Dead ends. A maze of dead end paths. The farmer did not have to tell the soldier that fact.
So it was a grove of mulberries well after dark, where an orchard road gave them a little recess off the highway; and a bed under the trees, where no one might notice. The sky had turned nasty toward dark, a leaden gray that killed even the sun-colors, down to a pewter twilight and a starless dark.
And with the prospect of a drenching they shared a cold supper of rice-balls and sausage and a little tea, with a quick, small fire of stolen mulberry leaves and twigs.
"Why were they afraid?" Shoka asked then, in the dim light of that fire.
"Of soldiers," Taizu said, as if it were simple sanity, and he were very dense.
"Soldiers."
"Of the Emperor."
He shook his head. "You're dealing with a man who was past twenty when you were born, girl. Who was in exile when you were scarcely aware of the world. In my time soldiers weren't to fear. Not—at least—within the towns and villages, no credit to a little rowdiness about the camps—that's always been. But this was fear."
"The troops do what they want. The mercenaries do. They have papers from the Emperor. They're the law. ..."
"The law my rear. The courts are the law, girl. . . . The Emperor doesn't hire mercenaries...."
"The lords are the law."
"On their land, yes. Town taxes go to the Emperor, town problems go to the—"
"—Emperor's judges. But if you haven't got money you can't pay the fines and they take your pigs; or your house; or maybe the Emperor's soldiers just feel like a joke so they flatten your house and kill you. There's nobody going to tell who they were, nobody'll care to find out who did it if you don't belong to some lord—he'll get mad and go to the courts, but you don't go to the court if you haven't got money—"
He listened. What she was describing was not the country he had left. But it was plausible, if an Emperor were a damnable fool.
"—because that judge back there, either he's crooked and he's taking money, or he knows what could happen to his farm if he got afoul of the soldiers. That's the way it is, out here in the country. That's the way the law is. And if you're a peasant and you've got somebody like lord Kaijeng, they tax him till he and his lady could hardly keep the place up and they raid his farms, and they march all his men away to the border wars, and finally they just come in and kill him, and you don't expect the Emperor did anything about it."
"Does the Emperor really do anything?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "They say the Emperor does this and the Emperor does that, but other people say he just puts his name on things and he spends all his time with his concubines and his birds."
"Birds." Cages . . . cages of exotic birds, an immense garden where birds flew free, and fine mesh nets secured them from the sky. Plants and birds imported from nameless places, at risk of lives. The boy had spent a lot of childhood hours there, dodging out on his weapons-drill and his court duties. Not an evil boy. A spoiled, self-centered, soft-minded boy, feckless as the sparrows.
Who murdered. Who cold-bloodedly schemed with Ghita to be rid of his wife, his advisors, his tutor—
Because he was a damned fool, whose wishes and whose desire not to think were more real to him than the bloody result of his scheming—
Damn him! Damn him for it!
Taizu had worked herself into a rage. He had, even thinking about it, for different reasons. So it was a long while before he said:
"Is that the reputation he has?"
"Everybody says he's a fool. Spends all his time with his birds. Lords give them to him, if they want anything. There was one bird cost this lord thousands. And it died inside a week and after that the other birds in the garden got sick and a lot of them died. The Emperor said it was poisoned and it put a spell on the rest. Ghita had that man arrested and they took his lands—Tenei was his name, lord Tenei, up north—I think it was P'eng."
"That damn dog—"
"They came in to arrest him and his wife committed suicide, but he hadn't the nerve so his friend killed him and killed himself."
"Who else are the lords? Can you name them off to me?"
She leaned back against a mulberry tree, a shadow in the dark, and ticked them off on her fingers.
"I don't know who's in Hua, if it isn't Gitu. He's also got Angen, of course. Shangei, that's lord Mendi. ..."
"My gods."
"I don't know anything about him. Except it was lord Heisu's place."
"Mendi's a dithering fool. Go on."
"Yiungei—" There was a little tremor of anxiety in her voice out of the dark. "That's lord Baigi."
"Ghita's lapdog. I knew that."
"Mengan district, in Yiungei, that's—"
"Jeidi?" It was his own district she spoke of, his own lands.
She shook her head. "Jeidi's dead. Peiyan."
"Not all the bandits are in Hoisan. Who in Taiyi?"
"It used to be Riyen. He died. It's some cousin—"
"Kegi."
"That was it."
"Just a name to me. Who are the best lords?"
"I don't know. Lord Mura. He was a friend of our lord. His name is Meigin. And lord Agin of Yijang, he was all right for a neighbor."
Two still alive. "Tengu?"
"I'm not sure. I didn't—care much then. I didn't care about lords. —I know Kenji: that's Mida."
Another one he knew, not a forceful man, a scholar.
"Hoishi is lord Reidi," he said, "last I heard. Much that you ever hear of him. I can't say I can complain of him as a neighbor, but I never crossed his borders. Now I have." He shook his head, feeling the same sense of desperation that had been with him down this road, too like—all too like—what he had felt ten years ago. "If Jiro could stand it, I'd say we should keep moving, but I won't break him down running, damned if I will."
"I wish you'd gone back!"
"It's too late now. There's no safety there—not for me, not for anyone with me. Not for the village if I go back there. This way it's on my head, and that's all they notice. Listen to me. I want you to listen to me very sensibly, Taizu: if soldiers do come on us, if there's no way to run, you leave me and you ride till that mare drops and you get off and walk—"
"No."
"Listen to what I'm saying, dammit! If they should call out the soldiers on us, I'm not saying it will happen—but if it does, it's because they've recognized me, not a kid from Hua—and there's no way in hell I can do anything at that point but make trouble for them. Most would stay with me—one or two might chase after you—you can outride them, you're lighter and that's a damn good horse, that's why I wanted her, other considerations aside. You can get clear. I haven't got a hope of it. So let's be sensible. They don't know you, they don't know what you intend. If I'm back in the Empire, they'll make only one supposition, and your only danger is getting caught in my company. Now, that's sense. If something happens to me, things are going to be stirred up for a while. You get out, get to the south, hide out till it's quiet—"
"You're making all this up, it's not doing any good, because I'm not going to do it. I'm not leaving you!"
He sat there quiet a moment, thinking: I wanted loyalty.
Damn her, does she ever do anything but when you don't want it?
He was scared, more scared than he had been since he could remember. He had known the first caravan to go behind them from Mon to Ygotai would carry the news of his having crossed the border: he had planned for that, planned to stay ahead of that rumor, even to use it: they would expect Saukendar to go due north to Cheng'di or into Yiungei, not to Hua. But what had seemed possible in Mon seemed less so in Ygotai, and the desperate look of the people and the evidence of profound changes in the land—made it all seem more desperate and more difficult.