“Your modesty is commendable. It reveals your character.”
Tu Shan shook his head. “No, I am just a fool, and ignorant. How could I dare so much as see the Imperial throne?”
“You defame yourself,” said Ts’ai Li on a slight note of impatience. “None can have lived as long as you without being intelligent and without gaining experience. Moreover, you have pondered what you have observed and drawn valuable lessons from it.”
Tu Shan smiled wryly, as though at an equal. “If I have learned anything, it is that intelligence and knowledge are worth little by themselves. Failing the enlightenment that goes beyond words and the world, they serve mainly to provide us with wonderful reasons for doing what we intend to do regardless.”
Yen Tuig-Kuo could not forbear to interject, “Come, come. You are no ascetic. The Emperor rewards, with Imperial generosity, those who serve him well.”
Tu Shad’s manner shifted subtly. It hinted at a schoolmaster with a pupil somewhat slow. “I have visited Ch’ang-an in my wanderings. Though of course I could not go into the palace grounds, I was in mansions. My lords, there are too many walls there. Every ward is closed off from every other, and when the drums sound from the towers at dusk, their gates are barred to all but the nobility. In the mountains one may go freely beneath the stars.”
“To him who walks in the Way, all places should be alike,” said Ts’ai Li.
Tu Shan inclined his head. “My lord is well versed in the Book of the Way and Its Virtue. But as for me, I am a blunderer, half blind, who would be forever stumbling against those walls.”
Ts’ai Li stiffened. “I think you make excuses to avoid a duty you would find onerous. Why do you preach to the people, if you care too little about them to lend your thoughts in aid of them?”
“They cannot be aided thus.” Low, Tu Shan’s words nonetheless cut through the wind. “Only they themselves’ can cope with their troubles, just as every man can only find the Tap by himself.”
Ts’ai Li’s voice slid quietly as a dagger: “Do you deny the Emperor’s beneficence?”
“Many Emperors have come and gone. Many more shall.” Tu Shan gestured. “Behold the flying dust. Once it, too, lived. The Tao alone abides.”
“You risk … punishment, Sir Sage.” Sudden laughter pealed. Tu Shan shipped his thigh. “How can a head removed from its neck give counsel?” He calmed as fast. “My lord, I meant no disrespect. I say only that I am not fit for the task you have in mind, and unworthy of it. Take me with you, and this will soon be clear. Better that you spare the priceless time of the One Man.”
Ts’ai Li sighed. Yen Ting-kuo, watching the inspector, eased a bit. “You rascal,” Ts’ai Li said, rueful, “you use the Book—what is the line?—‘Like water, soft and yielding, that wears away the hardest stone—‘“
Tu Shan bowed. “Should we not say, rather, that the stream flows on to its destiny while the stupid rock stays where it was?”
Now Ts’ai Li spoke as to an equal. “If you will not go, so be it. Forgive me when I report that you proved … a disappointment.”
Tu Shan nearly grinned. “How shrewdly you put it.” He bowed to Yen Ting-kuo. “See, my lord, there is no reason for me to track dirt across your beautiful mats. Best my disciples and I take ourselves from your presence at once.”
“Correct,” said the subprefect coldly. The inspector cast him a disapproving glance, turned again to Tu Shan, and said, in a voice slightly less than level, “Yet you, Sir Sage, have lived longer than almost any other man, and show no sign of age. Can you at least tell me how this is?”
Tu Shan became grave. Some might say he spoke in pity. “I am forever asked that.”
“Well?”
“I never give a dear answer, for I am unable.”
“Surely you know.”
“I have said I do not, but men insist, eh?” Tu Shan appeared to dismiss sadness. “The story goes,” he said, “that in the garden of Hsi Wang Mu, Mother of the West, grow certain peaches, and that he whom she allows to eat of these is made immortal.”