actions more than inclination. I carry important information for the court. I believe you know this. I believe that is why you have done me the honour of being here. I am not in a position to follow my desires and accept the privilege of hidden converse with you. There is too much embodied by that, with so many watching a carriage that bears kingfisher feathers. I am certain you will agree.”
He was certain, in fact, of the opposite, but if he had any hope of remaining free in his own alignment, his decisions, surely he needed to—
From within, coldly, An Li said, “This is truly that drunken poet beside you? The one they call Immortal?”
Tai inclined his head. “The Banished Immortal, yes. I have the honour of his companionship and counsel.”
Sima Zian, on his horse next to Tai’s, sketched his bow. He was smiling, Tai saw, amazed.
From within the carriage, a moment later, came a string of oaths startling in their crudeness, even to someone who had been a soldier.
In the silence that followed, the poet’s smile deepened. “Are those formal requests of me, my lord? I admit I would find some of them difficult, at my age.”
Roshan stared out at them both. The general’s eyes were nearly lost in the creased folds of his face. It was hard to see them to get any reading of his thoughts. He was, Tai realized, even more frightening because of that.
It was said that once, fighting in the northeast, he had defeated an army of Shuoki tribesmen beyond the Wall, part of a border insurgency. He had ordered his soldiers and their Bogu allies to cut off one foot from each man captured, then he and his army had ridden off, taking the enemy horses, leaving the Shuoki to die in the grass, or survive, somehow, maimed.
There were other stories.
Now, in that oddly high, accented voice he said, “Don’t be clever, poet. I have little patience for cleverness.”
“My apologies,” said Sima Zian, and Tai had a sense he might mean it.
“Your being here limits my actions.”
“For that,” said the poet, calmly, “I must decline to apologize, my lord, if your actions were to be as you suggested.”
Roshan leaned back in his seat. They couldn’t see him any more. Tai looked to his right. The sun was setting, he had to squint. Wei Song was arranging their men in a defensive alignment. They had not yet drawn their weapons. Traffic had come to a halt. The tale of this encounter, he knew, would race ahead of them now. It would be in Xinan before him.
That was the reason he was acting as he was. But there was a risk of dying here, of others dying for him. If a celebrated poet had not been with them …
From within the carriage he heard, “Son of Shen Gao, accept my sympathy for the passing of your honourable father. I knew of him, of course. I have journeyed two days from my own route to speak with you. I will not, for my own reasons, go back to that posting inn. They are not reasons you require to know. But if you enter my carriage, if you … honour me by doing so … I will begin by telling you what happened to a man you will be looking for, and show you a letter.”
Tai registered the changed tone. He said, carefully, “That man would be?”
“His name is Xin Lun.”
Tai felt his heart thump.
“Lun?” he repeated.
“Yes. He arranged for the assassins sent to kill you.”
Tai swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. “How do you know this?”
“He told me himself.”
“When did he … what did happen to him?”
A mistake, perhaps, asking this. It created an obligation of courtesy if the other man answered.
The other man answered. “He was killed some nights ago.”
“Oh,” said Tai.
“The same night word came that you were on your way to Xinan, and the news of the White Jade Princess’s gift. The horses. Your own is magnificent, by the way. I assume you will not sell him?”
“The same night?” Tai said, a little stupidly.
The vast, incongruous face reappeared in the carriage window like the moon from behind clouds. “I said that. He sent me an urgent request for sanctuary, explaining why. I offered it. He was murdered on his way from the Ta-Ming to my house.” A fat finger appeared, pointed at Tai. “Master Shen, you know your trouble isn’t with me. It is with the first minister. Your life depends on realizing that. It is Wen Zhou who is trying to kill you. You need friends.”
Tai was badly shaken. Lun was dead. Drinking companion, fellow student—a man he’d intended to kill himself, in Yan’s name. Discharging an obligation to another ghost.
One less obligation now? Was that good? Did it free him?
It didn’t feel that way. There was a letter. It might tell him the other thing he needed to know—and feared to learn.
“Get in,” said Roshan. Impatience in the voice, but not anger.
He swung open the carriage door again.
Tai took a breath. Sometimes you just went with the way the wind was blowing. He dismounted. He handed Dynlal’s reins up to the poet, who said nothing. Tai jumped down into the ditch, and accepted the hand of an officer of the Ninth District to climb to the other side.
He entered the carriage, closed the door himself.
IT WAS A RESPONSE to the realities of the main imperial roads that in most of the posting inns along them the stables were larger than the accommodations available for travellers.
Civil service messengers and military couriers, the most regular users of the staging inns, were constantly wearing out and changing horses, often not lingering for the night. A meal, back in the saddle. The whole point was to ride through the darkness down the middle of the road, not to seek out a feathered bed, let alone wine and a girl. Time mattered in a far-flung empire.
There were merchants and army officers on the roads, aristocrats going to and from country estates, moving with rather less urgency, and there were civil servants travelling to or returning from postings to various prefectures, or on tours of inspection there. For these, of course, rooms and adequate food were required.
The inns nearest to Xinan tended to be different. Their wine was generally excellent, and so were the girls and music. High-ranking mandarins making short journeys from the capital didn’t need their carriage horses changed but did demand a better quality of chamber and meal if, for example, they wished to time a return to the city for the hours before curfew fell.
The Mulberry Grove Rest House, not far from Xinan, qualified as one of the more elaborately appointed places to spend a night on the main east-west road.
Mulberry trees were long gone from the environs of the inn, as were the silk farms associated with them. The inn’s name evoked quieter days many hundred years ago, before Xinan had grown into what it now was. There was a plaque in the main courtyard, inscribed in the Fifth Dynasty: a verse extolling the serenity of the inn and its countryside.
It made for some irony. By the time Tai and his company rode into the inn yard, well after darkfall, it was as noisy and crowded as the road had been. Two riders had been sent ahead to arrange their stay, or finding rooms would have been doubtful.
Torches were lit in the inn yard. The night had been starry as they approached, the Sky River showing, a sliver of moon. These were lost in the smoky, clattering chaos of the main courtyard.
Tai’s horsemen were bunched around him. On guard, aggressively alert. He imagined Song had given the orders. Issues of rank in their company had been worked out; his Kanlin Warrior could speak for him. The soldiers might hate her for it, but that would have always been the case with a woman. In any event, Song didn’t seem
