My tone is scathing. At our meeting, he had given no indication that he was going to withdraw. I think back to his parting words—we could have been . . . friends—and feel personally betrayed.
“The situation with the Rouran may be more dire than we supposed,” answers Father. He doesn’t sound as angered as I would have expected for this insult. He only sounds . . . heavy. “I was highly displeased when I received the letter, and had to restrain myself from immediately composing a reprimand. But —”
Before he can continue, loud knocks erupt at the end of our lane.
“Every family must send one person to the marketplace!” shouts a man outside.
“Hurry. The imperial messenger will be here soon!” cries another.
My heart thumps, but I turn back to Father. “You were saying, sir?”
He shakes his head. “Go to the marketplace. We will speak later.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. There is no use badgering him to tell me anything before he is ready. There has never been any use. “Yes, Father.”
Back in my room, I change into men’s clothes, put my hair up in a topknot, and cover the slightly too-large knot with a square of brown silk. In the bronze mirror that once belonged to my mother, my reflection is bright but somewhat distorted. Still, that’s good enough: I only need to see that my topknot is neat and properly centered.
I would much rather go out as myself, a young woman, but Father has not allowed that in years.
Auntie Xia waits for me at the gate of the courtyard, the lines on her face etched deep with worry. “Hua gu-niang, you aren’t wearing enough. Put this on.”
Obediently, I let her wrap me in Father’s thickest cloak before heading out the front door. Auntie Xia’s admonishments follow me. “Turn your back to the wind. Don’t catch a cold!”
The marketplace is full to the brim when I arrive. I stand unnoticed at the edge of the crowd as men speak to one another, their voices rising and rising until the guards shout for everyone to be silent. We wait for the time of an incense stick—blowing on our hands, stamping our feet, me wishing that my cloak had a hood—before I hear riders approaching from the west. Soon the guards order us to line up in neat columns.
The imperial messenger, flanked by four outriders, gallops into the marketplace. All the waiting men—and I—kneel. But I keep my face up, curious to see the messenger. He will probably be Xianbei, and I have never seen anyone Xianbei up close.
During the Qin Dynasty, a wall that stretches from the eastern sea to the western deserts was constructed, at the cost of a million lives, to keep out the nomadic tribes that roam the wastelands to the north. The Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran—in the South, these tribes are known as vast, warlike hordes with their hearts always set on the fertile plains inside the Great Wall. The illustrious Han Dynasty assiduously maintained and expanded the Wall. When that dynasty at last fell after more than four hundred years, the North splintered into many squabbling minor states.
So it is perhaps ironic that the power that eventually arose and unified all those Northern states under a single banner was nomadic in origin: the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei tribe. In the South they are referred to as “the barbarian court,” even though as rulers they don’t seem noticeably worse than anyone else.
I arrived in the North expecting to see barbarians everywhere. I haven’t been out and about much—we’ve mostly kept to ourselves—but still, it has been plain to see that the Xianbei are few in number, compared to Han Chinese. Certainly I haven’t met any in this town.
The imperial messenger, other than being a tall, broad specimen, doesn’t seem particularly foreign. Nor is he dressed in furs or other exotic garments, but in a more striking version of the imperial livery, scarlet on black, with an impressive jeweled toque covering his topknot.
“The Rouran invade to the north,” he announces. “By orders of the emperor, each household is to contribute an able-bodied male for the realm’s defense. No exceptions! Conscripts are to report tomorrow at dawn.”
Cries of dismay erupt all around me, but I’m too stunned to make any sounds. One man per household does not place an equal burden on all households. And of the three men of our small household, Father is disabled, Murong is still a child, and Dabao becomes anxious and difficult to manage when he is farther than twenty paces from his mother.
And then I do gasp. Officially, at least, Murong, Dabao, and Father are not the only men of this household listed on the sub-prefecture roster of residents.
There is another, by the name of Hua Muyang.
Muyang, my twin brother, died when we were still infants, not long after Father returned paralyzed from the duel. Perhaps the loss of his son and his mobility, coming one after the next, were too great for Father to bear. Muyang’s name was never taken off the roster in the South. And after our flight to the North, Father again made sure that his name was duly recorded.
While mine was the one erased all those years ago in the South, and never registered here in the North.
That has long cast a shadow across my heart, but now it means . . . now it means that even if we could somehow convince the sub-prefect of the unsuitability of Father, Murong, and Dabao, we must still produce Hua Muyang.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. “Young xiong-di? Young xiong-di?”
I realize that I am panting, my hands over my face. A man of about Father’s age peers at me, his eyes sympathetic. “Are you all right, young xiong-di?”
I manage a nod. “Thank you, Uncle. I’m fine.”
The messenger and his outriders are already gone. The sub-prefect announces that at dawn the conscripts must report to the north gate, where their names will be checked against the rolls. Any family that does not submit a tribute can expect to have one seized, along with the family’s home and possessions.
The reaction from the crowd is muted—or perhaps it is only the din in my head drowning out all other sounds. Did Father deduce from Yuan Kai’s letter that a general conscription had been declared? Why didn’t he say anything? We could have gathered up what we could carry and hurried out of town before the imperial messenger was even a cloud of dust on the horizon.
Wait—Father went out earlier in a hired sedan chair, the reason my practice session started late. And when he came back, he was silent and haggard. He must have gone to the town gates and found them already closed. Then he returned knowing that while I might be able to scale the town walls and leave in secret, everyone else in the family was stuck.
My nails dig into my palms. I am in danger of panting again, the panic in me rising and rising. I feel a wild urge to pivot and run, away from this wretched place, this wretched day.
And yet I cannot move a single step.
At least I’m not the only one rooted in place. All the men around me, even those who are talking fast and gnashing their teeth, are still trying to come to terms with the suddenness and severity of the conscription.
But when they recover a little from their shock . . .
I pivot and run. My feet pound on the cobbled streets, carrying me past the blacksmith’s, which I visited not long ago—my practice sword, badly dinged by Sky Blade, needed its edge reworked—to the carter’s next door.
I know how to ride and I’ve been taught a thing or two on judging horseflesh. A glance at the carter’s pen tells me that there are no exceptional steeds to be had: They are dray horses, not bred for either speed or agility. I point at the sturdiest-looking of the lot. “I’ll take that one. And you’ll throw in the saddlery.”