Under Heaven

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.