Roshan was not to be allowed to claim these.
Roshan was a nickname, given by soldiers long ago, adopted by the court. The man's real name was An Li. He was a one-time barbarian cavalryman, then an officer, a general, now a military governor himself commanding the Seventh, the Eighth, and most recently also the Ninth District armies. A man everyone watched. And feared.
Tai had been away too long. There were elements—balances—he needed to learn, and he didn't have a great deal of time.
I can almost pity you was the other thing Xu Bihai had said. And at Kuala Nor among the ghosts a blue-tattooed Taguran had said nearly the same thing.
He had seen Roshan only once, in Long Lake Park, watching princes and aristocrats at a polo game. The general, visiting from his base in the northeast, in Xinan to receive yet another honour (and the gift of a city palace), had sat with the imperial party. He had been unmistakable in his colossal bulk, clad in brilliant, overwhelming red, his laughter ringing across the meadow.
He hadn't always been so fat, but one needed to be older than Tai to remember An Li's fighting days. He would destroy a horse under him today.
It was said that he laughed all the time, even when killing people, that he had never learned to read, that he was advised by a steppe demon, and had given the emperor certain potions for the delights of darkness in that time when Taizu first turned his aging eyes—and heart—to the youthful glory of Wen Jian.
It was also said that the only man Roshan had ever feared—and he had very greatly feared him, as everyone did—was the infinitely subtle, calculating, now-deceased first minister, Chin Hai.
With Chin gone, there was a new prime minister, and though Wen Zhou might be a favoured cousin of the Precious Consort, and owe his appointment to that as much as anything else, Roshan was also beloved of the emperor and had long been said to be equally close to the exquisite Jian—and perhaps more than merely close, depending on which rumour you heard and believed.
In the night street before a courtesan house in Chenyao's pleasure district, remembering a summer day in the park, Tai recalled looking across at the corpulent figure of the military governor from a distance and flinching inwardly at the image of such a figure embracing, crushing, the most beautiful woman of the age.
Jian was already named by then in poems, and had been painted, as one of the Four Great Beauties of Kitai, going back to the First Dynasty and the Empress Jade Pearl, among the immortals now.
To Xu Bihai tonight, Tai had simply said that he would seek counsel from as many people as he could before deciding what he would do, and expressed a willingness to come back west and meet the governor here, drink and dine again—perhaps in the presence of his charming daughters.
One of them had giggled at that from by the door, not the one in green. That one had simply looked across at Tai, her expression suddenly difficult to read.
Thoughts of the two of them drew his mind back to the house in front of him. He wasn't in the best condition, after so much saffron wine, to deal with matters of court and rival governors. Such issues could surely be deferred for a night? His first in a city after two years?
The doors of the house were wide open. He saw lights within. The attendant woman smiled from under two red lanterns. Of course she'd smile a welcome. It was her assignment here, and she would have just been informed that anything—anything—the young man wanted was to be offered to him, and charged to the governor.
The young man wanted more wine to start with, he decided. The sage in the cup, the poets said. The rest could follow as the spring night deepened and the late moon rose.
He heard a voice inside, speaking poetry.
He went up the wide, handsome steps, between lanterns, and entered the White Phoenix, giving a coin to the woman at the door.
CHAPTER VIII
The ridiculous Kitan adoration—and that feels like the right word!—of poetry and of declaiming, drunken poets is an endless mystery to Amber, and deeply annoying. Amber is from Sardia, has honey-gold hair, therefore her name. Not particularly inventive, but courtesan names never are.
She is beautiful (green eyes!). She's long-legged, has perfect skin, is very young. Beauty has been enough to ensure her a stream of clients since arriving here, even infatuated ones, though she can't sing or play one of their instruments, and poetry puts her to sleep.
Not every silk merchant or off-duty officer in need of a woman for a wintry afternoon or summer night wants the girl to discourse upon philosophy, or pluck "The Bandits of the Gorge" on a pipa before he takes her upstairs and throws her across a bed.
Amber makes a point of giggling when they do this to her. Men tend to be excited by that. She may not be educated, but she understands certain things.
In bed (or on the floor beside it) she knows exactly what she's doing, has a talent, especially if the man is young and not offensive in manner or appearance.
A few of the women who have been here longer are constantly urging her to listen more carefully to the poetry, even memorize some of it, to practise harder at her music. They are always pointing out that the men with real money, the ones who leave additional sums for the girl (they are allowed to keep half of this), will usually be those with some worldliness. That's just the way of things here in Kitai, even in a western market town.
Bright Amber (she likes the name they gave her, as it happens) doesn't entirely disagree, but she also knows that a merchant just off the long road will be generous to a pretty girl with smooth legs and an easy laugh and green eyes, and that many of those men will be indifferent to (or bored by, as she is) obsessive distinctions between eight-line regulated verse and any other of the hopelessly contrived forms poetry takes here.
Poetry! In the name of the bull-god! You even need to be a poet to rise in the civil service here. Can there be a clearer sign of a culture that has lost its way? Amber doesn't think there is, when she thinks about it at all, though she does concede the point Jade Flower makes: if Kitai has lost its way, why does it control so much of the world?
Maybe it would be different in a pleasure house in Xinan or Yenling, where the aristocrats are. Maybe she'd accept that it was worth her while to work on other skills. But Amber is happy in Chenyao, has thoughts already about one or two merchants and one extremely handsome officer of the Second District cavalry.
She's perfectly content to spend a year or two in the White Phoenix and then cajole or induce the right man to buy her as his concubine. It is as good a life plan as any for a girl.
She is from a hard world, after all. Orphaned in a plague summer, sold at twelve by her oldest sister to a brothel-keeper, noticed there by a merchant heading east, bought by him to sell. Her good fortune, that, no doubting it. She is distinctive in Kitai, and the White Phoenix is the best house in Chenyao. She has food and a bed of her own, firesides in winter, two days a month to herself, and half the festival holidays. Life has not dealt badly with her.
Chenyao is as far into Kitai as Amber feels any desire to go. They recite more poetry in pleasure houses east, among other things. She's been told that often enough. You need to pretend to listen and admire and understand it, strum accompaniment on your pipa, or else the men in fine silks of their own will laugh the wrong way, or ignore you entirely. A waste of a pretty girl, as far as Amber is concerned.