Under Heaven

He was looking at that part, and wondering about it, if it could possibly be read as a thought that the father, not the son, should be on the throne, when he heard the door to the room open.

He didn’t turn around, remained on the mat before the writing table, facing the open window. There was a breeze, and stars now, but the three lamps lit the room too much for them to be clearly seen.

“If I were someone who wanted you dead, you would be by now,” she said.

Tai laid down his brush. “That was one of the first things you ever said to me, at Iron Gate.”

“I remember,” she said. “How did you know it was me?”

He shook his head impatiently, looking out. “Who else would it be?”

“Really? Not an assassin from Tagur, perhaps? Trying at the last minute to stop their horses from crossing the border?”

“I have Kanlin guards,” Tai said. “He wouldn’t have gotten near this room. I recognized your footfall, Song. I do know it by now.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I thought I barred the door this time.”

“You did. This is an old inn. The wood shifts, too much space between door and wall. A sword can be used to lift the bar.”

He was still looking out the window. “Shouldn’t I have heard it?”

“Probably,” she said, “though someone trained can do it quietly. This is why you need guards.”

He was tired, but also amused. “Really? Why would an assassin bother with me? I am apparently of no use to anyone, in wartime.”

She was silent a moment. “I was angry. I didn’t mean that.”

“It is true, however. Once the emperor has the horses.”

“I don’t … I don’t think it is true, myself. I was trying to be persuasive.”

Her footfall, moving into the room.

A moment later one of the lamps was blown out. The one closest to him, illuminating his writing table. And because she’d come nearer he caught the scent of perfume. She never wore perfume.

He turned.

She had already crossed to the second lamp. She bent and blew that one out as well, leaving only the one by the bed. She turned to him.

“I’m still trying to be persuasive,” Wei Song said, and let her tunic slip from her shoulders to the floor.

Tai stood up quickly. He looked away a moment, then his eyes were pulled back to her. The lithe form. She had a long, shallow gash across the ribs on one side. He knew how she’d received that wound.

“Please forgive my shyness with the lights,” she murmured.

“Shyness?” Tai managed to say.

The single lamp beside her lit one breast more than the other, and the left side of her face. Slowly, she lifted both her hands and began unpinning her hair.

“Song, what … this is to persuade me to go north? You do not have to—”

“It isn’t,” she said, hands lifted, exposing her body to his gaze. “That wasn’t true, about persuading. It just sounded like a clever thing to say. A pleasure district remark? They are clever there, I know. And beautiful.”

She set one long pin on the table by the bed, and then removed and set down another, moving slowly, the light falling upon her. “This is a goodbye,” she said. “We may not meet again, since you will not come north.”

Tai was mesmerized by her movements. She had killed for him, he had seen her do it at Chenyao, in a garden. She was barefoot now, wore only thin Kanlin trousers, nothing down to the waist.

The last hairpin slipped free and she shook out her hair.

“Goodbye?” Tai said. “You were hired for ten years! You are mine until then!” He was trying to be ironic.

“Only if we live,” she said. She looked away, he saw her bite her lip. “I am willing to be yours,” she said.

“What are you saying?”

She looked back at him, and did not answer. But her wide-set eyes were on his, unwavering, and he thought, yet again, of how much courage she had.

And then, for the second time that day, Tai realized that within himself something had already happened, perhaps some time ago, and that he was only, in this lamplit, after-thunder moment, coming to know it. He shook his head in wonder.

“I can leave now,” she said, “and be gone before morning, to collect the horses.”

“No. I have to be there, remember?” Tai said. He drew a breath. “I don’t want you to leave, Song.”

She looked young, small, almost unbearably exposed.

He said, a roughness in his voice, “I don’t want you ever to leave.”

She looked away again, suddenly. He saw her draw a breath this time, then let it out slowly. She said, “Do you mean that? It isn’t because I have been so … because I did this?”

“I have seen women unclothed before, Song.”

She looked up. “I know. And I am thin, and have this new wound, which will be another scar. And one more on my leg, and I know I am insufficiently respectful and—”

She wasn’t very far away at all. He moved forward and put a hand, gently, over her mouth. Then he took it away and kissed her, also gently, that first time. Then he did so again, differently.

He looked down at her, in the one light left burning. Eyes on his, she said, “I am not greatly experienced in these matters.”

SOME TIME LATER. Her left leg across his body where they lay in the bed, her head against his shoulder, hair spread out. The lamp had been extinguished some time ago. The rain had stopped dripping from the eaves. They could see moonlight, hear a night bird singing.

Tai said, “Not greatly experienced?”

He felt more than he saw her smile. “I was told men like hearing that from a woman. That it makes them feel powerful.”

“Is that what it does?”

“So I was told.” One of her hands was playing at his chest, drifting down towards his belly then back up. “You were on Stone Drum Mountain, Tai. You ought to remember what happens there at night. Or did none of the women …?”

“I don’t think I’m going to answer that.”

“Not yet, perhaps,” she murmured.

The moon laid a trail of light along the floor of the room.

“You seem to always be coming into my chamber,” he said.

“Well, once I was saving you from a fox-woman, remember?”

“She wasn’t a fox-woman.”

“She was a trap. Extremely pretty.”

“Extremely,” he agreed.

She sniffed. “Even if it wasn’t a daiji, Sima Zian and I agreed you were not in a state to resist her that night, and bedding a governor’s daughter would have put you in a very difficult position.”

“I see,” Tai said carefully. “You and the poet agreed on this?”

“We did. They wanted you in a difficult position, of course. Xu Bihai was after the horses.”

“You don’t think she might simply have fallen in love with me?”

“I suppose there’s that possibility,” said Song. Her tone suggested otherwise.

“She was very pretty,” Tai said.

Song said nothing.

“So are you,” he said.

“Ah. That will surely make me fall in love.” She laughed again. “I’d have attacked you if you’d come into my room on the road.”

“I believe that.”