Tai waited. Lin Fong looked at him a moment, then nodded brusquely at a soldier. The man stepped forward and began untying the woman. He was careful not to step on the platform; discipline was good here.
Tai watched until the man was done, and then continued to wait politely. After a moment, the commander took the hint and dismissed the two soldiers.
The woman crossed her legs neatly and rested her hands upon her knees. She wore a hooded black tunic and black leggings for riding, both of common hemp. She had used the interval to pin up her hair. She didn't rub her wrists, though the ropes had been tight, would have chafed. Her hands were small, he noted; you wouldn't have thought she could be a Warrior. He knew better.
"Your name is?" he asked.
"Wei Song," she said, bowing slightly.
"You are at Stone Drum Mountain?"
She shook her head impatiently. "Hardly, or I could not have been here so soon. I am from the sanctuary near Ma-wai. The same as the rogue was, before she left."
A short ride from Xinan, near a posting station inn and a celebrated hot springs retreat with its pavilions and pools and gardens, for the emperor and his favourites.
Tai had said something stupid. Stone Drum, one of the Five Holy Mountains, was far to the northeast.
"Before what, please, Master Shen?" the commander repeated. "You have not answered me."
He made some effort to keep irritation out of his voice, but it was there. A brisk, fussy man. An important person for Tai just now. Tai turned to him.
It was time, evidently.
He had a vivid sense of roads forking, rivers branching, one of those moments where the life that follows cannot be as it might otherwise have been.
"I have been given a gift by the Tagurans," he said. "From their court, our own princess."
"Princess Cheng-wan has given you a personal gift?" Astonishment, barely controlled.
"Yes, commander."
Lin Fong was clearly thinking hard. "Because you were burying their dead?"
The man might be in a dismal posting, but he wasn't a fool.
Tai nodded. "They have done me too much honour in Rygyal."
"Too much honour? They are barbarians," Commander Lin said bluntly. He lifted his porcelain bowl and sipped the hot, spiced tea. "They have no understanding of honour."
"Perhaps," said Tai, his voice carefully neutral.
Then he told them about the horses and watched them both react.
CHAPTER IV
"
W
here are they?
These horses."
It was the right question, of course. The commander had gone pale, was clearly thinking hard, fighting agitation. Experience could only take you so far in dealing with some kinds of information. Two deep, horizontal lines etched his forehead now. Lin Fong looked afraid. Tai didn't entirely understand that, but it was there to be seen. The Kanlin woman, by contrast, seemed to have withdrawn into repose, attentive but unperturbed.
Tai had been on Stone Drum Mountain, however. He recognized this as a posture, a way of trying to make herself tranquil in the act of seeming so. Which meant she wasn't. She was very young, Wei Song, he realized suddenly. Younger than the assassin had been, probably the same age as his sister.
"I don't have them," he said simply.
Lin Fong's eyes flashed. "I did see you come in. I know that much."
Irritation for some men was their response to strain.
"You'll never get to court alive with Sardian horses, unless you have an army escort," the woman said. "And then you'll be indebted to the army."
Young, but a quick brain working.
The commander glared. "You are all indebted to the army. You would do well to remember it, Kanlin."
It begins,
Tai thought.
The old, old tale of the Kitan people and their rivalries. Petty kingdoms warring with each other, once; ambitious men and women at the imperial court, now. Military governors, prefects, mandarins rising through their nine ranks, religious orders, palace eunuchs, legal advisers, empresses and concubines, and on, and on ... all of them striving for eminence around the emperor, who was the sun.
He had been back in the empire for part of a morning, no more.
Tai said, "The horses will be held at a fort across the border, near Hsien. I have letters to be sent to court with the military post, explaining this."
"Held by whom?" The commander, working it through.
"By the Taguran captain from the pass above Kuala Nor. He's the one who brought me word of the gift."
"But then they can take them back! Keep them!"
Tai shook his head. "Only if I die."
He reached into his tunic pocket and drew out the original letter from Rygyal. He had a sudden memory of reading it by the lake, hearing the squabble of birds. He could almost feel the wind. "Princess Cheng-wan signed this herself, commander. We must be careful not to insult her, by suggesting they'd take them back."
Lin Fong cleared his throat nervously. He almost reached for the letter but did not; it would have been demeaning to Tai if he'd checked. He was an irritable, rigid man, but not unaware of due courtesy, even out here in the wilderness.
Tai glanced across at the woman. She was smiling a little at Lin Fong's discomfiture, not bothering to hide it.
He added, "They will keep them, unless I come myself." It was what he'd worked out with Bytsan sri Nespo at the end of a long night in the cabin.
"Ah," said Wei Song, looking up. "That is how you stay alive?"
"How I try."
Her gaze was thoughtful. "A difficult gift, that puts your life at risk."
The commander's turn to shake his head. His mood seemed to have changed. "Difficult? It is more than that! This is ... this is a tail-star burning across the sky. A good omen or a bad one, depending on what it traverses."
"And depending on who reads the signs," Tai said quietly. He didn't like alchemists or astrologers, as it happened.
Commander Lin nodded. "These horses should be glorious--for you, for all of us. But these are challenging times to which you are returning. Xinan is a dangerous place."
"It always has been," Tai said.
"More so now," said the commander. "Everyone will want your horses. They might tear you apart for them." He sipped his tea. "I do have a thought."
He was clearly thinking very hard. Tai almost felt sorry for the man: you were posted to a quiet border fort, sought to do well there, maintain order, efficiency, move onwards in due course.
Then two hundred and fifty Heavenly Horses arrived, more or less.
A tail-star, indeed. A comet streaking from the west.
"I will be grateful to learn any thoughts you have," he said. He felt formality reasserting within himself, a way of dealing with unease. It had been so long since he'd been part of this intricate world. Of any world beyond lake and meadow and graves. He did think he knew what was coming. Some moves in a game could be anticipated.
"Your father was a great leader, mourned by all of us, in the west, especially. You have the army in your blood, son of General Shen. Accept these dragon steeds in the name of the Second Military District! The one nearest Kuala Nor itself! Our military governor is at Chenyao. I will give you an escort, an honour guard. Present yourself to Governor Xu, offer the Heavenly Horses. Can you imagine the rank you will be given? The honour and glory!"
As expected.
And it did explain the man's fear. Lin Fong was obviously aware that if he didn't at least try to keep the horses for the army here it would be a mark against his own record, fairly or not. Tai looked at him. In some ways the idea was tempting, an immediate resolution. In others ...
He shook his head. "And I do this, Commander Lin, before appearing at court? Before relating to our serene and glorious emperor or his advisers how the princess, his daughter, has so honoured me? Before also telling the first minister? I do imagine Prime Minister Chin Hai will have views on this."
"And before letting any
other
military governors know of these horses?" The Kanlin woman spoke softly, but very clearly. "The army is not undivided, commander. Do you not think, for example, that Roshan in the northeast will have thoughts as to where they belong? He commands the Imperial Stables now, does he not? Do you think his views could matter? Is it possible that Master Shen, coming from two years of isolation, needs to learn a little more before surrendering such a gift to the first man who asks for it?"
The look the commander shot her was venomous.
"You," he snapped, "have no status in this room! You are here only to be questioned about the assassin, and that will come."
"It will, I hope," Tai agreed. He took a breath. "But I would like to give her status, if she will accept. I wish to hire her as my guard, going forward from here."
"I accept," the woman said quickly.
Her gaze met his. She didn't smile.
"But you thought she was here to kill you!" the commander protested.
"I did. Now I believe otherwise."
"Why?"
Tai looked across at the woman again. She sat gracefully, eyes lowered again, seemingly composed. He didn't think she was.
He considered his answer. Then he allowed himself a smile. Chou Yan would have enjoyed this moment, he thought, would have absolutely savoured it, then told the tale endlessly, embellishing it differently each time. Thinking of his friend, Tai's smile faded. He said, "Because she bound up her hair before coming here."
The commander's expression was diverting.
"She ... because ...?"
Tai kept his voice grave. This remained an important man for him for the next little while. Lin Fong's dignity had to be protected.
"Her hands and feet are free, and she has at least two weapons in her hair. The Kanlin are trained to kill with those. If she wanted me dead I would be, already. So would you. If she were another rogue, she wouldn't care about the consequences to Stone Mountain of killing you. She might even manage to escape."
"Three weapons," Wei Song said. She pulled one of her hairpins out and laid it down. It rested, gleaming, on the platform. "And escape is considered preferable, but is not expected with certain assignments."
"I know that," said Tai.
He was watching the commander, and he saw a change.
It was as if the man settled into himself, accepted that he had done what he could, would be able to absorb and deflect whatever criticism came from superiors. This was beyond him, larger by far than a border fortress. The court had been invoked.
Lin Fong sipped his tea, calmly poured more from the dark-green ceramic pot on the lacquered tray at his side. Tai did the same thing from his own. He looked at the woman. The hairpin rested in front of her, long as a knife. The head of it was silver, in the shape of a phoenix.
"You will, at least, attend upon Xu Bihai, the governor, in Chenyao?"
Lin Fong's expression was earnest. This was a request, no more. On the other hand, the commander did not suggest he visit the prefect in Chenyao. Army against civil service, endlessly. Some things never changed, year over year, season after season.
There was no need to comment. And if he also went to see the prefect, that was his own affair. Tai said simply, "Of course I will, if Governor Xu is gracious enough to receive me. I know that he knew my father. I will hope to receive counsel from him."
The commander nodded. "I will send my own letter. As to counsel ... you have been much removed, have you not?"
"Very much," said Tai.
Moons above a mountain bowl, waxing and waning, silver light upon a cold lake. Snow and ice, wildflowers, thunderstorms. The voices of the dead on the wind.
Lin Fong looked unhappy again. Tai found himself beginning to like the man, unexpectedly. "We live in difficult days, Shen Tai. The borders are peaceful, the empire is expanding, Xinan is the glory of the world. But sometimes such glory ..."
The woman remained very still, listening.
"My father used to say that times are always difficult," Tai murmured, "for those living through them."
The commander considered this. "There are degrees, polarities. The stars find alignments, or they do not." This was rote, from a Third Dynasty text. Tai had studied it for the examinations. Lin Fong hesitated. "For one thing, the first thing, the honoured empress is no longer in the Ta-Ming Palace. She has withdrawn to a temple west of Xinan."
Tai drew a breath. It was important news, though not unexpected.
"And the lady Wen Jian?" he asked softly.
"She has been proclaimed as Precious Consort, and installed in the empress's wing of the palace."
"I see," said Tai. And then, because it was important to him, "And the ladies attending upon the empress? What of them?"
The commander shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I'd assume they went with her, at least some of them."
Tai's sister had gone to Xinan three years before, to serve the empress as a lady-in-attendance. A privilege granted to Shen Gao's daughter. He needed to find out what had happened to Li-Mei. His older brother would know.
His older brother was an issue.
"That is indeed a change, as you said. What else must I know?"
Lin Fong reached for his tea cup, put it down. He said, gravely,
"You named the prime minister. That was an error. Alas, First Minister Chin Hai died last autumn."
Tai blinked, shaken. He hadn't been ready for this, at all. It felt for a moment as if the world rocked, as if some tree of colossal size had fallen and the fort was shaking with the reverberation.
Wei Song spoke up. "It is generally believed, though we have heard it suggested otherwise, that he died of an illness contracted with an autumn chill."
The commander looked narrowly at her.
We have heard it suggested otherwise.
These could be called words of treason.
Commander Lin said nothing, however. It could never have been said that the army held any love for Emperor Taizu's brilliant, all-controlling first minister.
Chin Hai, tall, thin-bearded, thin-shouldered, famously suspicious, had governed under the emperor through a quarter-century of growing Kitan wealth and fabulous expansion. Autocratic, ferociously loyal to Taizu and the Celestial Throne, he'd had spies everywhere, could exile--or execute--a man for saying something too loudly in a wine shop, overheard by the wrong person.
A man hated and terribly feared, and possibly indispensable.
Tai waited, looking at the commander. Another name was coming now. Had to be coming.
Commander Lin sipped from his tea. He said, "The new first minister, appointed by the emperor in his wisdom, is Wen Zhou, of ... of distinguished lineage." The pause was deliberate, of course. "Is his a name you might know?"
It was. Of course it was. Wen Zhou was the Precious Consort's cousin.
But that wasn't the thing. Tai closed his eyes. He was remembering a scent, green eyes, yellow hair, a voice.
"And if someone should ask me ... should propose to make me his personal courtesan, or even a concubine?"
He opened his eyes. They were both looking at him curiously.
"I know the man," he said.