The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan Read online

  I scratch out a quick note to Father, telling him that the war is over and that I have not dishonored the family name. After entrusting the letter to Xiao Yi, Kai’s attendant, I fall into bed and do not wake up until sunset. After dinner and a wash—with steaming hot water!—I sleep again until dawn.

  When I open my eyes, the room feels a little too warm—a completely foreign sensation—because of all the braziers Xiao Yi set blazing. I put on the men’s clothes that have been provided, made of blue embroidered silk. They are a bit long for me—Kai’s garments, most likely. When I’m dressed, I open a window. Are those actual flower buds on the trees in the courtyard? Has spring finally arrived in the North?

  Kai emerges from his rooms, with faint dark circles still under his eyes, but looking alert, clean, and very handsome. I half expected that it would feel awkward between us, after, well, having made promises for our next lifetime. But all I feel as I look upon him is a great swell of affection and happiness.

  “Good morning, Your Highness. What are you afraid of today?” I call out as my greeting.

  “That you wouldn’t be here when I got up. But, as usual, I see I was afraid over nothing,” he says brightly. “Ah, here comes Xiao Yi with our breakfast. It’s nothing but coarse food and weak tea, unfit for a refined palate such as yours. All the same, will you forgive the inadequacy of this rough repast and deign to partake of it in my rooms?”

  I laugh, remembering his similar words the first time we dined together. Confucius would clutch his chest in shock and disapproval, but I feel no compunction about sitting down with Kai in his reception room. “This lowly conscript overflows with gratitude at Your Highness’s beneficence. This morning’s bountiful meal will be a kindness never to be forgotten.”

  As we feast on freshly steamed pork buns, pickled radish, and bowls of hot porridge, he tells me that his father and his aunt have gone to Futian Pass for an inspection—and teases me about my evident relief. “You’re more afraid of her than you were of the bandits.”

  “I’m more afraid of her than I was of Anake, the Rouran warrior last night,” I joke right back. “And he almost made me drop in a dead faint!”

  On my third bowl of porridge, I remember something from my conversation with the emperor. “Why did you tell the emperor that you’d be dueling with a girl?”

  “Ah, that.” He sprinkles some finely diced pickled radish on his porridge.

  He is . . . blushing.

  “Yes?”

  He clears his throat. “The emperor knew that my aunt would not allow a marriage to be arranged for me until after the duel, since the outcome could be uncertain. But he had some matches in mind for me.”

  I stop eating and stare at him. It didn’t occur to me that his marriage might be something the court would take a hand in—a matter of state interest.

  “I declined all his suggestions!” he protests, a hint of apprehension in his voice. “He asked if I had any preferences. By that time I’d returned from the South, after having seen you and met you twice for sparring. I told him that I would not marry anyone else unless you first rejected me absolutely.”

  I breathe again, even as my cheeks grow warm. “And what did he say?”

  “He teased me for my presumption and told me that I had better render a great service to the country first, before I dare think of such things as choosing my own wife.”

  But he has now rendered a great service to his country, which the emperor publicly acknowledged.

  It becomes my turn to clear my throat. “Will your aunt ever allow such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, but I have told her the same thing as I told the emperor.”

  “What? When?” When her ladyship met me, she believed me to be Hua Muyang, my father’s son.

  “The morning we left the capital, when I said my goodbyes to her.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Nothing. But her opinion will matter only if you are amenable to the match.”

  His gaze is direct, this young man who is afraid of everything and yet fears nothing.

  “I—I will not reject you absolutely,” I say, my face burning. And then, because I’m braver than that, “Yes, I am amenable.”

  He smiles. I smile back.

  Then he asks, “Can I still come and find you in the next lifetime, when we are three?”

  We dissolve in laughter.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  After breakfast, I am free to spend my day as I wish. While we were riding all over the plateau, I would have said that I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing exactly nothing. But now that the rest of my life is here, doing nothing seems rather . . . boring. Especially when I’m filled with such a sense of energy and well-being.

  “What can I do?” I ask Kai, still smiling.

  He too is still smiling. “If you don’t have anything else you’d rather do, you can always come with me. I have to deal with the capital guards some more.”

  I haven’t the slightest idea what to do with capital guards. “Well, why not?”

  As it turns out, there is a great deal of work to be done, from poring over documents, to tracking how Lord Sang might have misused state funds to finance his treasonous activities, to checking for shortfalls in equipment and maintenance because money has been siphoned off elsewhere. I listen to Kai question some capital guards and speak to two dozen guards on my own.

  The next morning we draft a report for the imperial court. That afternoon I go out and shop, because I have been one of the royal duke’s men, and his men are paid regularly. With silver and coins I’ve earned on my own, I buy books for Father, calligraphy brushes for Murong, a supply of sweets for Dabao, and several lengths of silk for Auntie Xia.

  That evening Yu and Kedan reach the royal duke’s residence. Kai sends a message to the palace for Tuxi. He isn’t sure whether Tuxi will be able to come—the movements of royal princes being typically rather restricted. But soon Tuxi arrives to round out our group.

  Yu stays only a short time—there are too many household tasks for him to see to. But the rest of us linger over a plentiful dinner and talk and laugh. At first Kedan is uncharacteristically bashful, but once he realizes—as I did earlier—that Tuxi is the same person he has always been, he relaxes and entertains us with an account of the defense of Futian Pass. It must have been a most harrowing night, yet he makes us laugh uproariously with stories of soldiers in the overcrowded fort tripping over its few remaining chickens.

  We are obliged to give an account of what we went through that same night. To my surprise, Kai proves himself an exceptional storyteller, and I find myself listening with my mouth open to events I have lived through.

  Kedan has already been informed of Captain Helou’s fate, so Kai glosses over that part. But when he nears the end of his narrative, as he describes me fighting my way toward the gong, he says, “Hua xiong-di catches a spear thrown at him without even turning around. Then, as he hurls the spear right back, he yells, ‘Send me another, you pigs. I can do this blindfolded!’”

  Kedan hoots and claps.

  I’m astonished. “I said that aloud? I thought it was only in my head.”

  “Oh, everyone in that courtyard heard you, Hua xiong-di,” confirms Tuxi. “I think at least half the men shivered, including me.”

  “Me too,” says Kai. “You know I did.”

  Which makes me choke on my wine laughing.

  After he finishes the tale, I turn to Tuxi. “You were worried, weren’t you, Tuxi xiong, that your father wouldn’t believe you?”

  Tuxi reddens. “Horribly worried—not to mention I thought he would be angry that I went beyond the Wall without his leave. But”—he beams—“today he told me that sometimes boys become men when their fathers aren’t looking.”

  We bellow with approval and drink to his elevation in the eyes of the Son of Heaven.
r />   “Wait a second,” says Kedan after a while. “Nobody ever mentioned why the emperor was in the crown prince’s rooms that night.”

  “My horse went lame on the way, so I didn’t reach the palace until perhaps two hours before Kai xiong-di and Hua xiong-di,” explains Tuxi. “And by the time I half convinced my father that Lord Sang was expecting the Rouran, we weren’t sure we dared trust anyone. We wanted to distance my father from the guards who had been placed around him, and going for a visit to my brother’s residence seemed a plausible reason, since my father had been doing that frequently of late.”

  “And where was the crown prince all that time?” asks Kedan.

  “On his bed, in the next room from where we were fighting.”

  “What?” Kedan and I cry in unison.

  “Those of his household hid in a storage room, but he himself refused to move. He said he’d die with his father and brother if it came to that.” Tuxi exhales. “Fortunately that didn’t happen. We were all lucky.”

  He raises his bowl of grape wine. “To good men, men of great might and stalwart hearts.”

  Kai and I glance at each other and raise our bowls obligingly, but Kedan clears his throat. “Tuxi xiong, I regret to inform you, but one of us isn’t that good a man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. There is someone at this table who is no kind of man at all.”

  Tuxi looks concerned, as if wondering whether Kedan already had too much to drink.

  Kai and I exchange another glance. I turn to Kedan. “How did you know, Kedan xiong? And when?”

  He grins. “Remember that day we first saw the Dayuan horses, and you asked me to show you how to read tracks and prints?”

  I see where this is going. “My prints gave me away?”

  “Exactly. You were too light for a man of your height and build.”

  “What?” Tuxi stares at me, then looks around the table, his eyes settling on Kai. “Is Kedan xiong-di saying what I think he’s saying?”

  “Yes,” answers Kai. “More wine for you, my brother?”

  Tuxi thinks about it for a bit. Then he grins. “Yes. More wine for everyone.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We talk and laugh late into the night. Fortunately, I do not imbibe too much: The next morning, Kai and I head to the palace for a private audience with the emperor, to discuss what should be done about the city guards.

  When we arrive back at the royal duke’s residence, Yu greets us. “Your Highness, Hua xiong-di, Master Hua awaits you in the Court of Indigo Pine.”

  Master Hua? “My father is here?”

  “Yes, Hua xiong-di,” answers Yu, and withdraws discreetly.

  Kai waits until he is out of earshot. “Along with your letter, I sent a message to your father and asked him whether he would like to come to the capital, since you might be here for a while. I told him that we have fought together, that I would like to meet him formally, and that perhaps it is high time he and my aunt met again.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Your father, in his return message, asked me not to. He isn’t sure how you will receive him.”

  Neither am I. I don’t know that I’m ready to see him.

  “Let me take you to the Court of Indigo Pine,” says Kai.

  We walk silently for some time. Then, as we pass through the main garden, he says, “For the longest time, I couldn’t understand my aunt. She goes on retreats to mountain monas­teries, where the nuns expound on wisdom, compassion, and the impermanence of everything. And yet her hatred of your father has remained a permanent fixture in our lives.”

  I stop. So does he. With a faraway expression, he gazes at a small tree, its slender branches dotted with creamy white buds, ready to bloom. “And then one day, I overheard her saying that if only she hadn’t fallen ill, then whatever happened during the duel, it would not have been her sister who came out the worse. That’s when I understood that she blamed herself more than she blamed your father.

  “She drove me as hard as she did because she did not know what else to do with all her anguish. And when she meets with the nuns, she asks for their help in forgiving your father, but she never thinks that she needs to forgive herself too.”

  I bite the inside of my lower lip. “You are suggesting that perhaps my father feels as your aunt does about what happened?”

  Grief-ridden and full of self-blame?

  He turns to me. “I’m only saying that I can never fully experience how difficult my aunt’s life has been. And that I regret all the resentments I used to carry.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I enter the Court of Indigo Pine by myself. It is a small courtyard, but more ornately decorated than the princeling’s, with a grove of shapely pine trees, their needles brilliantly green even after a long winter.

  A house occupies the northern half of the courtyard. I’m not sure when Yu arrived, but he opens the door for me and ushers me in.

  Father has been set behind a low table, on a raised side platform. He is dressed in his most formal overrobe, but it hangs loose on him. He has become thinner in the time since I left home, his eyes sunken. My heart aches.

  Yu pours tea, urges us to taste all the different pastries and delicacies that have been laid out, and excuses himself.

  Father and I regard each other. I sink to one knee—so much deference isn’t expected in daily life, but it is before and after a major trip away from home. “I offer my humble greetings, Father. My apologies—I should have rushed home to look after you. It is unforgivable that you needed to come all the way to the capital.”

  “Take a seat,” he tells me. “It is good for me to get out once in a while. I visited the North in my youth, but I had never seen the Northern capital.”

  There is another raised platform opposite the one on which Father sits. I settle myself behind one of the low tables there—not the one directly across from him, but one further from the head of the room, as a gesture of respect.

  “Has Father been well in my absence?” I ask.

  He assures me that he has been well, given that the war was blessedly short. I ask after Murong, Auntie Xia, and Dabao, and he replies that they are also doing well, extremely relieved that I am safe and exceptionally proud of my deeds.

  He does not say that he is exceptionally proud of me, but I am not as disappointed as I could have been. Everything I have done, I did for duty and friendship. Every decision I have made, I made so that my conscience would be at ease.

  I am, I realize, proud of myself.

  We speak of some household matters. I begin to sense his distraction. He picks up a candied lotus seed and sets it down again. He picks up his teacup and sets it down again. At last he says, abruptly, “You have met the princeling’s aunt.”

  My chest tightens. “Yes, I have.”

  “Then you know what happened.”

  Is he not going to dispute anything? “I have heard what her ladyship and His Highness had to say.”

  Father’s hands clench in his lap. “I was—I was not a young man who deserved his good fortune. My father always taught me that character is more important than swordsmanship. But I believed swordsmanship to be character enough. Because no matter what I did, I would always be a great swordsman.

  “I did not like the matrimonial agreement my father made with Master Peng. I thought I wouldn’t get along with his elder daughter at all—nor with Master Peng, for that matter. And I was rankled by the fact that the Peng ladies seemed more adept at swordsmanship than I was.

  “But I wouldn’t have broken the agreement if I hadn’t loved your mother. The thought of marrying Miss Peng so that the swords would be reunited—that meant nothing to me. The thought of giving up your mother, of watching her someday marry another, that was unbearable.

  “What I did was egregious, but it w
as the only thing I could have done at the time. Even now, all these years later, knowing all the tragedies that have followed in the wake of that decision, I don’t know that I could have acted differently.”

  I look down at my hands. “You know I can never truly blame you for marrying Mother. But why did you not tell me the truth about what happened at the duel?”

  He turns his face to the front of the room. A water-and-ink landscape painting hangs there, that of a sword-sharp peak. “I went into the duel thinking that it might be fatal for me. I thought I’d reconciled myself to it. But when the moment came, when I was lying on the ground, helpless, and the princeling’s mother came at me, her sword dripping with my blood, I . . .

  “The thought of never seeing you, your brother, or your mother again burned through me like a wildfire. I cannot recall ever making up my mind that I would use the poisoned bronze lilies. I simply acted. The moment they left my hand I knew that I had not only condemned my opponent, but myself.

  “I was in a state of delirium from my injuries when I was carried back home. I woke up days later to the sight of your mother weeping by my bedside. We had lost a child, she informed me. And I was stricken with horror. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps in my fear and agony, I had mistaken my opponent’s intention. Perhaps she had meant only to take my sword, and not to murder me in cold blood, in front of many witnesses.

  “Without cause, I had killed the beloved sister of the woman I spurned. I had robbed a man of his wife and a son of his mother. What I now faced was divine retribution.

  “I shook as I asked your mother which one of the twins we had lost. She told me it was our son. My heart shattered, yet—yet such a fierce relief washed over me. I had feared that you were the one who was taken before your time, and that would have been too heavy a blow for an already broken man.”

  I stare at his profile. I can’t have heard him correctly. He has always wanted me to pretend to be his son.

  “The moment I saw you as a newborn, I knew that I would not trade you for ten sons. You were going to be the bright pearl in my hand, and I wanted nothing but a life of ease and plenty for you. So when I learned that you were still alive, despite my sorrow, my joy was sharper than Heart Sea or Sky Blade.