Imperial Tea

"Everywhere we see is the Empire of Heaven, but the Empire is not only this. It would take a month on a fast horse to see the end of it. The Empire is too large to be ruled solely by one person, even the Son of Heaven. It is made of ten Kingdoms, each as large as your great khanate even after you joined all the Khans together. Each has a king, ruling it, within the bounds granted him by the emperor. And each king keeps his own army to defend his own borders, because though the Army of Heaven is stronger than any of them it can not be everywhere at once.

"The Army of Heaven is also like the Imperial Tea - it is chosen from the best soldiers of each of the kingdoms, and together they are greater than the parts. It becomes an indomitable force."

The empress paused for breath, and Princess Dawn spoke. "And yet you defeated it. How? How did you defeat the undefeatable Army of Heaven?"

"No doubt that is a military secret," Flowing River said.

"No secret after we've done it," I said. "We poked it in the eye, then went around it. We came in force to the Northern Kingdom and made our numbers look even greater, so after a few battles the rest ran away, to tell the emperor that the Northern Kingdom had fallen. The emperor thought we had come not for a raid, but for conquest, since it was what he would do, so he brought an even larger force to take the kingdom back, mostly foot soldiers and siege engines to break down city walls. But a large foot force moves slowly, and spreads over a lot of ground. We trapped the few cavalry scouts - even the best Empire cavalry ride like sacks of meal - then hit the army only in the places the leaders were. The foot soldiers are still there, there are just too many of them, we can't kill them all, but without leaders they barely know how to wipe their asses. We rode around them and went here, to the Empire capital."

"But how did you know where to strike the Son of Heaven and princes? And how did you enter the unbreakable walls of the City of Heaven?"

"We told the cavalry scouts that we had captured who were from the Northern Kingdom that if they told us where the leaders were, we would let their families live. Same for this capital - we made a few captured soldiers talk to the gate guards, dressed our best men in the uniforms of the others, and they opened the gates for the rest. Most of the capital army - the Army of Heaven? - is still halfway to the Northern Kingdom, so once we got inside the fighting was easy. After the first few were killed, your mother, the empress, ordered the rest to surrender.

"We'll be leaving in a few days. Those ten different armies are all marching here to take back the capital and what do we of the Open Sky know about holding a city? But we'll take as much treasure as we can carry, and maybe some hostages that you'll buy back for more. You'll have your capital back, since you surrendered we promised we would not burn it. Prosper! Save up! Our children will come to take it again in another twenty years."

"No," said the empress. "When you leave the City of Heaven will die. The whole Empire will die. Your army could not conquer it, no human army can. But when you killed the Son of Heaven and the princes and humiliated the Army of Heaven, you killed it, just like one tiny dagger of honor in the heart can kill a person. The other armies of the Empire are just the armies of each kingdom, answering to each king. Each king sees the others as rivals, not friends; that was one of the ways the emperor kept power, by crushing any collaboration between any two kings. If any of the Empire's princes were alive, and leading the Army of Heaven, the oldest one would inherit, and the Empire would continue, but they aren't. And now that the Army of Heaven has been defeated, even though most of it still remains, the kings will not fear it."

"No more princes?" I asked. "Were they all with that one army? That seems careless."

"There were two with the army," River said. "One led the cavalry force, one was with his father, learning to lead. You killed both among the other leaders. The third was with the city, and led its remaining defenses against you. He refused my pleas to surrender, so you killed him as well."

"The emperor only fathered three sons?" I asked.

"Oh, he fathered dozens of illegitimate sons with lesser women and concubines," the empress said. "Even Polished Jewel birthed one, I think. But only three had survived who were heirs, from the Daughter of Heaven, his wife, myself."

"Two, I birthed two," Polished Jewel said quietly after translating, "One died in infancy, one will be three years old, with the other children of concubines, somewhere."

"None from other wives?" I asked.

"That was not the will of Heaven," Flowing River said. "The emperor tried to marry other wives of high standing, daughters of nobles and kings. All died before giving birth, whether from hunting accidents, travel accidents, disease, insurrection, or pirate raids. After the last noble Daughter of Heaven secluded herself in an impregnable castle on a mountain top while she carried his child, and the castle burned to the ground mysteriously, killing all those within, even the Son of Heaven could not find another willing to follow her. He even tried to marry one of his concubines who had already given him a son, and to legitimize him, but both mother and child were tragically torn apart by tigers when visiting the Imperial Zoo.

"Without legitimate heirs, each kingdom has its own laws of inheritance, some permit daughters to inherit, some don't, some to wives, some to uncles, some to brothers, some accept tracing relatives by marriage, others only by blood. Each of the kings is related to the Son of Heaven in some way, but none directly. When they get here, and see there is no emperor, no clear heir, and no indomitable army defending the capital, each king will find a reason why he, and no other king, deserves to inherit the Empire, and he will fight for it by force. The ten kingdoms will fight each other, and the Empire will rip apart. The illegitimate sons will be part of the chaos, either raising their own armies, or being used as pawns by the kings. There will be a civil war which will last decades if not a hundred years. When your children come back to loot the City of Heaven, they will find no gold and treasure, they will find only hovels and graveyards."

"Very sad," I said. "Do you want me to say I'm sorry for breaking it?"

"No," said the empress. "We want you to save it, by becoming the Son of Heaven."

The younger princess gasped. The elder one bit her lips. The empress kept talking.

"The people know the Army of Heaven can never be defeated. So it has not been, merely the Son of Heaven has been replaced. You came down from the steppes beyond the mountains like a thunderbolt - naturally a thunderbolt from Heaven. You killed only the corrupt leaders, not the faithful soldiers. The people know the Son of Heaven was once just one of the kings until Heaven chose him - they will believe it chose you."

"And the scholars, the nobles, the kings will believe that?"

"No, but they will accept you regardless. You are the only one who can hold the Empire together. You are an outsider, and the kings hate each other worse than they hate any outsiders. You are in the capital that can not be taken. You have the army that defeated the Undefeatable Army. Even according to the law - at least some laws. You killed the Son of Heaven with your own hand, at least one ancient law gives you inheritance rights due to that. Most important, you will marry our elder daughter, Princess Brilliant Dawn, with our consent, and take the Empire as dowry."

"No!" Brilliant Dawn cried. "I would die first!"

The empress calmly waited for her words to be translated, then addressed her daughter.

"Will you disobey? Then we shall mourn you. Glorious Sunshine will be the eldest daughter, and will marry the great khan. The Empire must be preserved."

Brilliant Dawn went pale. She lowered her eyes, and said, "I will obey."

"And why should I do this?" I asked. "I promised the People a raid that would live in history, and gave it to them. It will be hard to convince the army to stay here instead of going back to their families, to the plains and open sky."

"It will be easy," the empress said. "Have them spend a week in the City of Heaven, its treasures, gardens, and fountains. Tell them they will get the property of the leaders that they killed, their wives and families for slaves. It is the will of Heaven that the leaders died, so it is the will of Heaven they be replaced. Tell them their families will prosper far more by coming to live here where the treasure was made than by taking it back to the plains beyond the mountains - what would they spend it on there?

"And you, yourself, great khan. What will you do now that you joined the khans of the steppes into a single army? Now that you broke the largest Empire the world has ever seen? You are no family man, I can see that like the sun in a cloudless sky. Whom will you go home to? Will you grow fat and die? Are you done doing the impossible?"

"I will consider it," I said. "You offer me a choice of wives."

"No, great khan," the empress said. "The Princess Brilliant Dawn of Heaven is the elder, so, in all the legal codes that allow women to inherit, she would be the heir to the Empire. You must marry her."

"Unless she dies, then I may have her sister. And in any case, I may have you. I'm sure you would find a law that allowed the husband of the empress to rule."

"That ... is possible," the empress said. "But you would not want me. I have had a husband, I have had children, I have seen nearly five decades. You would want either princess, who has not known a man, and who has less than half my years."

"They've never fucked?" I said. "I want a wife that will bring me pleasure in bed. Virgins are for other virgins."

"Jewel," I said. "You know women? You know which will be good at fucking?"

"I have known many women, and I am experienced and skilled in the ways of love," Polished Jewel said. "Others in the harem have been my teachers, and my students. Yes, I can tell who will be a good concubine. But I have not known the empress or the princesses."

"Then know them," I said. "Right now. Kiss them, embrace them. Don't fuck them, hymens seem a big deal in this Empire. But tell me which will be good in the bedroll."

Jewel translated, then looked the women up and down languorously.

"No!" Princess Dawn cried out again. "You can not!"

The empress was calm. "It is a test that the great khan sets before us," she said. "It is a different one than what he says it is. He does not actually care whether his empress will be good at lovemaking, he knows that if he becomes emperor, he will have a thousand of Polished Jewel's sister-concubines to please him in bed. It is a test of which of you - which of us - will obey, which will resist his commands, and which will follow his commands and go beyond them. That is what an emperor truly needs from an empress. This is not nearly the hardest test an empress will have to pass.

"I will go first," she said. "Watch what your future husband wants." She stood, and extended her arm to Polished Jewel, who rose from kneeling and kissed her hand.

Jewel was barefoot, while the empress had platform shoes, so when the concubine followed the arm to try to reach the empress's face with her mouth, she had to stand on her toes. The empress did not bend down to make it easier. Jewel kissed the empress's neck, then opened the top of her gown to kiss down to her shoulders, then stood back on her heels to unbutton her clothes and stroke her body. River stood still and allowed her body to be explored as long as Jewel's hands roamed on top of and beneath her clothes. But when Jewel's unbuttoning threatened to take her robes off altogether, the empress seized the concubine by the hair, and pulled her face up to hers, forcing Jewel up on her toes again. She kissed the smaller woman on the lips, hard, parted those lips with her tongue, and thrust it down and inside. Jewel squeaked in surprise, then reacted in kind, holding River's shoulders and head. They kissed actively for a long time, fencing with tongues and pressing their bodies against each other. Both princesses stared transfixed, Glorious Sunshine wide-eyed and blushing, Brilliant Dawn also blushing, but with narrowed lips.

I took advantage of their lack of attention.

When they broke from the kiss, each woman's hands roamed the other's body, and watched the other's reactions. Where Jewel was petting and exploring, River grasped the concubine's barely clothed breasts, twisted her nipples, and forcefully rubbed her mound. Then she thrust her skirted knee between the concubine's legs, placed Jewel's arms around her neck, firmly grasped her plump buttocks, only barely hidden by pink gauze, pulled the smaller woman hard against herself, and kissed her again, with lots of tongue. Jewel tried to kiss back, but mostly moaned and shook. She closed her eyes and rode the empress's knee, only one foot on the floor, the other wrapped around the skirted leg. The empress met the eyes of each of her daughters, then pushed the concubine from her. Jewel let out a plaintive moan. She was trembling all over and wet down to her knees. As her legs nearly gave way, she grabbed an edge of the table to keep from falling.

The empress motioned to her elder daughter. "Princess Brilliant Dawn will be next."

"Wait, wait," Polished Jewel gasped until she recovered her breath. "Now, your highness."

Brilliant Dawn stood, but waited for Polished Jewel to come to her. The princess might have been the same height as her mother, but her shoes were lower. She embraced the concubine and bent her head down to her face, hesitantly. Jewel put her hands around Dawn's head, and took the initiative in covering her with kisses and bites on ears, cheeks, neck, and lips. The princess struggled to control the speed of the kissing, until she met her mother's steady gaze. Then she kissed Jewel back, giving as good as she got. Their open mouths met, and their red tongues intertwined, both moaning softly. After a while, their wet mouths separated, and Dawn was the one breathing hard. Jewel explored Dawn's body with her hands, then put one hand on the princess's breast, wrapped one leg around Dawn's narrow hips and pulled her into another kiss. They kissed, both with hands grasping each other's bodies, until the princess's fluttering eyes met mine. She stiffened, and pushed Jewel away.

"That should be enough," Dawn said. "You can now violate Sunshine."

Polished Jewel translated. The younger princess was blushing furiously. She was the shortest yet, both shoes and body, so Jewel met her face to face. Glorious Sunshine's arms trembled and went around Jewel's body lightly. Jewel stroked her hair, kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, and finally her mouth. The younger princess kept her mouth closed until she saw her mother's steady gaze, then opened her lips. Jewel put her tongue inside slowly, teasingly, drawing the princess's tongue out to meet hers. They kissed, and the princess closed her eyes, silently. Jewel was the one to pull away. She kissed the princess's neck and stroked her body through her clothes, all the while Sunshine breathed deeply and stood passively with flickering, unfocused eyes.

Jewel returned to her kneeling position beside the table. Her lips were wet and her face was flushed.

"Tell me about them," I said.

"The Empress Flowing River has known one man and several women," Jewel said, "more than two, fewer than ten. She has not bedded the man for the last ten years at least, but has made love with women since then, continuously and regularly." As Jewel translated, the empress remained impassive, but Princess Sunshine gasped and Princess Dawn tightened her lips. Jewel continued. "Princess Brilliant Dawn is a virgin, but has kissed one man, one woman, and one inexperienced woman, probably her sister. Princess Glorious Sunshine has not been with any person besides her sister."

"If you were not already fated to die, you would be executed for that," Brilliant Dawn said. Jewel translated without comment.

"Which of them would you choose?" I asked Jewel.

"Oh, I'd choose the empress. She knows her way around a woman's mouth and body, she is masterful and dominating. She made me spend when we were embracing! Though the Passion Fire probably helped.

"But you mean for yourself? You are a man, you would not want her. When with a man she can't dominate, she would lie still like a plank of wood. Also, even though she uses all the creams and potions of the Empire to keep her skin young, her heart is old, and men do not want older women.

"Princess Brilliant Dawn has fire. She would fight you in bed. I think you would like that. You're a man of the People; I have never broken horses, but remember my father said the best horses are the ones who were the hardest to tame. As long as you could tame her, she would give you the best ride, but she would be the most demanding.

"Princess Glorious Sunshine is young, and supple, and obedient. She would do what you say and would give you the most children. Choose her if you are not looking for a regular struggle."

The empress said, "The sandglass has run out, indicating the tea is brewed for optimal flavor. Let us drink it."

I picked up my cup, and tasted the tea. It was rich and of complex flavor. The Imperial women sipped theirs, watching me. I met their eyes, and drained my cup, leaves and all. The younger princess gasped, and the elder shuddered.

"The great khan is a man of action, not to be delayed in contemplation," the empress observed.

I waved at the cabinet of many drawers. "You have that tea Polished Jewel mentioned? Passion Fire?"

"We have every tea," the empress said.

"Brew it," I said, "four cups. We will all drink. I have a promise to keep to Polished Jewel, and I want to be ready after, to ride the one of you that I choose."

I waited for the translation, then turned to the kneeling concubine. "Jewel, you wanted to fuck? Come here."

She stopped translating and flew into my lap, smiling. Her hands went around my head and shoulders, and her lips sought mine. Her tongue flew like a darting bird, touching my lips in many places but not pressing to open them. When I opened my mouth it was immediately inside, and probing everywhere, but not deeply. I held her head and pushed my tongue into her mouth. Her tongue immediately retreated and she let me kiss her as deeply I wanted, moaning around the intrusion. Her legs wrapped around my waist and her body ground against mine. We struck the tea table and the cups clattered.

"They're like animals!" the elder princess whispered, taking advantage of the lack of translation.

"The great khan is virile, and will father you many children," the empress said. "Go, brew the tea, per his command. Sunshine, move the cups to another table, this one may soon be occupied."

"Which drawer is the Passion Fire?"

"Second row from the top, third from the end."

I hadn't felt Jewel's hands move, but she must have unbuttoned my jacket as we kissed, because I could suddenly feel her rock-hard nipples against my chest. As I broke away from her to catch my breath, she kissed down my neck, then my shoulders and chest, lightly sucked each of my nipples in turn, then knelt between my legs and kissed her way down my stomach. Her hands skillfully undid my pants, and released my cock, which was hard ever since I had watched her with the imperial women. She licked, then kissed, the head, then licked it all around, and took it into her mouth, nursing it with her lips and still licking it with the tip of her tongue. She looked up, met my eyes, then looked down again, raised her body from kneeling into a crouch to straighten her neck, and took my whole cock deep into her throat.