Dynasty of the Forgotten

Shao Ren woke before dawn with a bitter taste in his mouth that he could not place.

In the dream, the palace had been empty. No guards at the doors, no ministers behind the throne, not even the whistle of wind through the corridors. Only a wet, steady gnawing rose from the foot of the stairs. He went down two steps on marble colder than marble had any right to be, and saw a black dog tearing at scraps of food in a broken ceramic bowl. The bowl rolled over beneath his foot, and on one of its shards an old mark appeared: a crescent moon, with three dots trailing beneath it. The dog lifted its head. When Shao Ren raised his eyes from it, the white lion was already seated upon the throne.

It did not roar. It only watched.

The Emperor sat up in his bed, cold sweat on his neck. He did not believe in the interpretation of dreams, but this one had come to him three nights running, and each time he had drawn closer to the bowl.

He woke no one. Barefoot, he walked the long corridor to his daughter's wing and found both guards asleep on the threshold, their spears propped against the wall. He remembered that he ought to have them flogged, then forgot. Shao Lan, four years old, had kicked her blanket to the foot of the bed and slept on her side with one small fist clenched around something. He opened her fingers carefully and found a lump of sugar wrapped in paper, probably stolen from the palace kitchens. He closed her fingers again, drew the blanket up over her shoulders, and stood watching her until the first light crept through the cracks in the shutters. Only then did he understand that what had frightened him in the dream was not the empty throne. It was the lion, because it had sat upon the dais as though waiting for its master.

* * *

He summoned Su Wan before he had eaten. His adviser arrived as he always did, with short, even steps, and sat without being invited, closing his eyes while the Emperor spoke.

Shao Ren told him all of it, except the mark on the shard.

"How many nights?" Su Wan asked.

"Three."

"And each night the bowl was closer?"

"Yes."

"Then it is not the dream that is moving, Majesty." Su Wan opened his eyes. They were clearer than a man with white in his hair had any right to expect. "There was food in the bowl. Where did the food come from?"

Shao Ren had no answer.

"A warning needs saying only once," Su Wan said, counting something on his fingers. "What returns three times wants an answer. And you have not told me what was on the shard."

"Nothing worth mentioning."

The adviser bowed his head and did not press. He rose, bowed briefly, and said at the door that dreams are not read by questions alone, and that in a case like this the records were more honest than the stars.

* * *

Shao Ren knew the mark. He had seen it seventeen years ago, embroidered on banners of which no cloth now remained. So he did not wait for his meal. He ordered the western records opened.

Ling Jiu came in carrying three leather ledgers, and when he set them on the table a cloud of old dust rose, its smell mixing with dry ink. The Minister of Records and Finance was a thin man who always lowered his head a little more than protocol required, and no one had ever seen anything in his face that he had not meant them to see.

"These are the last of the records from the Unification War."

Shao Ren turned through the first and found lists of the dead. In the second, confiscated land. The third was the oldest, its pages stuck together with damp. He ran his fingers over the leaves until they stopped at a single name, written in ink darker than its neighbors: Shen.

"A family that ended seventeen years ago," said Ling Jiu.

The Emperor raised his eyes from the page. "Ended? The records write what they are permitted to write."

The remark was not meant for the minister alone. Seventeen years ago, Shao Ren had been a commander in an army that had not yet become an empire, and the name of Shen had been one of those he had been forced to erase in order to win. He had not spoken of it since the day he crowned himself, and no one had dared to ask.

"Shall I open the sealed archives for you?" Ling Jiu asked, in a measured voice.

The Emperor's hand stopped above the paper. Then he closed the ledger.

"Bring me Wu Zhan."

* * *

Wu Zhan had crossed the whole war as a soldier, and come back from it a man no one asked about what he had seen. That was why Shao Ren sent him only to the places where orders were not enough.

The Emperor laid a map before him and pointed to the far west.

"Zhao Yin."

"And what am I looking for there?"

"Something that should not exist."

"And if it is a person?"

"You will know him." Shao Ren lowered his voice. "And if he knows you before you know him, come back to me before anyone sees you. Write to me what you find with your own hand, not a scribe's."

Wu Zhan took the map and left. Ling Jiu stayed by the table, arranging the ledgers with more care than they needed.

"Do you believe it still exists?"

"If I did, I would not be sending only one man."

* * *

Winter comes to Zhao Yin a month early.

The birth came early too. The air was cold in Governor Liang Hu's house, and the women's breath rose as steam around the weak lamp. In the rear wing, a horse-handler's wife had given birth the night before, and she had been left waiting, because the governor's wife had begun to bleed and no one was sure her milk would come. When the newborn's cry rang out, Liang Hu stepped closer to see him. The midwife lifted the child a little to wash him, and beneath his shoulder a small mark appeared:

A crescent, with three dots beneath it.

Liang Hu did not cry out. He reached out, took the child from the midwife, and wrapped him in the blanket until the mark vanished. Then he said, without turning, "Leave us."

"But the washing isn't—"

"Now."

The midwife went out, glancing back over her shoulder. His wife stood staring at him, and he did not answer her. He handed her the child with care, small and warm and knowing nothing of the world, then crossed to the wooden chest at the far end of the room and took out an old piece of cloth, embroidered with the same design. It was heavier than it looked. He still remembered its weight as it had been pressed into his hand upon the snow, and the hand that had pressed it there, which could not let go. He stared at it for a long moment, then put it back and turned the key twice.

"Do not speak of this mark to anyone," he said. "Not even to me."

That evening he sent to the rear wing for the wet nurse, and told her the two children would sleep together in the same room.

* * *

Wu Zhan arrived some days later. He had begun with the mountain villages, asking the elders about names that had vanished after the war, and about men who had come down from the mountains and never returned. He reached the governor's house at sundown on the sixth day. Liang Hu received him himself, and they exchanged a few short, formal words, each weighing the other.

In the inner room two babies cried, then one fell quiet.

"A son born to you recently?" Wu Zhan asked.

"A week ago."

He asked for water to wash his hands, and stepped into the corridor that led to the room. The door stood ajar, and through it he saw a cloth slipping from a child's shoulder in the shadows. And in that moment he was no longer in the corridor. He was in the snow.

A dying man in his arms, blood on a soldier's cloak, and a hand gripping his wrist with the strength of someone who has nothing else left.

"If you see it again…"

The breath broke, then came back.

"Do not ask who is left."

Wu Zhan stumbled back into the corridor. The child had gone quiet, and he sensed Liang Hu standing behind him without a sound. He dried his hands slowly and said, "A fine child." Then he went on to the guest room without asking anything more.