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Baoxiang had been unable to avoid the Minister of Revenue's invitation to dinner. Come and keep an old man company, he had said, I'll show you those woodcuts from Tianjin that I mentioned. To continue to refuse might have seemed suspicious, but as the Minister chatted cheerfully over the plates he wished he had taken the risk. The effects of his perpetual sleeplessness were always worse in the evenings, so that as late hours approached he heard and saw everything through a drunken fog of exhaustion. Even if he hadn't been so tired, Baoxiang wouldn't have wanted to learn more about the old man's life, to be forced into this contact with him not as a lever in a plan, but as a person with his own life.
To Baoxiang's surprise, the Minister, whom he had known to be a widower, had his household overseen by a woman. Baoxiang had seen her when he arrived.
'My sister-in-law,' he explained. 'She begged me not to send her back to her family when my brother died. How could I refuse? She and her daughter live in the west courtyard and she manages the place for me. She's a more than competent housekeeper, and my niece is a good girl.'
Baoxiang suddenly had a bizarre feeling. Surely the Minister couldn't be thinking of a husband for his niece? But the woman withdrew with a smile, and left the two of them to look at the woodcuts, which were as marvellous as promised. Once, the part of Baoxiang that loved beauty would have thrilled in response to them. Now, they only made him feel worse, that he had lost that capacity. The Minister hadn't seemed to notice his abstraction, chattering as he put them away. Baoxiang shook himself. He could get through the evening; it was only one more performance.
'This big room's too cold for these old bones. We'll drink in my study, Lao Ji will show you. This old man must attend to his old weakness first to be ready for drinking.'
The room that Baoxiang was escorted to bore the stamp of the old man's personality moderated by a sister-in-law's desire for order. Piles of paper were contained, bookcases carried only what their weight should bear. Brazier and lamps, warm cushions, an embossed leather screen to protect against drafts. A large desk, and on it two familiar ledgers opened to almost identical pages. A chill ran down his spine. He was frozen where he stood in sudden fear; for all the impulse to dash the books into the brazier, he couldn't have done it had the torturer been in the room with him. He might as well have been; Baoxiang had not heard Lao Ji's footsteps retreat from outside the door. He was guarded.
'I'll leave first,' the Minister had said, seeing his deputy bent over his desk at the close of the day, and then he had waited to see what would happen.
'You have an excellent eye for it,' came the voice from the doorway. The Minister's face was still beaming, his robes still crinkled, as he crossed the room, but it was long since Baoxiang had considered him a fool. Even so, he knew he had badly underestimated him. His exhaustion had vanished in the gush of fear.
'Seeing this alone,' the Minister continued, gesturing at the second volume, 'anyone would think it my hand even if he knew it well. Especially once the official seal was upon it, and I'm sure that it would have been. But seen together, there are differences in the brushstrokes, and if we were each compelled to replicate the text without sight of the original, I would produce this -' he clapped his hand down on one volume 'and you this other. Ah, don't feel foolish, Prince of Henan. You have a healthy young body, you can't always remember to replicate an old man's stiffening wrist.'
Baoxiang was shaking in his dread. The Minister knew; he was in his house, in his power, and he was surely going to die. The only question was whether he would be granted the mercy of a knife in his gut and his body dumped in the streets rather than a public execution. Anger was beyond him, the pure, vicious blackness of his Mandate was beyond him. He was only his fear, a firm hand on his shoulder moving him that he was powerless to resist.
'Sit down, my boy,' said the Minister kindly. 'Now you know. Over here, by the brazier, it's bad to let sweat cool on you. Have some tea, better than wine for your present feeling.'
He pressed a cup into Baoxiang's hand. Terror sloshed in its depths. Drugged? Poisoned?
'Ah, you wonder what's in it.' The Minister took the cup back and drank it himself. 'There's no need, but I won't be offended if you prefer not to. If I were just going to kill you, Lao Ji would have done it, you know. So let's talk together, and decide what to do.'
There was no point in denial. 'How long have you known?' Baoxiang's voice trembled.
'Absolutely? Only since this morning, when my men found the ledgers in your house and everything else that was there too. What a place! No wonder you can't sleep, so depressing, especially for a man who loves beautiful things as you do. Of course, I have suspected for some time. Did you think this old man survived as long as he has by being a fool? You're very good, much better than anyone else who has wanted my seat, but I'm old, I know these games. I check every new man they send me above a certain rank.' The Minister shook his head with the weariness of long patience.
'I warned you to stay away from the Imperial family because I've made sure to do it myself, but they're bad at learning. You'd be amazed how often they and their supporters forget that it is more convincing if a spy can count. You can certainly count. You work twice as fast as the average man, and do twice as much work in ordinary hours and do it better. You know I'm not unreasonable. So I thought: what are you staying to do in the dark, that you don't do by daylight? Don't blame me for what you're feeling now.' The Minister smiled with all appearance of sincerity and added, 'I did try to give you a hint.'
This was the end, thought Baoxiang, and the utter wretchedness of it came as a kind of relief. There would be more fear to come, and far more pain, and all the while he forced himself not to imagine them his body anticipated both with a horror that made him feel his whole flesh was dissolving into jelly, but there could be no greater failure than this. This was the moment of discovery that everything he had done, had endured, had been in vain, and he would have to endure the knowledge of that for every remaining moment of his life, but the shock of realisation itself could never come again. He felt almost light-headed.
The Minister pressed a piece of candied fruit into his hand. 'Eat. We can't talk if you faint.'
Baoxiang ate. It was dried persimmon, and tasted of nothing. The Minister took several for himself.
'I have your servant, of course. A loyal man. But there was no need for him to talk for me to know what you're about. You let General Ouyang kill your brother, didn't you? The General was a fine soldier, but he never had a reputation for cunning. Perhaps he needed a little help with his plan and you gave it to him. How angry you must have been with the late Prince, to feel driven to that! I always heard that the pair of you were fond of one another, despite your differences in temperament. I'm sorry that the world drove you apart.'
The Minister was pitying him! Baoxiang couldn't believe it, and at that, a little of the saving anger came to him. How dare this old man pity him? He was clever, but soft with age. If he wanted to talk to Baoxiang then there was still a way to win, a way to get out of this, to provoke that disgusting, degrading pity and use it for his own ends. His rising fury cleared the fog of fear and exhaustion enough to think. The Minister had his money, had Seyhan, and Baoxiang didn't actually know if his servant had talked. Perhaps he hadn't, but he was unreachable regardless. Baoxiang would talk. He would make this old man believe that Baoxiang welcomed his sympathy, regretted his actions, had learned his lessons, and then when Baoxiang had ensured he had taken no precautions that would prove fatal to himself, he would have him killed. It would work. He couldn't lose now. In a moment he would find the right words to set him back on the road he had chosen, towards the end that would make everything worth it.
'Perhaps I'm wrong,' said the Minister. 'We needn't talk about it.'
Baoxiang couldn't speak. He had to speak, had to wrench things back to the way he needed them to be, grasp the unravelling threads in his hand and weave them together again, but the anger wasn't working, and the Minister was speaking again, kindly, unperturbed, as if all of Baoxiang's wrongness meant nothing to him.
'I don't take it personally,' the Minister continued. 'Your target isn't me, I am merely a necessary casualty. If you didn't want to wait for my ministry, you'd be better with slow poison so that I could ensure you succeeded me when I had to retire. So you must aim at implicating the Grand Councillor, though I never heard that he offended you. I don't believe you're in league with the rebels: you fought too hard against them as Provincial Administrator. Perhaps the Zhangs? They know how to recognise talent. Or, how high does your ambition reach, Prince of Henan?
He shook his head, gently chiding, 'Why wade in blood to the throne? You won't enjoy it the more when you get there. Though a man of your talents would be wasted as Great Khan. Still, if that's what you want, I can help. But don't think,' he added, and for a moment his voice wasn't gentle at all, 'that you will have a second chance with me. What you choose to do now is up to you and I will work with you sincerely, but if you aim at me, you will regret it.'
He took up the counterfeit ledger, tore out several pages, and laid them on the brazier. 'There!'
Baoxiang watched in horror. He wanted to reach out his hand and snatch back his plans from the coals on which they were smouldering. But of course he couldn't. He watched paralysed as the Minister fed the rest of the volume a sheet at a time into the fire, his rheumy eyes watering at the smoke. A placid cat emerged from its bed to curl up on a corner of the old man's robe. He choked out, 'Why? Why haven't you had me killed? I planned to ruin you.'
The Minister's hands didn't pause in tearing the ledger as he answered.
'You aren't a vicious man by nature, Wang Baoxiang. I told you, you have a promise I haven't seen in years, a young man of ambition who has found a place to exercise his talents, who offers scope for me to exercise mine beside him. The Yuan needs change, we can bring that, conquer it and make it ours at the same time we make it really work. It will be a truly worthwhile use of your talents. It should even be fun!'
He patted Baoxiang on the hand.
'Go home and go to sleep. Take tomorrow off. Eat some good food. Consider what you'd like to do. We'll talk again.'
As they crossed the front courtyard, Baoxiang heard the carriage being brought round for him. The Minister had insisted. He paused by the gate, a old man with crumpled robes and fraying hair, and pressed Baoxiang's arm once more. 'I have shown you mercy tonight. Won't you follow my example, and show it to yourself?'
He couldn't. How could he? There was no mercy in the world, not for himself, not for Esen, not for any of the people he had used and would use to achieve what he needed to express all his anger and hatred at all of them who didn't let him be what he was, to force them to see him, everything they hated, when he won. How could he let go of it, the black swirling force inside him that was the only thing holding him together in his fury?
But the Minister didn't say let go, he said only: do it differently, do it with me, do it as yourself. He couldn't, it was impossible, he could never go back to the man he had been before. But despite himself, Baoxiang saw that arthritic hand closing around the last piece of paper, crumbling it, consigning it to the fire, and the choice that had been made with that action, not to destroy Baoxiang when he might so easily have done so, because he hadn't wanted to be the man who did.
'There are things that can never be undone,' he had said, 'but this isn't one of them.'
The horses moved on, Baoxiang slumped back exhausted in the carriage. The heavy curtains blocked out all light, leaving him alone in the darkness. He felt his eyes close, pressed his hands against them so that they hurt, and then in front of him, his body delivered out of that deeper blackness, a shifting pattern, almost imperceptible, of colours, purple and green and grey growing in intensity until it swirled around him, blue, white, another thing inside him that he could reach for if he wanted. He didn't know if he wanted. He didn't know how he ever could. The horses were muffled by new-fallen snow. His hands dropped. He fell asleep.