flesh burn and her heart sing.
I want it to be what it was before.
'Papa! Papa!'
Anji let go of her hand. Out of the garden had come a procession, unseen and unheard until now. A lovely little child toddled forward on stout legs toward the porch, half ready to fall forward in his haste. Anji laughed and leaped down to the path to scoop up the toddler before the lad tumbled onto his face on the gravel. Tuvi made a sharp gesture, and the half-dozen persons halted dead still back by a hedge that screened the far porch from the eye of this one. There they waited obediently. All were women, drawing up cloth to cover their faces so Mai saw nothing but a distant glimpse of kohl-lined eyes and expensive silks in colors as garish as Anji's tunic.
Anji hopped back up on the porch, holding Atani with the ease of much practice. How sweet the baby was! How much he had grown! How dear and precious her beautiful boy had become! He was a darling, as sunny as day and with a brilliant chortling smile that vanished as soon as Mai extended her arms to take him. He flung himself against his father's shoulder to hide his face.
'He's shy,' said Anji. 'It's the age for it.'
'Won't he come to me?' She touched Atani's back tentatively, that sweet flesh like balm to her aching heart, but Atani glanced up and, shrieking, squirmed against his father, anything to get away from her.
She recoiled, gulping down tears.
'Mistress,' said Tuvi, his grimace one of sudden sympathy. 'He doesn't know you. It's been too long.'
T know,' she gasped.
That didn't make it hurt less.
One woman stepped away from the others, still holding cloth
across her face, but a gesture from Tuvi stopped her on the path, where she was too far away to really know what was going on. Anji's expression clouded. A frown splintered his joy, and the child sobbed once and was silent.
'That woman is pregnant,' said Mai.
'Yes.' He descended and kneeled on the path, setting down the boy and speaking softly into his ear, then patting him on the rump. 'Go to Mama,' he said, giving the child a swift, affectionate kiss on each plump cheek. 'Go now, Atanihosh. Hurry!'
The unfortunate stranger was forgotten. The boy set out with laughing determination. 'Mama! Mama!' he cried, trundling down the path with his arms outstretched toward the other woman.
'I have to sit down,' Mai whispered as her heart was ripped from her. It would have been better to be dead.
Tuvi reached for her, but Anji had already jumped back onto the porch and he caught her and held her as Atani was swept up into the arms of the woman he called 'Mama' and whisked away behind the hedge.
'Mai,' Anji whispered fiercely, holding her close, 'don't leave me. Stay here with me. Don't faint. I've got it all worked out.'
'Anjihosh,' objected the chief. 'Your mother-'
'She's got the treaty she wants. A grandson to raise. My wife will bear a child and we'll be fortunate if it is a girl. Why should I not take a second wife? I suppose it was inevitable. It was just too difficult to consider at the time, with the demons' army threatening the north. But now with the enemy army mostly hunted down and killed, there's no impediment-'
Mai shoved him off, slamming back into the wall, bracing herself against it. 'None? Not after your mother tried to kill me when I wouldn't agree to become your second wife? When I refused to step aside and let her rule over my household, the one I built and nurtured and fed? Knowing she set her agent on me, Anji, you think I'll expose myself to her again?'
He shook his head impatiently. 'Of course not. I can see it would be impossible for you to live under her suzerainty. But it is easy enough to set up another household, one that you hold authority over entirely. Some place close by, that a reeve can lift me to-'
'When you want sex? A second household? Close by? For your convenience? Do you expect me to agree to this?'
'The boy can visit you, Mai. I would bring him with me.'
'Visit? My son can live with me!' she cried, seeing the trap as it was sprung, the bait her hunger for her baby, as desperate as she was to hold her child against her breast.
'Ah,' he breathed. 'The boy.'
He glanced at Tuvi, at the eaves, at the hedge behind, and at the empty, silent garden. At his own hands. He wore her wolf's-head ring on his little finger, and it was this he stared at. She could practically see the thoughts chasing behind his eyes in currents and countercurrents, two rivers of desire colliding and mingling until, at last, his gaze hardened, even if the expression was tempered with regret.
'Neh. The boy belongs to her now. That was part of the agreement, that he believe she is his mother. It's the only way to ensure his safety. Surely, Mai, you can see that Atanihosh's survival must be our chief concern. A bitter price, but a necessary one. You and I will have other children. Many others, plum blossom.'
He reached to embrace her. She extended a hand, palm out, to stop him.
The future, a bolt of shimmering first-quality silk, unrolled before her. An elaborate compound furnished just as she wished, with painted screens and embroidered pillows and a spacious counting room for her mercantile business fitted with drawers and cubbies and writing desks, and that irritating Keshad as her chief accountant. She would insist on living in a town, or preferably a city like Toskala with a substantial market, whose streets and alleys and stalls she and Miravia could browse at their leisure. She would become a woman of means, using the coin she had herself earned, nothing gifted to her, and no doubt she could demand a position on the council which naturally no council would deny her. And Anji, for a day or a week or a month at a time, in her bed. His kisses and his warm embrace.
She enduring the cage for the sake of the boy, as Anji's mother had done all those years locked up in the women's palace within the emperor's palace in the Sirniakan Empire. All that she was, having meaning only because of the precious boy and a powerful man's desire for her.
'That's your offer,' she said, drawing down her market voice and her market face. 'Now here is my counteroffer.'
'Mai,' he said softly, with a soft smile that cut as sharply as steel, 'there is no counteroffer. There never was. Not since that day in Kartu's market.'
The thing about Sheyshi stabbing her is that it had anticipated the pain yet to come. This pain, severing flesh and bone and blood, she must absorb without letting any trace of it show on her face. She must lock it away now and only later let the agony tear through her.
'No.' She eased her hand away from his chest, not sure what she would do if he were to move in to kiss away her defenses, but the word was shield enough. His brows drew down; his gaze narrowed in that way it did when he felt thwarted. T will not be your second wife, and have my son call another woman 'mother.' I want my son back and to be your partner, as we were before.'
He laughed bitterly, his hand darting in to grasp strands of her hair that had fallen over her shoulder, to twist them between his fingers. 'Oh, Mai, however much I might wish it, it's impossible. We've crossed under the gate. There is no going back.'
She turned her head away, and he released her.
'This isn't about going back,' she said. 'But we can go forward on the path we were set on before. I had my business ventures, my warehouse. You were captain of Olossi's militia…'
She faltered.
He, who was now in all ways but in name the ruler of the Hundred. The Qin commander, accustomed to conquest.
To think she had mistaken him for the hero of the tale.
Flowers swayed as the wind danced through them. A high-pitched shriek of excitement rang: her child's voice. Then there was silence but for the rustling leaves and the mournful ripple of the awning. The unweighted corner of the map rose, as invisible fingers pried for secrets, and sagged down again.
Tuvi took her hand in his with the affection of an elderly uncle who has seen a great deal of the world and knows what to value. In his measured expression she saw the chief she had grown so very fond of. 'Mistress, he
