Under Heaven

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.