In that season, when the peach and apricot trees were flowering in the orchard, with magnolias in bloom and the paulownias growing new leaves and beginning to shade the path again, a letter finally came.
Tai read it and did calculations of distance and time. It was six days to the full moon. He left the next morning, with two of the remaining Kanlins and ten of his cavalry. He rode Dynlal, and they led a second Sardian horse, the smallest one.
North along the river road they went, the one he'd travelled all his life. He knew each inn along the way, the mulberry groves and silk farms. They saw a fox once, at the side of the road.
They encountered one band of outlaws, but a party as large as theirs, heavily armed, was far too intimidating and the bandits melted back into the forest. Tai took note of where they were. He'd send soldiers up this road later. The people living here would be menaced by these men. You could grieve for what might drive men to be outlaws, but you couldn't indulge it.
On the fifth day they reached the junction with the imperial road. There was a village to the west. East of here was the place where he'd sat in a carriage decorated with kingfisher feathers and spoken with An Li, who had brought destruction upon Kitai, and was dead now, leaving ruin and war all around.
Beyond that point along the road was the posting inn where he'd met Jian. One of Tai's cavalry from Iron Gate—his name had been Wujen Ning—had died there, defending Dynlal.
Wei Song had been wounded, defending him.
They didn't have to go that far. They were where they needed to be. The full moon would rise tonight. He waited, among a company of soldiers and two Kanlin Warriors. They ate a soldiers' meal by the side of the road. He read her letter again.
I have learned from my father that he approves of my marriage. I have also received leave from the elders of my sanctuary to withdraw from the Kanlin Warriors, and have completed the rituals required for that. I will be riding south to your father's home, if that is acceptable. I have sat beside open windows through autumn and winter, and have come to understand the poems about that better than I ever did. At times I have been angry with you, for causing me to feel this way. At other times I desire only to see you, and have my dust mingled with yours when I die. It would please me greatly, husband-to-be, if you were to meet me by the bridge across your stream, where it meets the imperial road between Xinan and the west. I will be there when spring's second full moon rises. Perhaps you will escort me home from Cho-fu-Sa?
The moon rose as he looked east along the road.
And with it, exactly at moonrise, she came, riding along the imperial way with a dozen or so companions and guards. It took him a moment to recognize her: she no longer wore Kanlin black. He'd never seen her in any other clothing. She wore no elegant bridal garb. She'd been travelling, and they had a distance yet to ride. Wei Song had on brown leather riding trousers and a light-green tunic with a short, dark-green overtunic, for there was still a chill to the air. Her hair was carefully pinned, he saw.
He dismounted and walked away from his men.
He saw her speak to her escort and she, too, dismounted and came towards him, so that they met each other, alone, on the arched bridge.
"Thank you for coming, my lord," she said. She bowed.
He bowed as well. "My heart outraced the both of us," he quoted. "The winter was long without you. I have brought you a Sardian horse."
Song smiled. "I will like that."
He said, "How did you know the old name for this bridge?"
"Cho-fu-Sa?" She smiled again. "I asked. The elders at Kanlin sanctuaries are very wise."
"I know that," he said.
She said, "It is pleasing to me to see you, husband-to-be."
"Do you want me to show you how pleased I am?" he asked.
She actually flushed, then shook her head. "We are not yet wed, Shen Tai, and others are watching us. I wish to make a proper appearance before your mother."
"And my sister," he said. "She is waiting as well."
Song's eyes grew wide. "What? How is...?"
"We have a few days to ride. I will tell you that tale."
She hesitated, and then she bit her lip. "I am acceptable to you, like this? I feel strange, not wearing black. As if I have lost... protection."
There was a swirl of wind. The water swirled below. Tai looked at her in the twilight. The wide-set eyes and the wide mouth. She was small, and lethal. He knew how gracefully she moved, and he knew her courage.
He said, "I have a few days of travelling to answer that, as well. To make you understand how pleasing you are in my sight."
"Truly?" she asked.
He nodded. "You make me wish to be always at your side."
She came and stood next to him on the arched bridge—at his side, in fact. She said, "Will you show me my new horse and take me home?"
They rode together under the moon, south along the river from Cho-fu-Sa.
Sometimes the one life we are allowed is enough.
Tales have many strands, smaller, larger. An incidental figure in one story is living through the drama and passion of his or her own life and death.
In that time of extreme upheaval in Kitai, of violence engendered by warfare and famine, a young Kanlin Warrior was travelling back that same spring from far-off Sardia with a tale to proudly tell, and carrying a letter from a woman to a man.
He survived his return journey through the deserts but was killed for his weapons and horse and saddle in an ambush northwest of Chenyao, on his way down from Jade Gate Fortress.
His saddlebags were rifled through, anything of value seized and divided by the bandits. They fought over his swords, which were magnificent. They also fought over whether to try to sell or to kill and eat the horse. In the event, it was eaten.
The letter was discarded, tumbling in dust and wind, and disappearing.
It might indeed have been thought that the death of Roshan would end the rebellion. This would have been a reasonable hope, but not an accurate one.
His son, An Rong, appeared to enjoy the idea of being an emperor. He continued to assert the will of the Tenth Dynasty in the east and northeast, with incursions south.
He had inherited his father's courage and appetites and matched him in savagery, but he had nowhere near the experience Roshan had in and around a court, nor did he know how to control his own soldiers and officers.
He couldn't have had those skills at his age, coming to power as he did. But explanations only clarify, they do not offer a remedy. An Rong proved unable to achieve any discipline or coordination among the fragmenting rebel leadership.
This could have prepared the way for their defeat and a return of peace to Kitai, except that times of chaos often breed greater chaos, and An Li's rebellion caused others to see opportunity in disruption.
A number of military governors, prefects, outlaw leaders, and certain peoples on the western and northern borders decided, independently of each other, that their own hour of glory had arrived—the moment to make more of themselves than had been possible in the decades of Kitan wealth and power under the Emperor Taizu.
Taizu was praying and mourning (it was said) in the southwest, beyond the Great River. His son was waging war in the north, summoning soldiers from border forts, negotiating for allies, and horses.
When the dragon is in the wild, wolves will emerge. When the wolves of war come out, hunger follows. The years of the rebellion—more accurately called the rebellions—led to starvation on a scale unmatched in the history of Kitai.
With all men, from beardless fourteen-year-olds to barely upright grandfathers, forcibly enlisted in one army or another across the empire there were no farmers left to sow or harvest millet, barley, corn, rice.