watched them dance, followed them up jade stairs.
None of these women, none of them, were what this one was in the brightness of what she offered. And she wasn’t even dancing now. She sat opposite, leaning upon cushions, gazing at Tai appraisingly, enormous eyes beneath shaped eyebrows.
He had seen her from a distance, in Long Lake Park, at festival ceremonies with the emperor and court in their elevated place on a Ta-Ming balcony, removed from ordinary men and women, above them, nearer heaven.
She wasn’t removed from him here, she was annihilatingly close, and they were alone. And one small, bare, high-arched foot seemed to be touching the outside of his thigh very lightly, as if it had drifted there, all unawares.
Tai swallowed hard. Jian smiled, took her time assessing him, utterly at ease.
An entire courtyard of people at an imperial posting station had seen him enter this sedan chair. A man could be killed for being alone with the emperor’s beloved. Unless that man was a eunuch, or—an abrupt thought—was made into one as an alternative to having his throat cut. Tai tried to find a safe place to rest his gaze. Light came gently through silk.
She said, “I am pleased. You are handsome enough. It is better when men are pleasant to look upon, don’t you agree?”
He said nothing. What did you say to this? He lowered his head. Her foot moved against his thigh, as if idly, a restlessness. She curled her toes. He felt it. Desire was within him. He worked fiercely to suppress it. Head down, avoiding those eyes, he saw that her toenails were painted a deep red, almost purple. There was nowhere safe to look. And with every breath he caught the scent she wore.
He made himself look up. Her mouth was full and wide, her face heart-shaped, skin flawless, and the silk of her thin blue summer gown, patterned in a soft yellow like the curtains, was cut low. He saw an ivory pendant in the shape of a tiger between the rich curves of her breasts.
She was twenty-one years old, from a well-known family in the south. Had come to Xinan to be married at sixteen to a prince of the imperial family, the eighteenth son.
Then the ever-glorious Emperor Taizu, her husband’s father, had seen her dance one night in the palace to the music of a flute (the story was very well known) and the course of her life and the empire’s course had been altered forever by the time the music and the dancing stopped.
The pious had declared (quietly) that what followed was a profanation of marriage and family. The eighteenth son accepted a larger mansion, another wife, and exquisite concubines. Time passed at court, pleasantly. There was music in the palace and at Ma-wai and a woman danced for the emperor. Poets began to write of four great beauties.
The empress was invited to follow her own clear inclination towards devotion and withdraw to a retreat outside Xinan and the palace, to enfold her life in prayer.
Tai’s sister had gone with her. He used that quick image of Li-Mei—brave and bright—to bring him back from what felt, truly, like intoxication. There was, he thought, no wine in the world like the presence of this woman. There might be a poem in that, it occurred to him.
Someone had probably written it.
He said, as the chair was lifted and they began to move, “My lady, your servant is too greatly honoured by this.”
She laughed. “Of course you are. You won’t be killed for being here, if you are thinking about that. I told the emperor last night I intended to come and bring you myself. Will you take a lychee? I can peel it for you, Master Shen Tai. We could even share it. Do you know the most enjoyable way to share lychee fruit?”
She leaned forward, as if inclined to show him right then. He said nothing. He had no words, no idea what to say.
She laughed at him again, the eyebrows arched. She regarded him another moment. Nodded her head, as if a thought was confirmed. “You reminded me of your brother when you held your hands up to my steward just now. Power hidden behind courtesy.”
Tai looked at her. “We are not very like, my lady. You believe he shows power?”
“Liu? Of course he does. But carefully,” said Wen Jian. She smiled. “You say you are greatly honoured. But you are also angry. Why are you angry with me, my lord?” She didn’t have to call him that. The foot moved again, unmistakably.
She would use her beauty, any man’s desire for her, as an agency, a weapon, he told himself. Her long neck was set off by golden earrings to her shoulders, set with pearls, the weight of the gold making her seem even more delicate. Her hair was coiled, but falling to one side, famously. Her own invented style, the “waterfall,” copied throughout the empire now. The hairpins were jewelled, variously, and he didn’t even know the names of all the gems he saw.
She laid a hand, as if carelessly, upon his calf. He caught his breath. She smiled again. She was measuring his responses, he realized.
“Why so angry?” she asked again in a voice suddenly like a child’s, grieving at being punished.
He said, carefully, “One of my soldiers was killed this morning, illustrious lady. I believe you heard. A soldier of the emperor. My Kanlin guard was wounded, and two of your own men. And my Sardian horse—”
“I know it. It was uncivilized. There was violence in my presence, which is never permitted.” She lifted her hand from his leg. “I have instructed my under-steward to kill himself when we reach Ma-wai.”
Tai blinked, wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“You … he …?”
“This morning,” said the Beloved Companion, “did not proceed as I wished it to. It made me unhappy.” Her mouth turned downwards.
You could drown in this woman, Tai thought, and never be found again. The emperor was pursuing immortality in the palace, men said, using alchemists and the School of Unrestricted Night, where they studied the stars and asterisms in the sky for secrets of the world. Tai suddenly had a better understanding of that desire.
“Your brother,” she said, “doesn’t look like you.”
“No,” said Tai.
She was going to do this, he realized: change topics, make him keep up with her, test him that way.
“He advises my cousin,” she said.
“I know this, illustrious lady.”
“I don’t like him,” she said.
Tai was silent.
“Do you?” she asked.
“He is my brother,” Tai said.
“He has measuring eyes and he never smiles,” said Wen Jian. “Am I going to like you? Do you laugh?”
He took a breath, then answered more seriously than he’d thought he would. “Less often since my father died. Since going to Kuala Nor. But yes, your servant used to laugh, illustrious lady.”
“In the North District? I have been told as much. You and my cousin appear to have admired the same woman there.”
Treacherous ground, Tai thought. And she was doing it deliberately.
“Yes,” he said.
“He has her now.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how much he paid for her?”
“No, illustrious lady.” How would he have known?
“A very great sum. More than he needed to. He was making a declaration, about himself.”
“I see.”
“I have seen her since. She is … very lovely.”
He considered that pause.
He said, “There is no wine in Kitai or the world as intoxicating as the Lady Wen Jian.”
The smile that brought him was a gift. He could almost believe she was flattered, a girl reacting to a well-
