Chapter Fourteen
The Sleaze of Princes
Mountain spoke at the squad-fire on the twelfth night.
He spoke at the third quarter of the evening, after the millet had been eaten and the dice had been brought out, with the squad on its heels around the four coals of the fire and the wind coming down off the higher plateau in the small dry ticking that was no longer snow but the first faint scrape of ground-blown salt. Mountain was on the windward side of the dice, which was his place because he was the largest of us and the wind broke best on him, and he had been holding his cup of millet-water on his knee with both hands warming the tin, and he had not spoken for the length of the meal.
He said, into his cup, "Yansheng."
I said, "Mountain."
Liu, on the lee side of the dice, lifted his head. Liu had been carving the duck — which had become a horse — which had become a duck again — in the half-light at his knee, and Liu had not, in the way Liu did, looked at me at all during the meal. Liu's head lifted now in the small careful way Liu's head had lifted in the third week of the muster when Wang had stood up at the bath and said coward of cold water, and Liu's eye, in the angle of his head, went to Wei.
Wei was at the windward side of Liu. He did not lift his head. He looked at the embers.
Mountain said, "Yansheng. You never bathe with us. Have you noticed."
I held the count of eight.
I said, in the belly voice, "Stomach-flux, Mountain."
Mountain said, "Three days a month. The sergeant gave you the slip. I know. I helped you carry the cot."
I said, "Yes, Mountain."
He said, "Three days a month is three days. There are twenty-seven other days. We have bathed in the river at Yulin, and the river at the salt-fork, and the trough at the camp the night before we crossed the Wall. You have not bathed any of those days."
I held the count.
I said, "Mountain. The cold."
He said, "The cold is for all of us."
He said it without complaint. He said it without accusation. He said it in the slow patient voice of a man who had grown up watching a four-ox plough turn at the end of a furrow and had learned, before he had learned how to count the oxen, how to wait for a thing to come back around. He said it as a man would say it to a man, in front of three other men of his squad and his sergeant, after a long count of the dice, on the night the cold had begun to ground-blow salt.
Wang Erlang did not look up.
Wang Erlang had been at the far edge of the firelight, on his heels, with his back to me and his cup on his knee, and the cup had not moved in five breaths. Wang Erlang had been listening since the second of Mountain's sentences. He had listened without lifting his head. He was, this night, the man at the squad-fire whose breath I was counting most carefully under the wind-tick of the ground-blown salt.
The pin behind my breastbone — Wei's pin, the slip-pin — went one whole turn tighter.
Old Crow at the far side of the fire did not move.
Old Crow had been watching the lamp at the prisoner-tent across the trampled grass through the small gap between the smith's wagon and the orderly's, with the angle of his head turned so that the watching could pass for a watching of the wind, and he did not, on Mountain's third sentence, change the angle of his head. He set, very slowly, the heel of his right boot in the snow.
He pressed.
He pressed the boot into the snow at the count of one. He pressed it at the count of two. He pressed it at the count of three.
He had been telling me, since the morning he had pegged the lambing-felt at eighteen-inch depths, that three in his boot at the heel was the count he kept for the wolf is to lie down where I put him, and the boy is to do the same. I held the warmth at the second rib under the back of my own left hand inside the under-shirt under the lamellar, and I let the warmth go flat the way a wolf goes flat when it has been told.
Mountain said, "Yansheng. I am not asking you to bathe. I am asking you, in front of the squad, why you do not."
The flap of the prisoner-tent across the trampled grass moved.
It moved without the Vermillion Guard at the flap stepping. It moved at the inner hem, by a breadth that could have been the wind on the laced seam — except that the seam at the inner hem had been double-laced by the orderly four days ago, and the wind on the seam at the third quarter of the night was not at the inner hem but at the south-east corner, and the breadth of the move at the inner hem was the breadth of a man's wrist passing along the hem on the inside.
I did not turn my head.
I felt him do it.
I felt him do it the way I felt the wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon set his head down between his paws and lift his right ear. I felt him do it the way I had felt him breathe out, on the seventh night, when I had said it is the binding into the felt at six paces. The bowl of his chest — Khaghan-bürkii's bowl, the bird's bowl, the bowl he had told me about at three paces on the night of I did not deny — opened, very small, and reached.
A voice came out of the prisoner-tent.
It was a low careful voice in clipped imperial.
It said, "Soldier."
It said it on a draw — a small lazy half-syllable in front of the word, the kind of draw a steppe prince in a hostage-camp uses when he is bored and the boredom has begun, on day twelve of a chained captivity, to want to be the kind of boredom that gets a junior soldier sent to bring him a second bowl of water for the small entertainment of looking at the junior soldier's neck — and the draw was not a draw I had heard him use in any of the eleven nights of the rotation. The draw was new. The draw was for the squad-fire.
The Vermillion Guard at the prisoner-tent flap did not turn his head. The other Vermillion Guard turned his face into the wind. Neither of them, by the rules of their trade, would call out to the squad-fire across the trampled grass to tell the prisoner to be quiet. They would let him speak. They had been told.
He said, on the draw, in the lazy half-syllable, into the open air of the prisoner-tent so that the words went out of the laced seam at the inner hem on the soft little breath of a man speaking just under the wind-tick of the ground-blown salt — and so that the breath would carry, in the still air at the third quarter of the night, the eighteen paces to the squad-fire of Squad Five at the eastern end of the squad-line —
"Soldier with the water-bowl. I have a thirst."
Liu, on the lee side of the dice, did not look up.
Mountain looked up.
Mountain looked at the prisoner-tent.
Mountain — who did not have, in the bowl of his own chest, any animal he had been told about and would not, in this lifetime, learn what the warmth at the second rib was for — looked at the prisoner-tent the way a man looks at a thing he has heard with his own ears that he does not want to have heard.
Wang Erlang, at the far edge of the firelight, lifted his head.
He lifted his head slowly. He turned the cup on his knee. He looked across the fire at me.
The voice from the prisoner-tent said, on the draw, in the same lazy half-syllable, "Soldier. I am told you are the squad-archer. I am told you are the youngest. I am told you have small soft hands. Bring me a bowl of water, will you, soldier with the water-bowl. Be a good little brother."
The prisoner-tent fell quiet.
The Vermillion Guard at the flap did not move.
The wind ticked at the south-east seam of my lambing-felt across the squad-line.
Wang Erlang looked at me across the fire.
He looked at me for a count of three. He held the count. He did not, in the count, do anything with his face that the wind-light at the cinnabar-stripe of any junior secretary anywhere within forty paces could have read — and there was, by my reckoning, no junior secretary within forty paces, because the lamp in the black-canvas wagon had been out since the eleventh hour, because the wagon-master had dragged the felt twice and the secretary had on the eleventh evening gone to the command-pavilion to read a letter from the Marshal that had come up by fast rider in the afternoon and had not, by the count of the orderly's nod at the wagon at the changing, come back.
Wang Erlang said, into the fire — not to me, not to the prisoner-tent, into the fire — "Soft hands."
He said it on the same draw the voice from the prisoner-tent had used.
He said it the way a bully puts an arm around the shoulders of a younger man at a tavern and walks him toward a window, and at the window the younger man understands that the arm is not, this time, going to push.
Wang Erlang said, still into the fire, "Mountain. The little brother does not bathe with us because the little brother is afraid of the men of the squad. Have you been a man in any other squad. Have you been a man at any village threshing-floor where the boys take a younger boy down to the river and the younger boy has not yet learned the way of his own chest. Have you, Mountain. Have you been that boy."
Mountain held his cup.
Mountain said, slowly, "Wang."
Wang said, "Have you, Mountain."
Mountain said, "Wang. I am not asking that thing."
Wang said, "I am answering the thing you are asking, Mountain. I am answering it because the thing you are asking is the thing that would, if Old Crow at the far side of the fire did not have ears, get the boy in the lambing-felt at the eastern end of the squad-line into the corner of the orderly's wagon at second watch with his trousers around his ankles. I am answering it because I am the man at the fire who has been a man at that village threshing-floor. The boy in the lambing-felt is the boy in the lambing-felt. The boy in the lambing-felt is not going to bathe with us. The boy in the lambing-felt has a thing in his chest that he is not, in the line of duty of any soldier of this squad, our business to find out about. Do you hear me, Mountain."
Mountain looked at his cup.
Mountain said, "Wang."
Wang said, "Do you hear me, Mountain."
Mountain said, slowly, "I hear you, Wang."
Wang said, in the same slow flat way he had been speaking into the fire, "Drink your millet, Mountain."
Mountain drank his millet.
The wind ticked at the south-east seam of the lambing-felt across the squad-line.
The voice from the prisoner-tent said, on the draw, in the lazy half-syllable, "Soldier. The water-bowl is empty."
Wei lifted his head.
He looked at the prisoner-tent.
He did not look at me. He did not look at Mountain. He did not look at Wang. He looked at the prisoner-tent.
He said, into the wind, "Liu."
"Sir."
"Take a bowl of water across to the prisoner-tent. He is bored. The Vermillion Guard at the flap will let you in. Sit at six chi. Watch him drink. Come out."
Liu said, "Yes, sir."
Liu stood up. Liu went to the orderly's wagon. Liu came back with a small tin bowl of water on his palm. Liu walked the bowl across the trampled grass to the prisoner-tent. The Vermillion Guard at the flap stepped to the side. Liu went under the flap. Liu came out at the count of a hundred and forty. Liu walked the empty bowl back to the orderly's wagon. Liu sat down at his place on the lee side of the fire and picked up the duck.
Liu did not look at me.
Wang Erlang did not look at me.
Mountain did not look at me.
Old Crow, at the far side of the fire, did not lift his right boot out of the snow.
He pressed it down at the count of one. He pressed it at the count of two. He pressed it at the count of three.
He said, into the wind, in the small thin steppe-tongue lilt that came under his imperial, "Good."
He stood up.
He went to the picket-line.
Wei caught me at the lambing-felt.
He caught me at the south corner — the corner where the paw-print had been on five mornings — and he did not look at me. He looked at the trampled snow at the corner where the wagon-master had dragged the felt at the second hour and where there was, tonight, no print.
He said, "Yansheng."
"Sir."
"The prince did you a kindness."
"Yes, sir."
"It will not be the last."
"No, sir."
"It will be expensive."
"Yes, sir."
He drew the small folded square of brown paper out of the inner pocket of his under-tunic.
He did not hand it to me.
He held it between the pads of his thumb and his index finger in the dark, and he looked at the trampled snow where the paw-print was not, and he said, "Yansheng. The next time the prince says soldier across the trampled grass on the draw of a man who is bored, the soldier with the water-bowl will go and bring the prince his water, and the soldier will sit at six chi, and the soldier will not speak a single word to the prince. Yes."
I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "When the soldier with the water-bowl comes out, the soldier will come to the squad-fire and sit down at her place — at the place at the windward of Liu, which is not Mountain's place and not Crow's place — and the soldier will not, in any breath of the night, look at Wang Erlang. Yes."
I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "She."
He stopped.
He had said her place. He had said she.
He held the small folded square of brown paper between his fingers in the dark.
He did not look at me.
He said, in the small low voice he had used at the embers on the morning of the tenth day when he had stopped at the of a in the of a soldier who has come down the line, "Yansheng. The soldier with the water-bowl. Her place. Yes."
I held the count of eight.
I said, in the belly voice, "Yes, sir."
He nodded.
He held out his hand.
He turned the small folded square of brown paper, in his fingers, so that the seal of his hand was face up.
He placed the small folded square against the back of my own right hand at the wrist where the lamellar cuff stopped, and he held the paper there for the count of one, and then he opened his fingers and the paper was mine.
I did not lift the paper to read it.
I knew what it said.
It said, Squad Five, Conscript Qiao Yansheng of Qiaojia. Lambing-felt assignment indefinite. Stomach-flux as continuing condition. Bathing requisition: solitary, at the wagon-master's tub, after dusk, day fourteen through sixteen of each lunar month, indefinite duration. Authorization: Sergeant Wei.
It said, in another reading of it, I have given you a bathing tub that is yours alone, because I have been a man with a daughter at home for forty-eight years, and the daughter would have been seventeen this lunar month, and the daughter is not, this night, in the legion. You are.
I put the paper into the inner pocket against my belly, against the bamboo tube, against the other brown-paper square from the night of the lambing-felt.
I said, "Yes, sir."
He went away.
I went to the prisoner-tent at the changing of the watch.
I went with a bowl of fresh water in the small tin and the binding-cloth tight under the lamellar and the kitchen-knife at the small of my back and the warmth at the second rib closed under the back of my own left hand inside the under-shirt where no man at any fire could see it.
I went under the flap.
He was awake. He was sitting forward over his good knee. He was, this evening, looking at the felt at the centre of the tent. He had drawn the lamp closer with his foot. The lamp was at the third quarter. The wax tablet of the secretary was not in the tent — the secretary had not been in the tent at any watch since the morning of the eleventh — but the lamp was at the third quarter as if the secretary had been there an hour and was about to come back.
I crossed at the six paces. I set down the bowl. I sat back at the six paces. I did not kneel at the three.
I held the position.
I did not speak.
He did not look at my face. I did not look at his.
He said, into the felt at the centre of the tent, in the third voice — not the lazy half-syllable, not the bored prince, the third voice — "I have done a thing I will not undo. May I tell you what it was."
I held the count of eight.
I said, in the belly voice, "Yes."
He said, "I have told the squad with my own mouth, in the lazy half-syllable of a hostage-prince who is at the third week of his boredom, that the soldier with the water-bowl is the kind of soldier a hostage-prince at the third week of his boredom likes to ask for water from. I have told the squad in the tongue of the men who pass each other at the threshing-floor of a village south of the Yellow River. I have told the squad that the soldier is at the wrong end of an arrangement no man in this squad has the appetite to interrupt. I have told the squad — through Wang Erlang's mouth, because I knew his mouth was the one that would carry the telling — that the soldier is, in the bowl of the soldier's chest, a thing the squad will not, in the line of its duty, find out about. I have made the soldier my soft little jailer. I have made the soldier the boy in the lambing-felt. I have done this. I will not undo it. I will, on any future night the question is asked at the squad-fire, do it again. Do you hear me, soldier."
I held the count of eight.
I held it longer.
I said, in the belly voice, "I hear."
He said, "And does the soldier forgive me."
I held the count of eight.
I said, in the belly voice, "The soldier has a sergeant who has just given her a bathing tub on the days no other man of this column will be there."
He did not move.
He waited.
He said, into the felt, in the third voice that was, for the first time in twelve nights, almost a laugh, "Then I have done the squad a kindness in two parts, and the second part of the kindness was done without my knowing."
I said, "Two parts."
He said, "The first part I have just told you. The second part the sergeant has told you. The third part I have not yet done. I will not, before the breakout, do it."
I held the count of eight.
I said, in the belly voice, "Tell me the third part."
He said, "The third part is that, when the breakout comes — and the breakout will come — I will, on the night of the breakout, kneel in this tent on the felt at the centre of it, and I will let the soldier with the water-bowl unlock the iron at my ankle with the key she has stolen at the cost of her own throat, and I will, in the moment the iron comes off, not be the prince who has been chained to a pole for thirty nights. I will be a man who has been let up by a soldier who has cost herself her throat for him. I will not, on that night, lazy-half-syllable her. I will not soft-hands her. I will not, on that night, speak to her in any voice but the third voice. Do you hear me, soldier."
I held the count of eight.
I said, in the belly voice, "I hear."
He said, into the felt, "Good."
He did not say anything else.
I sat at the six paces. He sat against the pole. The lamp burned down by another quarter. The wind ticked at the south-east seam of my lambing-felt across the squad-line. The wolf at the south line of the smith's wagon lay flat with his head between his paws.
When the changing of the watch came I rose.
I bowed at the small clipped angle.
I went under the flap.
I crossed the trampled grass to the squad-fire and sat down at the windward of Liu — at her place, in the small new ledger of the squad — and I did not, in any breath of the night, look at Wang Erlang.
Wang Erlang, at the far edge of the firelight, lifted his head once.
He looked at the fire.
He set his head down.
He drank his cup.