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any way.
    Youngest Son’s face! I cannot help staring. I recognise the colour of those eyes, his grandfather’s eyes, but not the haughty, military way he narrows his eyelids as though perpetually angry. That is something he has learnt from others. I know the shape of his cheeks, not the scar disfiguring one side, the battle which gave it birth. He is familiar, and undiscovered.
    He sits on his white charger, still as a statue. I watch him, frozen by conflicting emotions. We share one thing, at least. In all the years of his boyhood, neither of us anticipated this.
    My glance passes to the soldiers rapidly filling the square. A desperate lot, and hungry by the look of them, their uniforms faded and tattered. Veterans ready for anything, looking no further than the next fight or meal. I pray they are still capable of discipline.
    I turn my attention back to Youngest Son. He has followed my examination of his men, and perhaps reads my thought. He appears confused and resentful at the same time. His horse whinnies impatiently. It is thirsty and smells the water in the well. I wait, hoping my cap with its jade pendants sits straight on my head.
    A flicker of vexation on his face. At last he seems about to speak. The officers around him are exchanging glances.
    I sense the fate of the whole village depends on his first words, for if he willed it, a general massacre would begin.
    Then I realise he has no idea how to act, that my presence in the village square, especially dressed in the trappings of the Golden List, has surprised him. Oh, I have seen that expression before! I remember how he played as a boy, always leading the other children, his authority inexplicable to his elders, bubbling up as if from a hot spring. Yet sometimes I noticed the same doubt on his face. The secret doubt of all who strive for control.
    Memories of him gather, pinpoints of reflected light on a lake in summer. His mother passing him to me, a tiny, red wrinkled thing, both of us joyful she had survived a difficult labour. Later, a boy wrapped in the folds of my clothes against winter draughts, while I told tales of Grandfather’s brave deeds. His little face revealing tangled thoughts and desires – to be worthy of such an ancestor, to be important as any hero, and loved by me, how he longed for that. It touched my heart like a kind of grief.
    And then admonishing him when he bullied his older brother, his attitude of contrition belied by a curling lip, coldness of eye. Or flying a kite from Wobbly Watchtower Rock while I composed verses, crying out ‘See, Father!
    See! Look at me, Father!’, and my irritation at being interrupted, so the right word slipped away like an eel.
    Teenage years when the troubles began. My anger at the sloppy, careless way he composed his characters. Every smudge of ink seemed ingratitude and defiance. Anger at so many things.
    Now, in the village square, neither of us bend. I place my hands in my sleeves, a casual gesture, and entirely deliberate, emphasising my uniform and status, that I represent a higher authority, while he is a mere soldier.
    Everyone knows no decent man becomes a soldier. It is a risk I must take, or choose to grovel before their gaudy flags, the dense, sweating weight of them. The officers around Youngest Son murmur angrily. He must do something now, or lose face before his men.
    Still he hesitates.
    Perhaps he remembers our last meeting. Perhaps that is what makes him pause. A hot night. Monsoon weather, the sky a lake of rain. He was on his knees then, full of excuses. I merely said, ‘Because you are my son I will disgrace myself, and abandon all the principles I hold dear.
    Be content with that.’ The next day he left for the Military Academy and I journeyed to the Prefect of Chunming to ensure he would never become Lord of Wei. Did that make me complicit in his crime? Certainly I have spent many hours of doubt. Even now I have no clear answer.
    But I wept until dawn on the night he