The Hand, the Eye and the Heart Read online

But for boys, who were expected to go out into the world adventuring, and glorify their houses with valiant service of the empire? It seemed there were none of those grim admonitions. Since joining the army I’d learned that most men, like Sigong, saw Dou Xianniang and others like her as immortal, legendary figures. Women to dream over and desire.

  It made perfect sense that any sedate, proper young women whom Wu Jiang had been betrothed to since childhood would be unlikely to warm that small, fundamental ember of childish longing in his breast. The yearning for adventure, for burning glances, battlefield confessions of devotion, and epic, star-crossed love. But I, quite by accident, had set it ablaze.

  It was strange. The first time I had ever seen the Young General I had felt an instinctive, almost overwhelming response. I had thought he was like a hero from a play or ballad. I had thought he was everything that a man should be.

  I had never dreamed he would have a similar response to me.

  But while I liked him, respected him, and found pride in his liking and respect for me… My heart was foolish and stubborn. And it still longed for someone else. Someone it simply could not have. Not in this world.

  What is, is.

  Anyway, my own feelings, much as I wished to linger on them, did not materially affect the situation. Marriage was about family, about responsibility and forming alliances that would protect and nurture the houses which arranged them. It was not up to me to decide whether Wu Jiang’s suit was acceptable.

  That decision would rest with my father … and with the emperor.

  The thought of each of their possible reactions to General Wu’s infatuation with me – if he really followed through – was enough to paralyse me with apprehension. Emperors had been known to dispose of their children’s unsuitable lovers quite ruthlessly, and wipe out their whole houses if anyone protested. If Wu Fen decided that she did not like this match – and who, even knowing of her own humble origins, could blame her? – it might mean the destruction of my family.

  Yet even if Wu Fen, by some extraordinary chance, was willing to consider the daughter of Hua Zhou as, perhaps, an honourable concubine for her foster son … what if my father objected?

  He had removed our family from court influence once before, stubbornly walking away from power and riches even though it might have meant our lives. But that emperor had known him, and been his friend. This one was not.

  How had I landed myself in such an impossible tangle?

  Twenty

  u Jiang’s occasional polite enquiries after my health took on a more serious tone as the days went by. He no longer joked that I was getting skinny, but stated it forthrightly. More sweet treats began to appear at our nightly meals. Annoyed with myself that I had apparently allowed my worry – and the slight hollowing of my face – to unconsciously leak through on to my mask, I stayed up late one night with a precious candle and my hand mirror, ensuring that the bloom of ruddy youth was restored to my illusion. I expected General Wu to be satisfied with this, and hoped that his suffocating concern would abate.

  I hadn’t given him enough credit.

  “You’re looking better this evening,” the Young General commented as I was tidying my notes away for the night.

  “Thank you, General. If that’s all—”

  “Why are you looking so much better?” he persisted.

  “I’ve been following your advice, sir,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. It was an effort not to let my resentment and frustration with what felt like constant scrutiny show. I had survived the brutality of the training camp and the early weeks of our journey without any help. Why did he now believe I needed him to guard and monitor me? “Eating better, attempting to sleep a little more.”

  “And it’s agreed with you so well that in a single day you appear to have regained all the weight you lost, and healed up that bruise Sigong gave you in practice two days ago. If I didn’t know you, I’d suspect you of a rather skilful application of cosmetics.”

  You don’t know me!

  I clasped my hands to prevent them from closing into fists, and looked Wu Jiang straight in the eyes. “The bruise was light. It faded. That’s all.”

  The Young General squinted at me in the soft glow of the lamps. For a moment, I hoped that was the end of the matter. Then: “You’re a banner-breaker, aren’t you?”

  I felt my body go still – a tiny, betraying stillness that I forced myself out of nearly instantly. It was already too late. General Wu’s face lit up with a disarming, boyish grin.

  “I’ve never – knowingly – met one in real life, although my aunt says she keeps several at court. I didn’t even know women could possess the ability. Have you had much training?”

  What freak of misfortune had placed me in the way of a man who twinned the straightforwardness of a charging bull with the subtle observational skills of an ancient sage? He stared at me expectantly. Clearly he wouldn’t rest, or let me rest, until he had wrung some sort of confession from me, but the secret of my father’s gift was inviolate. It was not mine to share.

  “Obviously women do not normally manifest such traits. I have always been taught to keep it hidden, for the sake of future alliances and my family’s reputation. Training…” I allowed my voice to trail off as I moved my shoulders in a faint shrug.

  Wu Jiang nodded thoughtfully, apparently inferring, as I had intended, that I had little or no knowledge of my own gift. With the limited talent I had, it might as well be true anyway.

  “That’s a shame. So you can only use it – like this?” He gestured towards my face.

  “Yes. To protect myself. To hide myself. It’s an instinct.”

  “And the face I see now?”

  “Is mine,” I said quickly. “Merely a little … blurred.”

  “I suspected as much. It’s very clever, how you use it.” He paused, tongue passing over his bottom lip. “May I see it? Your true face?”

  My jaw twinged with the force of teeth clenching together. Thoughts raced through my mind. How could I refuse when he held such leverage over me? What if he made it a direct order? Perhaps the sight of my plain old self would even cool his ardour a little, and win me some space from him.

  But my rationality was at war with an overwhelming, instinctive need. I didn’t want him to see me.

  Need won.

  “No,” I said, firmly but gently. I realized that my voice had unconsciously lifted into a slightly more feminine register only when I added a belated: “I’m sorry.”

  I braced myself. This was the first – the only – personal thing he had ever asked of me, and I had denied him. How would he take it?

  Wu Jiang ran his hand over his thick beard, half concealing the change in his expression from grin to a different sort of smile – small, pleased, private.

  “Very well. I can wait.” He cleared his throat and sat up straighter, pulling the mantle of command back over himself in much the same way that I spun my mask of illusion into place each morning. “Thank you for your hard work today. Good evening.”

  I returned the pleasantries and escaped, my chest still heavy with anxiety. If I were the mussel and he the fisherman, then my shell had well and truly been forced open, and my vulnerable innards exposed. That this man should have learned all my most closely guarded secrets while I had run away rather than confide anything in Yang Jie… Oh, that was bitter.

  Yet. Wasn’t Wu Jiang worthy of my trust? Hadn’t he sought to earn it, painstakingly, day by day, through respect, courtesy and kindness? I wasn’t sure what still held me back. Was it mere habit? I couldn’t explain it, even to myself. Perhaps this secretiveness was a fatal flaw in me, that I could not bear to risk true vulnerability with anyone – not Yang Jie, not Wu Jiang – until, perhaps, it was too late to have any value.

  The flower waiting for me on my bedroll that night was a blue hydrangea. The symbol of gratitude, enlightenment … and love.

  We arrived at the city’s yellow earth rampart two days later, at mid-morning. It was
my first visit to the imperial seat where my father had lived for so long, and it was everything that I had imagined – and a few things I hadn’t.

  Rivers of people from all corners of the empire swarmed the roads to the city like colourful armies of ants. Merchants with carts full of fruit and sweets, herbal cures, lucky talismans and “tokens for your sweetheart!” hawked their wares cheerfully from the verges. Hooves and feet thundered as we crossed the bridge over the thirty-foot moat to the vast red-brick Gate of Shining Virtue: the entrance to the city. I gazed up in awe at its five individual gates – each one wide enough for a team of five oxen to drive through abreast. The central gate was the only one that was closed. It was never opened, the Young General told me, except for the emperor herself.

  But I was more interested in the evidence of battle that scarred the city’s gates. On the rampart above the gate openings there was a trio of great wooden watchtowers. One was hung with silk banners – the other two were under repair, with workmen busily scurrying over them, and scaffolding in place. It gave the gate a strange, lopsided appearance.

  “The Leopard himself attempted to assail the walls of the city at midsummer,” Wu Jiang murmured as I rode beside him at the front of the column of men. “They drove him away in a single night, but he did a great deal of damage before he fled.”

  “I’d heard nothing of this,” I said, trying to conceal my shock.

  “My aunt has taken great pains that the story not spread beyond the city itself. We fear the knowledge that the rebel army has grown so confident might cause panic, especially in more remote regions.” He nodded at me, then kicked his horse forward to greet a senior guard at the leftmost gate, leaving me blinking at the casual way he had imparted this confidence.

  Men. All you have to do is save their lives once or twice and they think they can trust you.

  My cynicism was feeble even in my own mind. In my saddlebags were a hydrangea blossom and an orchid, carefully pressed between the pages of one of my record books. They were the first of his flower offerings that I had bothered to preserve – and although I couldn’t really articulate why, the thought that our path was scattered with the flowers he had given me, and I had cast away, cost me a faint pang.

  After a few moments, Wu Jiang returned and signalled us forward on to the road that led through the second left gate. The scale of the city beyond made my breath catch in my throat. It seemed to cover more ground than any forest, lake or mountain range I had ever seen. The glint of three separate rivers wound through it – these, I knew, were tributaries of the Red, Gold Dust and Coiling Serpent Rivers – but they were dwarfed by the masses of buildings. My mouth kept dropping open of its own accord, and even though I knew I should preserve my dignity and adjust my shadow face to hide it, I simply couldn’t spare the energy. There was too much to see.

  Temples, public parks, grand palaces and government buildings, seething markets. Somewhere in there were also two universities and several army barracks. Wide roads of packed dirt – planted along the edges with magnificent elm, juniper and pagoda trees, and bordered with clean white sand – contained the traffic amid clouds of golden dust. Each road was aligned to the cardinal axes, and they – along with ten-foot walls – strictly divided the merchant wards from government enclaves, noble quarters from peasant ones, residential from public.

  Somewhere ahead of us, at the very northern end of the city – its North Star – lay the Imperial Palace. A combination of dust, bright sunlight and distance hid it now, but Father had said that on clear days it was possible to see the very top of the highest, gold-tiled roof peeking out from among the lush trees that made up its vast parkland. It was the emperor’s main residence, and its official name was the Centre of the Universe.

  In a very real way, it was exactly that.

  “Have you ever been to the city before?” Wu Jiang asked, leaning slightly towards me in his saddle.

  I let out a long breath before shaking my head. “I never dreamed that I would have the chance to really see it.” I saw the next question forming in his wrinkled brows and answered before he could voice it. “My father no longer cares to move in these circles. Our world is – quite deliberately – quiet. Retired from public life.”

  General Wu looked pleased. “Well, here you are, regardless. What do you think?”

  I smiled. “It’s going to be a long, dusty march, sir.”

  The Young General laughed, drawing stares from passers-by and the soldiers on the rampart. “Correct as always, Corporal.”

  Twenty-one

  eneral Wu disappeared within moments of our arrival at the grand building where the barracks were housed. Since these same buildings housed the administrative offices for many of the army’s senior officials, my guess was that he was now holed up in an official meeting somewhere with a group of scowling, grey-bearded men and reams and reams of paper.

  Although generally an aide would have been expected to accompany Wu Jiang to any such meetings, he had given me the rest of the day as leave. And lest I imagine that this was preferential treatment, he’d also offered the entire battalion the same privilege, merely reminding Sigong to make sure that everyone knew about the city’s curfew rules.

  “Tell the privates that I want them all back here as soon as they hear the evening drums beginning, on pain of my extreme displeasure,” he had said, hurriedly tucking his saddlebags under his arm. “Most of them won’t have been to the city before – they need to understand that once the drums stop, the doors are locked and there’s no excuse they can offer to get through. Even soldiers are subject to arrest or public punishment by the vagrant patrols when out of their proper ward. And Hua Zhi will have better things to do tomorrow morning than tour the city’s jails bailing out hungover, bloody-nosed young fools.”

  Then he’d hastened away, leaving me with nothing to do but restlessly pace the confines of the small room I had been assigned. I’d already handed all General Wu’s official reports in and had them logged by the department of military affairs – and I was grateful to be rid of them. As the days went on, the scribbled accounts had come to weigh rather more than their mere mass would have suggested. But now I had no idea what to do with myself.

  My footsteps echoed hollowly on the bare, unpolished wooden boards of my tiny, yet private room. Sparsely furnished and utilitarian, with only a small, barred window through which I was unable to see unless I was willing to stand on tiptoe, it was still measures more comfort than the privates were afforded. Besides the bed and a small leather trunk, it contained only a desk well supplied with more paper, brushes, inks, stamps, seals and waxes than I’d ever seen in one place before.

  The room was directly next to Wu Jiang’s – also utilitarian, but far larger – apartment, in case he needed me in a hurry. For a … note-taking emergency?

  I’d joined up to be a soldier. Instead I had become a secretary.

  I went back to the window and sacrificed my dignity by craning up to peer out. Not surprisingly in this maze of official buildings, the view was of a stone wall. Somewhere in the far distance a bird called. I thought of Bingbing with a lurch of sorrow.

  More pacing. Why had Wu Jiang had to give me leave? What was I supposed to do with it? I’d got so used to scurrying around after him every waking moment that I felt rather lost without his presence. That was not a good realization.

  Was I latching on to General Wu as a replacement for Yang Jie?

  No, they were entirely different, and my feelings for them were, too.

  So I was starting to get sincerely attached to Wu in his own right?

  That was even worse!

  Or was it? Was it so bad, when Wu Jiang had made it abundantly clear that any such feelings were already returned? My liking and respect for him grew with each day. I might have been given to a person I found far less personally attractive, if my father thought it best.

  If Wu Jiang’s promises came true, if he could win the emperor and my family around … surely the match wo
uld be a brilliant one for my house, offering my entire family honour and opportunity. It would be a chance at an entirely different life from the quiet, country existence I had grown to dread returning to. I would almost certainly live here, in the capital itself, with access to a wider world that I had never dreamed I would have the chance to inhabit. I would be valued. Cherished.

  Perhaps in time there would even be love.

  But it would still be a life lived behind the carved wood and silk screens of the women’s quarters. Bound by all the rules and events, and expectations – and yes, the joys and challenges – that made up a woman’s life.

  I whirled around and stubbed my toe.

  A short, sharp scream tried to break from my throat. I bit my tongue to keep it inside.

  Being planted in this snug, dry, low-roofed chamber was going to drive me mad after weeks under no roof but canvas and the sky. And I didn’t want to roam the City of Endless Serenity for the first – and perhaps last – time alone. That felt worse than never being allowed to visit at all.

  It had been over two weeks since I last caught so much as a glimpse of Yang Jie.

  Perhaps … just perhaps … I could seek him out now. Not to unload any unwieldy confessions, but just to talk. Just to be friends again. He might be angry with me. He might turn away from me, as I had so cruelly from him. Yet if I could only talk to him for a while, tell him how sorry I was, then even if he were furious, contemptuous, it would be worth it.

  But when I arrived at the barracks, I found the long, narrow room assigned to the east company empty. The privates were probably halfway to the markets by now. Stupid. I sighed.

  “Hua Zhi?” One of the sergeant’s voices – Sui. I turned to see him stepping into the corridor from the other wing of the barracks, his hair gleaming wet and his uniform replaced with a worn cotton robe: returning from the baths. “I thought you would be with General Wu at his meetings.”

  “No, sir – he gave me leave, with everyone else.”