

      Dulan, kaghan of the Bogü people of the steppe

      Hurok, his sister’s husband, later kaghan

      Meshag, Hurok’s older son

      Tarduk, Hurok’s second son

PART ONE

       CHAPTER I

      Amid the ten thousand noises and the jade-and-gold and the whirling dust of Xinan, he had often stayed awake all night among friends, drinking spiced wine in the North District with the courtesans.

      They would listen to flute or pipa music and declaim poetry, test each other with jibes and quotes, sometimes find a private room with a scented, silken woman, before weaving unsteadily home after the dawn drums sounded curfew’s end, to sleep away the day instead of studying.

      Here in the mountains, alone in hard, clear air by the waters of Kuala Nor, far to the west of the imperial city, beyond the borders of the empire, even, Tai was in a narrow bed by darkfall, under the first brilliant stars, and awake at sunrise.

      In spring and summer the birds woke him. This was a place where thousands upon thousands nested noisily: fishhawks and cormorants, wild geese and cranes. The geese made him think of friends far away. Wild geese were a symbol of absence: in poetry, in life. Cranes were fidelity, another matter.

      In winter the cold was savage, it could take the breath away. The north wind when it blew was an assault, outdoors, and even through the cabin walls. He slept under layers of fur and sheepskin, and no birds woke him at dawn from the icebound nesting grounds on the far side of the lake.

      The ghosts were outside in all seasons, moonlit nights and dark, as soon as the sun went down.

      Tai knew some of their voices now, the angry ones and the lost ones, and those in whose thin, stretched crying there was only pain.

      They didn’t frighten him, not any more. He’d thought he might die of terror in the beginning, alone in those first nights here with the dead.

      He would look out through an unshuttered window on a spring or summer or autumn night, but he never went outside. Under moon or stars the world by the lake belonged to the ghosts, or so he had come to understand.

      He had set himself a routine from the start, to deal with solitude and fear, and the enormity of where he was. Some holy men and hermits in their mountains and forests might deliberately act otherwise, going through days like leaves blown, defined by the absence of will or desire, but his was a different nature, and he wasn’t holy.

      He did begin each morning with the prayers for his father. He was still in the formal mourning period and his self-imposed task by this distant lake had everything to do with respect for his father’s memory.

      After the invocations, which he assumed his brothers were also performing in the home where they’d all been born, Tai would go out into the mountain meadow (shades of green dotted with wildflowers, or crunching underfoot with ice and snow) and—unless there was a storm—he would do his Kanlin exercises. No sword, then one sword, then both.

      He would look at the cold waters of the lake, with the small isle in the middle of it, then up at the surrounding, snow-draped, stupefying mountains piled upon each other. Beyond the northern peaks the land sloped downwards for hundreds of li towards the long dunes of the killing deserts, with the Silk Roads running around either side of them, bringing so much wealth to the court, to the empire of Kitai. To his people.

      In winter he fed and watered his small, shaggy horse in the shed built against his cabin. When the weather turned and