The meal did not immediately help. They ate in silence and the Xue family stared at the ground. Occasionally the boy would look up and glare at Lian, sizing her up as his father had once done. Lian pretended not to notice and only made occasional glances at Quan, who seemed almost as transfixed by the food as Fen and her uncle.
Lian had prepared the food with a spice called Winter Husk that only grew its peppers in the Zhosian mountains during the warm summers, on thin vines that crumbled each autumn. The pepper had to be collected just after the vine withered, then stored in a dry, cool place over the winter. Once it was dried out it was crushed to dust and became a sweet additive that gave way to a pleasant burn after the sweetness had dissipated. In Daming it was worth almost a silver piece for each handful of the spice. Lian used exactly that much to ensure the large meal she prepared was pleasant. Unfortunately none of the Xue clan were focused on the food so much as the quiet that sat behind it.
Li Jie was the quietest. Except for the rise of the foodsticks to his mouth and the rote act of chewing, he was motionless. Lian could tell he was considering all the turns of events of the day: his niece under attack, the return of the woman who had incapacitated his brother, the presence of the bandits. But his silence gave her no indication of what the cumulative effect would be. She remembered the man from her abrupt exit four years earlier. Bumping over Fen, seeing the surprised, scared expression on Li Jie's face. The memory brought her back to the righteousness of her anger and the fear that she'd be caught. From a distance now she could see the regret already seedling in that moment, the knowledge that she'd gone too far. The one extra kick that had snapped his neck. The single blow from which he'd never recover. Germinating, slowly, until it had bloomed this morning at the crossroad, at the sight of Fen's horrified expression. Fen had recognized her right away. It wasn't the fear of bandits that had driven her away, not just that at least. Part of her, somewhere, had remembered her father's killer.
"My brother was not a good man," Li Jie said without prompting, looking forward though not at anyone in particular.
"Uncle Li!" Fen gasped, the foodsticks in her hand shaking.
"But," Li Jie continued, "he was not entirely a bad man either. When Fen was born he was the only one who could keep her from crying, so he rocked her to sleep every night. Then her mother would sing to her. Every night to put her to bed. When Tan was born and Kang's wife died, Kang didn't stop the singing. Every night, he put them both to sleep. He was patient with them. And he loved them more than anything."
Li Jie looked at Lian. "But Kang was also an asshole. My father told us that because we owned the land the peasants farmed, we were better than them. I never saw the evidence of that, but Kang never questioned my father about anything. And he took it to heart. He was cruel. One time a peasant from one of my father's farms passed us on the road. I'd never met him before. Neither had Kang. He was nobody, an older man, struggling just to carry his grain. Kang stopped him in the middle of the street. Made him take off his pants and hold his genitals in his hand, like they were on a platter. People were walking by. They watched him humiliate this man, and when they didn't laugh, Kang smashed the man's testicles with his fist. For no reason. He left the man there in the middle of the road screaming and sick. And he didn't think anything of it."
Fen and the young boy – Tan – looked to be on the verge of tears. Fen had known some of her father's cruelty, but Tan was too young to remember it clearly.
"Your boy there," Li Jie kept talking, "he's dressed like a Zhosian. So I assume he's Tiendu Shu. Well, if they're right, when my brother Kang is reincarnated, the best he can hope for is a fly that eats nothing but shit."
Lian couldn't help but chuckle, and Li Jie smiled.
"What you did to him was wrong. But it was going to happen. He was too big and too stupid to know it, but I knew it was going to happen. If it wasn't you it was going to be some officer who insulted him and then had his soldiers tear Kang apart limb from limb. Or someone who pulled a knife in the middle of a fist fight. Or just some peasant he mistreated badly enough to get poisoned or stabbed to death in his sleep."
Fen started to sob, her head down into the dish in her hands. Lian made sure to wipe the grin from her face. Li Jie however, kept his in place.
"I'm sorry Fen, but you deserve to know. Your father was at fault. Maybe not for everything, but he could never help himself. Let's just be happy he didn't die."
Fen's sobs filled the small room. It was Quan who replaced them. "We're going to help you with the bandits." Everyone looked at him and his face grew more uncertain than his words. "We can get rid of them. My mother and I."
Li Jie smiled at the brashness of Quan's reply. "I appreciate the offer, but it won't be that simple. These aren't just any bandits. Even a Shuli Go can't possibly take them on by herself." Lian took a last bite of food but said nothing, letting Li Jie continue. "Don't get me wrong, the fact that you survived an encounter with the Keeper is impressive. But he has almost a hundred men and horses. You couldn't get close to him, and even if you did, it wouldn't be a fair fight."
"That's the second time you said there was a Keeper," Quan interjected. "You mean a Tiendu Shu Keeper?"
Fen spoke up this time, wiping away tears. "That's right. He's one of your stupid wizards, and he's been around here for two months now. It started off with just him and two or three others. Now he has enough men to destroy our whole village if he wants."
"Why hasn't he?" Lian asked.
"Our farms are on good land," Li Jie explained. "If he burns down the villages and the taxes don't get paid at the end of summer, the Prefect will send someone to find out why. And as strong as he is, he doesn't have enough men to withstand a battalion moving in and cutting him down. But after the summer is over..."
"The army won't do anything now?"
Li Jie shook his head. "I've written letters, met with magistrates to raise the alarm, but nothing. That's because the bandits aren't even our biggest problem."
Lian had walked into enough small towns to have a familiar, tired cadence when she asked: "What is the biggest problem?"
"The prefect," Fen responded, almost at a whisper.
"Well," Li Jie cut in, his voice also falling low, "not just the prefect. About five years ago, the governor introduced a new rite of inheritance. It forbid children younger than fourteen from inheriting. Instead, according to the rule, any inheritance over ten silver in value was to be presided over by the local prefect until the boy turned fourteen."
"What about girls? Are you fourteen yet Fen?" Lian asked.
"I'm almost fifteen," she responded, "but daughters haven't been able to inherit if there is a boy in the family for ten years."
Lian reared up. She had not heard that, and couldn't believe it. She knew Southern Shu had always been a more patriarchal part of the Empire – it had joined after the Peace of Antiquity, which had seen a series of Empresses rule competently for almost a thousand years – but Lian couldn't believe they'd actually taken away a woman's right to inherit. "I didn't know that," she admitted.
"The important part is until Tan turns fourteen," Li Jie said, "we can't let my brother die. When my father died, he had a young son with our stepmother. By rites he was to have a third of my father's land. And he did, until the governor changed the rules. The prefect took the land I'd been helping look after, under the authority of the new laws, and then within six months our half-brother had suddenly fallen ill and died. And since the inheritance only flows down the family tree, neither Kang nor I had any claim on it. In which case..."
"...in which case it reverts to the ownership of the state," Lian filled in.
"Yes. Which in this case meant the prefect, who himself has eight sons. And he's looking for land for all of them."
"I see." Lian leaned back, tapping her empty dish with her foodsticks. "So he doesn't care if the bandits come and kill you or not. In fact it's probably easier for him than waiting and hoping Kang dies on his own."
"That's right. That's why none of my messages seem to get to anyone who's listening. I'm considering riding straight to Daming myself, to see if I can raise it with the governor or someone in the court. But we're a minor family, and I don't have the money to bribe my way to the right people."
Lian looked around at the poor quality of the home. If the farming lands were rich, she couldn't understand how the family appeared to be so poor. "Kang was well dressed and very well fed when I... met him. What's happened?"
Fen bristled, her back upright and anger returning to her face. "The governor has raised taxes every year for the past five years. Because we own the land we have to pay the taxes, and we can't take much more from the peasants. So we've had to sell everything. Everything, you understand? We don't even own this piece of shit home. We rent it from the old magistrate. And it's your fault!"
Quan tried to interject, confused. "I thought you said the taxes had gone up..."
"They have, but we have to stay here and look after father, and uncle Li is running himself to death going back and forth between the estates, and Tan can barely read! He's a nobleman and he can barely—" Fen's entire body shook and she forced herself to stop, her hands in fists and her eyes closed.
Li Jie patiently filled in the details. "Kang also had a very good job working for the governor. Personal security, henchman, that kind of thing. He made enough to keep the family well served, so the taxes could pay for themselves out of the land. Now that's the only source of income."
"And if he were still there, working, the governor probably wouldn't be letting the prefect harass us anyway," Fen's voice turned steely.
Li Jie smiled again to try and defuse some of the tension. "So does that answer your question, Shuli Go?"
"About the army? Well yes–"
"No, not about the army. The other question that you didn't want to ask."
Lian looked at Lie Jie, then at each of his niblings. Tan looked slightly confused by the politics of the situation, but he understood enough to show a bit of his father's stubborn defiance in his face. Fen's jaw was shut tight, her high cheekbones shaking as she ground her teeth, her eyes rattling back and forth in their sockets. Li Jie had the stoic look of a scholar, asking questions he already knew the answer to, taking a joy in sharing information he knew another person needed. It was only in the eyes that he actually resembled his brother.
"That's why you've kept him alive," Lian finally admitted. "You need him alive."
"Yes," Li Jie nodded, "for another two years. Once Tan is fourteen, we'll do the right thing and send his spirit on. Right now it's trapped between his body and the afterlife, and that's not fair to him. He deserves better. He at least deserves to be judged by the Gods. Or the Great Tiendu. Whatever you believe."
Fen stood up angrily and announced, "I'm going to feed father. Tan, come with me."
Tan obeyed, falling in behind her as she grabbed a pot and a nearly empty sack of rice and headed into the other room, snapping the curtain behind her.
"She doesn't like to talk about him like he's already gone," Li Jie said. "She still loves him so much."
Lian looked to her own son, wondering if he'd feel the same way should she ever be incapacitated. She hadn't sung to him, or put him to bed. Not for most of his life. So she wasn't surprised when Quan failed to return the look. Instead Quan was staring at the closed curtain, and his face was concentrated on the young woman behind it. Despite everything, Lian smiled.
"Let's focus on the problem at hand first." Lian tried to bring the conversation back around. "How long have the bandits been in this area?"
"Just since the spring," Li Jie said. "That's when the first reports of the Keeper appeared. Since then he's just drawn more and more people to him."
"Where are they coming from?"
"All over. I don't think it's very different from other bandit groups you've probably run into. Young men mostly, the youngest siblings, never going to inherit enough land to survive or support a family. I lost two from my village – good boys, but the best life they could have hoped for was the military. I guess they figured dying running free on the foothills was better than marching to death in some other far off corner of the Empire."
"And you said he has almost a hundred men and horses?"
"That's right."
"He'd need a lot of grazing land to keep the horses. Do you have an idea of where he might be keeping all his men?"
Li Jie smiled again. "Actually, I do."
"Where?'
"One of the first families to be affected was the Gaos. Herders who keep sheep up on this one rocky set of hills. They've done it for hundreds of years. Now it's really just one old man and a distant nephew. They came down into my village badly shaken up in the spring, saying a Keeper had taken their livestock and told them never to come back. The boy had a badly broken arm from when he tried to say no. Almost lost him to a fever too. Anyway, that's where they seem to be coming from most times. Or at least that's where people see them going back to afterwards."
"Ok," Lian nodded slowly, a simmering decision suddenly made. "That's where we'll go."
"I'm sorry?" Li Jie was confused. "You're going to go after them?"
"Yeah, that's the best way. Groups like this – they're new and fresh and don't have many experienced people – they're only comfortable when they're on the attack. You come after them, in their new home that they're filling with all the goods they steal, and they panic. All we have to do is take out a few of them, especially this leader, and they'll break up."
"And what happens then?"
"What do you mean?"
"What happens to them then?"
"They usually go back home. Beg forgiveness."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"Then they wander. Some of them will get arrested for stealing. Some will wind up in the city, begging or looking for work. Some of them will wind up with another band of people just like it. Some starve to death."
"There's no way to bring them back peacefully?"
"Well that's not up to you or me. That's up to the families they left behind."
Li Jie nodded. "Ok. So, we attack them. How?"
"Well, you round up every man and woman capable of doing some fighting. How many do you think that'll be?"
"That depends... what do you mean by fighting?"
"I mean they can march twenty miles a day carrying food and a spear. And then at the end of the day they can take down a horse charging at them with that spear."
Li Jie thought for a moment. "Not many. Maybe ten or twelve between Brilliant River Valley and Lily Valley – that's the village on my land."
"That's what I figured. We'll need help from the army then."
"They're not going to help."
"Not that army. I have a friend who may help. I'll need two messengers and some paper."
"We can go see the Magistrate tomorrow. He's away for a wedding."
"Ok. You should probably get started rounding up your people. We'll need everyone ready to go tomorrow morning. How far away is this sheepherder's land?"
"About twenty five miles to the southeast."
"Ok, too far for one day. Is there a high spot we could camp between here and there where we could camp tomorrow night?"
Li Jie considered it. "Yes. An old stone fort from before Southern Shu was part of the Empire. It's mostly broken down but I've used it before if I had business to the south. It's probably fifteen miles away."
"Ok. So we have a plan. We pick everyone up tomorrow, camp at the old fort, and then we go straight at them. Sound good?"
Li Jie stood up and walked over to Lian. He put his hands together and performed a formal bow. Lian stood and responded with the same.
"I'm glad you're here to help us. I haven't slept in a month. Just waiting for the Keeper to come and finish the job, destroy one of our villages. Or both. It might have been today if it weren't for you."
Lian just nodded. "Go start getting your people ready. Do you have a horse?"
Li Jie shook his head with a hint of embarrassment: a noble without a horse wasn't much different from the peasants who farmed his land.
"Take our third one. Quan will take all the goods off and give you his saddle."
"Thank you. I'll have both villages ready tomorrow morning. I think they'll be happy we have a Shuli Go to help us."
Lian nodded and smiled, then motioned for Quan to go with Li Jie. A few minutes later her son returned carrying the heavy goods they'd brought with them into the house. He dropped them with a heavy thud onto the worn dirt floor. He sighed and looked at his mother.
"You're sure this is what we should do?"
She looked at him and smiled. "I already told you no, I'm not sure about any of this. But we're doing it."
Quan nodded and sighed again. He was staring at the ground when he asked his next question. "Was he really a Keeper? The bandit?"
"Yeah," Lian replied. This time she didn't have to imagine what her son was feeling. It was the same feeling she'd experienced when she'd been told of a rogue Shuli Go. The sense of betrayal from someone who'd taken the same oaths she had. And not just any oaths: these made you more powerful than other humans, and that made them more solemn than a simple swear. Keepers were in some ways even more powerful than Shuli Go, and having one leading a band of rebels out pillaging the countryside was antithetical to everything Quan had been taught. Not only was his mother not a great Shuli Go, but now a member of his own order had, in a sense, betrayed him. It was turning into a more emotionally challenging day than she'd expected.
Lian didn't have a chance to console Quan though, because just then Fen made an abrupt entrance from the other room, stepped one foot into the kitchen, hoisted her chin high, and announced. "I've decided you may stay here the night. But in the morning we have to begin the hunt for the bandits."
She avoided looking at either Lian or Quan but kept her proud stance, waiting for assent.
"Agreed," Lian responded.
Fen deigned to nod in their direction, before adding, "Good. And I will be going with you. These are my people too."
She stepped back and snapped the curtain shut again, ending any discussion on the subject.
"Well, looks like we'll have at least one willing soldier tomorrow," Lian joked. Once again though, Quan's attention was focused more on the curtain than anyone on his side of it.