Under Heaven

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