# For the Empire

  The silk robes felt uncomfortably light. It always did. Thirty years in boiled leather and lamellar steel, and my skin had never learned to tolerate the soft embrace of civilized fabric. I felt exposed, vulnerable.

  I noted the room had only two visible exits, stairwells down to the ground floor. Or if I ran for it I could throw myself out the window.

  I stood before the assembled guests of the Jade Grotto, my throat dry despite the wine I'd consumed, and recited the final stanza of my poem. Words I'd labored over for three days, trying to capture what it had meant to hold the line at Longyou when I was young and the world still made sense.

  Cold moon rises on the frozen plain,

  Brothers sleep where they were slain.

  When wolf banners fell to righteous steel,

  No one asked what a soldier might feel.

  The beacon fires have long grown cold,

  This is what I have. This is what I hold.

  I let the final line hang in the air, then bowed.

  A murmur of appreciation rippled through the pavilion. A few of the kinder scholars raised their cups in polite acknowledgment. A noblewoman whispered something to her companion behind a painted fan. Probably critiquing my tonal patterns. My lack of appropriate allusions to the classics. The roughness of my meter.

  They didn't understand. But what's new? Poetry in Chang'an was a game of references and refinement, and I was hardly Gao Shi.

  I returned to my cushion, grateful to be done with the ordeal. As General of the Left Imperial Guard, a junior third-grade position that sounded far grander than it was, I was obligated to attend these gatherings.

  To participate in the cultural life of the capital like a proper official, rather than the frontier relic I was.

  The wine, at least, was exceptional. I raised my cup and let the fragrant liquid wash away the taste of poetry. Osmanthus and something floral. It was delicate, refined, everything I was not. I loved it.

  "General Sun."

  A voice like a silver bell. I looked up to find a young woman kneeling beside my table, a porcelain wine vessel in her hands. She was perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with an oval face and intelligent eyes that seemed older than her years. She wore the flowing scarves and bared shoulders of a flying apsara, a silk dancer's costume that left little to imagination, though her bearing suggested she'd rather be wearing something else entirely. I sympathized.

  "Your cup is empty," she said, and poured without waiting for permission. The gesture was forward, familiar. Not the careful deference I'd come to expect from courtesans who recognized my rank and kept their distance.

  "My thanks." I said curtly.

  She didn't leave. Instead, she settled back on her heels and regarded me openly. "Your poem was about the Longyou campaigns, wasn't it? The Tufan incursions?"

  I blinked. "You recognized it?"

  "My father served at Liangzhou. Early in the Tianbao reign, before his leg was ruined by a Tufan arrow." She tilted her head slightly. "He used to tell stories. The frozen plain in your poem, was that the winter campaign at Qinghai?"

  Something stirred in my chest. An old ache. "You have a good ear."

  "I have a good memory." She smiled, and it reached her eyes. "What was it like? The fighting, I mean. My father never spoke of the battles themselves. Only the waiting, and the cold."

  I took another drink, using the motion to buy time. I got this question a lot. The scholars in this room wrote poems about war as if it were a beautiful abstraction. Heroic charges and noble sacrifices.

  They didn't know about the smell. The gasps of the dying. The feeling of your sword cutting into flesh and warm blood on your face.

  The way your hands shook for hours afterward.

  I took another drink.

  "Your father was wise," I said finally. "The waiting and the cold are what stay with you. The rest..." I shook my head. "The rest fades."

  That was a lie.

  She seemed to sense there was more, her eyes searching my face. "Have you ever..."

  "Girl." My voice came out harsher than I intended. She flinched back, and I felt a pang of regret. "Forgive me. I'm poor company tonight. You'd find better conversation elsewhere."

  She hesitated, and for a moment I thought she might press further. Part of me, the part that remembered what it was like to speak with someone who actually wanted to listen, almost hoped she would.

  My wife had been like that. Direct. Unafraid to ask difficult questions. She'd died in the second year of our marriage. That was twenty-three years ago. I'd never remarried. Never saw the point. Whatever this girl was after she wouldn't find it in me.

  "As you wish, General." The courtesan rose gracefully and retreated, but not before casting one last curious glance over her shoulder.

  I watched her go. A noble soldier's daughter, to have fallen so far. Her father had probably died poor, his pension stolen by some ministry clerk. The leg wound would have ended his career, and after that... I knew how the story went.

  I poured myself another drink and gulped it down.

  I caught the eye of my aide, Staff Sergant Wu, who loitered near the stairway. I nodded towards the direction the girl went and Wu nodded, slipping away to find that new host.

  It would cost me. A girl like that, literate, with good bearing, her contract wouldn't be cheap. But I had the silver to spare, and what else was I spending it on? Family? Fine robes I hated wearing?

  I'd have Wu settle her somewhere respectable. Maybe Officer Zhang had need for a clerk at the Scholar's Mark.

  You could always use someone who could read and write. It's what her father deserved.

  I drained my cup and poured another myself. Around me, the poetry gathering continued. A young scholar with an affected lisp was reciting something about autumn leaves and lost love. The noblewomen made soft sounds of appreciation. Someone laughed at a joke I hadn't heard.

  I was contemplating my escape when the doors burst open.

  A messenger stood in the entrance, his robes splashed with mud, his horse's foam still visible on his riding cloak. He was gasping for breath, and his face held the particular pallor of a man carrying world-ending news.

  "An Lushan," he managed between ragged breaths. "An Lushan has rebelled. The northern armies march on Luoyang."

  Silence. Complete and absolute.

  Then the screaming started.

  I remained seated as chaos erupted around me. Noblewomen shrieked and clutched at their companions. Scholars knocked over tables in their haste to flee. The host of the Jade Grotto was shouting for calm, her professional composure shattered.

  My hands shook. But I felt none of their panic. I felt something I hadn't in fifteen years.

  Purpose.

  I rose slowly, deliberately, letting my height and bearing cut through the hysteria. The crowd parted instinctively as I strode toward the door, my stride measured and purposeful. Each boot impact had its cadence.

  Behind me, I heard the whispers start.

  "Thank the heavens—"

  "General Sun, surely he'll protect us—"

  "—professional soldiers, at least someone knows what to do—"

  I permitted myself a small, grim satisfaction. For one night, at least, my presence at these insufferable gatherings was worth it.

  The streets of Pingkang Li were descending into chaos as I made my way back to the Guard compound. Lanterns swayed wildly as people ran in every direction, their shadows dancing like demons on the walls. I walked through it all like a stone in a river, letting the current of panic flow around me.

  The Left Imperial Guard compound was quiet when I arrived. Most of my men would be in the barracks. I passed the duty officer with a curt nod and made straight for my office.

  The door was solid oak, three inches thick, fitted with iron bands. I'd had it installed myself when I took command.

  I closed it behind me and let the heavy latch fall into place.

  And then I shouted.

  Not words. Just sound. Raw and exultant, torn from somewhere deep in my chest. The cry of a tiger too long caged.

  War. Real war. Not the endless paperwork and inventory counts and political maneuvering that had burned away the last decade of my life.

  Not the slow, grinding humiliation of watching my hollow command, reduced from a fighting force to a glorified warehouse.

  Not the parade of political appointees, men with no training and no interest. Absentees using The Guard as a mere stepping stone.

  Although, I reflected, catching my breath, Zhang had turned out differently. Colonel Zhang. The Collating Officer who actually collated.

  I crossed to the heavy wooden cabinet against the far wall. My hands trembled slightly as I worked the iron lock. From anticipation.

  The doors swung open, and there it was.

  My armor gleamed in the lamplight, each lacquered plate polished to a mirror shine. I'd maintained it myself, every day, even when I'd thought I'd never wear it again. The helmet with its red horsehair plume. The reinforced pauldrons that had turned a Tufan lance at Qinghai. The round mirrored chest piece that still bore the dent from a mace blow that should have killed me. My MingGuangJia that fit no one else.

  And beside it, my hammer.

  Eighty-two jin of forged steel, the head dented by a TuBuo helm, the shaft wrapped in leather darkened by decades of sweat and blood.

  I lifted it from its brackets. The familiar heft settled into my hands like an old friend. My shoulders remembered the motion before my mind did, and I swung the hammer in a slow controlled arc, the head silently traveling horizontally through the air.

  The muscles burned. I wasn't young anymore. But I wasn't dead either.

  I was grinning like a fool when the knock came.

  Three sharp raps on the oak. The iron door knocker.

  I nearly dropped the hammer in my haste to set it down. By the time I reached my desk, I'd managed to compose myself into something resembling dignity. I snatched up a map that happened to be lying there and bent over it with what I hoped was an expression of stern concentration.

  "Enter." I boomed without looking up.

  Trooper Meng stepped through the door, his young face pale and anxious but he stood straight as an arrow. Good lad.

  "General." Meng snapped a salute, his fist to his chest. "Orders from the Ministry of War."

  He held out a sealed scroll. My heart hammered against my ribs as I took it. This was it.

  I broke the seal. Unrolled the paper.

  Read it once.

  Read it again.

  The words didn't change.

  By order of the Ministry of War, in response to the present emergency, the Left Imperial Guard is hereby assigned to coordinate logistics operations for the defense of the capital. General Sun Li will report to the Ministry of Revenue for coordination of supply chain management.

  Supply chain management.

  The rebellion had come at last. The empire was burning. And I was to count grain sacks.

  "Sir?" Meng's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Is everything... are we being deployed?"

  I set the scroll down carefully. Precisely. The way a man handles something fragile when he wants very much to destroy it.

  "Tell me, Trooper Meng." My voice was steady. A small miracle. "Are you familiar with cart logistics?"

  Meng blinked. "Sir? I... the Collating—" He caught himself, straightened. "Colonel Zhang showed me some methods, sir. For tracking shipments and such."

  "Good." I nodded slowly. "That will be useful. Dismissed."

  Meng saluted again and retreated, clearly confused but too well-trained to question further. The door closed behind him with a heavy thunk.

  I stood alone in my office, I sat down and finally noticed a second sheet of paper that had been tucked behind the orders.

  A requisition form. Someone needed authorization for the procurement of horse manure. Fifty cartloads.

  Manure. While the world burned, I was to concern myself with shit.

  I cursed.