Under Heaven

CHAPTER IX

Li-Mei has her own yurt, assembled every evening for her when their travels finish for the day, taken down in the morning when they rise to go on.

The sun is west now, near the end of their fourth day outside of Kitai. She has never been this far. She has never wanted to be this far. There are two ladies attendant on her from the court. She doesn't know them, doesn't like either of them. They cry all the time. She is aware that they resent serving her instead of the real princess.

She's a princess now. Or, they call her one. They made her royal before this journey north started from Xinan. There was a ceremony in the Ta-Ming Palace. Li-Mei, in red-and-gold silk with a too-heavy headdress decorated with white jade, and tortoiseshells and pearls from the south, had paid little attention. She'd been too angry. Her brother had been standing behind the prime minister. She'd stared at him the whole time, never looking away. Making certain that he knew exactly how she felt, as if that would mean anything to Liu at all.

She is still more angry than anything else, though she is aware that this could be a way to hide fear from herself, and from others. It is anger that stops her from being gentler with the two women who are hers now. They are afraid. Of course they are. She could be gentler. None of this is their fault.

There's no shame to their grief, she thinks. Or their terror, which has grown worse, predictably, since they left Shuquian behind—the last major city north of Xinan—and then reached the Golden River's great bend and the Wall.

Shuquian had been many days back. They'd passed through the Wall and entered wilderness four days ago. Soldiers saluted from above as their party went through.

Li-Mei is counting, keeping track of time as best she can. A habit of mind. Her father used to say he liked it in her. Her father is dead, or this would not be happening.

The leader of their imperial escort had bowed three times to the princesses, and then he and the Flying Dragon Army from Xinan had turned back at the heavy gates in the Long Wall—back towards the civilized world. Li-Mei had left her sedan chair to stand in a yellow-dragon wind to watch them go. She saw the gates of the world swing shut.

The nomads, the barbarians, had taken custody of two Kitan brides, negotiated—traded—for furs and camels and amber, but mainly for horses and military support.

This is the first time the Bogu have aimed so high, or been given so much.

The actual princess, thirty-first daughter of the Glorious Emperor Taizu (may he live and reign forever, under heaven), will become the newest wife, in whatever ceremony they use on the grasslands, of Hurok, the ruling kaghan, lord of the steppes, or this part of them, loyal (for the most part) ally of Kitai.

It has been duly judged, by the clacking, black-garbed crows who serve the Imperial Throne as advisers, that with a momentarily overextended military, and issues as to both army costs and the supply of horses, it is a sage and prudent time to allow the kumiss-drinking steppe-barbarians this otherwise unthinkable honour.

Li-Mei should not be here, does not want—the gods know it!—to be a princess. Had her father not died, putting a two-year halt to all family ceremonies and celebrations, she'd surely have been married by now, and safe. Her mother and Second Mother had been working on that marriage, through the proper channels.

She is not remotely a true member of royalty, only an attendant to the aging, exiled-to-the-countryside empress. But Li-Mei is also the sister of an ambitious, brilliantly positioned brother, and because of that she is about to become, soon now, the whatever-the-number wife of Hurok Kaghan's second son, Tarduk, currently his heir.

Not that there is anything certain about remaining an heir on these steppes, if you've listened to the stories. Li-Mei is someone who does listen to what is said around her, always has been, from childhood—and her second brother, Tai, had come home from the north with a tale, years ago.

There are—as with everything done in the Ta-Ming Palace—precedents for elevating lesser women to royalty for this purpose. It is a kind of sly trick played on the barbarians. All the subject peoples want, ever, is the ability to claim a link to Kitan royalty. If a woman is called a princess that is more than enough for the second or third member of a wedding party. For the foreign ruler (this has happened a handful of times, though never with the Bogu) a true princess is... made available.

There are more than enough daughters, with this particular emperor, after forty years on the throne and ten thousand concubines from all over the known world.

Li-Mei has thought about the lives of these women, at times. Locked behind walls and gates and silk-paper windows in their wing of the palace, at the top of eunuch-guarded stairways. Most of them have grown old, or will, never having even been in a room with the emperor. Or any other man.

The true princess, the emperor's daughter, has not stopped having one of her attendant women (she has six of them) sing and play "Married to a Far Horizon" for her since they left Shuquian. They are weeping, day and night, Princess Xue and her women. Endless lamentation.

It is driving Li-Mei to distraction.

She wants a deeper calm around her in this wilderness, this wind, to nurture the fury within, ward off terror, think about her brother.

Both her brothers. The youngest, Chao, still at home by the stream, doesn't really count yet. Thinking of home—cascading images of it—is a bad thing to do right now, Li-Mei realizes.

She concentrates her mind, as best she can, on the brother she wants to kill, and on the one who ought, somehow, to have saved her from this.

Although, in fairness, there would have been nothing Tai could have done once Liu had—brilliantly, for his own purposes—proposed his sister as the second princess for the Bogu alliance and had that accepted. But why be fair? Why be accepting in this place of wolves and grass, when she is leaving everything she's ever known for empty spaces and primitive yurts, yellow-dust wind off the western desert, and a life among barbarians who will not even speak her language?

This would never have happened if her father were alive.

Eldest Son Liu has always been eloquent and persuasive, and daughters are tools. Many fathers would have acquiesced, seen the same family glory Liu did, but Li-Mei, only girl-child of her family, is almost certain that the general, even in retirement, would have stopped his first son from using a sister this way. Liu would have never dared propose it. Ambition for self and family was proper in a balanced man, but there were limits, which were part of balance.

She wants to think this, but has been with the court long enough—arriving the year before the empress's exile—to picture it otherwise. She can almost hear Liu's polished, reasonable voice: "What is so different from offering her as an attendant to the empress, in my proposing her elevation to a princess? Are they not both exaltations for our family? Has she any other duty, or role in life?"

It is difficult, even in the imagination, to shape a sufficiently crushing reply.

Tai might have done so, equally clever, in a different fashion. But her second brother is impossibly far away right now, west, among the ghosts. It is an absolute certainty that Liu took that absence into account, as well, when he shaped his plans. Nor could Li-Mei's sad, sweet empress, exiled from the palace, lost to endless prayers and a dwindling memory, do anything to shield her when the summons to the Hall of Brilliance came.

Li-Mei, being carried north, is beyond all borders herself now. The difference is, Tai—if he is alive—will be going home soon. She never will.

It is a hard thing to live with. She needs her anger.

"Married to a Far Horizon" starts up again, the worst pipa player of the six this time. They appear to be taking turns. Li-Mei allows herself to curse, in a very un-royal fashion. She hates the song by now. Lets that feeling help drive and shape the fury she requires.

She peeks out of her litter (they will not let her ride, of course). One of the Bogu is just then passing, riding towards the front. He is bare-chested, his hair loose, almost all the way down his back. He sits his horse in a way that no Kitan ever has. They all do, she's come to realize. The nomads live on their horses. He looks at her as he goes by. Their eyes meet for an instant before Li-Mei lets the curtain fall.

It takes her a few moments, but she decides that the expression in the rider's face was not conquest or triumph or even a man's lust, but pride.

She isn't sure what she wants to make of that.

After a time, she peers out again. No rider now, he's moved ahead. The landscape is hazy. The evening wind blows dust, as usual. It has done that for several days now. It stings her eyes. The sun is low, blurred above the endless grass. They have seen vast herds of gazelles the last two days. Heard wolves at night since leaving the Wall behind. The Kitan have a terror of wolves, part of the fear and strangeness these northern grasslands evoke. Those stationed in the garrisons past the Wall must hate it like death, she thinks.

Squinting towards the orange sunset, Li-Mei finds herself devising ways in which she might have killed her brother Liu before any of this happened, sent him over to the night.

The visions are briefly satisfying.

She's angry at Tai, as well, she's decided. She doesn't have to be fair to anyone in this wind. He had no business leaving them for two years, not with a father and husband buried. He was needed, if only as a counterweight to Liu. He ought to have known that, foreseen it.

She lets the curtain drop, leans back against pillows, thinking about the two of them, sliding towards memory.

Not necessarily a good thing. It means remembering about home again, but is she really going to be able to keep from doing that? It is, if nothing else, a way of not dwelling upon what is waiting for her when this journey from the bright world ends, wherever it does, in this emptiness.

Second mother, their father's only concubine, was childless. A tragedy for her, cause of nighttime sorrows and sleeplessness, but—in the difficult way of truth sometimes—an advantage for the four Shen children, because she diverted all of her considerable affection to them, and the general's two women did not have competing children as a source of conflict.

Li-Mei was six years old, which means Liu was nineteen, preparing for the first round of examinations in their prefecture. Tai was two years younger than him, training in military arts, already bigger than his older brother. Chao, the baby, was toddling about the yard, falling happily into piled leaves that autumn. She remembers that.

Their father was home, end of a campaign season (another reason she knew it was autumn, that and the paulownia leaves). Li-Mei, who had been diligently studying dance all summer with a teacher arranged by her mothers, was to offer a performance for the family one bright, windy festival-day morning with everyone home.

She remembers the wind. To this day, she believes it was the wind that caused her problem. Were her life not shattered and lost right now she could manage to be amused that she still clings to this explanation for falling.

She had fallen. The only time she'd done that after at least a dozen rehearsals in the days before, for her teacher and her mother. But with both mothers, and father, and her older brothers watching, and the drummer hired to accompany her, she had spun too far halfway through her first dance, lost her balance, tried to regain it, wobbled the other way, and tumbled—ignominiously—into leaves at the edge of the courtyard, as if she were no older than the baby playing in them.

No one laughed. She remembers that.

Liu might have done so in a certain mood, but he didn't. Li-Mei sat up, covered in leaves, shocked, white-faced, and saw her father's immediate, gentle concern, and then his almost-masked amusement at his short-legged little girl-child.

And that made her scramble to her feet and run from the courtyard, weeping uncontrollably. She had wanted to show him—show them all—how she was growing up, that she wasn't an infant any more. And what she'd done was entirely the opposite. The humiliation welling within her was beyond enduring.

Liu found her first, in the orchard under her favourite peach tree at the farthest end of a row, by the stone wall. She was sprawled on the ground, ruining her dance costume, her face buried in her arms. She had cried herself out by then, but refused to look up when she heard him coming.

She'd expected Second Mother, or perhaps (less likely) her own mother. Hearing Eldest Brother's crisp voice speaking her name had startled her. Looking back, she has long since realized that Liu would have told the two women to leave her to him. By then they'd have listened to his instructions.

"Sit up!" he said. She heard him grunt, crouching beside her. He was already plump, it wasn't an effortless position for him.

It was simply not done, to ignore a direct instruction from a first brother. You could be whipped or starved in some other families for that.

Li-Mei sat up, faced him, remembered to bow her head respectfully, hands together, though she did not stand up to do it.

He let that pass. Perhaps her mud-stained face, the tracks of her tears caused him to be indulgent. You could never tell with Liu, even back then.

He said, "Here is what you will learn from this." His voice was controlled, precise—not the tone with which one addressed a child. She remembered that, after. He was quiet, but he made her pay attention.

He said, "We train to avoid mistakes, and we do not go before others unless we believe we have trained enough. That is the first thing. Do you understand?"

Li-Mei nodded, eyes wide on her oldest brother's round face. He had the beginnings of a moustache and beard that year.

He said, "Nonetheless, because we are not gods, or of the imperial family, we cannot ever be certain of being flawless. It is not given to ordinary men, and especially not women. Therefore, this is the second thing you will remember: if we are in public and we err, if we fall in the leaves, or stumble in a speech, or bow too many times or too few... we continue as if we had not done so. Do you understand?"

She nodded again, her head bobbing.

Liu said, "If we stop, if we apologize, show dismay, run from a courtyard or a chamber, we force our audience to register our error and see that it has shamed us. If we carry on, we treat it as something that falls to the lot of men and women, and show that it has not mastered us. That it does not signify. And, sister, you will always remember that you represent this family, not only yourself, in everything you do. Do you understand?"

And a third time Li-Mei nodded her head.

"Say it," her brother commanded.

"I understand," she said, as clearly as she could manage. Six years old, mud and overripe fallen fruit on her face and hands and clothing. Representing her family in all she did.

He stared at her a moment, then rose with another grunt and walked from the orchard down the long row. He wore black, she remembers now. Unusual for a nineteen-year-old, bordering on presumption (no red belt, mind you), but Shen Liu was always going to pass the exams, all three levels, and become a mandarin in the palace in Xinan. Always.

Tai came into the orchard a little later.

It was a certainty that he'd waited for Liu to come and go, as a second brother should. The images of that day are piercingly sharp, a wound: she is equally certain, thinking back, that Tai knew pretty much exactly what Liu had said to her.

She was sitting up still, so this time she saw her brother's approach. He smiled when he drew near, she'd known he would smile at her. What she hadn't expected was that he'd be carrying a basin of water and a towel. He'd guessed she'd have been lying on muddy ground.

He sat down next to her, cross-legged, careless of his own clothing and slippers, and placed the bowl between them, draping the towel elaborately over a forearm, like a servant. She thought he'd make a funny face to try to make her laugh, and she was determined not to laugh (she almost always did), but he didn't do that, he just waited. After a moment, Li-Mei dipped her cupped hands and washed her face and hands and arms. There was nothing she could do about her specially made dance costume.

Tai handed her the towel and she dried herself. He took the towel back and set it aside, tossing the water from the basin and putting that beside him, as well.

"Better," he said, looking at her.

"Thank you," she said.

She remembers a small silence, but an easy one. Tai was easy to be with. She'd worshipped both her older brothers, she recalls, but Tai she'd loved.

"I fell," she said.

He didn't smile. "I know. It must have felt awful. You would have looked forward so much to dancing."

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He said, "It was very good, Li-Mei, until the wind picked up. I started worrying when I felt it."

She looked at him.

"Perhaps... perhaps next time, maybe even tonight... you might do it inside? I believe that is a reason dancers dislike performing out-of-doors. Any breeze affects how their clothing flows, and... they can fall."

"I didn't know... do they prefer inside?"

"I know it for certain," her brother said. "You were very brave to do it in the courtyard on an autumn morning."

She'd permitted herself to briefly claim the notion she'd been brave. Then shook her head resolutely.

"No, I just did it where mother and the drum man decided. I wasn't brave."

He smiled. "Li-Mei, just saying that makes you honest and brave. And that would be true, it will be true, when you are twenty-six, not six. I am proud of you. And father was. I saw it as he watched. Will you dance again for us. Inside? Tonight?"

Her lip quivered. "He was... father was almost laughing."

Tai grew thoughtful. "Do you know a truth about people? When someone falls, if they don't hurt themselves, it is funny, little sister. I'm not sure why. Do you have an idea?"

She'd shaken her head. She didn't know why it was funny, but she remembered giggling when Chao toddled and toppled into leaves.

Tai added, "And father didn't laugh. He was afraid for you at first, then afraid he would hurt your pride if he smiled, so he didn't."

"I saw. He was holding it back. He covered his mouth with his hand."

"Good for you, seeing that. Yes. Because he'd been very proud. He said he hopes you'll try again."

Her lip wasn't quivering any more. "Did he? Truly, Tai?"

And Tai had nodded. "Truly."

She still doesn't know, to this day, if that last was the truth, but they'd walked out of the orchard together, Tai carrying the basin and the towel, and she'd danced for them again that night (the dancing costume hurriedly cleaned), among carefully spaced lanterns in the largest reception room, and she hadn't fallen. Her father had smiled throughout, watching her, and patted her cheek when she came over to him after, and then he had stood up and bowed formally, without laughing at all, and given her a string of copper coins, the way one paid a real dancer, and then a sweet from one of his pockets, because she was six years old.

If she were to address within herself—or explain to someone who might ask and have any claim to an answer—a few of the very great differences between her older brothers, Li-Mei thinks, those long-ago conversations in the autumn orchard would do well enough.

Liu had told her—that day, and endlessly after, in person and in letters from Xinan—that she represented the family in all she did. She accepted it as true: for her, for any woman or man. That was the way of things in Kitai. You were nothing in the empire without a family behind you.

But she is beyond the empire now. The nomads, with their strings of long-maned horses and huge wolfhounds and their primitive yurts and harsh-sounding language... don't know her family. Her father. Don't care at all about that. They don't even know—the thought comes hard to her—that she's part of the Shen lineage. She's been named as one of the imperial dynasty. That is how the Bogu see her, that's why they look so proud, glancing at her as they ride by.

The honour of it eludes her, just now. She is the embodiment of a smug deception and of her brother's cold ambition. And no one at home by their small stream will ever see her again.

She wonders, controlling emotion, if a letter will even reach her mother and Second Mother, if she sends one, or a dozen, with Bogu riders to the trading place by the river's loop in spring.

Tai had called her brave, had repeated over and again how clever she was, growing up, how both these things would help her in life. She isn't so sure any more. He wouldn't have been lying, but he might have been wrong.

Bravery might mean only that she doesn't weep at night, or insist on hearing the same interminable lament as they travel, and Li-Mei has no idea at all how cleverness might play out for the second or fifth wife of the kaghan's heir.

She doesn't even know what number she'll be.

She knows nothing of the man she's travelling to wed—whose bed she'll share, if he even chooses. In her carried litter, Li-Mei draws a deep breath.

She can kill herself. That has been done by women married in this fashion. It is considered a disgrace, of course. She isn't sure she cares. She can decide to cry and mourn all the way north, and after they arrive.

Or, she can represent her father's bright, tall memory, and the version of herself Tai has held up like a bronze mirror all her life. The version of Shen Li-Mei that an aged empress had loved and trusted in her own exile after the Precious Consort came and bewitched with music and wit and beauty, changing the world.

A woman could change the world.

And Li-Mei is not the first woman to be exiled from her life and home, through marriage, through the ending of marriage, through someone's death, through birth, through the inability to bear a child... in one hard way or another.

She hears shouted orders. She recognizes some words by now, having paid attention. They are finally stopping for the night. The approach of summer on the steppe means very long days.

The routine has been established: the two princesses remain in their litters while their yurts are prepared. They step out when summoned and proceed directly into the yurts where a meal is brought to them. After, they are readied for bed by their women, and they sleep. They rise so early that, even nearing summer, there is sometimes frost on the grass, or a mist rising.

In the litter, as it is set down, Li-Mei makes a face. It is somewhat childlike, in fact, although she wouldn't like to be told that. She pushes bare feet into slippers.

She draws back her curtain herself—all the way this time—and she steps outside into evening light and the dusty wind of the wide steppe.

The grass around her, the world, is green as emeralds. Her heart is beating fast. She hopes no one can tell that.

One of her litter-bearers cries out, startled. A rider turns at the sound, sees her standing there and comes galloping back through the tall grass: the same one who glanced at her before. He swings off his horse before it has even stopped, hits the ground smoothly, running then slowing, an action done half a thousand times, Li-Mei thinks.

He comes up, anger and urgency in his face. He speaks fiercely, gesturing at the litter for her to re-enter, no ambiguity in the message though she doesn't understand the words.

She does not move. He says it again, same words, more loudly, same harsh, pointing gesture. Others have turned now, are looking at them. Two more riders are coming quickly from the front of the column, their expressions grim. It would be wisest, Li-Mei thinks, to go back into her litter.

She slaps the man in front of her, hard, across the face.

The impact stings her hand. She cannot remember the last time she struck someone. She cannot remember ever doing so, in fact.

She says, enunciating clearly—he will not understand, but it doesn't matter: "I am the daughter of a Kitan general, and a member of the imperial family of the Celestial Emperor Taizu, Lord of the Five Directions, and I am bride-to-be of the kaghan's heir. Whatever rank you hold, any of you, you will listen to me now. I am done with staying in a litter or a yurt all day and night. Bring me someone who understands a civilized tongue and I will say it again!"

It is possible he might kill her.

She may be standing at the edge of night here, of crossing over. His shame will be very great, struck by a woman.

But she sees indecision in his eyes and relief floods through her. She is not going to die in this evening wind, they have too much vested in her coming north to this marriage.

He had looked so proud moments before, riding past, gazing at her. With nothing but instinct as her guide, Li-Mei steps back, places her feet together, and bows, hands formally clasping each other inside the wide sleeves of her robe.

Straightening, she then smiles, briefly, royalty condescending to ease a hard moment.

Let them be confused, she thinks. Let them be uncertain of her. Showing anger and independence, then courtesy and even grace. She sees that the curtain of the other princess's litter (the real princess) has been pulled slightly back. Good. Let her watch. At least the idiotic song has stopped.

Li-Mei hears birds; they are passing overhead, in great numbers. There is a lake nearby. That will be why they've chosen this place to stop for the night.

She points to the water. "What lake is that? What is it called in your tongue?"

She looks at the man in front of her. The other two have reined up by now, have remained on their horses, visibly uncertain as to how to proceed. She says, "If I am to live among the Bogu, I must learn these things. Bring me someone who can answer!"

The man in front of her clears his throat and says, amazingly, "We name it Marmot Lake. There are many of them here. Marmots, their burrows on the hills, other side."

He speaks Kitan. She raises her eyebrows and favours him—again, keeping it brief—with a smile.

"Why did you not tell me you spoke our language?"

He looks away, manages a shrug that is meant to be disdainful, but fails.

"You learned it trading by the river's loop?"

He looks quickly back at her, startled (but it wasn't a difficult surmise).

"Yes," he says.

"In that case," she says, coldly now, "if you have anything to say to me, including requests I may or may not agree to, you will say it from now on in the language I know. And you will tell the others what I said to you just now. Do you understand me?"

And, gloriously, after a short pause, he nods.

"Tell them," she says, and she turns her back on them to look east towards the lake and the birds. The wind is tugging at her hair, trying to pulls strands of it free of the long pins.

There is a poem about that, the wind as an impatient lover.

She hears him clear his throat again, then begin to speak in his own tongue to the riders who have gathered.

She waits for him to finish before she turns back, and now she gives him something, gives it to all of them. "I will be trying to learn your language now. I will have questions. You must show me the riders who know Kitan. Do you understand?"

He nods again. But, more importantly, one of those on horseback lifts a hand, as if asking permission to speak (which is proper!) and says, "I speak also your tongue, princess. Better than this one." He grins, crooked-toothed. An edge of competition here. He is a bigger man.

And Li-Mei sees, with pleasure, that the one standing before her looks angrily at the new claimant. She smiles at the one on the horse this time. "I hear you," she says, "though I will form my own conclusions as to whose speech is best among those here. I will let you all know, after I've had time to judge."

They must be played, she thinks, kept in balance, the men here. Any woman from the Ta-Ming knows something of how to do that. Meanwhile, this is useful, the first good thing in who knows how long. All her life she has been known for asking questions, and now she might find some answers here.

She needs to learn as much as she can about the man she's marrying and the life of women on this steppe. If existence is to become a dark horror, she will end it herself. But if days and nights can be shaped in any way here beyond the Wall and the known world, she has decided to try. She is trying now.

She looks at the one standing before her. "Your name?" She keeps her tone and bearing imperious.

"Sibir," he says. Then adds, "Princess." And inclines his head.

"Come with me," she says, bestowing this upon him as a gift for the others to see and envy, "while they put together the yurts. Tell me where we are, how far we have yet to travel. Teach me the names of things."

She walks away without waiting for him, going towards the water, out of this jumbled column of riders and litters and disassembled yurts. The long sun throws her shadow ahead of her. Be imperial, she reminds herself, head high. The sky, she thinks, is enormous, and the horizon (the horizon she is married to) is astonishingly far. Sibir bestirs himself, follows quickly.

It pleases her that he does not fall into stride beside her, remaining half a step behind. This is good. It is also good that her heartbeat has slowed. Her right hand stings from when she slapped him. She cannot believe she did that.

The ground is uneven; there are rabbit holes, and those of other animals. Marmots. The grass is astonishingly high, almost to her waist as she nears the lake. Grasshoppers jump as she walks through. She will need better shoes, she realizes. She is unsure what clothing they packed for her at the palace. She deliberately ignored all that at the time, lost in anger. She will have one of her women open the trunks and boxes they are bringing north, and look.

"I intend to do this each morning before we start and every evening when we make camp," she says, looking around. "Also at midday when we stop to eat, unless you tell me there is danger. I want you to attend upon me. Do you understand?"

Do you understand? She is sounding like her brother Liu. And yes, there is irony in that.

The one named Sibir does not answer, unexpectedly. She looks over her shoulder, uneasily. She is not as confident as she sounds. How could she be? He has stopped walking, and so does she.

His gaze is not on her.

He says something in his own tongue. An oath, a prayer, an invocation? Behind them, in the column of riders, the others have also fallen silent. No one is moving. The stillness is unnatural. They are all looking in the same direction—towards the lake, but beyond it, above, to the hills where the marmot burrows are supposed to be.

Li-Mei turns to see.

There is another stirring of wind. She brings up both hands and crosses them on her breast protectively, aware again, powerfully, of how alone she is, how far away.

"Oh, father," she whispers, surprising herself. Why did you leave me to this?"

Of all creatures living, the Kitan most fear wolves. A farming people—rice and cereal grains, irrigation and patiently cultivated fields—they always have. The wolves of the northern steppe are said to be the largest in the world.

On a hill slope beyond the lake there are a dozen of them, in the open, motionless against the sky, lit by the late-day sun, looking down upon them, upon her.

Sibir speaks, finally, his voice thick with tension. "Princess, we go back. Quickly! This is not natural. They let themselves be seen! Wolves never do. And—"

His voice stops, as if the capacity for words, in any language, has been ripped away from him.

She is still looking east. She sees what all of them see.

A man has appeared on the hilltop, among the wolves.

The beasts make room for him. They actually do that.

And Shen Li-Mei knows with sudden, appalling certainty that her life's journey is about to change again. Because paths can and do fork, in ways no man or woman can ever truly grasp, for that is the way the world has been made.

CHAPTER X

That same evening, in the Ta-Ming Palace, bordering the northern wall of Xinan, with the vast, enclosed Deer Park visible through open balcony doors, a woman is playing a stringed instrument in an upper-level audience chamber, making music for the emperor and a select company of his courtiers. His heir, Shinzu, is also present. The prince is cradling a steadily replenished cup of wine.

The Emperor Taizu, Serene Lord of the Five Directions, ruling with the mandate of heaven, never takes his eyes from the woman making music. That observation applies to most of the people in the chamber. (One mandarin is also watching, out of the corner of his eye, a prodigiously large man near the emperor, trying—and failing—to see into his heart.)

Wen Jian, the Precious Consort, is accustomed to being the object of all gazes. It is the way things are, the way she is. This is so whether she is making music, as now, or simply entering a room, or riding through one of the city or palace parks alongside water or wood. It is acknowledged as her due. She is already named among the legendary beauties of Kitai.

She is twenty-one years old.

She takes the breath away, alters the rhythm of the heart. First time seen, every time after: as if memory is erased, then renewed. One thinks of impossible ripeness, then of porcelain or ivory, and tries to reconcile these images, and fails, seeing Wen Jian.

This evening, her instrument is western in origin, a variant of the pipa, played with the fingers, not a plectrum. She was singing earlier but is not doing so now; only rippling notes fill the room, which has columns of alternating jade and alabaster, some of the latter so finely wrought that lanterns placed within them cast a light.

A blind man sits with a flute on a woven mat beside the woman. At a moment of her choosing, she strokes a final note and he knows this for his cue and begins to play. She rises, and it can be seen she is barefoot, crossing the pink marble floor to stand before the throne that has been carried to this room.

The Son of Heaven smiles behind the narrow, grey-white length of his beard. He is robed in white. His belt is yellow, the imperial colour. He wears a soft black hat pinned upon his head, black silk slippers stitched with gold, and three rings upon each hand. One of the rings is a green jade dragon. Only the emperor can wear this. Forty years ago, a little more, he killed his aunt and two of his brothers, and sixty thousand men died in the weeks and months following, as he claimed and secured the Phoenix Throne after his father's passing.

Bold and capable on the battlefield, learned, imaginative (much more than the brothers who died), a hardened leader, Taizu had secured the Ninth Dynasty and shaped the known world, using war to bring expansion and peace, and then that peace—enduring, for the most part—to begin the flow of almost unimaginable wealth to Kitai, to this city, this palace, which he'd built beside the smaller one that had been his father's.

He is no longer young. He is easily wearied now by affairs of state and governance after so many decades of diligent care. He is building his tomb northwest of Xinan, beside his father's and grandfather's, dwarfing them—but he wants to live forever.

With her. With Jian, and her music and youth, the beauty of her. This improbable discovery, treasure beyond jade, of his white-haired latter days.

She moves before them now in a high room, beginning to dance as the blind man lightly plays. There is a sound among those watching, a collective intake of breath, as from mortals glimpsing the ninth heaven from a distance, a hint given of what existence might be like among the gods.

The emperor is silent, watching her. Jian's eyes are on his. They are almost always on his when he is in a room. Flute music, that soft breath of anticipation as her dance begins, and then one voice cries out, shockingly, an assault: "Oh, very good! You will dance for us now! Good!"

He laughs happily. A voice oddly high-pitched in a stupefyingly massive body. A man so large his buttocks and thighs overspill the mat set out for him next to the throne. He has been permitted to sit, leaning upon cushions, an acknowledgement of necessity and a sign of honour. No one else is seated other than the emperor and the blind musician, not even Taizu's heir. Shinzu stands near his father, drinking wine, carefully silent.

It is usually wise for a prince in Kitai to be cautious.

The very large man, not careful at all, had been born a barbarian in the northwest. He was arrested, young, for stealing sheep, but permitted to join the Kitan army instead of being executed.

He is now so powerful it terrifies most of those in this room. He is the military governor of three districts in the northeast, an enormous territory. A very large army.

This has never happened before, one governor for three districts, it has never been permitted to happen.

The man's thick legs are thrust straight out before him; there is no possible way he could cross them. His eyes are almost-hidden slits in the creases of a smooth-shaven face. His hair, under a black hat, is thinning; there isn't enough left to tie into a knot. When he comes to Xinan, or when he leaves the imperial city, returning to his northern districts, twelve men bear his sedan chair. Gone are the days when a horse could carry him, into battle or anywhere else.

His name is An Li, but he has been known for a long time as Roshan.

He is hated by a great many, but there are those who adore him, as passionately, as intensely.

The emperor is one who loves him, and Jian, the Precious Consort, has even adopted him as her son—though he is past twice her age—in a child's game, a mockery of ceremony, seen by some as an abomination.

Earlier this spring the women of her entourage, thirty or forty of them, giggling amid clouds of incense and the scent of mingled perfume, had stripped him of his garments as he lay upon the floor in the women's quarters, and then they had powdered and swaddled and pinned him like a newborn in vast cloths. Jian, entering, laughing and clapping with delight, had fed him milk, pretending—with exposed breasts some said—it was her own.

The emperor, it was whispered, had come into the room that day in the women's quarters, where the gross man who had been—and in many ways still was—the most formidable general in the empire was wailing and crying like a newborn babe, lying on his back, fisting small eyes with his hands, while sleek, scented women of the Ta-Ming Palace laughed themselves into raptures of amusement to see Jian and Roshan so merrily at play at the centre of the world.

Everyone in Xinan knew that story. Other tales were whispered about the two of them which were unspeakably dangerous to say aloud in the wrong company. In any company, really.

To speak out, as Roshan does this evening, just as Wen Jian's dance begins, is a violent breach of protocol. For those who understand such things it is also a ferociously aggressive display of confidence.

He is uncouth and illiterate—proudly declares it himself—born into a tribe bordering desert dunes, among a people who had learned to survive raising sheep and horses, and then robbing merchants on the Silk Roads.

His father had served in the Kitan army on the frontier, one of many barbarian horsemen filling that role as the imperial army evolved. They had stopped the raiding, made the long roads safe for commerce and the growth of Xinan and the empire. The father had risen to middling rank—preparing the way for a son who had not always been so vast.

An Li, in turn, had been a soldier and an officer, then a senior one, whose soldiers left mounds of enemy skulls on his battlefields for the wolves and carrion birds, subduing swaths of territory for Kitai. Following upon these conquests he'd been made a general and then, not long after, a military governor in the northeast, with honours beyond any of the other governors.

He assumes a licence, accordingly, to behave in ways no other man would dare, not even the heir. Perhaps especially the heir. He amuses Taizu. In the view of some in this room, he acts this way deliberately, interrupts crudely, to show others that he can. That only he can.

Among those with this opinion is the first minister, the new one: Wen Zhou, the Precious Consort's favoured cousin, holding office because of her intercession.

The last prime minister, the gaunt, unsleeping one who died in the autumn—to the relief of many and the fear and grief of others—was the only man alive Roshan had visibly feared.

Chin Hai, who had steadily promoted the gross barbarian, and kept him in check, has gone to his ancestors, and the Ta-Ming Palace is a different place, which means the empire is.

Eunuchs and mandarins, princes and military leaders, aristocrats, disciples of both the Sacred Path and the Cho Master—all of them watch the first minister and the strongest of the military governors, and no one moves too quickly, or calls attention to himself. It is not always a good thing to be noticed.

Among those observing Jian's first slow, sensuous motions—her cream-and-gold silk skirt sweeping the floor, then beginning to rise and float as her movements grow swifter, wider—the most suspicious view of Roshan is shared by the prime minister's principal adviser.

This figure stands behind Zhou in the black robes (red belt, gold key hanging from the belt) of a mandarin of the highest, ninth degree.

His name is Shen Liu, and his sister, his only sister, is a great distance north by now, beyond the Long Wall, serving his needs extremely well.

He has a cultured appreciation for dancing such as this, for poetry, good wine and food, painting and calligraphy, gems and brocaded liao silk, even architecture and the subtle orientation of city gardens. More, in all these cases, than the first minister does.

There is also a sensual side to his nature, carefully masked. But watching this particular woman, Liu struggles to resist private imaginings. He frightens himself. The very fact that he cannot help but picture her in a room alone with him, those slender hands upraised, wide sleeves falling back to show long, smooth arms as she unpins night-black hair, makes him tremble, as if an enemy might somehow peer into the recesses of his thought and expose him on a precipice of danger.

Impassive, outwardly composed, Liu stands behind First Minister Wen, beside the chief of the palace eunuchs, watching a woman dance. A casual observer might think him bored.

He is not. He is hiding desire, and frightened by Roshan, perplexed as to what the man's precise ambitions might be. Liu hates being unsure of anything, always has.

The first minister is also afraid, and they believe they have reason to fear. They have discussed a number of actions, including provoking Roshan into doing something reckless, then arresting him for treason—but the man controls three armies, has the emperor's love, and Jian, who matters in this, is ambivalently positioned.

One of Roshan's sons is here in the palace, a courtier, but also a hostage of sorts, if it comes to that. Liu is privately of the opinion that Roshan will not let that deter him from anything he decides to do. Two of the governor's advisers were arrested in the city three weeks ago at the first minister's instigation: charged with consulting astrologers after dark, a serious crime. They have denied the accusations. They remain incarcerated. Roshan has appeared serenely indifferent to the matter.

The discussions will continue.

There is a rustling sound. A lean cleric of the Path, an alchemist, appears beside the throne bearing a jade and jewelled cup upon a round golden tray. The emperor, his eyes never leaving the dancer, whose eyes never leave his, drinks the elixir prescribed him for this hour. She will take hers later.

He might never need his tomb. He might live with her forever, eating golden peaches in pavilions of sandalwood, surrounded by tended lacquer trees and bamboo groves, gardens of chrysanthemums beside ponds with lilies and lotus flowers floating in them, drifting amid lanterns and fireflies like memories of mortality.

Tai looked across the raised platform at the poet, and then away towards a lamp and its shadow on the wall. His eyes were open, but seeing nothing more than shapes.

Sima Zian had finished the tale, what he knew. What was, he'd said, beginning to be known among people with links to court or civil service.

It was a story that could easily have reached the scholars-in-waiting, come to the ears of Tai's friends: two princesses to be sent as wives to the Bogu in exchange for urgently needed horses for stock breeding and the cavalry, and increased numbers of the nomads to serve for pay in the Kitan army. One of the princesses a true daughter of the imperial family, the other, in the old, sly trick...

It is about your sister, the poet had said.

A great deal had become clear in this softly lit reception chamber of a courtesan house, late at night in a provincial town far from the centre of power. From where Tai's older brother, trusted confidant and principal adviser to First Minister Wen Zhou, had achieved... what people would regard as something brilliant, spectacular, a gift to their entire family, not just himself.

Tai, looking towards shadow, had a sudden image of a little girl sitting on his shoulders, reaching up to pick apricots in the—

No. He pushed that away. He could not let himself be so cheaply sentimental. Such maudlin thoughts were for slack poets improvising at a rural prefect's banquet, for students struggling with an assigned verse on an examination.

He would conjure, instead, mornings when General Shen Gao had been home from campaigning, images of the wilful girl who had listened at a doorway—letting herself be seen or heard, so they could dismiss her if they chose—when Tai spoke of the world with their father.

Or, later, after the general had retired to his estate, to fishing in the stream, and sorrow, when Tai had been the one coming home: from the far north, from Stone Drum Mountain, or visiting at festivals from studying in Xinan.

Li-Mei was not some earnest, round-faced little girl. She had been away from home, serving the empress at court for three years, had been readying herself to be married before their father died.

Another image: northern lake, cabin aflame, fires burning. Smell of charred flesh, men doing unspeakable things to the dead, and to those not yet dead.

Memories he would have liked to have left behind by now.

He became aware that he was clenching his fists. He forced himself to stop. He hated being obvious, transparent, it rendered a man vulnerable. It was, in fact, Eldest Brother Liu who had taught him that.

He saw Sima Zian looking at him, at his hands, compassion in the other man's face.

"I want to kill someone," Tai said.

A pause to consider this. "I am familiar with the desire. It is sometimes effective. Not invariably."

"My brother, her brother, did this," Tai said.

The women had withdrawn, they were alone on the platform.

The poet nodded. "This seems obvious. Will he expect you to praise him for it?"

Tai stared. "No," he said.

"Really? He might have done so. Considering what this does for your family."

"No," Tai said again. He looked away. "He will have done this through the first minister. He'll have had to."

Sima Zian nodded. "Of course." He poured himself more wine, gestured towards Tai's cup.

Tai shook his head. He said, the words rushing out, "I have also learned that First Minister Wen has claimed for himself the woman I... my own favoured courtesan in the North District."

The other man smiled. "As tightly spun as a regulated verse! He'd be another man you'll want to kill?"

Tai flushed, aware of how banal this must seem to someone as worldly as the poet. Fighting over a courtesan now. A student and a high government official! To the death! They performed this sort of shallow tale with puppets for gaping farmers in market squares.

He was too angry, and he knew it.

He reached over and poured another cup after all. He looked around the room again. Only a dozen or so people still awake. It was very late. He'd been riding since daybreak this morning.

His sister was gone. Yan was dead by the lake. His father was dead. His brother... his brother...

"There are," said Sima Zian gravely, "a number of people in Xinan, and elsewhere, who might wish the prime minister... to be no longer among the living. He will be taking precautions. The imperial city is murderously dangerous right now, Shen Tai."

"I'll fit in well then, won't I?"

The poet didn't smile. "I don't think so. I think you'll disturb people, shift balances. Someone doesn't want you arriving, obviously."

Obviously.

It was difficult, despite everything, to picture his brother selecting an assassin. It was painful as a blow. It was a crack, a crevasse, in the world.

Tai shook his head slowly.

"It might not have been your brother," said the poet, as if reading his thoughts. The Kanlin woman, Wei Song, had done the same thing a few nights ago. Tai didn't like it.

"Of course it was him!" he said harshly. There was a dark place beneath the words. "He would know how I'd feel about what he did to Li-Mei."

"Would he expect you to kill him for it?"

Tai slowed the black drumming of his thoughts. The poet held his gaze with those wide-set eyes.

At length, Tai shrugged his shoulders. "No. He wouldn't."

Sima Zian smiled. "So I thought. Incidentally, there's someone on the portico, keeps crossing back and forth, looking in at us. Small person. Wearing black. It may be another Kanlin sent after you..."

Tai didn't bother to look. "No. That one is mine. Kanlin, yes. I hired a guard at Iron Gate. A Warrior who'd been sent by someone in Xinan to stop the assassin."

"You trust him?"

He thought of Wei Song in the laneway tonight, when the governor's men had come for him. He did trust her, he realized.

Once it would have irritated him, to have someone post herself so visibly on guard: the loss of privacy, the assumption that he couldn't take care of himself. Now, with what he'd learned, it was different. He was going to need to think that through, as well.

Not tonight. He was too tired, and he couldn't stop his thoughts from going to Li-Mei. And then to Liu. First Son, elder brother. They had shared a room for years.

He pushed that away, too. More sentimentality. They were not children any more.

"It is a woman," he said. "The Kanlin. She'll have seen the governor's soldiers leave with their prisoners, decided someone needed to be on watch. She can be difficult."

"They all can. Women, Kanlin Warriors. Put them in one..." The poet laughed. Then asked, as Tai had half expected, "Who is the someone in Xinan who sent her?"

He had decided to trust this man, too, hadn't he?

"The courtesan I mentioned. Wen Zhou's concubine."

This time the poet blinked. After a moment, he said, "She risked that? For someone who's been away two years? Shen Tai, you are..." He left the thought unfinished. "But if it is the first minister who wants you dead, even costing the empire your horses might not change his mind."

Tai shook his head. "Killing me now, after word of the horses has arrived, Zhou or my brother runs the risk of someone—you, Xu Bihai, even the commander at Iron Gate—linking it to him. The loss of so many Sardian horses would make my death important. His enemies could bring him down with that."

The poet considered it. "Then what is this about? There was nothing you could do for your sister from Kuala Nor, was there? You were much too far, it was already too late, but an assassin was sent. Was this about eliminating a new enemy before he returned?" He hesitated. "Perhaps a rival?"

There was that.

Her hair by lamplight.

And if someone should take me from here when you are gone?

He said, "It might be."

"You are going on to Xinan?"

Tai smiled, first time since coming back down the stairs. Mirthlessly, he said, "I must, surely? I have sent word. I will be anxiously awaited!"

No answering smile, not this time. "Awaited on the road, it might also be. Shen Tai, you will accept an unworthy friend and companion?"

Tai swallowed. He hadn't expected this. "Why? It would be foolishly dangerous for you to put yourself..."

"You helped me remember a poem," said the one called the Banished Immortal.

"That's no reason to—"

"And you buried the dead at Kuala Nor for two years."

Another silence. This man was, Tai thought, all about pauses, the spaces between words as much as the words themselves.

Across the room someone had begun plucking quietly at a pipa, the notes drifting through lamplight and shadow, leaves on a moonlit stream.

"Xinan is changed. You will need someone who knows the city as it has become since you left. Knows it better than some Kanlin pacing back and forth." Sima Zian grinned, and then he laughed, amusing himself with a thought he elected not to share.

The poet's hand, Tai saw, reached out to touch his sword.

Friend was the word he had used.

A journey does not end when it ends.

The well-worn thought comes to her in the chill of night as she waits in her yurt alone. Li-Mei is not asleep, nor under the sheepskin blankets they lay out for her at night. It can grow cold on the steppe under stars. It is black as a tomb inside, with the flap closed. She cannot even see her hands. She is sitting on the pallet, fully clothed, holding a small knife.

She is trembling, and unhappy about that, even though no one is here to see her weakness.

The doctrines of the Sacred Path use the phrase about journeys and destinations to teach, in part, that death does not end one's travelling through time and the worlds.

She does not know, there is no way she could know, but Bogu belief lies near to the same thought. The soul returns to the Sky Father, the body goes to earth and continues in another form, and then another, and another, until the wheel is broken.

Li-Mei understands something else tonight. She knows something else. And this was so in the moment she saw the wolves on the slope and the man with them, and watched the nomads behind her hurled into chaos and panic—these hard, fierce men of the steppe whose very being demands they show no fear to anyone, or to themselves.

Something is about to happen. A journey, one sort of journey, will end, possibly right here.

She is awake and clothed, waiting. With a knife.

So when the first wolf howls she is unsurprised. Even with that, she is unable to keep from jerking spasmodically at the lost, wild sound of it, or stop her hands from beginning to shake even more. You can be brave, and be afraid. She fears she'll cut herself with the blade and she puts it aside on the pallet.

A lead wolf by itself at first, then others with it, filling the wide night with their sound. But the nomads' dogs—the great wolfhounds—are silent, as they have been since the first wolf sighting towards sundown.

That, as much as anything else, is why she is so certain something strange is happening. The dogs should have gone wild at the sight of the wolves before, and hearing them now.

Nothing. Nothing at all from them.

She does hear movements outside, the riders mounting up. They will be happier on horseback, she has come to realize that. But there are no shouts, commands, no warlike cries, and no dogs. It is unnatural.

The wolves again, nearer. The worst sound in the world, someone called their howling, in a long-ago poem. The Kitan fear wolves more than tigers. In legend, in life. They are coming down now. She closes her eyes in the dark.

Li-Mei wants to lie on her small pallet and draw the sheepskins over her head and wish this all away, into not-being-so.

There was a storyteller in the town nearest their estate who used to offer a marketplace tale, a fable, of a girl who could do this. She remembers extending to him a copper coin the first time, then realizing he was blind.

She wants so much to be there, to be home, in her own bedchamber, going back and forth on the garden swing, on a ladder in the orchard picking early-summer fruit, looking up to find the Weaver Maid in the known evening sky...

She realizes there are tears on her face.

Impatiently, with a gesture at least one of her brothers would have recognized, she presses her lips together and wipes at her cheeks with the backs of both hands. In her own way, though she might wish to deny it, showing distress disturbs her as much as it would the nomads outside on their horses.

She forces herself to stand, makes certain she's steady on her feet. She's wearing riding boots. She'd made her two women find them in the baggage when she came back from that walk at sundown. She hesitates, then takes the knife again, drops it into an inside pocket of her tunic.

She might need it to end her life.

She draws a breath, lifts back the heavy flap of her yurt, and ducks outside. You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery. Her father had taught her that, a long time ago.

A wind is blowing. It is cold. She is aware of the hard brilliance of the stars, the band of the Sky River arcing across heaven, eternal symbol of one thing divided from another: the Weaver Maid from her mortal love, the living from the dead, the exile from home.

The man is standing before her yurt. She'd had a thought about him before, what he might be, but it turns out she is wrong. It is difficult to tell his age, especially in the night, but she can see that he's dressed as any other Bogu rider might be.

No bells, no mirrors, no drum.

He isn't a shaman. She had thought this might be why the horsemen were so afraid. She knew about these men because her brother had told her, years ago. Though, if truth was being demanded, Tai had told their father—and Li-Mei had listened nearby as father and Second Son talked.

Did it matter? Now? She knew some things. And they could have sent her away from the stream, or closed the door, if they'd wanted to. She hadn't worked very hard at remaining hidden.

The man in front of her yurt is the one from the lakeside slope. She has expected him to come. In fact, she knows more than that: she knows she is the reason he's here and that he is the cause of the dogs' silence—though wolves are with him in the camp now, half a dozen of them. She decides she will not look at them.

The Bogu riders are rigid, an almost formal stillness. They sit their horses at intervals around her yurt, but no one is moving, no one reacts to the intruder among them, or his wolves. They are his wolves, what else can they be? She sees no nocked arrows, no swords unsheathed. These men are here to escort the Kitan princesses to their kaghan, to defend them with their lives. This is not happening.

Stars, a waning moon, campfires burning between yurts, sparks snapping there, but no other movement. It is as if they have all been turned to moonlit statues, the man and his wolves, the horsemen and their horses and the dogs, as in some legend of dragon kings and sorcerers of long ago, or fox-women working magic in bamboo woods by the Great River gorges.

The Bogu look, Li-Mei thinks, as if they could not move.

Perhaps that is true. An actual truth, not a fable told. Perhaps they are frozen in place by something more than fear or awe.

It isn't so, she decides, looking around her in the firelit dark. One man twitches his reins. Another draws a nervous hand down his horse's mane. A dog stands up then sits quickly again.

Folk tales and legends are what we move away from when the adult world claims our life, she thinks.

For a brief, unstable moment, it crosses her mind to walk up to the man with the wolves and slap him across the face. She does not. This isn't the same as before. She doesn't understand enough. She doesn't understand any of it. Until she does, she can't act, can't put her stamp (however feeble) on events. She can only follow where the night leads, try to hold down terror, be prepared to die.

The knife is in a pocket of her robe.

The man has not spoken, nor does he now. Instead, looking straight at her, he lifts a hand and gestures, stiffly, to the east—towards the lake and the hills beyond it, invisible now in the dark. She decides she will treat it as an invitation, not a command.

Not that it makes a difference.

The wolves—six of them—immediately get up and begin loping that way. One passes close to her. She doesn't look at it. The man does not turn to watch them. He continues to face Li-Mei, waiting.

The riders do not move. They are not going to save her.

She takes a hesitant step, testing her steadiness. As she does, she hears a sigh from those on horseback: a sound like wind in a summer grove. She realizes, belatedly, that everyone has been waiting for her. That is what this stillness has been about.

It makes sense, as much as anything does in this wide night in an alien land.

He has come for her, after all.

CHAPTER XI

He was tired. It had been a very long day and his body was telling him as much. Tai was hardened and fit after two years' digging graves by Kuala Nor, but other factors could enter into making someone weary at day's end.

It would also be dishonest to deny that a measure of his languor could be traced to an encounter upstairs in the White Phoenix, just now.

He was aware that the woman's scent was still with him, and that he didn't know her name. That last wasn't unusual. And whatever name he'd learned wouldn't have been her real one. He didn't even know Rain's real name.

That suddenly became a sadness, joining others.

Stepping outside with the most celebrated poet in the empire, his new companion—the reality of that was going to take time to settle in—Tai saw someone waiting, and decided he'd be happier if his recently hired Kanlin guard hadn't looked so smugly amused. Registering her expression, he wished he were sober.

Wei Song approached. She bowed. "Your servant trusts you are feeling better, my lord." She spoke with impeccable courtesy—and unmistakable irony.

Tai ignored her for the moment. A useful tactic, when your thoughts offered no good reply. He looked around the night square. Saw the governor's sedan chair behind her. Other soldiers had replaced those who'd taken the would-be assassins. Caution—another new thing—made him hesitate.

"You saw these men arrive?" he asked, gesturing.

Song nodded. "I spoke with the leader. You may safely ride with them." Her tone was proper, her expression barely so. He really wished she hadn't said what she'd said back at Iron Gate, about women waiting for him in Chenyao.

Tai became aware of an extreme delight showing in the face of the rumpled poet beside him. Sima Zian was eyeing Tai's bodyguard with appreciation by the light of the lanterns on the porch.

"This is Wei Song, my Kanlin," he said, briefly. "I mentioned her inside."

"You did," agreed the poet, smiling.

Song smiled back at him, and bowed. "I am honoured, illustrious sir." She hadn't needed an introduction.

Tai looked from one of them to the other. "Let's walk," he said abruptly. "Have the soldiers follow. Song, is there word from the governor? About the men they took?"

"A report will be sent to us as soon as they have something to tell."

Us. He considered commenting and decided he was too tired for a confrontation, and not sober enough. He didn't want to argue. He was thinking about his sister. And his brother.

"We're leaving at sunrise," he said. "And we'll be riding faster now. Please advise our soldiers from Iron Gate."

"Sunrise?" protested Sima Zian.

Tai looked at him.

The poet grinned wryly. "I'll manage," he said. "Send this one to wake me?"

Wei Song laughed. She actually laughed, flashing white teeth. "I'll do that happily, my lord," she said.

Unable to think of anything to say to that, either, Tai began walking. Sima Zian caught up with him. He showed no evidence of fatigue or the wine he'd drunk. It was unfair. Song walked behind them. Tai heard one of the governor's men snap a command as they lifted the empty sedan chair and hurried to follow.

Something occurred to him.

Without breaking stride or looking back, he said, "Song, how did those two men get inside?"

She said, "I had the same thought, my lord. I was guarding the back. There is an entrance there. I believed that soldiers of Governor Xu could stop anyone at the front. I have spoken with them about this failure. They know I will mention it to their commander."

It was difficult to catch her out, Tai thought. As it should be. She was a Kanlin, after all.

"They will not feel kindly towards you," the poet said. Zian glanced back at Song as they walked.

"I'm certain that is so," she said. Then, after a pause, she murmured, "I saw the fox-woman again, Master Shen. Near the laneway when you fought the soldiers."

"A fox-spirit? Inside the city?" The poet looked at her again. His tone had changed.

"Yes," she said.

"No," Tai snapped in the same moment. "She saw a fox."

There was silence from the other two. Only their footsteps and distant noises from other streets. The city, Tai thought. He was in a city again, at night. By the waters of Kuala Nor the ghosts would be crying, with none to hear their voices.

"Ah. Well. Yes. A fox. I wonder," the Banished Immortal said thoughtfully, "if it will be possible to find an acceptable wine at this inn. I hope it isn't far."

THERE WAS NO MESSAGE from the governor when they reached the inn. Nor was there a room available for the poet. Song spoke to the attendant in the reception pavilion, and Zian was assigned her chamber.

She would sleep outside Tai's room again. The staff of the inn were embarrassed by the awkwardness, eager to provide a pallet on the covered portico. It wasn't unusual for guards to sleep outside doorways.

There was little Tai could do about it. The poet invited Song to share his room. She declined, more sweetly than Tai would have expected.

He stared at her as the attendant hurried off to give orders. "This is because of those two men?" he asked.

She hesitated. "Yes, of course. And your friend needs a chamber. It is only proper to—"

"It's the fox, isn't it?"

He couldn't say why that upset him so much. Anger was too easily his portion. He'd gone to Stone Drum Mountain, in part, because of that. He'd left for the same reason, in part.

She met his gaze, eyes defiant. They were still in the reception pavilion, no one else nearby.

"Yes," she said. "It is also that."

Kanlins, he recalled, were enjoined not to lie.

What was he going to say? It was unexpected on her part, given how controlled she was, otherwise. An embracing of folk legends, ancient tales, but she certainly wasn't alone in doing that.

The poet had wandered off through the first courtyard into the nearest pavilion, where music was still playing. As Tai glanced that way, Zian reappeared, grinning, carrying a flask of wine and two cups. He came back up the steps.

"Salmon River wine, if you can believe it! I am very happy."

Tai lifted a warding hand. "You will undo me. No more tonight."

The poet's smile grew wider. He quoted, "At the very bottom of the last cup, at the end of night, joy is found."

Tai shook his head. "Perhaps, but sunrise will also be found soon."

Sima Zian laughed. "I thought the same, so why go to bed at all?" He turned to Wei Song. "Keep the room, little Kanlin. I'll be with the musicians. I'm sure someone there will offer a pillow if I need one."

Song smiled at him again. "The chamber is yours, sir. Maybe the pillow—or the someone—will prove unsatisfactory. I have my place tonight."

The poet glanced at Tai. He nodded his head. He didn't look nearly intoxicated enough.

"I will instruct that any message from the governor tonight be brought to me." Song had the grace to bow to Tai. "If that is acceptable."

It probably shouldn't have been, but he was weary. Too much of too many things. It is about your sister.

He nodded. "Thank you, yes. You will wake me if you judge it proper."

"Of course."

Two servants carrying a rolled-up pallet appeared, moving briskly, managing to bow sideways as they passed. They hurried out to the courtyard, past lanterns, towards a building on the left. Zian went out after them, but turned right again, towards pipa music and flutes and a ripple of late-night laughter. There was, Tai saw, an eagerness to his stride.

Tai and Song followed the pallet the other way. It was set down on the covered portico of the first building, outside the closed door of his own chamber. The servants bowed again and hurried away, leaving them alone.

There were torches burning at intervals along the portico. Faintly, from the far side of the courtyard, they could hear the music. Tai looked at the stars. He thought about the last time Song had spent a night outside his room. He wondered if there was a bolt on the door.

He remembered that he'd meant to check on Dynlal before retiring. He could ask Song to do it, and she would, but it didn't feel right. She'd been awake as long as he had. It was unlikely to be necessary: one of the Iron Gate soldiers, that first one who'd seen Tai approaching, from up on the wall, hardly ever left the horse. Odds were good he was sleeping in the stables.

He didn't know where the other soldiers were... sharing one of the larger rooms, most likely. They'd be long asleep by now.

In a way, Sima Zian had the right idea. Tai had spent entire nights drinking before, many times. With Spring Rain, with Yan and the other students and their women. He wasn't up to that tonight.

"You'll wake the men?" he asked Wei Song.

"I'll wake all of you before dawn."

"Just knock, for me," he said. He managed a smile.

She made no reply, just looked at him a moment, hesitating. When she stood so near, he realized how small she was.

"I'll go tell the stable hands to have the horses fed and watered before sunrise. We'll need a horse for Master Sima. And I'll look in on Dynlal." She bowed briefly, walked quickly down the three steps to the courtyard. He watched her crossing it.

She didn't look tired either, he thought.

He went into the room, closed the door. Then he stood, just inside, keeping extremely still.

After a moment he opened the door again. "Wait here," he said to the empty portico. "Come if I call you." He left the door ajar, turned back into the chamber.

It was her perfume that had registered.

That, and the amber glow in the room: three lamps were lit, which was extravagant, so late. The servants of the inn would not have done that.

There was another entrance, from the covered porch on the opposite side, a private space from which to look at flowers or the moon. The sliding, slatted doors had been pushed back, the room was open to the night. The gardens of the inn went all the way down to the river. Tai saw a star in the opening, quite bright, flickering.

She had changed her gown. She was wearing red now, gold threads in it, not the green of before. He wished it hadn't been red.

"Good evening," he said quietly to the daughter of Xu Bihai.

It was the older one, the one he'd liked: sideways-falling fashion of her hair, clever look in her eyes, an awareness of the effect she'd had, bending to pour wine. Her jewellery was unchanged, rings on many fingers.

The governor's daughter was sitting on the edge of his canopied bed, alone in the room. She wore gold, open-toed sandals. Her toenails were painted red, Tai saw. She smiled, stood up, moved towards him, exquisite.

It was still unfair, in almost every possible way.

"My Kanlin guard... she's just outside the door," he lied.

"Then shouldn't we close it?" she asked. Her voice was low, amused. "Would you like me to do that? Is she dangerous?"

"No. No! Your father... would be very unhappy if his daughter was in a closed bedchamber with a man."

"My father," she murmured, "sent me here."

Tai swallowed.

It was just possible. How urgently, how desperately, did the military leader of two western districts want to keep Tai—and his horses—from rivals? From Roshan, as an example. As the best example. What would he do to achieve that?

He'd given an answer, hadn't he, earlier tonight? I would sooner kill you, Xu Bihai had said, over saffron wine.

Was this—a lissome daughter sent to bind him—an alternative short of murder? It would preserve the horses for the empire. And for the Second and Third Military Districts. If Tai was killed the horses were lost. And Governor Xu, if known to have caused that to happen, was likely to be exiled, or ordered to end his life, for all his power and accomplishment.

But a man could be seduced by an elegant daughter with the worldly skills of well-bred women in Ninth Dynasty Kitai. Or he could be compromised, perhaps, forced to behave with honour after a night... lacking honour, defined by skills. There was that possibility.

And daughters—like sisters—could be used as instruments.

He was not, he realized, tired any more.

The governor's daughter, tall, slender, came slowly up to him. Her perfume was delicious, expensive, disturbing, and the red gown was cut as low as the green one had been earlier tonight. A green dragon amulet still hung between her breasts on a golden chain.

Silk brushing against him, she glided past, to close the half-open door.

"Leave it! Please!" Tai said.

She smiled again. She turned towards him, very close. Large eyes, looking up, claimed his. Her painted eyebrows were shaped like moth wings. Her skin was flawless, cheeks tinted with vermilion. She said, softly, "She might become envious or aroused, your Kanlin woman, if we leave the door ajar. Would you like that? Would that add to your pleasure, sir? To imagine her looking in upon us from the dark?"

If, Tai thought, a little desperately, she was doing this on the instructions of her father, she was a very dutiful daughter.

"I... I have already been to the White Phoenix Pleasure House tonight," he stammered.

Not the most poised or courteous thing to say. Her fingernails were also red, and they had golden extensions, a fashion he remembered from two years ago in Xinan. The fashion had reached this far west. That was... that was interesting, Tai thought.

It wasn't, really. He wasn't thinking very clearly.

Her breath was sweet, scented with cloves. She said, "I know where you were. They are said to be well trained, the girls there. Worth the cost to any man." She cast her eyes down, as if shyly. "But it is not the same, you know it, my lord, as when you are with a well-born woman you have not bought. A woman who has risked a great deal to come to you, and waits to be taught what you know."

Her right hand moved, and one of those golden fingernails stroked the back of his hand, and then, as if carelessly, moved slowly up the inside of his forearm. Tai shivered. He didn't believe there was a great deal this one needed to be taught. Not by him, not by anyone.

He closed his eyes. Took a steadying breath and said, "I know this is foolish, but are you... could a daiji be within you?"

"That took longer than it should have!"

A third voice—from the small porch leading to the garden and the river.

Tai and the governor's daughter turned, very quickly.

Wei Song stood framed in the space between the sliding doors. One sword was drawn, levelled at the girl.

"I can be a little dangerous," he heard his Kanlin Warrior say calmly. She wasn't smiling.

The other woman lifted shaped eyebrows, then turned, very deliberately, away from Song, as if from someone inconsequential.

"My name," she said to Tai, "is Xu Liang. You know it. My father introduced us tonight. I am flattered you think me fair enough to be a daiji spirit, but it is an error. It would be another error if your woman-servant harmed me."

It was said with the utmost composure. There really was something, Tai thought, about being well-born. You could call Kanlin Warriors woman-servants, for one thing.

It is an error. He glanced towards the porch. Song was biting her lower lip; he doubted she was aware of it. He was trying to remember if he had ever seen her look this uncertain before. It might have been diverting at any other time. She kept her sword levelled, but without force or conviction now, he saw.

He was still trying to define a proper target for his own rising outrage. Was there no privacy in a man's life when he travelled with a guard? Or, for that matter, when some military leader encountered on the road decided to bind him with a daughter? Everyone could just wander into his room as they pleased, when they pleased, day or night, eliciting embarrassing fears of shape-changing spirits?

The daughter in question murmured, still not bothering to look at Song, "Did you not see my guards, Kanlin, in the garden? They rowed me here, to the water gate of the inn. I am surprised, and a little unhappy, that neither of them has killed you yet."

"It would be difficult for them, my lady. They are unconscious, by the trees."

"You attacked them?"

She turned to glare at Song. Her anger was pretty clearly unfeigned, Tai decided. Her hands were rigid at her sides.

"I found them that way," Wei Song said, after a hesitation.

Lady Xu Liang's mouth opened.

"They are not dead," Song added. "No blows that I could see, no cups or flasks for poison, and they are breathing. If you have not been claimed by a fox-spirit, governor's daughter, and used for her purposes, it may be... because something kept the daiji away."

Tai had no idea what to make of this. Shape-shifting fox-women were the subject of erotic legends going back to the earliest dynasties. Their beauty impossibly alluring, their physical needs extreme. Men could be destroyed by them, but in such a manner, spun of world-changing desire, that the tales aroused fear and inchoate longings.

Further, not every man made the nighttime recipient of a daiji's fierce hunger was destroyed. Some of the tales suggested otherwise, memorably.

Wei Song hadn't yet lowered her blade. Tai said, first of half a dozen questions jostling in his head, "How did you know to come back?"

She shrugged. "You couldn't smell that much perfume through the door?" A cool glance at the governor's daughter. "And I was quite certain you hadn't asked for another courtesan. You did say you were tired. Remember, my lord?"

He knew that tone.

Xu Liang folded her arms across her low-cut gown. She looked younger suddenly. Tai made his decision. This was not a girl possessed by a fox-spirit that had chosen to make use of her body—and his—for what was left of tonight. He didn't even believe in fox-women.

That did mean, if you were functioning well enough to consider the matter, that the governor's older daughter was remarkably seductive and alarmingly poised. He'd address that issue later.

Or, perhaps better, he wouldn't.

He concentrated on his black-clad guard, not much older than Xu's daughter. "So you went...?"

Song rattled it off impatiently. "I came back around on the garden side. I saw the two guards in the grass." She looked at Liang. "I never touched them."

The governor's daughter looked uneasy for the first time. "Then what? How were they...?"

A footfall on the porch, behind Wei Song.

"I'd have to agree it was probably a daiji," said Sima Zian.

The poet came up the steps into the room. "I just had a look at the two of them."

Tai blinked, then shook his head in indignation.

"Shall we," he asked caustically, "wake our soldiers and invite them in? Oh, and perhaps the governor's men out front might want to join us?"

"Why not?" grinned Zian.

"No!" said Xu Liang. "Not my father's guards!"

"Why? You said his soldiers brought you here. It won't be a secret," Song said dryly. These two, Tai realized, had decided not to like each other.

"You are wrong, again, Kanlin. It is secret, my being here. Of course it is! The two in the garden are men I can trust," Liang said. "My own guards all my life. If they have been slain..."

"They are not dead," the poet said. He looked around. Probably hoping for wine, Tai thought. "If I were to shape a conjecture, and I confess I enjoy doing that, I would say that Master Shen was the target of a daiji, that our clever Kanlin is correct." He smiled at Song, and then at the governor's daughter. "Your arrival, gracious lady, was exquisitely timed for the fox-spirit—or was guided by her." He paused, to let that thought linger. "But something here, perhaps within our friend, kept the spirit away—from him, and from you. If I am correct, you have cause to be grateful."

"And what would something be?" asked Xu Liang. Her painted eyebrows were arched again. They really were exquisite.

"This is... this is nothing but conjecture!" Tai snapped.

"I did say that," Sima Zian agreed calmly. "But I also asked if you saw ghosts at the White Phoenix tonight, when first we spoke."

"You are saying that you did?"

"No. I have only a limited access to the spirit world, my friend. But enough to sense something about you."

"You mean from Kuala Nor? The ghosts?"

It was Wei Song this time, her brow furrowed. She was biting her lower lip again.

"Perhaps," said the Banished Immortal. "I would not know." He was looking at Tai, waiting.

Another lake, far to the north. A cabin there. A dead shaman in the garden, mirrors and drum. Fires, and then a man, or what had once been a man...

Tai shook his head. He was not about to speak of this.

When pressed, ask a question. "What could my being at Kuala Nor possibly mean to a daiji?"

The poet shrugged, accepted the deflection. "You might draw one as you passed by. She could become aware of your presence, conscious of those protecting you, hovering."

"There are spirits attending upon Master Shen?"

Xu Liang didn't sound fearful. You could say, if you wanted, that she appeared to find the notion intriguing, engaging. She'd uncrossed her arms again, was looking at Tai. Another appraising glance, not dissimilar to ones she'd given him from by the door in her father's reception room.

He really had been away from women too long.

"There are spirits near all of us," Song said from the porch, a little too emphatically. "Whether we see them or not. The Way of the Sacred Path teaches as much."

"And the Dialogues of Master Cho assert that this is not so," murmured the woman in the red gown. "Only our ancestors are near us, and only if they were improperly consecrated to the next world when they died. Which is the reason for our rituals."

Sima Zian glanced happily from one woman to the other. He clapped his hands. "You are both splendid beyond description! This is a wonderful night. We must find wine!" he cried. "Let us continue this across the way, there is music."

"I am not entering a courtesan pavilion!" said Xu Bihai's daughter with immediate, impressive propriety.

The fact that she was standing, scented and bejewelled, in a man's bedchamber and had been on the verge of closing the door (lest someone be made envious by what was apparently to transpire) seemed entirely beside the point, Tai thought, admiringly.

"Of course! Of course you aren't," the poet murmured. "Forgive me, gracious lady. We'll bring a pipa player here. And perhaps just one girl, with cups and wine?"

"I think not," said Tai. "I believe that Wei Song will now escort the Lady Xu Liang back to her father's mansion. Is the boat waiting for you?"

"Of course it is," Liang said. "But my guards..."

Tai cleared his throat. "It appears, if Sima Zian is correct, and my Kanlin, that they may have encountered a spirit-world creature. I have no better explanation. We are told they are alive."

"I will return and watch over them myself," Song said, "and tell them when they wake that their lady is home and well."

"They won't believe you if I'm not here," Xu Liang said.

"I'm a Kanlin," said Song simply. "We do not lie. They will know that, if others, less experienced, do not."

The poet, Tai thought, looked ridiculously pleased by all of this.

Liang, he realized, was looking at him again, ignoring the other woman. Tai didn't entirely mind that. He was briefly tempted by the notion of agreeing with Zian, summoning music and wine.

But not really. His sister was a long way north, beyond the Wall by now. And tonight, here in Chenyao, men had—

"I did say earlier," Xu Liang murmured, eyes demurely downcast, "that my father had sent me. You have not asked why."

Indeed. Well, he'd had what seemed a good notion why.

"My apologies." He bowed. "Is it permitted for your servant to ask now?"

She nodded. "It is. My father wished to advise you privately that those two men, when encouraged to discuss their adventurism tonight, suggested only one name of possible significance before they each succumbed, sadly, to the exacting nature of the conversation."

She looked meaningfully at the poet, and then at Song on the porch. Tai understood. "One is my guard," he said. "The other my companion."

Liang inclined her head. She said, "The assassins were bandits from the woods south of here. The man they named lives in Chenyao. He, in turn, when invited for a conversation, was kind enough to offer another name—from Xinan—before lamentably expiring."

Tai was listening very closely. "I see. And that other name is?"

She was crisp, efficient. She said, "Xin Lun—a civil servant at court, we understand—was the name given. My honoured father offers his deepest regret that he was unable to be of greater assistance, but dares to hope this will be of some use to Master Shen."

Xin Lun. Again. Yan had spoken that name before he died. He'd been killed as he said it.

Lun. Drinking companion, fellow student, convivial and clever. Not a student any more, it seemed. If he was in the palace he'd passed the examinations while Tai was away. A card and dice player once, ballad singer at night, a lover of—as it happened—Salmon River wine. Wearing the robes of a mandarin now.

Because of Yan, it wasn't a revelation, not devastating news of betrayal. More a confirmation, an echo. He'd been waiting for a different name, perhaps two, behind these assassins... and had been deeply afraid to hear one of them spoken aloud.

He showed none of this in his face, he hoped.

He bowed to the governor's daughter. "My thanks to your father. And to you, gracious lady, bearing these tidings so late at night. I do understand why Governor Xu would not trust them to anyone else."

"Of course he wouldn't," she murmured.

She looked directly at him as she said it, then let that slow smile shape her lips, as if the guard and the poet weren't in the room. As if she and Tai were continuing a conversation interrupted earlier, and so unpleasantly, by another girl with a blade.

The other girl escorted her out the sliding doors and through the garden. Sima Zian walked them down to the river. Standing on the porch, Tai watched the three of them go towards the trees and the water beyond. He lost them in the dark, then saw the one man come back a short time later and head across towards the music again, head lifted, steps quickening, hearing it.

Tai waited in silence for a time, listening to the night. He caught the scent of flowers, citrus. There were peonies. A slight breeze from the north, towards the river. The stars that ended the night this time of year were rising.

"Daiji?" he called, greatly, recklessly daring.

He couldn't say why, but it felt as if there might be an answer to something, to part of this story, out in the garden.

Nothing stirred in the dark but fireflies. Flashing go the night-travellers. The old song about them. He thought of the tale of the poor scholar who could not afford oil for lanterns, gathering fireflies in a bag each evening, studying by their light. They used to joke about that story, in Xinan, the students. Chou Yan, Xin Lun, Shen Tai, the others.

There were other night-travellers tonight. He wondered where his sister was, where in a too-wide world. A hard pull upon the heart. His father was dead. This would not have happened, otherwise.

Deaths, even quiet ones, had consequences.

Three men had died in Chenyao tonight under questioning. For attempting to have him killed.

No movement in the garden, no approach to his call, his foolishness. He didn't believe there had been a fox-creature following him, though it was interesting that Wei Song seemed to fear them. He hadn't noticed her biting her lower lip that way before. He had thoughts about how those two guards had ended up unconscious.

Wind in leaves. Distant music. The bright, low star he'd seen before was still there. It felt as if a great deal of time had passed since he'd come into this room, but it wasn't so.

Tai didn't call again. He turned and went back inside. He washed and dried himself using the filled water basin and towel. He undressed, put out the three lights burning in the room, drew the sliding doors and hooked them shut. Some air came in through the slats, which was good. He closed the main door, which was still ajar.

He went to bed.

A little later, drifting towards sleep as to the shore of another country, he suddenly sat up in the nearly black room and swore aloud. He half expected to hear Song from the portico asking what was wrong, but she wouldn't be back from the governor's mansion yet.

They couldn't leave at sunrise. He'd just realized it.

It was not possible. Not in the empire of the Ninth Dynasty.

He had to visit the prefect tomorrow morning. Had to. They were to take a morning meal together. It had been arranged. If he didn't attend, if he simply rode off, it would bring lasting shame upon himself, and upon his father's memory.

Neither the poet nor the Kanlin would say a word to refute this. They wouldn't even think to try. It was a truth of their world, for good or ill. As much a part of it—this ritualized, unyielding, defining formality—as poetry was, or silk, or sculpted jade, palace intrigues, students and courtesans, Heavenly Horses, pipa music, or unburied tens of thousands upon a battlefield.

CHAPTER XII

They are walking east in the night, around the shore of the small lake, then ascending the slopes of the hills that frame it on the far side. No one has followed them. The wind is from the north.

Li-Mei looks back. The campfires glow. They seem fragile, precarious, in the vastness stretching in all directions. The firelit presence of men—some women are down there, but not her, not her any more—surrounded by all of night and the world.

It is cold in the wind. Swiftly moving clouds, then stars. Deerskin riding boots are better than jewelled slippers, but are not adequate to this steady walking. The wolves keep pace on either side. She is still trying not to look at them.

The man has not said a word since they walked out of the camp.

She hasn't seen him clearly yet. She needs more light. His strides are long, ground-covering, though somehow awkward, stiff. She wonders if it is because he's accustomed to riding. Most of the Bogu are. He walks in front, not bothering to see if she is keeping pace or has tried to run away. He doesn't need to do that. He has the wolves.

She has no idea where they are going or why he is doing this. Why he has come for her, and not the real princess. It is possible that this is a mistake on his part, one that their guards permitted, encouraged, to protect the bride of the kaghan.

Loyalty, Li-Mei thinks, requires that she continue the deception, let the princess get as far away as possible. She doesn't think he intends to kill her. He could have done so by now if that was why he was here. Nor does this feel like someone seeing a chance of wealth, kidnapping Kitan royalty. That had been her thought, waiting in the yurt, holding a knife in the blackness. Kidnapping isn't uncommon back home, in the wild country along the Great River gorges, certainly. But she doesn't think this is a man looking for money.

He may... he may want her body. Difficult to shield that thought. The allure of a Kitan woman, the exciting mystery of strangeness. This might be that sort of abduction. But again, she doesn't think it is. He has hardly even looked at her.

No, this is different: because of the wolves and the silence of the wolfhounds when he came for her. There is something else happening here. Li-Mei has prided herself all her life (had been praised by her father for it, if ruefully) on being more curious and thoughtful than most women. More than most men, he'd added once. She has remembered that moment: where they were, how he looked at her, saying it.

She is skilled at grasping new situations and changing ones, the nuances of men and women in veiled, elusive exchanges. She'd even developed a sense of the court, of manoeuvrings for power in her time with the empress, before they were exiled and it stopped mattering.

Her father hadn't been this way. She has the trait, very likely, from whatever source her oldest brother does. Though she doesn't want to think about Liu, acknowledge any kinship, any sharing, with him.

She wants him dead.

What she also wants, what she needs, is a rest just now, and to be warmer. The wind, since they have climbed higher—skirting the steepest of the hills, but still ascending—is numbing her. She is not dressed for a night walk on the steppe and she has carried nothing with her at all, except a small knife in her sleeve.

She makes a decision. Inwardly, she shrugs. There are many ways to die. As many, the teachings tell, as there are ways to live. She'd never thought about being torn apart by wolves, or ripped open in some Bogu sacrifice on the plain, but...

"Stop!" she says, not loudly, but very clearly.

It does sound too much like a command, in the huge silence of the night. It is mostly fear, infusing her voice.

He ignores her, keeps moving. So, after a few steps to consider that, Li-Mei stops walking.

Being ignored is not something she's ever been inclined to accept, from girlhood. They are on a ridge. The lake lies to their left and below, the moon shows it to her. There is beauty here for a landscape painter. Not for her, not now.

The nearest wolf also stops.

He pads towards her. He looks directly at Li-Mei, the eyes glowing the way they do in tales. One of the things that is true, she thinks. His jaws open, teeth showing. He takes two more silent steps nearer. Too near. This is a wolf. She is alone.

She does not weep. The wind is making her eyes tear, but that is an entirely different thing. She will not cry unless driven to a deeper abyss than this.

She resumes walking, moving past the animal. She does close her eyes in that moment. The wolf could shred her flesh with a twist of his head. The man has slowed, she sees, to let her and the animal catch up again. He still has not looked back. He seems to know what has happened, however.

She doesn't know anything, and it can be called intolerable.

Li-Mei takes a deep breath. She stops again. So, beside her, does the wolf. She will not look at it. She calls out, "If you intend to kill me, do it now."

No reply. But he stops this time. He does do that. Does this mean he understands her? She says, "I am very cold, and I have no idea where you intend to walk like this, how far. I will not willingly go farther unless you tell me what this is. Am I being abducted for money?"

He turns around.

She has achieved that much, she thinks.

For a long moment they stand like that in the night, ten paces apart. She still cannot make out his features, the moon is not enough. Does it matter? she thinks. He is a big man for a Bogu, long arms. He is bare-chested, even in this wind, his loose hair whipped around his face by it. He will not be sympathetic, Li-Mei thinks, to a claim of being cold. He is gazing at her. She cannot see his eyes.

"Shandai," he says. She is shocked. The fact of speech. "You follow. Shelter. Horse." He says this in Kitan. Awkwardly, but in her tongue.

He has already turned away again, as if this terse handful of words is all he feels capable of saying, or inclined to say. A man unused to speech, explaining himself. Well, he would be, she thinks, glancing at the wolves.

"Shandai?" she repeats. "That is... where we are going?" She had not looked at any maps before they set out. Regrets it now.

He stops again. Turns, slowly. She can see the stiffness in his posture. He shakes his head impatiently. "Shandai!" he says again, more forcefully. "Why this. Why you. Come! Bogu will follow. Shaman."

She knows what a shaman is. She'd thought he might be one.

He starts walking again, and she does the same. She is working on it, puzzling it out. She doesn't feel as cold now, or even tired, with a thought to pursue. He doesn't want to be caught by a shaman. That seems reasonably clear. Her guards had had none, and feared him. A shaman... will not?

Some time later, directly ahead, she sees the first grey begin to soften the sky, then there is a pale band, and pink. Morning. She looks around. Mist, rising. A rolling away of grass in all directions, between them and every horizon.

Married to a distant horizon.

Perhaps not. Perhaps a different tale?

Just before the sun rose in front of them, making bright the tall grass and the world, under heaven, she understood the word he'd spoken to her.

The imperial way, running utterly straight for eighteen li through the exact centre of Xinan, from the main gate of the Ta-Ming Palace to the southern walls, was four hundred and ninety paces wide.

There was no thoroughfare so broad and magnificent in the empire or the world. It had been designed to overawe and intimidate, proclaim majesty and power on a scale worthy of the emperors ruling here in glory with the mandate of the gods, and as a reasonably effective firebreak.

It was also difficult for anyone to cross, after curfew, without being seen by one of the Gold Bird Guards stationed at every intersection.

You had to run a long way, without any hint of concealment.

Thirty of the guards were at all important crossroads (there were fourteen major east-west roads), five guards at the smaller ones. You faced thirty lashes with the medium rod if found on a major roadway after the drumbeats sounded to lock the ninety-one wards. The night guards were authorized to kill, if one ignored a command to halt.

Order in the capital was a priority of the court. With two million inhabitants, and vivid memories of famine and violent unrest, this was only sensible. Within the wards—each one enclosed by its own rammed-earth walls—one could be abroad after dark, of course, else taverns and pleasure houses and the local dining places, peddlers and snack wagons, men selling firewood and lamp oil and cooking oil, would have had no trade. They did their best business after the two huge city markets closed. You couldn't slam a city shut at night, but you could control it. And defend it.

The massive outer walls were four times the height of a man. A hundred of the Gold Bird Guards manned the towers above every major gate, day and night, with twenty at the lesser ones. There were three very large gateways through the walls to east and south and west, and half a dozen to the north, four of them opening into the palace courtyards, the administrative offices attached, and the emperor's vast Deer Park.

Four canals flowed into the city, diverted from the river to provide drinking and washing water, irrigate the city-gardens of the aristocracy (and create lakes for the larger gardens). One canal was assigned to floating in logs for the endless construction and repair and to carrying flat barges with coal and firewood. At the point where each canal came through the walls there were another hundred guards.

Being found in a canal was punished with sixty lashes if it happened after dark. If found in the water by daylight, without an acknowledged labour (such as shifting the logs if they piled up), the punishment was thirty. It was also recognized that men, drunk at sunrise after a long night, could fall into the water without ill intent. The Emperor Taizu, Lord of the Five Directions, was a merciful ruler, ever mindful of his subjects.

Less than thirty lashes with the rod seldom killed, or caused permanent incapacity.

Of course few of these rules and restrictions applied to aristocrats, to imperial couriers, or to the black-clad civil service mandarins from the Purple Myrtle Court—the crows—with their keys and seals of office. Ward gates would be opened or closed for them on command if they were abroad on horseback or in carried litters during the dark hours.

The North District, home to the best pleasure houses, was accustomed to late arrivals from the Ta-Ming and its administrative palaces: hard-working civil servants from the Censorate or the Ministry of Revenue, finally free of their memoranda and calligraphy, or elegantly attired noblemen exiting city mansions (or the palace itself), more than slightly drunk, seeing no compelling reason not to prolong an evening with music and silken girls.

Sometimes it might be a woman travelling one of the wide streets in a discreet sedan chair, curtains drawn, an anonymously clad officer of her household alongside to deal with the Gold Bird Guards and shield her assignation.

In Xinan, after darkfall, it was fair to say that someone on a main thoroughfare was—if not an officer of the guard—either at risk, or part of the court.

Prime Minister Wen Zhou normally took pleasure in riding his favourite grey horse down the very centre of the imperial way at night. It made him feel as if he owned Xinan, to be so conspicuously at ease, a powerful, handsome, richly dressed aristocrat proceeding south from the palace to his city mansion under moon or stars. He had guards with him, of course, but if they kept behind and to either side he could imagine himself alone in the imperial city.

The distant outer edges of the road had been planted with juniper and pagoda trees by the present emperor's father, to hide the drainage ditches. There were beds of peonies—king of flowers—running between the lamplit guard stations, offering their scent to the night in springtime. There was beauty and a vast grandeur to the imperial way under the stars.

But this particular night, First Minister Wen found no pleasure in his night ride.

He'd been afflicted with such anxiety (he would not call it fear) this evening—after his cousin's dance in that upper chamber of the Ta-Ming—that he'd felt an urgent need to remove himself from the palace lest one of the appallingly astute figures of court or civil service note apprehension in his features. That would not be acceptable. Not in a first minister (and president of seven ministries) in his first year of office.

He could have asked Shen Liu to come home with him, and Liu would have done that, but tonight he didn't want even his principal adviser beside him. He didn't want to look at that smooth, unforthcoming face, not when he felt his own features to be revealing depths of indecision.

He trusted Liu: the man owed everything to Wen Zhou, his own fate by now completely tied to the first minister's. But that wasn't always the point. Sometimes you didn't want your counsellors to see too clearly into you, and Liu had a habit of appearing able to do that, while revealing next to nothing of himself.

The first minister had other advisers, of course, a vast bureaucratic army at his disposal. He had done his own investigations, had learned a good deal about Liu—and his family—some of it complex, some of it unexpected.

Liu's subtlety made him enormously useful, because he could read others in the palace with acuity, but it also meant there were times when you were just as happy to arrange for morning attendance from the man, and spend the night with others.

Zhou had to decide if he wanted Spring Rain alone tonight or to pair her with one of his other women. He was angry and uneasy, that might affect what he needed. He reminded himself, again, not to use—even in his mind—her name from the North District. He was the one who had changed it, after all.

He looked around. Not far now from his ward gates.

His home in Xinan, provided by the emperor, was in the fifty-seventh ward, east of the imperial way, halfway down. There lay many of the most luxurious properties in the city.

Including, as of this same night's proclamation by the emperor, the newest mansion of the military governor of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts: An Li, widely known as Roshan.

Whom Wen Zhou hated and feared and wished dead—in all his bloated grossness—and consumed by eyeless, crawling creatures without names.

His hands tightened on the reins, and the high-strung horse reacted, pacing sideways restively. Zhou handled it easily. He was a superb rider, a polo player, enjoyed speed, and the most challenging horses. Enjoyed them more than, say, calligraphy displays or landscape painting or poetry improvised in a palace room. Dancing, he'd concede, was pleasant enough if the dancer was even nearly as skilled—or as stunningly desirable—as his cousin.

His cousin, who had changed the empire. Jian, to whom he owed everything he was now and everything he had. But who refused, capriciously, to be unequivocal in supporting him against a monstrous general's obvious ambition. She'd even adopted Roshan as her child some months ago! What game—what possible woman's game—was she playing at?

The obese barbarian had to be thirty years older than her. His odious sons were older than her! The adoption had been a frivolity, Zhou had to assume, meant to divert the court—and the emperor.

The first minister was among those who had not found it diverting. From the moment Chin Hai had died and Zhou had manoeuvred swiftly from his position as president of the Ministries of Revenue and Punishment to succeed him, he had been aware that An Li was his greatest danger—among many.

Roshan, with Chin Hai gone, was like a beast of the jungle uncaged. And why, why did the emperor and his exquisite concubine not see that, beneath the clownish act Roshan offered them?

Zhou forced himself to be calmer, if only for the horse. He looked up at stars, the waning moon, racing clouds. He was saluted by the next set of guards as he approached their station. He nodded vaguely to them, a straight-backed, broad-shouldered, impressive man.

It occurred to him, undermining any movement towards tranquility, that if he was—and he was—contemplating having his enemy ruined or killed, it was possible that Roshan was shaping similar thoughts about him.

These night rides from the palace might become less prudent, going forward. It was a consideration to be weighed. In fact... he gestured his guards in closer. Motioned one to ride ahead. They were nearly at their gate: someone would need to signal for admittance.

Even in the presence of the emperor, Roshan seemed to know no fear, inhibition, no idea of restraint—his very bulk suggested as much. He had been mortally afraid of Chin Hai, however, would break out in a sweat if Prime Minister Chin spoke to him, if they were even in the same room. Zhou had seen it, more than once.

No great surprise, that terror; everyone had feared Chin Hai.

Whatever any man might accuse Zhou of doing since accepting office—in the way of choosing persons for exile or elimination, with formal design, randomly, or for a personal reason—no one could honestly suggest that he was introducing this as a feature of government. Not after what Chin Hai had done for most of the emperor's reign.

It was Shen Liu, his so-clever adviser, who had pointed this out, not long after Zhou had been appointed to succeed the one called (privately) the Spider. Some men simply had to be dealt with, Liu had said, if one were to properly discharge the duties of office and establish the proper tone as first minister.

If one were new, and relatively young—and Wen Zhou was both—weakness might be anticipated, and probed, by some within the court, the wider empire, or abroad. Any such misconception on their part needed to be swiftly addressed.

A measure of effectively employed terror, Liu had suggested, was almost always useful.

One might argue, he'd added, that it was imperative in challenging times. Kitai might be wealthy beyond description, but that could make it more vulnerable to destructive ambition, more in need of loyal men to have narrow eyes and suspicious hearts. To be cold and vigilant while others played at polo games, wrote poems, danced to foreign music, ate golden peaches brought from far corners of the world, built lakes in private gardens, or used extravagantly expensive sandalwood for the panels of pavilions.

Polo was Wen Zhou's favoured sport. Sandalwood, he happened to believe, was entirely proper for a display of wealth. He had it in the walls of his bedchamber. And the man-made lake behind his mansion had jade and ivory rocks on the island built within it. When he had guests for a party, courtesans hired from the best houses would play music from that isle, dressed like creatures from legend. Once they'd worn kingfisher feathers, rarer, more expensive than jade.

But the new first minister had taken Liu's central point: a firm hand was needed for the Ta-Ming Palace and the civil service and the army. Perhaps especially the army. Chin Hai, fearing the aristocrats in his own early days, had gradually placed barbarian generals in many of the military governorships. It had made him safer (what could an illiterate foreigner, who owed him everything, aspire to be, or do?), but there were consequences. All the more so since the celestial emperor (may he live a thousand years!) was older now, distracted, less firmly attentive to imperial matters, month by month, day over day.

Night after night.

It was widely known that Roshan had sent the emperor an alchemist's potion shortly after Taizu had summoned his very young Precious Consort to the palace and installed her there. Shortly before the illustrious empress was gently persuaded to take up her new residence at a Temple of the Path outside Xinan.

Wen Zhou wished—he so dearly wished—he'd thought of sending that potion himself. Firmness. You could make a joke about firmness.

He didn't feel amused or amusing. Not tonight. The city palace just given as a gift this evening (another gift!) to the pustulent barbarian toad was Chin Hai's own mansion, conspicuously uninhabited in the nine months since he'd died.

What did it mean that it had now gone, in its unrivalled splendour and notoriety (tales of interrogation chambers underground, walls made proof against screaming), to the military governor of three districts and their hard, trained armies in the northeast? A man who was scarcely ever in Xinan to even make use of the mansion? Did the emperor, did Zhou's empty-headed cousin, did no one realize what sort of message this sent?

Or, rather more frightening, did they realize it?

The ward guards recognized them, of course. There was a shout and a signal from atop the wall. Men began hastily unbarring the gates as the first minister and his men approached, angling across the imperial way. Not the best ward security, perhaps, but mildly gratifying, the alacrity—and fear—with which they responded to his presence.

He should be used to it by now, perhaps, but why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale? Could one of the philosophers answer him that? He still enjoyed saffron wine, and being serviced by women, did he not?

Passing through, he asked casually, addressing the night, not deigning to look anywhere near an actual person, who else had come through after curfew. He always asked them that.

Someone answered. Two names. Neither one, for different reasons, brought Zhou any of the pleasure he'd just been thinking about. He rode on, heard orders behind him, the gates creaking closed, the heavy bar sliding.

Even here, within the ward, the main east-west street running between the gates at each end was sixty-five paces wide. Long expanses of wall on either side, lanterns at intervals, shade trees planted by mansion owners. The walls were interrupted on the north side of the street by the massive doors of homes that were better described as palaces. To his right there were only occasional servant-doorways: back-garden exits from someone's property. All front doors faced south, of course.

He saw the second of the men who had come through earlier, waiting in a sedan chair with the curtains back so he could be seen and known under the lanterns hanging by the doors of Zhou's own home.

He hadn't intended, or desired, to see this man tonight, and his principal adviser would have known that. Which meant that if Liu was here, something had happened. Something even more than the disturbing news they'd heard this evening, of the gift given to Roshan.

Roshan himself was the other man who'd passed through after nightfall. Come, undoubtedly, to boastfully luxuriate in his newest extravagant possession: a city palace larger, and more potently symbol-laden, than any other in Xinan.

Perhaps, Zhou thought, he could ride over there himself, suggest a drink by way of celebration, poison the wine.

Roshan drank very little. He had the sugar sickness. Zhou wished it would kill him already. He suddenly wondered who the governor's personal physician was. It was a thought...

Chin Hai's former mansion was only a short distance on horseback, two streets over and one north from here. The property was gigantic, even by the standards of an aristocratic neighbourhood: it stretched all the way to the northern wall of the ward—the southern border of the fifty-third. There were rumours that a tunnel went beneath the wall into the fifty-third.

The mansion's servants had been kept on, he knew, paid by the court, even with no one living there. The pavilions and rooms and furnishings, the courtyards, gardens, banquet halls, women's quarters, all would have been impeccably maintained, awaiting whoever might be honoured—exalted!—at the whim of the emperor with the dead prime minister's home.

Well, now they knew.

Zhou swung down from his horse, tossed the reins to one of the servants who hurried up, bowing. The doors were open, wide enough for a carriage and horses. The first courtyard was brightly lit, welcoming. His own was an entirely magnificent home. It just wasn't...

Seeing the first minister dismount, Liu stepped out of his sedan chair. There was mud in the roadway from rain the night before. His adviser placed his feet carefully, a fastidious man. Zhou found it amusing. The prime minister, booted, accustomed to polo and hunting, utterly unfazed by dirt and mud, strode over to him.

"He came through the gates just before you," he said. There was no need to say the name.

Shen Liu nodded. "I know. I asked."

"I thought of riding over to welcome him to his new home. Bring poisoned wine."

Liu's face took on a pained expression, as if his stomach were ailing him, one of the few ways he revealed himself. His adviser carefully restrained himself from glancing around to see who among the guards or servants might have heard. Zhou didn't care. Let the gross barbarian know what the first minister of Kitai thought of him and his too-obvious designs.

As if Roshan didn't know already.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "I said you were to come in the morning."

"I received tidings," Liu murmured. "Or, I was advised of tidings that have come to the palace."

"And I needed to know this tonight?"

Liu shrugged. Obviously, was the import of the gesture.

He was an irritating man, and disturbingly close to indispensable. Wen Zhou turned and strode through his open doors into the courtyard, splashing through a puddle. He crossed and entered the first reception hall and then the private room beside it. Servants sprang to action. An interval passed in which boots became slippers, court garb turned into a silk robe for a night at home, and cypress-leaf wine was warmed on a brazier. Liu waited in the adjacent chamber.

There was music from a pavilion across another small courtyard, a more intimate reception room with a bedchamber attached. Spring Rain was playing her pipa for him, having awaited his arrival as she always did. She would be adorned with jewellery, he knew, her hair exquisitely pinned, her face painted. Waiting for him. His.

Her name was Lin Chang now, a change made on his own order once he'd brought her here. It was far more suited to her status as a concubine of the first minister of Kitai. He hadn't been able to stop thinking of her by the North District name yet. Not that it mattered.

She belonged to him, and would wait. It was her role. Although, looked at another way, he was going to have to wait until whatever Liu had on his mind tonight was shared.

The prime minister decided that he was likely to remain in a troubled mood. He walked back into the reception chamber, was handed the wine. He sipped. Threw the cup down. It bounced and rolled against a wall.

The servant, cringing and bowing, almost to the floor, mumbling desperate apologies, scurried to the brazier and added coal to the flame below. He crawled over and picked up the discarded cup. His hands were shaking. There were stains on the carpeting.

The first minister had made extremely clear by now his preference as to the temperature of his wine at night (which was not the same as in the morning or at midday). Servants were required to know these things or accept consequences. Consequences, in at least one case, had left a man crippled and dismissed. He begged in the street now, behind the mansion. Someone had told Zhou that.

The pipa music continued from across the small courtyard. The sliding doors were open, window shutters were folded back on a mild night. The silk-paper windows did little to keep out sound. He thought about silencing the instrument, but the music was beautiful—and promised a mood very different from this one, once he'd dealt with Liu.

He gestured, Shen Liu took one side of the platform. Zhou sat opposite, cross-legged. A breeze, music, late night. The two men waited. The servant, bowing three full times, eyes never leaving the floor, brought the wine again and extended it with both hands. Wen Zhou tasted.

He didn't nod, he didn't need to. Keeping the cup was sufficient. The servant poured for Liu, backed up, bowing all the way to the edge of the room. He was expecting to be beaten later. The wine had been too cool. Zhou looked at his adviser, and nodded permission to speak.

"What do you think happens," Liu asked, his round face placid, as usual, "when we make jests about killing him?"

He hadn't expected that as a start. "We don't," Wen Zhou said coldly. "I do. Unless you have become a humorist when I am not present?"

Liu shook his head.

"I thought not. What happens," the prime minister went on, his mood congealing further, "is that I amuse myself."

"Of course, my lord," said Liu.

He said nothing more. He'd made his accursed point: sometimes you weren't allowed to amuse yourself.

Zhou was inclined to disagree. If he wanted a woman or a horse, they were his until he grew tired of them. If he wanted a man dead he could have him killed. Why else be what he was? This came with his power, defined it.

"Why are you here?" he growled. He gestured, the servant scurried forward with more wine. Liu declined a second drink. The first minister had long intended to see his adviser drunk; it hadn't happened yet.

From across the courtyard the pipa music had stopped.

She'd have been told that her lord was engaged with his principal adviser. Rain—Lin Chang—was impeccably trained, and intelligent. She'd not wish to distract them, he knew.

His adviser waited until the servant had withdrawn to the far wall again. He said, "Word came tonight, a military courier from the west. From Iron Gate Fortress."

"Well, that is west," said the prime minister, amusing himself slightly.

Liu did not smile. He said, "You know that my... my brother has been at Kuala Nor? You asked about my family last year and I told you?"

He did remember asking. It was before he'd taken office. He remembered this piece of information very well. And the man. He hadn't liked Master Shen Tai. Hadn't known him at all, but that didn't matter.

The first minister nodded, more carefully. His mood had changed, he didn't want it noticed.

"Burying bones," he said indifferently. A flick of one hand. "A foolish thing, with all respect to your father. What of it?"

"He's left the lake. He is coming back to Xinan. They made him a member of the Second Military District army to shorten his mourning time, permit him to return."

The two men in this room had done the same thing not long after Shen Gao had died, to allow Liu to come back to the palace—to assist the ambitious cousin of the woman the emperor favoured above all others.

The first minister considered this a moment. Still carefully, he said, "I wonder why? We know this from Iron Gate?"

Liu nodded. "He passed through for one night. He sent a message ahead to the Ta-Ming, along with the fortress commander's formal report."

One night meant he wasn't lingering as he travelled. Wen Zhou affected a yawn. "And why would the movements of your brother—diverting as the topic might be for you, personally—be of interest to me, or of importance to the empire?" He thought he'd said that well enough.

Liu looked discomfited. An extreme rarity. He shifted position. A rider could look like that after too long in the saddle. It was interesting. The prime minister kept his gaze on him.

"Well?" he added.

Liu drew a breath. "He... my brother reports first that an assassin was slain at Kuala Nor, having been sent there to kill him."

"I see," said Zhou, keeping his voice level. "That is first. Of little importance to us, as far as I can see. What else?"

His adviser cleared his throat. "It seems... it seems that the White Jade Princess, in Rygyal... Cheng-wan, our, our own princess..."

"I know who she is, Liu."

Another throat clearing. Liu was unsettled. That, in itself, was disturbing. "She's given him a gift," Liu said. "To honour what he was doing by the lake. With the dead."

"How pleasant for your brother," Wen Zhou murmured. "But I fail to see—"

"Two hundred and fifty Sardian horses."

Like that. A hammer.

Zhou felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed, with difficulty. "He is... your brother is riding from the border with two hundred and fifty Heavenly Horses?"

It was impossible, he thought.

In a way, it was. "No," said Liu. "He has arranged to have them held by the Tagurans. He must go back and claim them himself, only he can do it, after it is decided what is to be done with them. He writes that he is coming to Xinan to inform the celestial emperor. And others."

And others.

Now he understood why this was information he needed to know.

He also understood something else, abruptly. He struggled to keep this from showing in his face. Liu's unpleasant younger brother had told the soldiers at Iron Gate Fort, and written a letter, about an assassin sent after him. He was a figure of significance now, with those horses. There would almost certainly be an inquiry, where there might never have been one before.

Which meant...

It meant that someone in Xinan had to be dealt with. Tonight, in fact, before word of Shen Tai's journey and his gift—likely racing through the palace and the Purple Myrtle Court even now—spread too widely, and reached the man in question.

It was unfortunate. The person he was now thinking about had his uses. But he also knew too much, given these sudden tidings, for the first minister's comfort.

It was still possible, for certain reasons, that the extremely irritating Shen Tai might not reach Xinan, but everything was changed with this information.

"What does that mean, he has to claim the horses himself? Did you read the letters?"

"I did." The prime minister didn't ask how Liu had achieved that. "If he does not go back for them himself the gift is revoked. It is a gift from the princess to him. There was... there is a third letter, from a Taguran officer, making this clear."

Inwardly, with great intensity, the prime minister of Kitai began shaping the foulest oaths he could imagine. He felt a droplet of sweat slide down his side.

It was worse than he'd imagined. Because now if Shen Tai died on the road—if he'd already died—his death cost the empire those horses.

Two hundred and fifty was an absurd, a stupefying number. The man was coming back as a hero, with immediate access to the court. It was about as bad as it could get.

And someone needed to be killed, quickly.

The silence continued. No pipa music across the way. Liu was very still, waiting for him, clearly shaken himself. You might have thought it a good thing for him, for his family, but not if you knew these brothers—and something else that had been done.

Zhou said it aloud, with the thought. "Your sister is beyond the Long Wall, Liu. He can't do anything about her."

Liu's eyes wouldn't meet his gaze. This was rare, told him he'd hit upon the concern—or one of them—in his adviser's mind. "You are," he added tartly, "the eldest son, aren't you? Head of the family. This was within your rights, and I approved it and proposed it at court. It brings you honour, all of you."

It had also put Liu even more in his debt.

His adviser nodded, though with something less than his customary crispness.

"What else do I need to know?" the prime minister asked. Relations within the Shen family were not his most compelling problem. He needed to dismiss his adviser. He had someone else to summon tonight. "Who will know of this?"

Liu lifted his eyes. "Who will know? Everyone," he said. "Tonight, or by mid-morning. It was a military dispatch, two copies, one to the Grand Secretariat, one to the Ministry of War, and nothing in the Ta-Ming stays secret."

He knew that last. Nothing in the Ta-Ming stays secret.

A man was coming, a troubling man, with control of an impossible number of Sardian horses and a profoundly exalted stature, for so-very-virtuous actions in the past two years.

He would be received by the Son of Heaven.

There was no way to prevent it. And depending on what Shen Tai wanted, he could become an immediate, unpredictable factor in a game already too complex for words.

Although, possibly, he'd be killed, or had already been killed, on the road from Iron Gate. But that had different implications now, given the horses. The court would investigate, undoubtedly. And First Minister Wen knew altogether too much about those chances of death on the road.

It had been such a small, private matter when set in motion. An impulse as much as anything, a casual flexing of power. But now... if it emerged that the empire had lost two hundred and fifty Sardian horses because of someone's recklessness, pursuing entirely personal interests...

It could happen, if someone talked.

There was a man who absolutely needed to die before he arrived at the same conclusion regarding his own risks—and tried to protect himself. By speaking to someone in the palace, for example. Tonight. Possibly even right now.

Or—the prime minister felt himself growing pale at the thought—perhaps by attending upon a certain military governor with what he had to say, asking for guidance and protection.

A scenario too terrifying to even contemplate.

He sent his adviser home.

Too abruptly, perhaps, given a shrewd man, but there wasn't time to be subtle here and he was not about to share this story with Liu. He'd have to rely on the fact that Liu was distracted and uneasy. Because of what he'd done with the sister, of course, and the brother's return.

This was all because of the same man, Zhou thought bitterly. The one coming back along the imperial road from beyond the border. He might have the power—and the desire—to ruin them both.

When he was alone, except for the still-cowering servant who did not matter, Zhou began to swear aloud. The person he cursed—without speaking the name, he was hardly so great a fool—was the seventeenth daughter of the celestial emperor, the serene and beautiful, the White Jade Princess, Cheng-wan.

Who, from far-off Rygyal on its mountain-ringed plateau, had capriciously, irresponsibly, altered so much. The way a woman could.

He heard the pipa music begin again.

She'd have been told of Liu's departure. Would assume Zhou was free now, the toils of the day falling away. He wasn't. They weren't. He could not go to her. He couldn't slake or assuage or channel fear or anger yet. He needed to deal with something immediately, and that meant trusting another man. And hoping it was not already too late.

He knew the man he needed, gave orders for him to be brought. As to trust, he could always have this one killed as well, after. These matters rippled outwards, the prime minister thought, like the waters of a still pond after a single stone fell.

There. Think of that image! He was an accursed poet, after all.

He lifted his cup, the servant hastened to bring him wine. He tried not to picture someone riding, or being carried from the Purple Myrtle Court in a litter, even now, across the night city. Arriving before the doors of the new mansion of Roshan. Being admitted. Telling him...

The guard he'd summoned was announced. Zhou bade him enter. A big man. A scar on his right cheek. His name was Feng. He bowed in the doorway.

Wen Zhou dismissed his servant, then said what had to be said. He did so with precision, his voice calm. Feng accepted the orders with another bow, no flicker of response in his face.

Which was all as it should be. You simply could not guide and govern an empire this vast, with so many challenges from within and without, while being the sort of gentle-souled person who might be deemed worthy of admission to holy orders.

And any fair-minded man evaluating the times would agree that this was even more the case if one's emperor was no longer young, no longer the driven, brilliant leader he had been when he seized the throne himself (killing brothers, it needed to be remembered) and began shaping a reign of glory.

If the late Prime Minister Chin Hai, at the emperor's side for decades, had taught the court anything it was that sometimes the darker, disturbing deeds of government needed to be shouldered by the first minister. Why else were there said to have been those soundless rooms underground, or the secret tunnels in and out of the city palace, that now belonged, as of tonight, to the most dangerous man in Kitai?

And if a beleaguered, overburdened first minister, directly responsible for no fewer than nine ministries, forswearing his own best-loved pleasures and diversions in the tireless service of his emperor, should have invoked the power of his office in the trivial matter of a chosen woman and an irritating man she'd known too well... well, were there to be no benefits attached to dealing with so many tasks? To the sleepless hours, for example, that lay ahead of him tonight while he waited for the return of the man he'd just sent out?

In their nine heavens, Wen Zhou decided, the gods would understand.

She has never accepted the name he chose for her when he bought her from the Pavilion of Moonlight Pleasure House and had her brought here.

Lin Chang means nothing to her, it has no weight at all. Neither had Spring Rain at first, but she has at least grown accustomed to her courtesan name, and was even offered choices when they proposed it, asked if it felt right.

Zhou hadn't done that. He hadn't needed to, of course, but neither had the women at the Pavilion of Moonlight when she'd arrived there. He hadn't even told her the source of her new name, what it meant to him, if anything. It certainly wasn't Sardian. No acknowledgement of her origins. He'd wanted something more dignified than a North District pleasure girl's name, and there it was.

And it isn't worth hating. It really isn't. That is the change in her. You did need to decide what mattered, and concentrate on that. Otherwise your life force would be scattered to the five directions, and wasted.

A woman needs to accept some truths in the world.

Wen Zhou is immensely powerful. He is not cruel to his servants or his women, certainly not by the standards of Xinan. Or those of Sardia, as it happens.

He is young, not unpleasant to be with in most humours. And his needs with women, though he likes to think they are decadent (men are often that way), are hardly so, for a girl from the pleasure district.

No, if she hates him now—and she does—it is for a different reason. The intensity she brings to bear upon this anger is extreme.

He had not needed to order a rival killed.

Tai wasn't even a rival, in any way that signified. He had gone away for his mourning years, leaving her where she was, and what man—what student, having not yet even taken the examinations—could set himself against the first minister of the empire, the Precious Consort's kinsman?

You could, if you wished, draw upon your knowledge of how fragile men were, even the most powerful. How much they could be shaped, or guided, by women and the needs they aroused. Was not the august emperor himself the clearest illustration?

You could understand how even a man of the stature of Wen Zhou might dislike remembering nights in the Pavilion of Moonlight when he'd arrived unexpectedly and discovered her already with another, and perhaps too obviously enjoying that.

But you could also draw a line in your own mind, straight as string, as to what you'd accept in the way of actions following upon that—and killing was on the far side of such a line.

It had not been difficult to shape a space for herself when she'd arrived here in the compound. She had been able to render two of the servants infatuated with her. Had she been unable to do that she'd hardly be worth desiring, would she? She'd begun working on the task of gathering information as soon as she'd come, without any purpose in mind. It was just... what you did.

She'd made it clear (let them appear to deduce it, which worked with most men, high or low) that her reasons for wanting to learn the current mood, conversations, comings and goings of their lord had to do with her sustaining desire to please him, to know his needs at any hour.

She behaved—behaves still—impeccably, in the compound, or when she leaves it in a litter, guarded, to shop at one of the markets, or accompanies Zhou to banquets or polo games.

No one here has cause to hate her, unless it is the other concubines, and she has been careful with them. She still calls herself Spring Rain among the others, to avoid seeming to put on airs.

Her real name, from home, is hers to keep, and hasn't been spoken by anyone in a long time. She put it aside when she crossed the border at Jade Gate years ago. It is possible that there is no one in all of Kitai who knows it. An unsettling thought.

Zhou's wife is of little consequence, a woman of extreme breeding—selected for that—and even more extreme piety, which means she and her husband lead widely divergent lives. One of the concubines has offered the view that she might have been less virtuous if more attractive. An ungenerous thought, though not necessarily an untrue one.

The first minister's wife is often away at one sanctuary or another. Her generosity to holy men and women is well known. Her husband encourages it. She also frequents astrologers, but is careful about it. The School of Unrestricted Night has an ambiguous place in the court of the Emperor Taizu.

Tonight, Rain knew that Adviser Shen had come to their doors before Zhou was even home, and that he'd been nervous about something. Normally, Shen Liu would be admitted to wait inside, but he had declined that invitation, staying in the street under the lanterns, watching for Zhou. The nervousness—reported by Hwan, her primary source of information—was unusual.

Shen Liu does not know of her connection to his brother, Rain is almost sure of that. She is less confident of some other things about him. She will need a certain Kanlin Warrior to return and report before she knows—if any sure conclusion is possible. Shen Liu is a cautious man.

It is unlikely to be obvious if he's been part of a plan to kill his brother.

Rain has been waiting in Number Two Pavilion, elegantly attired. She wears no perfume, as usual. That makes it easier for her to cross dark courtyards, linger on porticos. Perfume is an announcement, after all.

Only when she knows Zhou is coming to her will she use her scent. It has become a gesture she's known for here, a signature, like a calligrapher's brush stroke. Another way his newest concubine honours her master.

These devices are not difficult for a woman who can think, and with men who don't realize she can.

She'd heard the two men come in to the chamber across the small courtyard. Had begun playing her pipa then, to let Zhou know she was here. She stops when she hears—too faintly to make out words—that they have begun to talk. They will, she knows, think it a courtesy of hers.

She crosses the wet courtyard, barefoot, to save her slippers, carrying her pipa. That is her excuse: if anyone sees her, she is on the portico, out of sight, to offer music to her lord and his adviser if a request for it arises. Music is her domain here.

The sliding doors are open on a spring night and silk-paper windows block little sound. She hears, quite clearly, what they are saying.

Her heart begins pounding. Excitement, and there is fear, but she has made her peace with that, and her own decisions, some time ago. Betrayal, it can fairly be called. It will be called that, if what she's done emerges from night into bright day.

But he'd sent a trained assassin, a false Kanlin, and arranged for two more, in an excess of casual, murderous inclination, and Rain would have called it a betrayal of herself to do nothing about that.

Tai wasn't at his father's home, it seemed, even in their mourning period. Wen Zhou, evidently, knew where he was. Rain did not. It was maddening. She was too isolated here—the city, the empire, the world beyond these stone walls were all wrapped in a cloud of not-knowing.

She had done what she could. Hwan, usefully in love with her by then, had arranged for a Kanlin, a real one this time, to come to her from their sanctuary at Ma-wai. The woman—she'd asked for a woman—had come over the wall at the back of the compound for a night meeting in the garden.

Rain had told Hwan it had to do with a threat she needed to quietly guard against—and that much had been true. She had paid the Kanlin, and sent her to Tai's family, which was the only place to begin. Surely there they would know where he was, and why he was away?

Tonight, listening from the portico, Rain finally knows where Tai had gone. It is a wonder.

Walking back to the Number Two Pavilion, having a maidservant wash her feet, beginning to play her instrument again for the man now waiting for someone else to return tonight, Rain tries to decide if she wants the guard—his name is Feng—to succeed in killing Xin Lun.

She remembers Lun: quick, irreverent company in the Pavilion of Moonlight. A good singing voice, a loud, high laugh, generous with money. None of that matters. What concerns her is if it will be better if Tai is able to find the man alive when he returns. If he survives, himself.

She tries to make her heart be calm. There is no place here for desire, or dreams, though dreams are difficult to control. Whatever else might be true, she cannot be his now.

He should not have gone away without her. She had told him what might follow. Men didn't listen enough. A truth of the world.

But... what he had done at Kuala Nor. What he had done.

And now two hundred and fifty horses from her own land. It is beyond words, it reaches past music, and it can change so much—though not for her.

It is extremely late when Zhou comes to her. She has been certain he will, though not what his mood will be. Hwan and her maidservants had been asleep when Feng returned to the compound.

Zhou seems almost cheerful when he crosses the courtyard to her. She believes she has an idea what that means.

He takes her with some urgency. From behind first, against the wall, and then more slowly, face to face on the wide bed while she touches him in the ways he likes. He does not awaken any of the other women to play with them, or to watch.

After he is done, she washes his body while he sips wine her maidservant has readied. She is careful about his wine.

She is thinking hard, hiding it, as ever.

Xin Lun is dead. Zhou will have protected himself, ended that risk of exposure. She will need to consider this, she thinks, her hands moving over the body of the man, lightly, then strongly, then lightly again.

She will be wrong in some of her guesses and conclusions. There are limits to what a woman in her position can know, however intelligent and committed she might be. There are too many constraints on someone confined to the women's quarters of a compound or a curtained sedan chair, relying for information on infatuated servants.

There have always been such limits. It is the way of things, and not all men are foolish, though it might seem otherwise at times.

Tonight, she wonders—caressing him, smiling a little as she does so, as if in private pleasure (he likes this)—if he will order the guard slain now.

He'll probably send Feng away first, she decides. South, to where his family and power base are. Raised in rank, to disguise the purpose, make it appear a reward, then accidentally dead in a far-away prefecture.

Alternatively, he might decide he needs a man like Feng in Xinan, with events unfolding as they seem to be.

Either is possible, Rain thinks, singing for him now, a song of the moon reflected in the Great River, autumn leaves falling in the water, floating past the silver, moored fishing boats, drifting towards the sea. An early verse of Sima Zian, the Banished Immortal, set to music, a song that everyone knows, only ever sung late at night, bringing peace with it, carrying memories.

CHAPTER XIII

It was possible, Tai knew, to be asleep, and dreaming, and somehow be aware you were dreaming, entangled, unable to wake up.

After the night he'd had: intense in the White Phoenix, violent earlier, and with unsettling tidings given him, he found himself alone in a bedchamber in Chenyao, dreaming himself lying on his back, bed linens scattered around him, while he was mounted and ridden by a woman whose face he could not see.

In the dream he could hear her breathing become more rapid, and could feel his own excitement. He was aware of his hands on her driving hips as she rose and fell upon him, but try as he might, in the darkness of dream (heavier than any in the waking world), he couldn't see her, didn't know who this was arousing in him such a fever of desire.

He thought of the fox-spirit, of course he thought of that, even in dream. Perhaps especially because this was a dream.

He tried to say the word again: daiji. But words, even the one word, would not come to him, just as clear sight was not given. Only movement, touch, the scent of her (not perfume), her quickened breathing—small gasps now—and his own.

He wanted to reach up and touch her face like a blind man, find her hair, but his dream-hands would not leave her hips, the smooth skin there, the muscles driving.

He felt wrapped and gathered, cocooned like a silkworm in this enclosed, indeterminate space of not-waking-yet. He feared it, was aroused and wildly excited by it, wanted never to leave, wanted her never to leave him.

Some time later he heard a different sound, and woke.

He was alone in the room, in the bed. Of course he was.

A hint of light through the slatted doors to the garden. The bed linens were in disarray. He might have tossed them off in restless sleep. He was confused, tired, not sure why he was awake.

Then he heard again the sound that had reached him: metal on metal, from the portico past the door.

Something heavy fell, hitting the wall outside.

Tai leaped from bed, scrambled into his trousers, didn't bother knotting them, or with a shirt or boots or tying his hair.

He did take his swords. He jerked open the door, noting that he hadn't barred it the night before, though he remembered intending to.

There was a man on the threshold. He was dead. Sword wound, right side.

Tai heard fighting to his left, the garden. He stepped over the dead body, ran towards the sound of swords, barefoot down the portico, his hair swinging free, sleep gone, the dream gone, in this first light of morning. He reached the end, leaped over the railing without breaking stride.

Wei Song was in the courtyard, spinning Kanlin-style—fighting five men.

It had been six, at least, with the one behind Tai. She was battling in a deadly, whirling silence. Tai swore savagely under his breath: she could have shouted for help! He had an idea why she hadn't. He didn't like it.

Sprinting towards them, he screamed: a release of pent-up rage, as much as anything else, directed at anyone and everyone and everything just then. At all of these people acting upon him, and for him, and even through him—from the moment Bytsan sri Nespo had given him a rolled-up parchment at Kuala Nor with a gift of too many horses.

It had gone far enough, this passiveness, this acceptance, absorbing the designs of others—benign, or otherwise. It was not what he was, or would allow himself to be, under the nine heavens. Perhaps he could declare that, with two swords in his hands.

One of the men facing Song half turned towards Tai's sudden cry. That turning closed the scroll of his life.

Song's left-hand sword took him on the side he'd exposed. The blade was withdrawn, as cleanly as it had entered, drawing life away with it.

She dropped and rolled through a flower bed, peonies crushed under her. They sprang back up as she did. A sword stroke from the nearest man, meant to decapitate, whistled through air.

Tai was among them by then.

The essence of Kanlin training, as he saw it (others might differ), was the continuous, patient, formal repetition of the movements of combat. Without swords, with one blade, with both, over again, every day of one's life, ideally, the movements becoming so instinctive that the need for thought, awareness, planning in a fight disappeared. The body knew what it needed to do, and how to do it.

So it was without anything resembling deliberation, without a thought given to how long it had been since he'd done this, that Tai planted his right-hand sword in the earth, left it quivering there, and hurled himself into a twisting dive. A movement which—when properly executed—let the left-hand sword slide under one's own flying body and sweep like a scythe, parallel to the ground, at someone facing him, or turning to do that.

His blade caught the nearest man, biting deep, just above the knee, sending blood spurting like some primitive sacrifice to the rising sun.

Tai landed (a dangerous moment, with a blade in one hand) and, from his knees, killed the wounded, falling man with a straight thrust to the chest.

Three left. All three turned to him.

"Get away!" Wei Song screamed.

Not likely, thought Tai, anger-ridden.

You each chose a man on either side when there were three lined up straight against two—if they made that mistake.

He switched his single blade to his right hand. Took the man farthest from Song: that was routine. He parried a slash from the bandit, and rolled again through the air to his left, a different move, one he hadn't realized he remembered. You needed to be careful not to cut yourself with your own sword doing this one, too—that awareness came back in mid-air—but as he completed the movement, before he landed, he slashed at the bandit, and felt the sword bite.

The man screamed, went down. Tai landed in flowers, was up (almost) smoothly, and dispatched this one, too, on the ground. He looked quickly over, dropping down in anticipation of an attack, then stepping back.

No immediate danger. The middle figure was also down.

Song had adapted to what they had given her. She'd used both her swords, slicing as the man turned towards Tai. You could call it elegant, though there was a great deal of blood.

The last of the bandits turned, not surprisingly, to flee.

Unfortunately for him, his way was blocked by a rumpled, irritated-looking poet with grey hair untied and askew.

Sima Zian looked for all the world like one of the grotesque guardian statues placed by the doorway of a house or the entrance to a tomb, to frighten away demons.

"You took me from my first cup of wine," he said grimly. "Let fall your weapon. Doing so offers you a small chance of living. Otherwise there is none."

The bandit hesitated, then—evidently—decided that the "small chance" wasn't real. He shouted what sounded like a name and hurtled full tilt towards the poet, blade swinging. Tai caught his breath.

He needn't have bothered. He knew the tales, after all. Sima Zian had been an outlaw himself for years in the wild country of the gorges, and his sword—the single one he carried—was famed.

He sidestepped the wild charge, dropped, leaning away, and thrust out a leg. The running man tripped and fell. Before the bandit could recover from where he sprawled by the portico, Master Sima was upon him, dagger to throat.

The sun appeared over a pavilion to the east.

A servant walked into the courtyard from that side, carrying a water basin. He stopped. His mouth gaped.

"Summon the governor's men!" Song shouted. "They are in front!" She looked at Tai. "And are about as useful as they were at the White Phoenix." She walked over and handed him his second sword. She had already sheathed her own pair.

"These came in through the water gate?"

She nodded.

The poet had the bandit's left arm twisted high behind his back. It would crack, Tai saw, with only a little pressure. The dagger remained at the man's throat.

"Why are you here?" Sima Zian said quietly. "You know the governor's questioners will be merciless. Answer me, I'll do what I can."

"Who are you," the man rasped, face to the earth, "to offer anything in Chenyao?"

"You'll have to believe I can. They will be here soon. You heard her send for them. Speak!"

"You will kill me, if I do? Before they..."

Tai winced, closed his eyes for a moment.

"I swear it," said the poet calmly. "Why are you here?"

"It was my brother they tortured last night. After the two men named him."

"Your brother hired men to kill Shen Tai?"

"He was told a man of that name might come from the west. To watch for him. Good money if he came to Chenyao and did not leave."

"Your brother was the one directed in this way?"

"Yes. A letter. I never saw it. He only told me."

"Who wrote the letter?"

"I do not know."

"Then why are you here? If it was his task?"

There came a sound from the man on the ground. "Why? They carried him back to his wife last night. Dropped his body in the street. His servant summoned me. He was naked in the mud. He had been castrated, his organ stuffed in his mouth. His eyes had been carved out and they had cut off his hands. This was my brother. Do you hear it? I was here to kill the one who caused this."

Tai felt himself swaying where he stood, in the spreading light of day.

"The ones who caused this are not here," said Sima Zian, gravely. It was as if he'd expected these words, Tai thought. "You must know that. They work for Governor Xu, who sought only to stop violence and murder in his city, as he must do for the Son of Heaven we all serve in Kitai. It is... it is not easy to amend a broken world."

That last was from a poem, not his own.

They heard a jingling sound. Soldiers, half a dozen of them, entered the courtyard at a run. One of them shouted an order.

Sima Zian murmured something Tai didn't hear.

The poet's knife moved. The bandit, face down among earth and flowers, died instantly, before the guards arrived to claim his living body for more of what had been done to his brother in the night.

"How dare you kill him!" the lead guard rasped in fury.

Tai saw the poet about to reply. He stepped forward, lifting a quick hand. Zian, courteously, was silent, but he remained coiled now, like a snake who might still strike.

"How dare you let assassins into this inn yard!" Tai snapped. "Into a garden you were here to guard! I want your names given to my Kanlin, right now. I will wait for Governor Xu to advise me how he intends to make redress for this."

The soldier looked, Tai decided, very like a fish extracted from his element, suddenly lacking easy access to breathing.

Xu Bihai was, it was already clear, not a man given to half measures. He'd regard this second failure by his guards as a stain upon his honour. These soldiers might well be executed, Tai thought. He wasn't sure, at this particular moment, if that distressed him.

He took a breath. "I'm sorry your morning was disturbed," he said to Zian.

The poet flexed his shoulders and neck, as if to loosen them. "Hardly your fault. And it isn't as if I was asleep."

"No?"

"Well, perhaps I'd dozed a little. But I was having my first cup. Will you join me now?"

Tai shook his head. "You must excuse me. I have to change for breakfast with the prefect. I forgot about it last night."

"Ah!" said the poet. "We'd have been late for a dawn departure, even without this diversion."

"We would have been."

Tai turned to Song. She looked pale. She had cause. "You are all right?"

"They barely touched me." It wasn't true, he saw, there was a line of blood on her left side, showing through her slashed tunic. Her expression changed. "That was a foolish leap for someone who has not fought in two years! It was folly to even come out. What were you thinking?"

Tai stared at her, small and resolute, wounded, glaring up in fury. It was a maddening question. "What was I thinking? Who fights six men without calling for help?"

She looked away, then shrugged. "You know the Kanlin answer to that, my lord. Your servant offers apologies if you believe I erred." She bowed.

He started another sharp retort, then stopped. He looked more closely. "Your hand is also hurt."

She glanced at it indifferently. "I rolled over some rocks. I will get these soldiers' names and have them taken to the governor. Is there a message?" She paused meaningfully. "For anyone else?"

Tai ignored that. "What happened to the two men in the garden last night?"

"They revived. I spoke with them. They took the river path home."

"You were awake?"

She nodded. Hesitated. "It is why I saw when these others came up the garden."

He thought about that. "Song, how would they know my chamber?"

"I think we will discover that someone here told them—under duress, or not. We can leave that, unless you wish otherwise, to Governor Xu's inquiries."

"Yes," said Tai. "We are leaving as soon as I return from the prefect."

"As soon as we return," she said. She met his gaze. Her mouth was firm, her eyes resolute, indomitable.

He looked back at her. She had just fought six assassins, in silence, to keep him from coming out and possibly being killed in a fight.

He would need to ask her, though not just now, if she truly thought he was best served by being left to lie in bed to be attacked—unarmed and defenceless—in the event they killed her as she fought them alone.

"Your servant will escort you, and wait," Song murmured. "If that is acceptable, my lord."

She lowered her eyes, presenting a small, neat, lethal image, all deference and duty, in a black Kanlin robe.

"Yes," he sighed. "It is acceptable."

What was the point of saying anything else?

"Shandai is my brother!"

Li-Mei's voice is louder than she's intended it to be. They are alone, after all, only the wolves around them in a vast expanse, the sun just risen. But her heart is racing. "That is what you are trying to say? His name? Shen Tai?"

He turns to look at her. There is light, pale and benevolent, warming the land, mist is rising, dispersing. She can see him clearly for the first time, and she knows who this man has to be.

Tai had told them what happened. Well, he'd told their father, with Li-Mei among the willow trees near the stream.

This man with the stiff, ground-covering gait and the lightless eyes will surely be the one assailed by shaman-magic all those years ago, who had almost died. Or half-died. Or had been made into some... thing suspended between living and dead.

Tai hadn't been able to tell their father which, so Li-Mei didn't know. Couldn't know, even looking now. But what fit was the identity, the remembered name—Meshag, son of Hurok—like the puzzle pieces of wooden toys her mother or Second Mother would sometimes bring home for her on market days long ago.

She should be terrified, Li-Mei thinks. He could be a monstrous spirit, a predator like his wolves, malignant, devouring.

He isn't, though, and so she isn't. He hasn't touched her. The wolves haven't. He is... he is rescuing me, the thought comes. And he is rescuing her, not the true princess, the emperor's daughter, because—

"You are taking me away because of what Tai did?"

He has been staring at her, accepting her gaze in the growing light. After another long moment, his untied hair moving in the breeze, straying across his face, he nods his head once, down and back up.

"Yes," he says. "Shan... Shendai."

Li-Mei feels herself beginning to tremble, is suddenly much too close to tears. She hates that, but it is one thing to be fairly sure of a guess, it is another to be standing here with a spirit-figure and wolves, and be told it is true.

"How did you know I was with them? How did you know to come?"

She has always been able to think of questions to ask. Her voice is smaller. She is afraid of this answer, for the same reasons, most likely, that the Bogu riders were afraid of him last night.

Magic, whether the foretellings of the School of Unrestricted Night in Xinan, the potions and incantations of the alchemists, or darker, bloodier doings up here with mirrors and drums... this is not easy ground.

And the story her brother told, all those years ago, is still the worst she's ever heard in her life.

Perhaps the man senses that? Or perhaps for an entirely different reason, he only shakes his heavy head and does not answer. Instead, he takes the leather flask from his hip and extends it to her, his arm straight out.

She doesn't repeat her question. She takes the water, drinks. She pours some into one hand and washes her face with it, a little pointlessly. She wonders if he'll be angry at the waste, but he says nothing.

His eyes are deeply disturbing. If she thinks about how they became so black and flat she will be afraid. He isn't dead, she tells herself. Repeats it, within, as if for emphasis. She may need to keep telling herself this, she realizes.

He says, awkwardly, but in her tongue, "Cave not far. You rest. I find horses."

She looks around at the grassland stretching, all directions. The lake is gone now, behind them. There is only grass, very tall, lit by the risen sun. The mist has burned away.

"A cave?" she says. "In this?"

For a moment she thinks he is amused. His mouth twitches, one side only. Nothing in the eyes. Light is swallowed there; it dies.

She hands him back the flask. He seals it, shoulders it, turns to walk on. She follows.

Shandai.

The world, Li-Mei decides, is a stranger place than any sage's teachings can encompass. You have to wonder why the gods in their nine heavens have made it this way.

They reach the cave quite soon.

She'd missed the depression in the landscape ahead of them. From the edge, she sees this is a shallow valley, with another small lake within it. There are wildflowers on the banks. On the far side, the slope back up is steeper.

They descend and start across. It is full morning now, the air is warmer. At the lake Meshag fills his flask. Li-Mei washes her face properly, shakes out and reties her hair. He watches her, expressionless. He is not dead, she tells herself.

The lead wolf takes them to the cave at the eastern end. Its entrance is entirely hidden by tall grass. She'd never have seen it. No one who didn't know this was here would see it.

This is not the first time, Li-Mei realizes, that the man and these animals have been here. He gestures. She finds herself crawling, elbows and knees, holding down fear, into a wolf lair.

The tunnel is narrow, a birth chamber, the smell of wolf all around, and small bones. She feels these, with her hands, under her knees. Panic begins to rise in the blackness, but then the cave opens up. She is in a space with rough stone walls and a ceiling she can't even make out. She stands. It is still dark but not completely so. Light filters in farther up, openings high on the cliff face. She can see.

The strangeness of the world.

Meshag comes through the tunnel. The wolves have not followed them. On guard outside? She doesn't know. How could she know? She is in a wolf cave in the Bogu grasslands beyond the borders of the world. Her life... her life has carried her here. The strangeness...

He hands her a satchel and the flask. "Here is food. Not leave. Wait. My brother will come after us, very soon."

My brother. His brother is the kaghan's heir. The man she is supposed to marry. She is a Kitan princess, a treaty-bride.

She looks at the man beside her. His speech, she decides, is already clearer. Can the dead learn things?

He isn't dead, she reminds herself.

"Where are you going?" she asks, trying to keep apprehension from her voice. Alone, a cave in wilderness, wolves.

He looks impatient. It is almost a relief to see such a normal expression—if you don't look at the eyes.

"Horses. I told before."

He had. She nods. Tries, again, to assemble facts she can work with. She can't say why it matters, but it does. "Your brother. You are opposing him? For me? For... for Shen Tai? For my brother?"

There is enough light for her to see that his eyes remain flat. There is nothing to find in them. It makes her consider how much of what she's known—or thought she knew—of any person has come from their eyes.

"Yes," he says, finally.

But he's taken so long she decides it isn't entirely true, this reply. That might be an error she's making. He might have simply been trying to decide whether to tell her. But she still feels...

"What would he do to you? Your brother?"

Again, he stares. Again, a hesitation.

He says, "He wants me destroyed. He has never found me. Now he will think he can."

Destroyed. Not killed. But it might be just language again, words. She is working hard.

"He thinks he can find you by following me?"

He nods, that single down and up. "All of us. The wolves. I have allowed myself to be seen."

"Oh. And you haven't done that? Before?"

"Not so near him. Or his shamans. Not difficult. Grasslands are large."

You might imagine you saw a smile there, almost.

She lowers her head, thinking.

She looks up again. She says, "I am grateful. You took... you are taking a great risk. For me." She bows. Twice, right fist in left hand. She has not done so yet to him, and it is proper. They may call her a princess but she isn't, and it doesn't matter, anyhow.

Meshag (she needs to start using the name, she thinks) only looks at her. She sees that he is not discomfited by her gesture. He was the kaghan's heir, she thinks.

She is nowhere near her home.

He says, quietly, "I wish him destroyed, also."

Li-Mei blinks. He looks at her, dead-eyed, bare-chested, hair to his waist, utterly strange, in this cave where they stand, faint light filtering from above.

He says, "He did this to me. My brother."

And it begins, piece by puzzle piece, to come clearer.

He has not yet returned. It is now, she judges, well into the afternoon, though it is difficult to measure time inside a cave. There is more light filtering down now, the sun is higher. She has eaten, has even dozed fitfully, lying on earth and pebbles, her head pillowed awkwardly on the satchel. She is obviously not a princess if she can do that.

Awakened by what was probably an imagined sound, she's untied and then retied her hair, used a little of the water to wash her hands again.

She is not to go outside. She can ignore this—she's ignored so many instructions through her life—but she isn't inclined to do so. Nor does it occur to her to run away.

For one thing, she has no idea where to go. For another, the man she's been sent to marry is looking for her. She has no doubt of that, and she doesn't want to be found. She doesn't want to live her life on these steppes. She may end up with no choice (short of death), but for the moment, at least, there appears to be a glimmering of one, like glow-worms in a night dell, or a cave.

She has no idea what Meshag intends to do, but he is helping her away, and that is a start, isn't it? It might get her killed, or he might decide to claim her body as a prize in a war with his brother, take her right here on earth and stone. But what control does she have, in any of this?

What she'd prefer (it feels an absurd word) is to be with the empress still, serving her, even exiled from the Ta-Ming. Or, even better, to be home right now at this beginning of summer. She can picture it too well. Not a helpful channel of thought or memory.

She is sitting, hands around drawn-up knees. She permits herself to cry (no one can see), and then she stops.

She looks around for what must be the fiftieth time: the low, narrow tunnel leading out, the curved cave walls rising towards light spilling softly down from the openings on the one side. Stones and pebbles, bones scattered. The wolves will have needed to eat, feed their cubs. She shivers. There is one other tunnel, larger than the entranceway, leading farther in. She'd seen it on first entry here.

She can't say why she decides to explore it now. Anxiety, a desire to do something, make a decision, however trivial. Patience is not a skill she has. Her mother used to talk to her about it.

She finds she can stand in the second tunnel if she bends over. The air seems all right as she goes. She isn't sure how she'll know when it isn't. She keeps her hands on the rough walls to either side and strains her eyes, for the light begins to fade.

It is a short distance, actually. Another birthing passage, she thinks, though she can't say why that thought has come to her, twice now.

She straightens in a second chamber, not as large, or as high. It is colder. She can hear, faintly, the sound of water dripping.

Something else is different. There is no wolf smell here. She doesn't know why. Wouldn't they extend their lair as far from outside as they could? Protect the cubs? What is it that has kept them away? And does that mean she shouldn't be here either? She doesn't know. The answers are too remote from any life she's lived.

Then, as her eyes adjust to fainter light, Li-Mei sees what lies in this chamber.

Both hands go to her mouth, as if to lock in sound. As if a gasp or cry would be sacrilege. Her next thought is that she might know, after all, why the animals have not come here. For this must be—surely it must be—a place of power.

On the wall in front of her, dim in the darkness, but clearly conjured forth, Li-Mei sees horses.

Innumerable, jumbled chaotically, piled on each other all the way up into shadow. Full-bodied, half-forms, some with only heads and necks and manes, in a racing, tumbling, spilling tumult. A herd, all facing the same way, moving the same way, deeper in, as if thundering across the curved cave walls. And she knows, she knows, in the moment of seeing, the moment they emerge from darkness on the wall, that these painted, surging figures are unimaginably old.

She turns, in the centre of a cascade. On the opposite wall is another herd, galloping the same direction, the horses superimposed upon each other in wild, profligate intensity, so vital, so vivid, even in barely sufficient light, that she can imagine sounds, the drumming of hooves on hard ground. The horses of the Bogu steppes.

But before the Bogu tribes were here, she thinks. There are no men on these walls and the horses are untamed, free, flowing like a river in spate towards the eastern end of the cave, deeper in—where there is a third tunnel, she now sees.

Something rises within her, primitive and absolute, imperative, to tell her she will not go in there. It is not for her. She does not belong, and she knows it.

High above that slit of an entranceway, the largest by far of all the painted horses looms: a stallion, deep-chested, red-brown, almost crimson, its sex clearly shown. And on its body, all over it—and on this one, only—Li-Mei sees the imprint of human hands laid on in a pale-coloured paint, as if branding or tattooing the horse.

She doesn't understand.

She does not ever, in her life, expect to understand.

But she feels an appallingly ancient force here, and senses within herself, a yearning to claim or possess it. She is certain that those who placed their handprints on this wall, on the painted body of this king-horse, whether they did so ages ago or have come recently through these tunnels, were paying tribute, homage, to this herd.

And perhaps to those who put these horses here, leading the way deeper in.

She will not follow them there. She is not such a person, and is too far from home. There is a barrier in her mind where that third tunnel begins. It is not an opening she can take. She has not led a life guided by magic, infused or entwined with it. She doesn't like that world, did not, even at court—alchemists hovering, stroking narrow beards, astrologers mumbling over charts.

Still, she looks at these horses, unable to stop turning and turning, aware that she's becoming dizzied, overwhelmed, consumed by the profusion, the richness here. There is so much power on these walls, humbling, evoking awe, enough to make someone weep.

She has a sense of time stretching, back and back so far it cannot be grasped. Not by her, at any rate. Not by Shen Li-Mei, only daughter of the Kitan general Shen Gao. She wonders, suddenly, what her father would have said had he been with her in this hidden place. A hard thought, because if he were alive she wouldn't be here.

And in that moment she hears a sound that makes her halt her spinning. She stands motionless suddenly, silent. She listens. The drip of water. Not that. She is almost certain she heard a horse. Fear comes with that.

Then another sound: someone coming into this inner cave from the first one. Instead of frightening her, this reassures. Meshag went to get horses. He knows where she is. The sound she's heard—faintly—is from outside. A real horse, not the supernatural neighing of a spirit stallion on these walls.

She sees him come through. He straightens. She is about to speak when he holds up a hand, three fingers to his lips. Fear returns. Why silence? Who is out there?

He gestures for her to follow, turns to lead her through the short tunnel to the wider, brighter cave, the first one. She takes a last look at the horses all around, at the king-horse with the human hands upon him, and then she makes her way out.

In the larger cave, with the high openings lending light, Meshag turns again, once more with fingers to his lips urging silence. He is wearing a long, dark tunic now, a leather vest over it. She wonders what clothing he has found for her. She opens her mouth to whisper a question (surely they can whisper?) but his gesture, seeing that, is imperative. His eyes gleam, flashing angrily in the thin light from above.

She registers this, says nothing. She draws a slow breath.

He gestures again for her to follow, turns to take them back towards daylight.

She approaches closely, behind him. And at the edge of the tunnel that will lead them out, in the moment when he bends low to enter it, Li-Mei stabs him in the throat from one side with the knife she's carried in her sleeve all this way.

She drives the blade in then rips it towards her with all her strength, knowing she'll have only this one chance, not knowing how to kill a man, where the knife must go. She tears it out and stabs him again, and a third time, sobbing. He grunts only once, a queer chest sound.

He falls with a clattering noise, right at the entrance to the tunnel.

Still weeping (and she is not a woman who weeps), Li-Mei strikes again with the knife, into his back. It hits metal, twists in her hand. She is frantic, terrified, but he lies where he's fallen, and now she sees how much blood there is.

She scrabbles away, clutching the marred blade. She backs up against the cave wall, eyes never leaving him. If he gets up, if he even moves, she knows she will begin to scream and not be able to stop.

Nothing, no movement. Her rapid, ragged breathing is loud in her ears. The light in this chamber falls as before. It is the light that saved her, that told her. If she is right in this. Her hands are still shaking, spasms she cannot stop. She puts the knife down beside her. She has killed a man. She is quite certain she has killed a man.

It is not Meshag. It is not him. She says that last aloud, shocking herself with the sound, the harshness of her voice. It cannot be him, must not be.

She needs to know. Can only do that if she looks. That means going back to where he lies, face down, before the tunnel. It requires courage. She has more, in fact, than she knows.

Holding hard to inner control, she does crawl back, bent knife in hand. There are stones on the cave floor, they hurt her knees. Her wrist hurts, from when the knife twisted. Why did it twist? She thinks she might know. Needs to touch him to be sure.

She does that, too. Drags him by his legs from the tunnel's entrance. More light where he lies now. With an effort, grunting, she pushes him onto his back. Into her mind there flashes a horrifying image of this man rising up as she does so. Rising to...

He is dead. He will not rise. And he is not Meshag.

An older man, lean face, thin grey hair. He looks nothing at all like Meshag, son of Hurok. Now. But he had before. Had looked exactly like him, in all but one respect. Which tells her what this man is. What he was, she corrects herself. He is dead. She killed him.

She rips through his tunic, chest to belly, with her reddened, twisted blade. Tears it open with both hands. Metallic mirrors appear, strapped around his body, glinting in the pale light from above.

It is a truth about the nature of human beings that we seek—even demand—order and pattern in our lives, in the flow and flux of history and our own times.

Philosophers have noted this and mused upon it. Those advising princes, emperors, kings have sometimes proposed that this desire, this need, be used, exploited, shaped. That a narrative, a story, the story of a time, a war, a dynasty be devised to steer the understanding of a people to where the prince desires it to go.

Without pattern, absent that sense of order, a feeling of randomness, of being lost in a world without purpose or direction can undermine even the strongest man or woman.

Given this, it would certainly have been noted as significant by any such philosopher or adviser that the second son and the only daughter of General Shen Gao, honoured in his day as Left Side Commander of the Pacified West, each killed a man on the same morning, a long way from each other.

The son had done this before. The daughter had not, had never expected to.

As to the meaning to be attached to such a conjunction, a pattern discovered embedded in the tale...

Who can number, under nine heavens, the jewel-bright observations to be extracted from moments such as these? Who will dare say he knows with certainty which single gem is to be held up to whatever light there is for us, in our journeying, and proclaimed as true?

Eventually Li-Mei begins to think about the horse sound she'd heard: she fears an animal will give her away, reveal the cave, if it is still out there.

It might not be. The wolves might have driven it away. Or killed it. It leaves her feeling oddly passive, after the hideous spasm of action before: someone is lying not far away, blood thickening on stone. It is as if she's exhausted her reserves of force, her ability to play any further role, help herself, can only wait to see what will follow. It is an unexpectedly peaceful state.

You sat, leaning against a wall, legs extended, in the midst of stones and animal bones and the smell of wolf and the sometimes flutter of a bat or bird overhead, and you waited to see who—or what—would come for you. You didn't have to do anything, there didn't seem to be anything left to do.

There is no point going outside to be seen. Where will she walk from here, or even ride, alone? She has no adequate clothing, no food, and the wolves are out there.

So there is a curious measure of tranquility in her when she hears the sound of someone else coming into the cave through the tunnel. She looks over, but she doesn't stand up, or try to hide. She holds her bent knife in her hand.

Meshag enters and straightens and looks around.

She can see him absorb what has happened. She looks at him closely, of course, though she is very sure the deception isn't happening again.

He kneels beside the fallen man. She sees that he avoids the blood on the cave floor. He stands and comes towards her. She looks at his eyes.

"He was a shaman?" she asks, though she knows the answer.

He gives his short nod.

"He made himself look exactly, almost exactly like you. He never spoke. He was taking me outside when I..." She doesn't finish.

"What was not me?"

She stands before answering. Brushes at her leggings and tunic to remove some of the rock dust. There is blood, too, she sees. That isn't going to disappear so easily.

"His eyes," she says. "His... yours couldn't have been so bright." She wonders if this will be wounding, for what it implies.

But it looks as if he smiles. She is almost sure she sees it before the expression goes away. He says, "I know. I have seen my eyes in water. In... pools? That word?"

"Yes, pools. This is since what happened to you?"

A stupid question but he only nods again. "Yes, since. My eyes are dead."

"No, they aren't!" she says with sudden force. He looks surprised. She feels surprised. "Your eyes are black, but they aren't... you aren't dead!"

No smile this time. "No. But too nearly something else," he says. "Before Shan... before Shendai came. That day."

That day. "And it was your brother who...?"

"Yes."

"You know this?"

"I know this."

"And this one?" She gestures at the body. "He was sent by him?"

Unexpectedly, he shakes his head. She had thought she was beginning to understand. "No. Too soon. I think he sees me when I leave to find horse. Or before, as we came here."

"He just saw a chance to take me?"

"For himself, or for reward, might be. He sees me to know me. Who I am. Watching the wolves might have told him. Then it takes time to make a spell to shape-change."

Li-Mei is thinking hard.

"He could have just come in and seized me when you left? No?"

He considers that. "Yes. So must have meant to take you to them. Maybe afraid you kill yourself, so he changed."

She clears her throat. Her hand is hurting.

"Must go now," he says.

"What about him?"

He looks surprised. He gestures at the bones around them. "Leave to wolves. It is what we do." He pauses, looks a little awkward. Then he says, "Was good, killing this one. Was very bravery? Is the word?"

She sighs. "Brave. I suppose it is the word."

Again he hesitates. He motions with a stiff hand. "You see what is next cave?"

"The horses? I saw. I didn't go farther. I felt... not brave."

"No," he shakes his head. "Was right. Not to go. For priests, spirit-walkers. Very old. But you see last horse? Above?"

"I saw it."

He looks at her, seems to make a decision. "Come. One thing we do, then go."

She has exhausted her reserves for resisting. She lets him lead her back into the dimness of the horse-cave with those animals on the wall, laid upon each other long ago. And she watches as he does go into the last cave, the one she would not enter. Very old.

He comes out with a shallow earthen bowl, and mixes into it water from a second flask he's carrying, and he stirs with a wooden stick, his motions stiff as they always are. There is no grace to him, how he moves. She is surprisingly certain there was, once.

He signals her nearer. She goes. He takes her right hand—the first time he's ever touched her—and lays it flat in the bowl. There is a paint of sorts, white, or very nearly.

At that point she realizes what is happening.

He leads her over by the wrist and he lays her hand on the flank of the king-horse above the tunnel leading to the third cave, so that a fresh imprint is made there among all the others, which means that her existence, her presence, her life having been here has now been recorded, registered. And perhaps (she will never know) that does play a role in what follows.

It is so hard to see the patterns, to be sure that they are there.

They leave that cave and then the other one, go back out into sunlight. She blinks in the day's brightness.

He has found one horse only, but the dead shaman's is still tethered here, unmenaced by the wolves, though lathered with fear—and so they have two mounts, after all, along with the food and the clothing Meshag has taken from who knows where.

He helps her on the smaller horse, and then he mounts and gentles the shaman's, and they ride a path out of that valley and go east with the sun overhead and the wolves beside them.

Li-Mei has no notion, no least idea where he is taking her, but she is alive, and not going placidly into the fate devised for her against her will and desire, and, for now, for this moment under heaven, that is enough.

CHAPTER XIV

Wujen Ning, of the Second District cavalry, had been the first to see Master Shen Tai and his horse appear like ghosts out of a grey dawn west of Iron Gate Fortress.

Now, not many days after, he was dimly aware that his life might be changed—or might have already been changed—by them.

It was not normal for peasant labourers or soldiers without rank to undergo such alterations in the flowing of their lives. You worked your fields, dealt with flood or famine, married, had children born, had them die (and wives). Events far away rolled on, vaguely apprehended, perhaps heard about over rice wine in a tavern, if you went to taverns.

Or you joined the army, were posted where they posted you—usually far from home these days. You dug ditches and latrines, built and rebuilt garrison walls and buildings, patrolled for bandits or wild animals, caught fevers, lived or died, marched, did go to taverns and brothels on leave in market towns. Sometimes you fought, some of you died in battle, some lost an eye or an arm and wished they'd died. The sweep of distant events among the great might come more often to your ears in the way of army talk, but it tended to have just as little impact, short of a major campaign, or perhaps a rebellion.

Change wasn't a part of life as Wujen Ning had understood or experienced it. This truth was currently... undergoing change.

For one thing, he was shockingly close to Xinan, to seeing the capital for the first time in his life. Only a night or two away now, they told him.

The countryside had been altering as they'd ridden east from Chenyao. Wheat and barley fields, the occasional mulberry grove (silk farms set back behind them, away from the noise of the road) had given way to village after village, and larger towns, so frequent now you could say they were continuous. People and more people. Temple bells ringing not in haunting isolation but barely audible amid loud populations. Small farms—potatoes, broad beans—were tucked in between the villages, squeezed.

There was an endless line of market carts or wood-cutters' wagons going both ways along the imperial road, clogging it, slowing them. This was the outermost sprawl of Xinan, he was told. They were getting close now.

It was not something Ning had ever thought about, or wanted. The capital had been as remote to his grasp of the world as the sea. It terrified him, to be honest: so many people. Already. He tried not to let that show, and since no one in their company was really looking at him and he talked little, he thought he'd kept his secret. He did catch himself whistling nervously sometimes.

He wondered, as they travelled, how the other soldiers felt about coming to the capital. There were thirty riders now, not just the five that had set out from Iron Gate to escort Master Shen. Governor Xu had insisted that Shen Tai, as an honorary officer of the Second District army, carrying tidings (and riding a horse) of greatest importance, be accompanied—and protected.

There was some anger and some amusement among the Iron Gate soldiers (Ning didn't see the humour, but he wasn't good at that, he knew) arising from the belief that it was carelessness among the governor's guards that had come near to having Master Shen killed in Chenyao.

One of Ning's fellows from Iron Gate, a man with no shortage of opinions or wine-soaked breath to voice them with, said he didn't think any of those soldiers who had been on guard outside their inn that night were still alive.

Governor Xu might no longer be in the prime of youth, he said, but he wasn't showing any inclination to retire to fruit orchards and trout ponds. He was wealthy, aristocratic, known to have rivalries with other military governors. One big one in particular, he'd said with a knowing look, as if everyone at their table would realize the one he meant. Ning didn't. It didn't bother him.

Had Shen Tai been killed (or the horse, Wujen Ning thought, with genuine horror) it would, apparently, have reflected very badly on the governor. Ning didn't understand or think much about this either, but from the time they'd left Chenyao he had made it his task to stay as close as he could to Master Shen and Dynlal. He honoured Shen Tai; he loved the horse. How could anyone, Wujen Ning thought, not love the horse?

The Kanlin woman, who frightened all of them a little (and elicited some crude talk at night), appeared to have decided Ning was all right. After an amused expression or two, she had accepted him as having a place close to them while they rode, or when they settled for the night.

(Ning didn't understand her glances. He didn't know what anyone could find amusing in any of this, but he had learned to accept that what made others smile could be a source of perplexity for him.)

They were stopping at large inns now at sundown, imperial posting stations. Good meals, a change of horses. They had documents, signed by the governor.

Ning was always entrusted with Dynlal at the end of a day's ride. He tried not to let his pride show, but it probably did. He talked to the horse at night, waking and walking out from whatever space he shared with the other soldiers, bringing apples to the stable. Sometimes he'd sleep there.

Master Shen didn't look at him much as they rode, or at any of them. He spoke occasionally with his Kanlin guard, more often with the poet who had joined them (another mystery). His preoccupation was with speed. None of the soldiers knew why, not even the one who acted as if he knew everything.

If Wei Song and the poet knew the reason, they weren't telling. The poet's name was Master Sima. The others said he was famous. Immortal, one of them declared. Ning knew nothing about that but he didn't think anyone was immortal. Maybe the emperor.

What he did know was that Shen Tai was in a great hurry to get to Xinan.

Ning wasn't, at all, but his own wishes and desires were as those of the silkworm that spins in subdued light amid a hush, and lives only to do that.

On the fifth day out of Chenyao, just before crossing an arched river bridge Tai had always loved, they'd come to a road branching south, running alongside the stream.

He had known it was coming, of course.

He'd been careful not to look down that road as they reached the junction, or to speed up his horse in feigned indifference as they went across the bridge above bright water. There were plum blossoms in the stream, he saw.

It was difficult. He knew that southern road as surely as he knew his own face in a bronze mirror. Every turn, every fall and rise. Knew the towns and hamlets you would pass, the fields and mulberry groves and silk farms. The one genuinely good wine shop, and the places to find a woman and a bed between the imperial road they were on and the home where he'd grown up, where his mothers and youngest brother were, and his father's grave.

Not him. Not Liu. Not Li-Mei.

The three of them were in the world, entangled in it. In the dust and noise, jade-and-gold. After two years by the lake he didn't know how he felt about that, he'd been moving east so fast he hadn't had time to think about it. That was, he decided, a component of the dust and noise: never enough time.

For Li-Mei it would be worse. Tai remembered the dust storms of the north. Real ones, stinging, blinding, dangerous, not a poet's imagery. There was so much anger when he thought of her.

He'd felt a tug within, a feeling nearly physical, as they passed the cut-off south. Two years and more since he'd been there, seen the gates in the stone wall, the worn-smooth statues beside it (to frighten demons away), the always-swept path, the goldfish ponds, the porch, garden, stream.

His father's grave-marker would be raised by now, he thought. The allotted time had passed. His mother would have done things properly, she always did. But Tai hadn't seen the headstone, hadn't bowed before it, didn't know what was inscribed, what verse had been chosen, what memorial words, who had been selected to do the calligraphy.

He'd been at Kuala Nor. And was going elsewhere now, riding past the road that would bring him home. There could be peace there at night, he thought, after two years of hearing the dead.

He knew that this speed was almost meaningless. It crossed into some showy gesture, a display of love for his sister, driving riders and horses hard towards Xinan, and to no point.

She'd already been gone when Sima Zian left the capital. He'd said so. The decision had been made before poor Yan had set out for Tai's family estate, thinking to find him there, to tell him what was being done to her. There might have been enough time if he'd been home.

Too late now. So why was he pushing on so fiercely, all of them awake before sunrise, riding till nightfall? The days were longer now, too, approaching the summer festival.

No one complained, not by word or glance. The soldiers would not (would never!), but neither did Wei Song, who had given considerable evidence of a willingness to advise him as to correct conduct. And Sima Zian, older and presumably suffering most from their pace, did not seem to be suffering at all. The poet never spoke to Tai about their speed, the folly of it, the absence of proportion.

Perhaps, with a lifetime of observing men, he'd understood from the beginning what Tai only gradually came to grasp: he wasn't thundering down this road on his glorious horse in a wild attempt to rescue his sister.

He was going to his brother.

Accepting that truth, acknowledging it, didn't bring anything like the calm that resolving uncertainty was supposed to do. For one thing, there was too much anger in him. It seemed to find new channels with every li they rode, every watch of the nights when he lay awake, even in the fatigued aftermath of the day's riding.

He didn't talk about any of this with the poet, and certainly not with Song, though he had a sense they both knew something of what was troubling him. He didn't enjoy the feeling of being understood so well, even by a new, dazzling friend, and certainly not by a Kanlin woman who was only here to guard him, and only because he'd made an impulsive decision at Iron Gate. He could have dismissed her by now. He had thirty soldiers.

He didn't dismiss her. He remembered, instead, how she'd fought at sunrise, in a garden in Chenyao.

It was late in the day. Tai felt it in his legs and back. The sun was behind them, a mild summer's day, slight breeze. The imperial road was thronged with traffic. It was too crowded, too noisy, for any attempt to appreciate the beauty of late afternoon, the twilight to come.

They were three days past the cut-off to his home now, which meant less than two days from Xinan. They might even be there tomorrow, right around curfew. He knew this part of the road very well, had gone back and forth often enough through the years.

Even with the crowds they were going quickly. They used the middle of the three lanes, reserved for soldiers and imperial riders. A pair of imperial couriers, galloping even faster than they were, shouted for them to make room and they did, jostling some farm carts and laden peasants right off the road towards the drainage ditch. The couriers carried full saddlebags, obviously packed with more than message scrolls.

"Lychees for Wen Jian!" one of them shouted over his shoulder as the poet threw out a query.

Sima Zian laughed, then stopped laughing.

Tai thought about helping the farmers right their carts and goods, but there was too much urgency in him. They would help each other, he thought, and looking back saw that it was so. It was the way of life for country folk: they'd probably have been fearful and confused if soldiers had stopped to aid them.

He looked over at the poet. Zian's horse was beside his. Dynlal could have outrun all the others easily; a foolish thing to do. It might not be as foolish in a day or so. Tai had been thinking about that, of making his way ahead, entering Xinan quietly, before the gates closed at dusk. He had someone to see, and it might be more possible after dark.

The other man's expression was grave, as they watched the couriers disappear into dust ahead of them, carrying a delicacy for the Precious Consort. Lychees. The military post, wearing out horses with them.

"That is wrong. It is not..." Sima Zian began. He stopped.

Recklessly, Tai said, "Not proportionate?"

Zian looked around to ensure that no one else was near them. He nodded. "One word for it. I fear chaos, in the heavens, here on earth."

Words that could have you beaten and exiled. Even killed. Tai flinched, sorry he'd spoken. The poet saw it and smiled. "My apologies. Shall we discuss the verses of Chan Du? Let us do that. It always brings me pleasure. I wonder if he's in Xinan... I believe he is the best poet alive."

Tai cleared his throat, followed the lead. "I believe I am riding with the best poet alive."

Sima Zian laughed again, waved a hand dismissively. "We are very different men, Chan Du and I. Though he does enjoy his wine, I am happy to say." A brief silence. "He wrote about Kuala Nor when he was younger. After your father's campaign. Do you know them, those verses?"

Tai nodded his head. "Of course I do." He had studied those poems.

Zian's eyes were tiger-bright. "Did they send you there? To the lake?"

Tai thought about it. "No. My father's sadness sent me there. One poem... may have given me a task."

The other man considered that, then said:

"You thought it was a poet's imagery? About the ghosts?"

Tai nodded. "I imagine everyone does. If they haven't been there."

A short silence, and then the poet asked, "Son of Shen Gao, what is it you need to do when we arrive? How may I help you?"

Tai rode a little. Then said, very simply, "I do not know. I am eager to be counselled. What should I do?"

But Sima Zian only repeated back to him, "I do not know."

They rode on, the light very rich now, nearing day's end, the wind behind them. Tai felt it stir his hair. He reached forward and patted the mane of his horse. He loved the horse already, he thought. Sometimes it took no time at all.

The poet said, "You told me you wanted to kill someone."

Tai remembered. Late night in the White Phoenix Pleasure House. "I did say that. I am still angry, but trying not to be unwise. What would you do, in my place?"

A quick answer this time. "Take care to stay alive, first. You are a danger to many people. And they know you are coming."

Of course they did. He'd sent messages, the commander of Iron Gate had, Governor Xu would have sent letters, using all-night riders.

But Tai took the point, or what might have been part of a subtle man's point: it truly would not be wise to ride alone through the walls, to do whatever it was he wanted to do, if he decided what he wanted to do.

He realized that Zian was reining up beside him. Slowing Dynlal, Tai looked ahead, towards the side of the road, at a grassy space across the ditch. He realized, doing so, that it had become more than just foolish, any notion of slipping quietly into the city as darkness fell.

He stopped his horse. Lifted a hand so the others would do the same. Wei Song came up beside them and so, a little behind her, did the gap-toothed soldier whose name he could never remember. The one who always took care of Dynlal.

"Who is it?" Song asked quietly.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked the poet.

"Not to me!" she snapped.

"Look at the carriage," said Zian. There was an edge to his voice. The sun from behind them lit the road, the grass, and the carriage he was eyeing. "There are kingfisher feathers on it."

"That isn't the emperor!" Song said. "Stop being obscure. I need to know, to decide what—"

"Kanlin, look at the soldiers!" said Sima Zian. "Their uniforms."

A silence.

"Oh," said Song. And then she said it again.

The poet was looking at Tai. "Are you prepared for this?" A real question, the large eyes grave. "You may not have any more time to decide what you wish. He cannot be ignored, my friend."

Tai managed a thin smile. "I wouldn't dream of doing that," he said.

He urged Dynlal forward, towards a tight cluster of forty or fifty soldiers surrounding an enormous, sumptuously extravagant carriage. A carriage so big he wondered how they'd got it across the small bridge that carried the roadside ditch. Maybe, he thought, one of the bridges was larger, farther east? At a crossroads?

It didn't matter. The mind, he decided, could be peculiar at times like this with what it chose to dwell upon or ponder.

He heard hoofbeats. Looked back. He wasn't alone, after all: rumpled poet, small, fierce, black-clad Kanlin.

He reined up, looked across the ditch at the carriage. Kingfisher feathers decorating it, as the poet had pointed out. In the strict code of such things, these were reserved for the imperial household, but some, near enough to the throne, in high favour, might display that favour by using them.

He reminded himself that those in the palace—in all the different factions—would be wanting to enlist him to their cause if they could, not end his life.

He moved Dynlal across the roadway to the grass beside the ditch.

The door of the carriage was opened from the inside. A voice, unexpectedly light, slightly foreign, used to commanding, said bluntly, "Master Shen Tai? We will talk in here. Come now."

Tai drew another breath. Let it out. He bowed.

He said, "I will be honoured to converse with you, illustrious lord. Shall we speak at the posting station east of us? Your servant must attend to the needs of his soldiers and friends. They have been riding all day."

"No," said the man in the carriage.

Flat, absolute. Tai still couldn't see the speaker, not from where he was beside the road astride Dynlal. The voice added, "I wish not to be seen and known."

Tai cleared his throat. "My lord," he said, "there can be no one on this road who matters who does not know who is in this carriage. I will meet you at the posting inn. Perhaps we can dine together. It would be a great honour for me."

A face appeared in the window of the carriage. Enormous, round as a moon, under a black hat.

"No," repeated An Li, usually called Roshan, governor of three districts, adopted son of the Precious Consort. "Get in or I will have your soldiers killed and your friend decapitated and have you brought in here anyway."

It was surprising, given how crowded the road had been, but a space seemed to have somehow been shaped where they were, in both directions, east and west. Tai looked ahead, then over his shoulder, saw that other travellers were holding back. It was quiet, suddenly.

It matters, he told himself. It matters what I do now.

So he said, speaking very clearly, "Sima Zian, it is a grief to me, as it will surely be to the empire, that our friendship may end your illustrious life, but I must trust you to understand why this is so."

"Of course I do," said the poet. "What is friendship if it comes only when the wine cups are readily filled?"

Tai nodded. He turned to the Kanlin. "Wei Song, be good enough to ride back and advise Governor Xu's escort that they must prepare to be attacked by cavalry of the—" he glanced over at the horsemen by the carriage—"is it your Eighth or Ninth Army, honourable governor?"

From within the carriage there came no reply.

The man would be thinking hard. Tai had just said something, perhaps two things, that would register. He was pleased to note that his voice had remained level, as if he did this sort of thing every day.

"I believe it is the Ninth," said the poet.

"I obey, my lord," said Song, in the same moment.

He heard her galloping back to their cavalry. He didn't turn to watch. He looked at the carriage, at the round, silent moon-face within, just visible.

He said, quietly, "My lord, I am—honorary though the commission may be—an officer of the Second Military District, commanding cavalry, some of them assigned to me by Governor Xu himself. Regulations must shape my actions more than inclination. I carry important information for the court. I believe you know this. I believe that is why you have done me the honour of being here. I am not in a position to follow my desires and accept the privilege of hidden converse with you. There is too much embodied by that, with so many watching a carriage that bears kingfisher feathers. I am certain you will agree."

He was certain, in fact, of the opposite, but if he had any hope of remaining free in his own alignment, his decisions, surely he needed to—

From within, coldly, An Li said, "This is truly that drunken poet beside you? The one they call Immortal?"

Tai inclined his head. "The Banished Immortal, yes. I have the honour of his companionship and counsel."

Sima Zian, on his horse next to Tai's, sketched his bow. He was smiling, Tai saw, amazed. That drunken poet.

From within the carriage, a moment later, came a string of oaths startling in their crudeness, even to someone who had been a soldier.

In the silence that followed, the poet's smile deepened. "Are those formal requests of me, my lord? I admit I would find some of them difficult, at my age."

Roshan stared out at them both. The general's eyes were nearly lost in the creased folds of his face. It was hard to see them to get any reading of his thoughts. He was, Tai realized, even more frightening because of that.

It was said that once, fighting in the northeast, he had defeated an army of Shuoki tribesmen beyond the Wall, part of a border insurgency. He had ordered his soldiers and their Bogu allies to cut off one foot from each man captured, then he and his army had ridden off, taking the enemy horses, leaving the Shuoki to die in the grass, or survive, somehow, maimed.

There were other stories.

Now, in that oddly high, accented voice he said, "Don't be clever, poet. I have little patience for cleverness."

"My apologies," said Sima Zian, and Tai had a sense he might mean it.

"Your being here limits my actions."

"For that," said the poet, calmly, "I must decline to apologize, my lord, if your actions were to be as you suggested."

Roshan leaned back in his seat. They couldn't see him any more. Tai looked to his right. The sun was setting, he had to squint. Wei Song was arranging their men in a defensive alignment. They had not yet drawn their weapons. Traffic had come to a halt. The tale of this encounter, he knew, would race ahead of them now. It would be in Xinan before him.

That was the reason he was acting as he was. But there was a risk of dying here, of others dying for him. If a celebrated poet had not been with them...

From within the carriage he heard, "Son of Shen Gao, accept my sympathy for the passing of your honourable father. I knew of him, of course. I have journeyed two days from my own route to speak with you. I will not, for my own reasons, go back to that posting inn. They are not reasons you require to know. But if you enter my carriage, if you... honour me by doing so... I will begin by telling you what happened to a man you will be looking for, and show you a letter."

Tai registered the changed tone. He said, carefully, "That man would be?"

"His name is Xin Lun."

Tai felt his heart thump.

"Lun?" he repeated.

"Yes. He arranged for the assassins sent to kill you."

Tai swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. "How do you know this?"

"He told me himself."

"When did he... what did happen to him?"

A mistake, perhaps, asking this. It created an obligation of courtesy if the other man answered.

The other man answered. "He was killed some nights ago."

"Oh," said Tai.

"The same night word came that you were on your way to Xinan, and the news of the White Jade Princess's gift. The horses. Your own is magnificent, by the way. I assume you will not sell him?"

"The same night?" Tai said, a little stupidly.

The vast, incongruous face reappeared in the carriage window like the moon from behind clouds. "I said that. He sent me an urgent request for sanctuary, explaining why. I offered it. He was murdered on his way from the Ta-Ming to my house." A fat finger appeared, pointed at Tai. "Master Shen, you know your trouble isn't with me. It is with the first minister. Your life depends on realizing that. It is Wen Zhou who is trying to kill you. You need friends."

Tai was badly shaken. Lun was dead. Drinking companion, fellow student—a man he'd intended to kill himself, in Yan's name. Discharging an obligation to another ghost.

One less obligation now? Was that good? Did it free him?

It didn't feel that way. There was a letter. It might tell him the other thing he needed to know—and feared to learn.

"Get in," said Roshan. Impatience in the voice, but not anger.

He swung open the carriage door again.

Tai took a breath. Sometimes you just went with the way the wind was blowing. He dismounted. He handed Dynlal's reins up to the poet, who said nothing. Tai jumped down into the ditch, and accepted the hand of an officer of the Ninth District to climb to the other side.

He entered the carriage, closed the door himself.

It was a response to the realities of the main imperial roads that in most of the posting inns along them the stables were larger than the accommodations available for travellers.

Civil service messengers and military couriers, the most regular users of the staging inns, were constantly wearing out and changing horses, often not lingering for the night. A meal, back in the saddle. The whole point was to ride through the darkness down the middle of the road, not to seek out a feathered bed, let alone wine and a girl. Time mattered in a far-flung empire.

There were merchants and army officers on the roads, aristocrats going to and from country estates, moving with rather less urgency, and there were civil servants travelling to or returning from postings to various prefectures, or on tours of inspection there. For these, of course, rooms and adequate food were required.

The inns nearest to Xinan tended to be different. Their wine was generally excellent, and so were the girls and music. High-ranking mandarins making short journeys from the capital didn't need their carriage horses changed but did demand a better quality of chamber and meal if, for example, they wished to time a return to the city for the hours before curfew fell.

The Mulberry Grove Rest House, not far from Xinan, qualified as one of the more elaborately appointed places to spend a night on the main east-west road.

Mulberry trees were long gone from the environs of the inn, as were the silk farms associated with them. The inn's name evoked quieter days many hundred years ago, before Xinan had grown into what it now was. There was a plaque in the main courtyard, inscribed in the Fifth Dynasty: a verse extolling the serenity of the inn and its countryside.

It made for some irony. By the time Tai and his company rode into the inn yard, well after darkfall, it was as noisy and crowded as the road had been. Two riders had been sent ahead to arrange their stay, or finding rooms would have been doubtful.

Torches were lit in the inn yard. The night had been starry as they approached, the Sky River showing, a sliver of moon. These were lost in the smoky, clattering chaos of the main courtyard.

Tai's horsemen were bunched around him. On guard, aggressively alert. He imagined Song had given the orders. Issues of rank in their company had been worked out; his Kanlin Warrior could speak for him. The soldiers might hate her for it, but that would have always been the case with a woman. In any event, Song didn't seem inclined to worry about being well liked by soldiers.

Tai was too preoccupied as they rode in to be unhappy about how protective they were. In fact, with some ruefulness, he realized that he didn't even mind it any more. He'd been frightened in that carriage by the road, and was still disturbed.

The two advance riders they'd sent reported to Song and their captain. Their company had three rooms, seven or eight to a room. There was a chamber for Tai and Sima Zian to share. The other soldiers would sleep in the stable. There were to be guards posted tonight, Tai learned, listening without much concentration to orders being given in his name. He ought to be paying closer attention, probably. He found it difficult.

He had no problem sharing a room with the poet. For one thing, Zian hadn't made it to their chamber from the pleasure pavilions in the other inns where this had happened. This was a man who had earned legendary status in diverse ways. Tai could never have sustained the hours and the drinking the poet managed—and Sima Zian had to be twenty years older than Tai was.

They dismounted in a clatter of weapons and armour and the stamp and snort of tired, hungry horses. Servants ran in every direction through the courtyard. It would not, Tai thought, be difficult to kill him here. One suborned servant, one assassin with a knife or on a rooftop with a bow. He looked up. Smoke from torches. He was very tired.

He forced himself to stop thinking about it. Held to the core truth underlying all of this: killing him now, with word of the Sardian horses already in Xinan, represented a reckless, possibly suicidal act for anyone.

Even an enormous, and enormously powerful, military governor of three districts. Even the first minister of Kitai.

He looked around, trying to bring himself into the present, not let his thoughts run too far ahead, or linger behind. Song was at his elbow. So, until a moment ago when Tai dismounted, had been the gap-toothed soldier from Iron Gate.

He shook his head, suddenly irritated. "What is the name of that one who always takes Dynlal?" He spotted the man, leading the horse towards the stables. "I should know it by now."

Song tilted her head a little, as if surprised. "A border soldier? Not really. But he's called Wujen. Wujen Ning." He saw her teeth flash. "You'll forget it again."

"I will not!" Tai said, and swore under his breath. He took immediate steps to fix the name in memory. An association: Ning was the metalsmith in the village near their estate.

He looked at the woman in the flickering light. Torches were above them, over the portico. Other lights moved through the yard. Insects were out now after dark. Tai slapped at one on his arm. "We are less than a day from your sanctuary," he murmured. "Do you wish to go home, Kanlin?"

He'd caught her by surprise, he saw. Wasn't sure why, it was an obvious question.

"Do you wish to dismiss your servant, my lord?"

He cleared his throat. "I don't think so. I have no cause to question your competence."

"I am honoured by your trust," she said formally.

Zian strode over from—predictably—the direction of the music, to the right of this first courtyard.

"I have arranged a table," he said cheerfully, "and I have requested that their best saffron wine be heated, seeing as we have had a long, difficult day." He grinned at Song. "I trust you will approve the expense?"

"I only carry the money," she murmured. "I don't approve the spending of it, except for the soldiers."

"Make sure they have wine," Tai said.

The poet gestured with one hand, and Tai went with him through the crowd. Song stayed beside them, her expression alert. It made him weary, this need for vigilance. It was not a life he'd ever wanted.

How many men were allowed the life they wanted?

Maybe this one, he thought, looking at the poet moving eagerly ahead of him towards where they could just hear a pipa being played, in a room beyond the courtyard noise. This one, or maybe my brother.

"Your brother," Roshan had said without preamble, as Tai closed the carriage door and sat opposite him, "is not named in the letter. It was read to me several times. I do not," he'd added, "read, myself."

It was widely known. A source of derision among the aristocrats and the examination-trained mandarins. It was regarded as a principal reason why the endlessly subtle Chin Hai, once first minister, once feared everywhere, now gone to his ancestors, had allowed Roshan and other barbarian generals to acquire so much power on the borders. An illiterate had no chance of threatening him at the centre of his webs in the Ta-Ming, the way an aristocrat with an army could.

Such, at any rate, had been the view of the students taking the examinations, or preparing to. And, of course, whatever they agreed upon had to be true, did it not?

Settling into the carriage, Tai had immediately felt out of his depth. Which was, he was certain, the point of Roshan's remark.

"Why would you imagine I'd consider that possible? That my brother could be accused of anything regarding me?"

He was delaying, trying to get his bearings. The governor leaned back against a profusion of cushions, eyeing him. An Li was, from this close, even more awesomely vast. A size that seemed mythic, a figure of legend.

He had, when not yet promoted to the rank of general, led three companies of Seventh District cavalry through five brutal days and nights of riding to turn the tide of battle against an incursion from the Koreini Peninsula. The Koreini of the far east, ambitious under their own emperor, had elected that spring to test the Kitan emperor's commitment to the building of garrison forts beyond the Wall.

They had been given an answer, to their very great cost—but only because of Roshan. That was twenty years ago. Tai's father had told him about that ride.

He had told Liu, as well, Tai remembered.

An Li shifted on his cushions again. "Your brother is principal counsellor to the first minister. Shen Liu has made his choice of paths. The letter—you may read it—indicates that Prime Minister Wen had his reasons for wishing you no longer among us, or in a dear woman's thoughts. Or perhaps able to disrupt your brother's plans for your sister. He does, after all, depend on Shen Liu for a great deal. It was the first minister who formally proposed your sister's elevation to exalted status. You did know that?"

Tai shook his head. He hadn't, but it made sense.

The governor sighed, fluttered a hand. His fingers were unexpectedly long. He wore a sweet, floral scent, it filled the carriage. He said, "Spring Rain? Is that the charming creature's name? It will puzzle me until I draw my last breath how men can be so undone by women." He paused, then added, thoughtfully, "Not even the highest among us are immune to the folly of that."

Nothing he says is unplanned, Tai told himself. And that last remark was treason, since the highest among us could only mean the emperor.

Tai said, possibly making a mistake, "I might risk such a course myself for a woman."

"Indeed? I had thought you might be different. This Lin Chang—that is her name now?—is she so very appealing? I confess I grow curious."

"I never knew that name. We called her Rain. But I am not speaking of her, my lord. You have mentioned two women."

Roshan's eyes were slits. Tai wondered how well the man could even see. The governor waited. He shifted in his seat again.

Tai said, "If you can bring my sister back from the Bogu lands before she is married there, I will claim and then assign all of my Sardian horses to the armies of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts."

He hadn't known he was going to say that.

An Li made a small, involuntary movement of one hand. Tai realized he'd startled the other man. The general said as much: "You are more direct than your brother, aren't you?"

"We have little in common," Tai said.

"A sister?" the other man murmured.

"And a father of distinction, as you were gracious enough to mention. But we see different paths to extending the family honour. I have made you a formal proposal, Governor An."

"You would do this, you would give them to me, all of them, for a girl?"

"For my sister."

From outside Tai heard sounds again: traffic on the roadway had resumed, creaking cartwheels, laughter, shouts. Life moving, on a spring day. He kept his gaze on the man opposite.

At length, Roshan shook his head. "I would do it. For two hundred and fifty Sardian horses? Of course I would. I am thinking now, right here, of how to do it. But it is impossible. I believe you know that. I might even accuse you of toying with me."

"It would be untrue," Tai said quietly.

The man across from him shifted yet again, stretching a massive leg to one side, with a grunt. He said, "Five horses would have been generous as a gift. Princess Cheng-wan has shaken your life, hasn't she?"

Tai said nothing.

"She has," the governor went on. "Like a storm shakes a tree, or even uproots it. You have to choose what to do now. You might be killed to stop you from choosing. I could do it here."

"Only if it did not get back to the Ta-Ming, to the first minister, whose action cost the empire those horses."

An Li stared at him with those slitted eyes.

"You all want them too much," Tai said.

"Not if they go to an enemy, Shen Tai."

Tai noted the word. He said, "I just offered them to you."

"I heard you. But I cannot do it, since it cannot be done. Your sister is gone, son of Shen Gao. She is north of the Wall by now. She is with the Bogu."

He grinned suddenly. A malicious smile. No sense of any genial, amusing figure of the court, the one who'd allowed himself to be swaddled like a baby by all the women. "She may be with child to the kaghan's son as we speak. At the least she will know his inclinations. I have heard stories. I wonder if your brother knew them, before he proposed her as wife to the kaghan's heir."

The sweetness of the perfume was almost sickening suddenly. "Why be uncivilized?" Tai said before he could stop himself.

He was fighting anger. Reminded himself again that the other man was not saying these things—was not saying anything—without purpose.

Roshan seemed amused. "Why uncivilized? Because I am! I am a soldier all my life. And my father's tribe warred with the Bogu. Shen Tai, you are not the only one to be direct by inclination."

"Let me see the letter," Tai said. Being direct.

It was handed across without a word. He read, quickly. It was a copy, the calligraphy was too regular. No mention of Liu, as Roshan had indicated. But...

Tai said, "He is clear, Xin Lun. Says he expects to be killed that night. Begs you to guard him. Why did you not send men to bring him to you?"

The expression on the other man's face made him feel, again, out of his depth. Childlike.

An Li shrugged, turned his neck one way and then the other, stretching it. "I suppose I could have. He did ask for protection, didn't he? Perhaps you are right."

"Perhaps?" Tai was struggling, heard it in his voice.

The general betrayed impatience. "Shen Tai, it is important in any battle to know your own strengths and weaknesses and to understand your enemy's. Your father must have taught you this."

"What does that have to do—?"

"Wen Zhou would have learned of your horses and your survival as soon as word reached the palace. As soon as anyone learned it that night. That is why Xin Lun knew he was in danger. The first minister could not let him live, knowing what he knew, and with what he'd done. Zhou is a fool, but dangerous."

"So why not send your soldiers for Lun?"

The general shook his massive head, as if sorrowing for the ignorance of the world. "Where was this happening, Shen Tai? Where were we all?"

"Xinan. But I don't—"

"Think! I don't have an army there. It is not permitted to me, to anyone. I am on my enemy's ground without my forces. If I shelter Lun in the capital, I am declaring war on the first minister that very night, where he has the weapons he needs and I do not!"

"You... you are the favourite of the emperor, of the Precious Consort."

"No. We are both favoured. It was a policy. But our so-glorious emperor is unpredictable now, too distracted, and Jian is young, and a woman, which means unpredictable. They are not, son of Shen Gao, reliable. I could not bring Lun into my home and be halfway certain of leaving Xinan alive."

Tai looked down at the letter in his hand. Read it again, mostly to give himself time. He was beginning to see.

"So... you let Lun believe you would. You offered him sanctuary. That led him to start down through the city."

"Good," said An Li. "You are not a fool. Are you as dangerous as your brother?"

Tai blinked. "I may be dangerous to him."

The general smiled, shifted again. "A good answer. It amuses me. But come, work it through. What did I do that night?"

Tai said, slowly, "You did send men, didn't you? But not to escort Xin Lun. Only to observe."

"Good, again. And why?"

Tai swallowed. "To see when he was killed."

An Li smiled. "When, and by whom."

"The killer was seen?"

"Of course he was. And by the Gold Bird Guards, as well. My men made certain of it. The Guard were persuaded not to do anything yet, but have recorded what they saw that night."

Tai looked at him, the small eyes, florid face. "One of Wen Zhou's retainers killed Lun?"

"Of course."

As simple as that.

"But if Lun is dead...?"

"The honourable Xin Lun is as useful to me murdered as alive. Especially if the city guards know who did it. The letter is what I needed, along with the observed killing of the letter-writer by a known person. The first minister has generously obliged me. Xin Lun in my home might have had me arrested. Xinan was the wrong place for me to begin a battle."

Tai let that last sink into awareness, stone in a pond.

"Are you beginning a battle?"

There was a silence. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted an answer. Sounds from outside again. The customary back and forth of the road. An irritated outcry, an oath, more laughter. A day moving towards a usual end, sunset and the stars.

"Tell me," the man opposite said, "were you really burying dead soldiers at Kuala Nor for two years?"

"Yes," Tai said.

"Were there ghosts?"

"Yes."

"That was bravely done, then. As a soldier I honour it. I could kill you here, if I decided your horses would somehow determine the course of events."

"You don't think they will?"

"They might. I have decided to act as if it is not so, and to spare you." He shifted position yet again.

"You'd have lost—"

"Rank, title, all granted lands. Possibly my life. And so, Shen Tai, what does that tell you, by way of answering the question you asked?"

Are you beginning a battle? he'd asked.

Tai cleared his throat, managed a half-smile. "It tells me I need to be grateful you've decided the horses might not matter as much as some others seem to think."

A moment of stillness, then the carriage rocked to Roshan's laughter. It lasted a long time.

When he finally subsided, coughing, the governor said, "You can't see it, can you? You have been too long away. I am being pushed towards my destruction or to resisting it. Wen Zhou is rolling dice. That is his nature. But I cannot, I will not linger in Xinan to see what the emperor does, whether Jian chooses her cousin or... her adopted child."

Tai had never seen a smile so lacking in mirth.

He shivered. The governor saw it, of course. The narrow eyes in the folds of flesh. Roshan said, "You may keep that copy, it might be of use to you. And perhaps to me, if you choose to remember who gave it to you, eventually." He shifted his outstretched leg one more time.

Eventually. Everything he said had layers of meaning.

And so, Tai abruptly realized, with a sudden hard shock of understanding, did his movements. They had nothing to do with restlessness. The man was in pain. Once you saw it, it was obvious.

Tai looked away, an instinct to hide what he'd realized. He wasn't at all sure how he'd intuited this, but he was certain he was right. And that An Li would not be pleased to have it noted.

"I... I am not part of this," he said, thinking hard. He wondered now about the scent, that too-sweet perfume. Was it covering something else?

"I'm afraid that is not true. Everyone will be part, if this happens. That includes you, unless you go back to Kuala Nor, and the dead. And maybe even there. I told you, the princess in Rygyal has seized hold of your life." He gestured, his hands outspread. "I would be very cautious with those horses. You may find yourself between cliffs and tigers, as we say in the northeast." He dropped one hand in his lap, motioned with the other. "You may go, son of Shen Gao. I have my own road to take now. Remain guarded in Xinan."

"You are not going back?"

The other man shook his head. "It was a mistake to go to court this spring. My oldest son said as much, tried to stop me. I sent him back north four days ago. To our own ground." That cold smile. "He knows how to read, my son. Even writes poetry. I don't understand it."

Another piece seemed to be trying to slide into place, like one of the puzzle toys his sister used to love. Tai tried to remember what he knew about the sons.

"But you came this way yourself to—"

"To meet you, and decide if you might give your horses to Wen Zhou. I have satisfied myself you will not."

Tai felt a calmness descend. "And if you had satisfied yourself otherwise?"

"There would have been a fight here. A small, first battle. Your cavalry would have been killed, and probably the poet. But certainly you, first of all. I would have had no choice."

"Why?"

A reckless question but he never received an answer to it. Not in words. Only another mirthless smile.

It was then, looking at that expression, that a feeling overtook Tai unlike any he'd ever known.

He said, before an instinct for caution could stop the words, "Governor An, honoured general, you do not have to shape your son's legacy. You have your own to devise yet, my lord. We who follow great fathers, we must make our own paths and choices. This empire has been defended by you all these years. Surely you can allow yourself some rest now? Some easing of... of painful burdens?"

Too close, too much said. The look he received was as bleak and frightening as anything he'd ever experienced. He thought of wolves, of teeth and claws in his own flesh. Coming directly after the earlier, inward sensation, an impulse sharp as a thorn, it almost made him ill. An Li did not speak again. Tai said nothing more.

The carriage door was opened for him by the governor, leaning over to do so. A gesture of courtesy from someone of such rank. Tai bowed where he sat, then stepped out and down into the late-day light and what looked, surprisingly, to be the ordinary world.

He was irritably aware that Wei Song was watching them from the far side of the room, near the doorway to the courtyard. He was in a recessed alcove with the poet, drinking good wine too quickly. Quiet music was playing.

There was food. He wasn't hungry. He'd felt a need to become drunk, wasn't there yet. He didn't want to be dealing with the thoughts he was carrying. A river too deep, as a friend had written once.

Not a very good line, in truth, though it lodged in the mind.

It didn't matter how deep a river was, what mattered was how swiftly the water flowed, how cold it was, if there were dangerous creatures in it, if it had rapids or falls.

Tai drained another cup of saffron wine. Looked around the room, saw his Kanlin watching him, some distance away.

He didn't like the set of her too-wide mouth, or that intense, alert scrutiny. The mixture of concern and disapproval in it.

So, I'm drinking, he wanted to say. There a reason I shouldn't be? It wasn't as if she'd ever cast that sort of glance at Sima Zian, though the man spent every single night and most of the days doing exactly this.

It occurred to him, gazing across the crowded room, that he'd never seen her in anything but the black tunic and leggings or robe of a Kanlin, and he never would. Her hair had been unbound, that first sunrise, at Iron Gate. He'd thought she was another assassin. She wasn't. Rain had sent her. Rain was sleeping now a little more than a day's ride from here. In Wen Zhou's home. In his bed, perhaps. Or maybe she was in his bed and not asleep.

She had tried to tell him this might happen.

It came to him to be irritated again by the too obviously professional appraisal his Kanlin was still giving him. His Kanlin. That was why the poet never got this look. Zian hadn't hired her. He just... enjoyed her presence.

The poet was an easy companion. He could talk if that was your mood, or sit as quietly as you needed. Tai shook his head. Found himself returning, against his will, to the end of the encounter in Roshan's carriage.

The reason he was drinking.

The pipa subsided, a flute took up the melody. Across the small platform the poet was, as best Tai could tell, a few drinks behind him for the first time ever. No judgment in those eyes. No amusement either. You could say that was a judgment of sorts.

Tai didn't feel like saying it, or thinking it, or having his mind working on anything at all tonight. He gestured vaguely and a sleek figure in pale-blue silk was beside them, filling his cup. He was vaguely aware of perfume, the cut of her gown. Xinan fashion for this season, he imagined. They were almost there. He'd been away two years. They were almost there.

"A woman is generally better than wine for pushing thoughts away. And almost always better for your head." Zian smiled gently.

Tai stared at the other man.

The poet added, quietly, "In the depths of the wood I hear only birds. You need not say anything, but I am listening."

Tai shrugged. "I'm here. We're all alive. My brother's name wasn't in that letter. I'd say it was a good encounter. Respectful. Illuminating."

"Would you?"

It was, more than the words, the calm, forest-deep gaze that brought him up short in his striving for irony.

In the depths of the wood... His reply had been unworthy: of this man, of what had just happened, of what Tai was dealing with. The pipa resumed, joining the flute. The players were very good.

"I'm sorry," he said. He lowered his head. Looked up. "You told me earlier today that it felt as if something was approaching. You called it chaos."

"I did."

"I think you are right. I think it is almost certain."

"And you want to do something? That is what troubles you? Shen Tai, we need to remember what we are, our limitations."

And so Tai did end up saying, after all, what he'd been thinking (or trying not to think). "I could have killed him. In the carriage. He is not young. He is in great pain, all the time. I had my knife. Do you understand? I was there, and I listened to him speak and I thought: this is what I must do! For the empire. For all of us." He looked away. "I have never had such a feeling in my life."

"Well, you spoke of killing someone, while we rode."

He had. He'd meant Xin Lun. "That was about Yan's death. A response. This was different. It felt as if I owed Roshan's death, and my own, to... to everyone else. That it was required of me. Before it is too late."

He saw that he'd disturbed the other man, finally.

"What does he intend?"

"He's left Xinan, going back northeast. His son has already gone. He feared remaining in the city. Says Wen Zhou was forcing him. He has Xin Lun's letter. It shows the first minister tried to kill me."

"Will anyone believe it?"

"I think so. Roshan has people, including the Gold Bird Guards, who saw that Zhou had Lun killed. Because he knew too much."

He had never seen the poet look like this. "He went northeast to do what?"

Tai just looked at him.

"You'd have been killed immediately," Zian said, finally. "Surely, you know it."

"Of course I do! Sometimes you have to accept that, don't you? Isn't that what courage is? In a soldier? I think I was a coward, today."

Tai drained his cup again.

The poet shook his head. "No. Ending a life, two lives that way? And other people on that road. You weren't ready to pretend to be a god."

"Perhaps. Or I wasn't ready to accept my own death. Offer it. It might have been that."

The poet stared at him. Then said:

Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is."

Tai looked at him and then away, across the room.

Wei Song had gone. He didn't know where. The music continued. It was very beautiful.