1 BORDER OF THE KINGDOMS OF ZHU YUANZHANG AND THE ZHANG FAMILY EIGHTH MONTH, 1356
“Surely it requires no extended consideration,” the woman’s voice said from behind the stirring gauze curtain of the carriage. “Why not give me your answer now, Zhu Yuanzhang, and save us both the time?”
Even here, far from the sea, the plain beneath the carriage’s hilltop vantage point blazed white with salt as though the wealth of the woman’s kingdom overflowed without restraint. The hot tiger tail of the southern summer had vanished the shallow lake that usually lay here on the border between the two territories. Above their armies, quickening flags dashed colored reflections onto the expanse. Yellow, for the rebel army of the Radiant King. Green for the Zhang merchant family, the former loyalists of the Empire of the Great Yuan, who had finally broken with their Mongol rulers that spring and proclaimed their rule over the salt and shipping lanes of the eastern seaboard.
Zhu Yuanzhang, her golden king’s armor and gilded wooden hand matching the color of the grass under her horse’s hooves, saw the generals of the opposing armies walking towards each other with deliberate courtesy. Their small noonday shadows sliced over the shattering crust beneath their boots.
To the casual eye there was little between the two generals to set them apart. Two winged helmets in the Nanren style, two sets of lamellar armor with the dark leather taking in the sun and the metal lion’s-head bosses on their shoulders sending it flashing back like mirror signals. But to Zhu, whose general was her brother in all but blood, their distant shapes were as easily distinguished as two faces. That was Xu Da’s unmonkishly tall frame, his joyful stride that of a young man eager to taste the world. The other, General Zhang, of lesser height and build, but carrying himself with the reserved confidence of a man with the life experience of Zhu and her general put together. Zhu knew just how quickly General Zhang had moved after his family’s separation from the Yuan. In the space of a few months he had taken all the remaining cities along the southern reaches of the Grand Canal and moved the Zhang family’s capital to walled Pingjiang on the eastern shore of Lake Tai. Now all that separated the Zhangs in the east from Zhu’s own kingdom in the west was a stretch of flatlands in the curve of the mighty Yangzi River as it wound its way to the sea.
“Surrender to me,” said the woman behind the curtain. Her voice had a throaty quality, low and flirtatious. It was a voice for a closed room, velveted with suggestion: that though they were strangers who had only just met, perhaps they were moments from becoming as known to each other as two bodies could be. It was one of those tactics that worked only as long as the calculation underneath it remained unseen. Zhu, who not only saw it but also considered herself generally immune to the urges of physical desire, was interested to feel a mild tug in response. As someone lacking in femininity herself, it had never occurred to her that it could be weaponized. The novelty of having it wielded against herself amused and impressed her in almost equal measure.
On the plain the two generals inclined their heads in respect; conveyed and received the formal message of surrender; and withdrew. Their tracks lay bruised blue behind them.
Zhu finally turned to her interlocutor. “Greetings to the esteemed Madam Zhang.”
“I see you refuse my title,” the woman said archly.
“Why shouldn’t I, when you refuse mine?” Zhu returned. The snap of words sent a current of vitality through her. It was the delight of power mixed with play, as thrilling to her as the tang of brine in her nose and the hot wild wind that snapped her banners and sent the grass rushing and leaping down the hillsides. In a tone of matching archness, she added, “Perhaps my surrender is better given to he who holds the true title. Your husband, the king. I would rather be received face-to-face by my equal than by his honorable wife speaking from behind a curtain of propriety.”
The woman gave a manicured laugh. “Don’t worry. Your surrender will be given correctly. My husband’s reputation may precede him, but a weak man, well managed, is a woman’s greatest strength.” A shadow rippled against the gauze, as if the woman had leaned close. Her lowered voice issued an invitation for Zhu to lean down from her horse, to let her ear drift so close to those murmuring lips that she might have felt each syllable on her skin had it not been for the thin barrier between them. “I don’t think you’re a weak man, Zhu Yuanzhang. But your position is weak. What hope can you have against my larger army; against my general who was even hailed as an equal by the Yuan’s feared General Ouyang?
“Give me your surrender. Bring your forces under my command. Instead of waiting for the Yuan to send their Grand Councilor and that central army of theirs to put us down, we’ll march on Dadu together. We’ll take their capital, and the throne. And when my husband is emperor, he’ll grant you the title of your choosing. Duke, prince? It will be yours.”
Zhu said dryly, “When the histories are written, such a title will surely commend me to their authors as a great man.”
The men she and Madam Zhang had each brought here were only for show. This was a meeting, not a battle. But Zhu was under no illusions about her situation. Her army, an infantry-dominated force built from the former Red Turban rebellion and additional peasant recruits, was barely half the size of the Zhangs’ well-equipped professional army. And with the exception of her capital, Yingtian, none of the dozen cities she held in the south could match even the poorest of the Zhang family’s canal-linked economic centers. It was clear what the outcome of a battle would be. Had their positions been reversed, Zhu would have counted herself the victor and demanded surrender, just as her opponent was doing now.
Madam Zhang murmured, “Is that what you want? To be great?” Her tone was as smooth as the trailing caress of fingertips along skin. “Then accept me, and let me make it happen.”
Greatness. Zhu had wanted it her entire life. With a certainty as crisp as shadow cast across salt, she knew it would always be everything she wanted. She straightened in the saddle and gazed eastwards over the sweep of the Zhang family’s realm. The wind rushing against her from that distant tawny horizon seemed to bring it close; it turned that abstract line into something palpable, something fiercely visceral. Reachable. The thought filled Zhu with sharp joy. Stationary and yet soaring on her hilltop, she had the curious sensation of seeing her entire path to her future stretching before her. From her eagle’s vantage she could see no true obstacles on that path—only small bumps that would barely check her as she ran headlong towards her goal.
With a surge of delight, she said to the faceless woman behind the curtain, “I don’t want to be great.”
She savored the pause as Madam Zhang’s mind churned, wondering what she had misunderstood about Zhu’s character—where she had gone wrong with her seduction.
The stump of Zhu’s arm ached inside the too-tight cuff of her wooden hand. But that discomfort, and the daily repercussions of being a one-handed man in a two-handed world, was merely the cost of her desire, and Zhu was strong enough to bear it. She was strong enough to bear anything, or to do anything, for the sake of what she wanted.
“Then—” Madam Zhang began.
“I don’t want to be great,” Zhu repeated. Her desire was the radiance of the sun, an immensity that filled every part of her without exception. Who else understood what it was to feel something of this magnitude; to want something with the entirety of their self, as she did? “I want to be the greatest.”
Sparkling crystalline eddies scrubbed across the bare surface of the plain. Life-sustaining salt that, in such concentration, became life-denying.
“I see,” Madam Zhang said after a moment. Her flirtatiousness had taken on a sheen of disdain, and Zhu had the mental image of the door to a private room slamming in her face. “I forgot how young you are. Young people are always too ambitious. They haven’t yet learned the limits of what’s possible.”
Lacquered fingernails tapped the inner frame of the carriage, signaling the driver. As the carriage moved off, Madam Zhang said, “We’ll meet again. But before we do, let this elder tell you something. Cast your eye upon my general down below. What respect does he lack from the world around him, for his manner, his appearance, his accomplishments? The natural place of a man like that is above others. You would do well to consider your natural place, Zhu Yuanzhang. If the world can barely stand to let its eye fall upon a man as lacking as you, do you think it would accept you on the throne? Only a fool would risk everything for the impossible.”
Zhu watched the carriage wheel away down the hill. If Madam Zhang had known the true extent of Zhu’s physical lacks—which, as far as matters of masculine anatomy went, included more than broad shoulders or a right hand—no doubt she’d have considered even Zhu’s present accomplishments to have been impossible. But if you were determined to want the impossible, there was a better way to get it. Zhu thought with amused defiance: Change the world, and make it possible.
YINGTIAN
A king and queen strolling through their palace grounds proceeded without impediment, since everyone in their way stepped aside and bowed, but the sheer profusion of construction workers in every direction made Zhu think of herself as a boat cutting through a weed-clogged pond. As they passed yet another building shrouded in bamboo scaffolding, she said admiringly, “I wasn’t even away that long. You’ve been busy.”
Her wife, Ma Xiuying, delivered a look of deep indignation. “Of course I’ve been busy. When you said you wanted a new palace to reflect your status, did you think it would build itself?”
It wasn’t even just the palace that was under construction. When Zhu had returned to the city, she’d seen the rising foundations of Yingtian’s new walls, and ridden down sunbaked avenues lined with seedling trees that wouldn’t give shade for decades yet. The sunshine sawdust smell and the breeze flowing unchecked through the construction sites; the uncluttered sky that seemed bigger and bluer than anywhere else Zhu had lived: the possibility contained in all that newness thrilled her to her bones.
Ma added, “Whereas it sounds like you rode all the way to the border just to posture.” The enormous volume of her embroidered silk dress barely slowed her stride. Since she was of Semu nomad stock and her feet were as big as a peasant’s, she moved several times faster than the aristocratic Nanren women who could be seen tottering about Yingtian under parasols.
Zhu hustled to keep up. “Better to posture than to take them on. Which is something Madam Zhang knew as well as I did. She wanted me to surrender.”
“Which would make sense for both of you. So of course you refused.”
But as long as there existed something greater in the world than what Zhu had, she knew she would desire it. She could have as readily given up that desire as she could have stopped breathing. “It makes sense according to that particular situation. So what I need to do is change the situation.”
“Oh, is that all. Perhaps you can double your army just by wishing it.”
Zhu twinkled at her. “Maybe I can! But I’m going to need your help.”
Ma stopped and shot her a look. “My help.”
“Why does that seem so surprising? You’re a very capable woman.” Zhu indicated the hammering, shouting chaos on all sides. She switched to one of the languages she’d learned in the monastery (but never practiced) and said very badly, “You can speak Uyghur, can’t you?”
Ma went blank in surprise. Then she laughed and replied in the same language, “Better than you, apparently.”
Uyghur wasn’t a world away from Mongolian, which put Zhu in mind of the eunuch general Ouyang and his flat, alien accent when he spoke Han’er. She had always found that accent rather ugly. But she could have listened to Ma’s Uyghur all day: there was something purely delightful about finding a new facet of someone she already knew so well.
“It’s been so many years. I thought I might have forgotten.” Ma switched back to Han’er. She had a nostalgic look. “When I was growing up in Dadu, when my father was a general of the Yuan’s central army, we spoke our own Kipchak language at home. But we’d use Mongolian with the Mongols, and Uyghur with other Semu people. Once you know one of those three, the others come easily. But Han’er is completely different. I barely knew a word when my father brought us to Anfeng and gave me to the Guos.”
Her father, who had betrayed the Yuan and joined the Red Turban rebellion in Anfeng, only to be betrayed in turn by his rebel compatriots and left to die on General Ouyang’s sword. Zhu felt a pang at the thought of the life Ma had lived before they met. Everything she had suffered. She found she couldn’t muster up much regret for the deaths of Ma’s father, or the two Guos: Old Guo and his son Little Guo, Ma’s unfortunate fiancé. “None of them saw your talents.”
She realized she’d been too callous when a flash of pain crossed Ma’s face. She knew Ma still grieved them. Not for who they’d been to her, or how they had treated her, but simply as human beings. Even after a full year of marriage, Zhu still found Ma’s compassion mysterious. When they were together she sometimes thought she might understand—might even feel it, as if it were being transmitted by the vibration of Ma’s tender heart against her own—but as soon as they were apart, it faded like a dream.
She changed the subject. She’d spent the greater part of her life trying to escape her past, and unpleasantly sticky feelings such as grief and nostalgia still filled her with the vague urge to run. “Can you find me a dozen or so other Semu people who speak Uyghur?” she said. “Women too, if you can find them. And while you’re at it: a couple of camels.”
To her satisfaction, the request jolted Ma out of her grief. She gave Zhu an incredulous glare.
“Who doesn’t need the occasional camel? I’m sure you have some sort of ancestral facility with them,” Zhu said cheerfully. “I’ll also need as many rolls of silk as you can get.”
“Maybe you have an ancestral facility with the turtle who laid you as an egg!” Ma exclaimed. “Fine: Semu people, camels, silk. The sun and moon and all the magpies flying over the River of Heaven. When are you leaving?”
“As soon as possible. It’s a long march. I’ll need to ask Xu Da to start mobilizing the forces immediately. But you’ve got one thing wrong.” A group of palace maids fluttered past, saw the Radiant King and his consort approaching, and flung themselves into reverences. Zhu flicked her fingers benevolently to bid them rise. “It’s: Are we leaving soon.”
Ma frowned in confusion.
“Am I as much a fool as the Guos, to overlook the talented woman in my own house?” Zhu felt a frisson of excitement at her own audacity. “We’ll do it together.”
The image of a beautiful, jade-cold face rose in her mind, and set all her senses tingling in that eerie recognition of someone else who was neither one thing nor the other. Her stump sang in remembered pain.
“Zhu Yuanzhang,” Ma said, low, mindful of passersby who might hear her addressing the Radiant King so informally. “What are you planning?”
Zhu smiled at her. “I need an army on top of the one I already have. So we’re going to Bianliang to get one.”
After a long pause, Ma said, “The eunuch general—”
“Don’t worry—”
“Don’t worry!”
“—I’m not going to walk into the tiger’s cave. Believe it or not, I’ve learned some lessons from the past.” Zhu laughed. “This is a battle-free mission. But we have to move fast. Imagine you’re him: you’ve just spent a lifetime biding your time and pretending loyalty to the ones who murdered your family. But now they’re dead, and you’re finally in a position to get your revenge on the person who’s responsible for everything you suffered: the Great Khan. You’d be desperate to get moving, wouldn’t you?
“The only reason General Ouyang hasn’t left Bianliang already is because the Great Khan summers in Shangdu and doesn’t return to Dadu until mid-autumn. But the very instant he hears the Great Khan is back, he’ll be on the march. So we have to get to Bianliang before that happens.”
Ma said with deep suspicion, “No fighting. Are you going to make him an offer like Madam Zhang made to you?”
“Not exactly. But it’ll be fun, I promise.”
Before Ma could reply, there was a roar and a dust cloud rose into the sky where an old building had been an instant ago.
“Buddha preserve us, it looks worse than before,” Ma cried, as bricks rained down on a plaza that had already sprouted the skeletons of several new constructions. “Are you sure we couldn’t have just kept everything?”
The air was full of brick dust and yellow dust and the familiar dark pickle smell of fire-powder. For an instant Zhu saw a vision of future Yingtian through that dusty curtain: a gleaming metropolis of such brash, tasteless, shocking newness that it stood as radical dismissal of everything that had come before.
Her stamp upon the world, made new.
She felt wild with speed: as if she was running as fast as she could towards that tawny horizon. “Have faith, Yingzi. It’s going to be magnificent.”
Copyright © 2023 by Shelley Parker-Chan
