Chapter 11: The Return

 

In the Great Zhou Dynasty, every year without fail, sacrifices were offered to the sun, the moon, and the stars.

By rights, the emperor should have presided. But the emperor of Great Zhou was young and had not yet taken power, and so the duty fell instead to Prime Minister Kong Ye for the sun, and to Zhang Xingjian for the moon. It was Zhang Xingjian who led the officials in that particular worship, year after year — and the capital of Dongjing, being a city that ran on legend as much as law, had long since woven stories around this arrangement.

Some said the nickname began on a night when both sun and moon had vanished behind clouds, and the city had sunk into a particular desolation — until Zhang Xingjian appeared, and the moon slid out from its hiding place as though it had been waiting for him. Others claimed it began at a lakeside gathering, where singers and dancers who had not yet seen his face caught his reflection in the water and, not knowing any better, mistook the image for the moon god himself descending to earth.

Either way, from that time on, whenever the moon was worshipped, the role belonged to Zhang Xingjian.

Young General Yang Su recounted all of this to Shen Qingwu with great relish as they waited, savoring each detail the way people do when they find a story genuinely delightful. When he finished, he asked her, "What does the general think of these legends?"

Shen Qingwu considered them for exactly as long as they deserved. "Just a way to gain fame, isn't it?"

Yang Su had no response to this.

The eunuch who had led the soldiers into the palace found himself glancing back at the first female general of the Great Zhou Dynasty — they had not known, before General Wu entered Dongjing, that the General of the West was a woman. He looked at her and wondered, privately, what kind of disturbance she would send through these still, murky waters.

---

The boom of the palace gates opening rolled through the cold air.

The soldiers looked up.

On the high altar built along the long ascending steps, surrounded by shamans and musicians, chime bells rang out in solemn procession. Snow was falling. At the center of it all stood a young man in sacrificial robes, his back to the crowd below, leading the civil and military officials in the worship of the bright moon. The goddess of the moon as sovereign, all the stars in attendance — the vast ceremony reached upward into the sky and disappeared.

Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound except the snow coming down and the ceremonial music rising up.

The snowflakes fell without preference, settling on the young man at the head of the group, on his robes, on his hair, on his shoulders — and his pristine stillness seemed to absorb them so naturally that it was impossible to say where the snow ended and he began. Shen Qingwu and the other border soldiers, in the palace for the first time, found themselves holding their breath without having decided to, as though noise would break something irreplaceable.

Zhang Xingjian turned around.

The soldiers below the steps saw his face.

Yang Su stared. He raised one hand and scratched his cheek slowly, and then said, almost to himself: "That's Zhang Yuelu."

The general's claim that he was merely seeking fame — that had been unfair.

---

Shen Qingwu watched Zhang Xingjian descend from the high platform through the falling snow and said nothing.

Distant things came back to her. The years at the border — the accumulating weight of them, the resentment that had built up like sediment, the long stretches of melancholy she had not known what to do with. She had convinced herself, during those years, that she did not love this man. The logic had seemed sound: if she loved him, would she not have broken when she was forced to swear that oath? Would she not have felt remorse when she stabbed him?

But this was New Year's Eve, three years later, and snow was falling, and Zhang Xingjian was walking toward her through it — and Shen Qingwu, if she was being honest with herself, found him even more handsome than she remembered.

She turned to Yang Su. She said, carefully and distinctly, word by deliberate word: "This is Zhang Yuelu."

Zhang Yuelu. Not Zhang Xingjian. The name she had given him, the private diminutive that placed him in a category of things that were hers to name — and yet here she stood, with no idea how to face him.

---

Zhang Xingjian descended the platform with the unhurried ease of a man entirely at home in his own bearing — refined, relaxed, carrying that characteristic touch of casual elegance. He wiped his hands with a handkerchief and bent his head slightly to listen to the eunuch murmuring close beside him. His dark eyes flickered, briefly, as he looked down toward the steps.

The eunuch's voice lifted into the ceremony: "The General of the Western Garrison has arrived —"

The officials rose from their seats, turning to look. Whispers moved through them immediately, quick and astonished: "Is the General of the Western Garrison a woman? How has none of us heard of this? Who appointed her?"

Through the crowd and the flying snow, Shen Qingwu watched Zhang Xingjian's face with cold eyes and saw the precise moment it happened — his gaze found her, and for just an instant, something that had been bright and clear in his expression went very still, like a surface suddenly smoothed of all movement. He controlled it within a breath. With Prime Minister Kong absent, protocol required that he greet her. He stepped down from the platform in place of the young emperor, and produced, with the impeccable craft of long practice, exactly the right degree of gracious warmth.

"General Wu."

Shen Qingwu walked forward.

Yang Su and the others fell in quickly behind her. They were nineteen years old and had been at the border; Bo Rong had taught them enough about reading rooms to understand, vaguely, that something was moving under the surface of this exchange. What none of them could read — because they did not know the court — was precisely what it was.

What Shen Qingwu could read was simpler and more complete: Zhang Xingjian did not want to see her. He was performing courtesy because courtesy was what he did. He would perform it flawlessly, as he did everything, and the distance between the performance and the truth would be invisible to everyone except her.

She had the thought clearly, without sentiment: What does it matter to me whether you want to see me.

The Yizhou army's great victory had pleased the court enormously. The fact of a female general was puzzling, yes — but this was New Year's Eve, the night of the moon worship, and no one would move to make an issue of it here. She walked steadily forward, up the steps, toward the ranks of the officials.

Then, from within the surrounding voices, one voice arrived differently — not composed, not curious, but shaking: "Qingwu?!"

Her brother. Shen Zhuo, who was so undone by the sight of her that he could not keep hold of his wine cup and lurched to his feet. A guard moved quickly to restrain him, pressing a hand to his arm — do not act rashly — and Shen Zhuo stood caught between his impulse and the hand on his arm, staring.

Zhang Xingjian lowered his eyes and poured a cup of wine himself. Snowflakes drifted down and found the clear surface of it, and found his eyelashes.

The Yizhou army had fought hard and come far. By any logic, by any measure of emotion, this cup was owed to Shen Qingwu.

---

As she ascended the steps, the officials' voices moved around her: how could it be a woman, how could it be a woman — and in the middle of all that noise, something shifted, briefly, in the usually quiet interior of Shen Qingwu's mind.

Bo Rong had supported her, had always supported her — but he had also told her the truth: the world rarely accepted women in the court. They would need to proceed carefully, gradually. And then, not long after, she had been appointed general. Bo Rong himself had been surprised. He had laughed and said to her, "Could it be that our A-Wu comes from a noble family — that someone in the court is protecting you?"

She had not thought much of it at the time.

Now, standing in the midst of confused and whispering officials, looking at Zhang Xingjian's face — composed as still water, utterly untroubled — she understood for the first time who had protected her appointment.

She stopped in front of him.

Among the officials, the Shen family had recognized her. The recognition moved through them like cold water, and they went rigid — drenched in the specific cold sweat of people who know Shen Qingwu and therefore know that whatever she does next will not be the careful, expected thing. She had come back to Tokyo. Why? For revenge? Because of the wedding — the Zhang family and the Shen family on the verge of being joined — had she come to destroy that? She had made a vow. What did her presence here mean?

The silence that had gathered in the space between Shen Qingwu and Zhang Xingjian was almost a physical thing.

He raised his eyes to look at her. Then, representing the court, he held out a cup of hot wine:

"General, you've worked hard. Please drink this wine."

The lamplight was bright and, somehow, desolate.

He said all the right things with a perfunctory precision that was in itself a kind of message — everything correct, nothing real — and Shen Qingwu looked at him for a moment, one brief indifferent glance, and then walked past him.

The silence that followed was extraordinary.

Behind her, Zhang Xingjian heard her ask the eunuch standing beside her, who had gone slightly pale: "Where shall I sit?"

The eunuch gathered himself. "You haven't drunk your wine yet."

"I've heard," Shen Qingwu said, her voice entirely conversational, "that it is usually the prime minister who serves wine to border generals like me who have traveled from afar. Is Zhang Yuelu the prime minister?"

The officials exchanged bewildered glances. The name she used — Zhang Yuelu, not Zhang Xingjian, not Prime Minister's Representative, not any of the forms of address that protocol required — landed in the air and sat there, conspicuous and strange.

Zhang Xingjian, his back to them, lowered his eyes. He made a soft sound — something that might, in different circumstances, have been a laugh. Then he set down the wine cup and said, with perfect gentleness:

"Prime Minister Kong is ill. Since General Wu is so particular about courtesies — let us wait for Prime Minister Kong."

He turned to look at her.

She glanced up.

Their eyes met. The thing that passed between them in that instant was not cold, exactly — it was more like the moment before cold, the suspended second before something drops below freezing, when the surface is still but the stillness itself is a warning. Her pupils were black as deep water at the bottom of a cliff wall. Still as ice that will not thaw.

Shen Qingwu sat down without a word.

Yang Su and the others, inwardly staggered with admiration, bowed and followed. They did not know the architecture of the Tokyo court. They did not know that Zhang Xingjian's position was second only to Prime Minister Kong. They only knew to follow their general — and so none of them bowed to Zhang Xingjian.

The officials went so quiet the snow could be heard falling outside.

The Shen family trembled.

Zhang Xingjian smiled and did not look at her again. He had seen this — Shen Qingwu, pale-eyed, pale-faced, stabbing him in an alley — he had seen her at her most impossible and her most incomprehensible. She was still that Shen Qingwu, still the version of her that was different from everything else in the world. But what did it matter to him now.

The banquet continued as though the ground had not shifted.

The young emperor appeared, sat restlessly for a short time, called for his sister with the bored petulance of a child, and left in a daze. The officials laughed dryly at nothing and said less. Nothing else unusual happened. The night deepened into itself.

When it finally ended, well past midnight, the officials filed out into the dark, yawning, their breath making small clouds in the cold.

---

Palace lanterns wound through the snow like a river of soft light.

Zhang Xingjian walked at an unhurried pace through the white, his cloak drawn around him. Ahead of him, not two zhang away, Shen Qingwu moved with her group — close enough to be aware of, far enough to be deniable.

The Shen family caught up with her. Shen Zhuo reached her first: "Qingwu, stop — what is going on — um—"

He reached for her. Yang Su and the others moved without being asked, hands going to their swords. Shen Zhuo went still, looking at these unfamiliar military officers with startled eyes.

Shen Qingwu did not alter her expression.

Her father pushed forward, lowering his voice to a hiss, the embarrassment of a man who has done things he has not yet apologized for and does not know how to begin. "Where have you been these past few years? How did you become a general? Do you know that there are no women holding official positions in this dynasty — you'll be drowned in criticism." He reached for her arm. "Resign now. I will report to the court tomorrow that I have failed to discipline my daughter properly."

Shen Qingwu did not lift her eyes.

Her unruly and arrogant nature, unchanged across ten years, held its ground without effort.

Her father's face reddened with helpless fury. Shen Zhuo stood nearby and looked at his sister — this stranger who was still somehow his sister — with complicated, wordless feelings.

People were passing in every direction around them. Her father did not want the Shen family made a spectacle of, and in his peripheral vision he could see Zhang Xingjian approaching through the snow. The scene at tonight's banquet would be gossip by morning. There was still time to limit the damage.

"You shouldn't have been so rude to Zhang Sanlang," he said, lowering his voice further. "You shouldn't have ignored him like that."

Shen Qingwu's brows drew together, slightly, in what appeared to be genuine confusion. "Didn't I swear I'd never speak to him again? Didn't I keep my promise?"

Her father breathed in carefully. Held it. Released it. "I only recently learned what your mother did back then." He looked at her. Something underneath the embarrassment shifted, briefly, toward something more honest. "Come home. I'll tell them not to bully you again."

"I have conditions," Shen Qingwu said.

Her gaze moved past her father's shoulder to the figure standing behind the falling snow.

Her father followed her eyes and saw Zhang Xingjian, and hesitated, and in his hesitation read the direction of her thought, and found himself caught between what he feared she wanted and what he knew he owed her. "Hmm. If you can't forget the past... it's not impossible to discuss—"

"If Zhang Xingjian kneels and begs me," Shen Qingwu said, with the same flat, matter-of-fact composure she used for everything, "I'll resign from my official post."

Zhang Xingjian, who had come close enough to hear, looked up. His expression was gentle — the surface of it was always gentle, always perfectly arranged — but underneath, in the place behind his eyes where the performance did not reach, there was nothing. An absence where something might once have been.

The Shen family could not, of course, ask Zhang Xingjian to kneel before anyone. They stood in their hesitation and said nothing and said nothing.

Shen Qingwu turned and walked away into the snow.

Yang Su and the others fell in behind her, exchanging glances full of questions they would ask later.

Those left behind looked at one another in the lamplight and the cold.

Had Shen Qingwu gone mad, after all these years?

Or had she, at last, come back to herself?