He sat there, the sedan chair moving steadily along the road, breathing perfume in an enclosed, intimate place removed from the ten thousand noises of the world, and he waited for the next question. The one that could plunge him--all of them--into the chaos Zian feared.
It wasn't Roshan? Who was it, then?
she was going to ask him.
She never did. Either she knew already, or she was afraid to know, or to have it said aloud. Be brought into the world, compelling a response. Her hand lifted from his calf where it had been resting again. She selected a lychee from a bowl beside her, peeled it expertly.
She extended it towards him.
"Please," said Wen Jian.
Tai took the ripe, slippery fruit from her fingers. It tasted like the south, and summer, like memories of sweetness lost.
That last, he realized, was what he was feeling. Something slipping away, almost gone. Yesterday's encounter by the road and now this one. Both of them coming to meet him on the way. Entirely different encounters but also the same at their core. Power approaching, to know what he was going to do. Needing to know, because power always needed that--knowledge was how power preserved itself, or tried.
He had set out from a mountain bowl, the battleground his father had never left behind, determined to reach Xinan to do ... to do what, precisely?
He had never decided, he'd been moving too fast.
Kill a man, he'd told the poet yesterday, as an answer for Yan's death. But Xin Lun was dead already. No fault of Tai's, no achievement of his, no credit to his name with Yan's ghost by the lake. And Lun had only been an instrument.
What else? What else had he been racing here to do, straight down the imperial road past the cut-off south that could have taken him home? Deal with the horses, somehow, that life-claiming gift.
Life-claiming. The thought reverberated strangely in his mind. Tai hadn't lived a life where enemies, on a murderous scale, had played any kind of role. But the first minister wanted him dead. On a whim, most likely. Because he
could
. Wen Zhou, who was this woman's kin, holding office because of her.
He looked at Jian, across from him. She had peeled her own lychee and, as he gazed, placed it delicately between her front teeth and bit down. Tai shook his head, then smiled. He had to smile, she was so obviously playing with her own desirability.
"Oh, good!" she said. She licked her lips, glistening with the fruit. "This will be a tedious journey if you are serious all the time."
The back and forth of it, he thought. Hard questions, ripe fruit bitten, a slow tongue tracing wet lips, a foot or fingers touching him, conjuring desire. Then the questions would come again.
In that moment, Tai arrived at a decision. It seemed obvious enough, and it had the virtue of simplicity. He'd only needed to finally grasp something: that he could never be subtle enough to match those waiting for him. He didn't have time to know enough, or gain an awareness of relationships, at a level that would let him move with these men and women to their music. He wouldn't even
hear
the notes they heard.
He wasn't able to probe for what they knew or wanted, play the game of words spoken and unspoken with the court and the higher civil servants and even some of the governors, in and around the Ta-Ming Palace and the emperor.
He would be among them today. And he couldn't learn that rhythm, not in the time he had. So he wouldn't even try. He'd go another way, like a holy wanderer of the Sacred Path choosing at a fork in the road, following his own truth, a hermit laughing in the mountains.
Tai drew a breath. He said, "I offered the horses to Governor An yesterday."
She stared, sat up straighter. Carefully put down an unpeeled lychee she'd just picked from the bowl.
"All of them?"
He nodded. "But I had a condition, and he declined."
"An Li rejected two hundred and fifty Sardian horses?"
"I said they were his if he brought my sister back from the Bogu. He said he could not do it. The horses are yours, illustrious lady, if you can do this."
"
All
of them?"
He nodded again. She was clearly shaken. Roshan had been, as well.
"I don't ... Is she your lover, your sister?"
He could not allow himself to be offended. This was the court. Such thoughts would occur to people. He shook his head. "Nothing like that. This is to honour my father as much as anything. He would never have let my brother do this. In our mourning period, it was an act of disrespect."
She was staring as if dazed. And the woman in this sedan chair was no simple concubine or dancer, however exquisite. This was someone who
defined
the life of the Ta-Ming now, who shaped and balanced it, in a dangerous time.
He was beginning to understand how dangerous, since yesterday and the thought he'd had: of the knife he carried, and committing murder in that carriage by the road.
"You are not suggesting it was wrong to give your sister to this marriage and send her north?"
He needed to be careful. "The Son of Heaven cannot be wrong."
"No, he cannot." Her voice was emphatic.
"This is a personal request, my lady, only that."
"You do understand," she said, her voice controlled now, "how much you can expect at court as the last hero of Kuala Nor and brother to a new princess? Have you considered that the emperor cannot be less generous than the Lion of Tagur or he is shamed? He must give you gifts that exceed those horses from Sangrama."
He hadn't thought about that. At all. Including, before this morning, the connection to Li-Mei, how much her elevation meant for him. He said as much.
Jian shook her head impatiently. Her earrings made a jingling sound. "Son of Shen Gao, you are angry with your brother for what he did. You are a rival to my cousin for a woman. Very well. Do you think
their
ranks and honours are set in jade, reserved to them forever? Do you think they might be just a little fearful of your coming?"
Tai's turn to be unsettled. "I don't know enough to judge such matters. I have little experience, or guidance. Sima Zian's, perhaps."
The woman made a face. "Not the surest counsellor, Master Shen. He has never held office, and he owes me a sweeter poem than the last he offered."
"Perhaps later today?" Tai said. "If he is permitted to--"
"I have other intentions today. Some people have been summoned to Ma-wai. This is too important to go any longer unaddressed."
"What is?"
"You are, son of Shen Gao!
You
are too important. Why do you think I am here?"
"Because ... because of the horses?"
A slow smile, honey poured to sweeten a drink. A hand, shining with rings, touched his unshod foot where he had kept it carefully against the side of the sedan chair. "You are permitted to think it is only them. But consider what I have said. I will be disappointed if you prove unintelligent. Or lack decisiveness."
Fingernails moved. He said, a little desperately, "Illustrious lady, you do not want the horses?"
"Ten of them," she said promptly. "If you wish to give me a gift in exchange for company on this road and lychees peeled for you. I want to train them to dance, I have been told it can be done. But what would I do with more than that? Lead them to war?"
"Then ... then surely the emperor? I will give the Sardians directly to the Son of Heaven."
"You
are
anxious to be rid of them, aren't you? No. Think, Shen Tai. Our exalted emperor is not permitted to be indebted to any of his subjects. His is the duty of supreme generosity. He'd have to return more than you gave him or be shamed in the eyes of the world. You control more of these horses than Kitai has received at any one time, ever. The Son of Heaven must honour you as soon as you arrive. And if you also give him the horses ...?"
Tai suddenly wished he'd taken that turnoff south, that he were riding home along a road he knew. Not all men, surely, needed to be part of the ten thousand noises, the swirling dust, the palace struggles, the guiding of the world?
He closed his eyes. Not the wisest thing to do. Her foot moved immediately, as if she'd been waiting for that. The toes flexed against his thigh. If she chose to move just a little more ... Tai opened his eyes, quickly.
"Have you ever made love in a sedan chair?" Wen Jian asked, guilelessly. Those enormous eyes met his from under perfect, painted eyebrows. "It can be done." She moved her foot.
Tai made a small, involuntary sound.
Directness.
He had decided upon that.
He said, "My lady, you are making my heart pound. My mouth is dry with desire. I know you are toying with me, like a cat, and I wish only to honour you and the emperor."
That smile again. "You know I am doing this ... this toying, do you?"
He nodded his head, too rapidly.
"And that is my only purpose, you have decided?"
He stared at her. Couldn't speak.
"Poor man. Would a lychee help at all? That dryness ...?"
Tai laughed. He couldn't help it. Her expression was mischief incarnate. A moment ago she'd been crisply explaining affairs of the empire and the world, now she was enjoying her beauty and the power it gave her. She took and peeled another fruit without waiting for his answer. She extended it. Her fingers touched his.
She said, quietly, "I told you, the emperor, may he live eternally and in joy, knows I am here, knows you are with me. He will ask me at Ma-wai if you were respectful and I will tell him you were, because indeed, you are. Does this make you feel easier?"
He was doing a lot of nodding or shaking of his head. He nodded again.
She said, "I have arranged that compensation will be paid to the family of your soldier. My under-steward has been instructed to do this before he attends to his own affairs and ends his life."
He'd forgotten about that. Tai cleared his throat. "May I ask, gracious lady, that the steward be permitted to live? Wujen Ning, my soldier, and my Kanlin will both have been aggressive in defence of me, and of the horse."
The eyebrows arched again. "You may ask. I am disinclined, however. This morning was incorrectly undertaken. It reflects badly upon me, and the throne." She selected another lychee. "In a short while we will reach a waiting carriage and your horse and companions. You will ride to Ma-wai, escorting me. I like this chair, but not for longer journeys. Do you like it?"
Again, he nodded. Then said, "Illustrious lady, I think I would like being anywhere you are."
That unhurried smile: genuine pleasure it seemed (though he truly couldn't be sure). "A smooth-enough tongue, Shen Tai. As I said, you might survive in the palace."
"Will you help me?" he asked.
He hadn't known he was going to say that.
Her expression changed. She looked at him. "I don't know," said Wen Jian.
A SHORT TIME LATER they halted at a place where--when the yellow silk curtain was pulled back--he saw that a carriage was indeed waiting. This one, too, had kingfisher feathers.
Beside it on the road (not the imperial road now, they had turned off, northeast) Tai saw Zian and Song and his soldiers on their horses, and the restless, magnificent figure of Dynlal.
He gave his horse a lychee by way of apology, and mounted up.
No great speed now, they were escorting a carriage. A west wind blew. There was birdsong as the sun climbed. They saw green hills ahead of them. They rode that way. These were the forested slopes where the most extravagant country estates of Xinan's aristocracy were to be found. The Five Tombs District it was called, near the burial place of the last emperor and his ancestors, and the vastly larger tomb the Emperor Taizu (might he live another thousand years) was building for himself.
Just before they reached the first foothills they passed a large postal station inn on this northeast-southwest road, then they came to a small lake surrounded by trees, a place celebrated for hot springs and healing waters. On the western side of the lake were a silk farm and a Kanlin retreat, on the other shore lay Ma-wai.
CHAPTER XVI
L
i-Mei has lost track of how long they've been riding. Five nights? The landscape is unvarying, remorseless. The approach of summer has made the grass very tall and there are few paths or tracks. Time blurs. She doesn't like it. She has lived her life anticipating possibilities, knowing what is happening, where she is going.
Shaping
where she is going, to whatever degree she can.
She is much like her oldest brother in this, but would not happily acknowledge that.
She knows how to ride, was taught as a child because her father thought it important, even for a girl, but this much time on a horse, day after day, is hard for her, and Meshag is not inclined to rest very often.
She is in pain at the end of each day and then weary through the next morning's riding because nights sleeping under stars are cold and not restful. She'd hoped this discomfort would pass.
She says nothing about it, but is aware that he knows. She has a sense they are travelling more slowly than he wants to, because of her. She's tried to shorten their rest times herself, being the first to stand up, but Meshag has simply ignored her when she does this. He will only move when he is ready to move, or decides that she is, more likely.
But he'd said, back in the cave (another world, where she killed a man), that his brother would follow them, with shamans, and it is clear to her that whatever Meshag, son of Hurok, has become, whatever dark link he might have to wolves and the wild and spirits, he doesn't want the shamans catching them. Surely for her sake, possibly for his own.
He's avoided his people, hasn't he? Stayed clear of his brother all these years since
her
brother saved his life (maybe saved his life). But now, for her--for Shen Li-Mei, a woman from Kitai--he's approached the Bogu again, stolen her away, and they are being pursued. So he has told her. Li-Mei has no way of knowing the truth. It leaves her uneasy, even angry. She asked him, some time ago, why they hadn't already been caught, since they weren't travelling at great speed.
"They have to find us," he said. "Have other princess to carry north. They do not know which way we travel. He had to wait for a shaman."
A long answer, for him.
She has only the barest idea of where they are. They have been riding east. These are Shuoki lands, but if she remembers rightly they move north as the weather warms. The Shuoki are enemies of the Bogu. There are Kitan garrison forts somewhere in this direction, northern outposts. The Long Wall is south of them, of course. She doesn't know how far, but it will be rising and falling with the land like some serpent heading to meet the sea. Ahead of them will be nothing but grassland if the Shuoki are indeed north. The Bogu do not graze their herds this far east, and they are nowhere near the Koreini Peninsula.
He is taking her into emptiness.
It has been two days since any sign of human life--morning smoke by a distant lake. Meshag had decided not to go that way for water, though they'd been rationing theirs by that point. He'd found a small pool towards evening. They camped there, the wolves on guard.
So she does have some notion of time, after all, she tells herself. A pool of water two nights ago, a slight rise in the land last night in the open. No real shelter since the cave with the horses on the walls.
They have made no fires of their own at night. He hasn't touched her, except to help her on her horse. She has thought about that. Has thought about it a great deal.
She'd expected to have been taken physically by now, has been preparing for it from the time she waited in the yurt, in darkness. She is a woman alone with a man in an expanse of empty land--certain events usually follow upon that.
Meshag is too different, however, in visible, unsettling ways. She doesn't know what to think any more.
She has never made love to a man, has only played with the other girls at court, giggling or whispering explorations to little import. Some of the others have done more--with each other, with courtiers (or one of the princes) in the Ta-Ming--but Li-Mei has not. The empress, even when they were still in the palace, was devout and demanding:
her
women were expected to observe rules of well-bred conduct, which were clear on this matter.
Once, the emperor's named heir, Prince Shinzu (a special case, of course), had come to stand behind Li-Mei during a musical performance in the Min-Tan, the Hall of Light.
As the musicians played and the dancers began, she had felt sweetened breath on her neck, then a hand brushing her lower back, through silk, gliding down, back up, down again. Shinzu was regarded as vividly irresponsible, charming, rarely sober. There were endless rumours as to how long he'd remain heir, or even why he was Taizu's chosen successor among so many sons.
She remembers that day extremely well, remembers standing, eyes forward, towards the dancers, not moving at all, breathing carefully, suspended between outrage and excitement and helplessness as he touched her from behind, unseen.
He hadn't done anything more. Hadn't even spoken with Li-Mei afterwards, then or at any other time before she went away from the palace with the empress into exile.
With a murmured phrase (she hadn't even heard the words clearly) he'd moved on when the music ended. She'd seen him talking to another lady of the court, after, laughing, another wine cup in his hand. The woman was laughing, too. Li-Mei could recall ambivalent feelings, seeing that.
She has never considered herself the sort of beauty to drive a man to excesses of desire or recklessness. Nor, even, was she the kind of woman who normally elicited even transitory attention on an autumn afternoon in the Hall of Light.
Had her father been alive she'd be married by now, undoubtedly, and would know much more about this aspect of the world. Men and women. She's been ready to learn for a while. Were Shen Gao still living, his daughter would not now be alone with a barbarian rider and wolves among the grasslands of the north.
Meshag sleeps a little apart from her. The wolves take stations like sentinels in a wide circle around them. The stars have been more dazzling each night as the moon wanes. She sees the Weaver Maid set each evening, then the Sky River appear overhead as darkness deepens, and then the lost mortal lover rising east, on the far side of the River.
She is never easy about the wolves, still tries not to look at them, but they aren't going to harm her, she knows now, because of Meshag. Every day he has ridden away before sunrise, mist rising from the grass. He's made her keep riding alone, heading into the sun as soon as it is up and the mist has burned away. The wolves guide her, guard her.
She still hates them. You couldn't change a lifetime's thinking and feeling and fear in a few days, could you?
Each time, Meshag has caught up with them before midday, with food. He is hunting, in the hunter's time before dawn. He even brings firewood, kindling on his back. He tramples grass, shapes a space, builds low, careful daytime fires.
They eat rabbits, or marmots most recently--today--skinned and cooked, a whittled stick through them. He gives her some kind of fruit to peel. She doesn't know the name of it. It is bitter but she eats it. Drinks water. Washes her face and hands, always, more symbol than anything else. She is Kitan, and her father's daughter. Stands and stretches, does it before Meshag does.
They ride on, the sun overhead, clouds, no clouds, the days mild, evenings chilly, the nights cold. The plain stretches, all directions, unlike anything she's ever known, the grass so high, nearly hiding them, even on horseback, as they go. It does conceal the wolves, she can just about forget that they are there.
She can almost imagine they will ride like this forever, in silence, through tall grass, with wolves.
NOTHING IS FOREVER, not since the world changed after the war in heaven.
Late that same day, the sun behind them. Li-Mei is weary, trying to hide it, glad Meshag rides in front and seldom looks back. He leaves it to the lead wolf to be sure she is keeping up. She has been reciting poetry, not with any theme or coherence, only to distract herself, keep herself riding until he calls a halt.
Then he does halt, too sharply. She hasn't been paying attention, almost bumps his mount with hers. She pulls up quickly, twitches her reins, comes around beside him.
He is looking at the sky.
A few clouds ahead of them, some to the north, pink and yellow in the light of the low, long sun. No sign of rain, any kind of storm. The wind is easy. It isn't anything like that.
She sees a swan. Sees that this is what he is watching. His face has become very still.
It is just a bird,
she wants to say. But she has been among strangeness long enough now to know that he would not be looking up like this, looking like this, if it were simply a bird flying by.
She sees him draw the short, thick Bogu bow from his saddle.
He hadn't had a bow when he'd come for her. He'd taken this one when he stole the horse. Li-Mei moves her own mount away, to give him room. The swan is flying south, towards them.
It is springtime. Even she knows a swan should not be flying south in spring. It is alone. Perhaps lost, having wandered in the high roads of the sky? She doesn't really think that. Not when she looks at the man beside her, arrow now to bowstring, the bow lifted. It is a very long shot, she has time to think.
She hears the arrow's release.
Red song of war arrows, red sun.
There are so many poems about bow-songs and war in Kitai, back a thousand years to the first shaping of the empire.
Meshag has not looked awkward or rigid, she realizes. Not claiming his bow, fitting the arrow, letting it fly.
The swan falls out of the sky. So white against the colours of the clouds and the blue. It disappears into the grass.
She sees two wolves go after it, swift, avid. There is silence.
"Why?" she asks, finally.
He is looking back west. Sky and grass. He puts the bow away.
"He has found me," he says. "Ill chance."
She hesitates. "Your brother?"
He nods. The wind moves his hair.
"The ... a
swan
was searching?"
He nods his head again, absently this time. It is clear that he is thinking. Devising.
He says, "Now when shamans will call it there is no answer. They know direction each bird was sent. Will know I killed it."
She is afraid again. It is the strangeness of all things that frightens her most. You killed a bird in the sky, just as you killed rabbits or marmots in morning mist, and that meant ...
"Couldn't it have been hunted for food? By someone else?"
He looks at her. The black eyes. "Bogu never kill swans."
"Oh," she says.
He continues to gaze at her, a longer look than any she can remember. His eyes take in light and swallow it.
He says, "My brother would hurt you."
She has not expected this. "
Hurt
me?"
"He is ... like that."
She thinks a moment. "Some men are, too, in Kitai."
He seems to be working with a thought. He says, "When I was ... I was not like him."
When I was
. When he was a man? She doesn't want to go towards that, it is dark in that direction.
She says, to fill silence, not really needing an answer, "Why would he hurt me? A Kitan princess, bringing him glory?"
He moves a shoulder, the awkward shrug. "Far too many questions. You are always asking. Not proper for women."
She looks away. Then back. "Then I need to thank you again, and be grateful I am not going to him, don't I? Will they catch us now? Where are we riding? What have you decided to do?"
They are a test of sorts, these swift, immediate inquiries. She is the way she is.
She sees the expression she has decided to call a smile.
There are ways of beating back fear, strangeness, the sense of being profoundly lost in the world.
THEY HAVE RIDDEN until darkness has almost gathered the land, eating cold meat in the saddle and the remains of the fruit. The waning moon has set. Li-Mei, in real discomfort, has continued to remain silent about it. They will be pursued now. He is trying to save her. This is no springtime ride in the Deer Park to see animals feeding or drinking at twilight.
He brings her to water again. She isn't certain how, this far from Bogu lands. It is the wolves, she decides.
He tells her they can rest only a short while, that she is to sleep right away. They will ride in darkness now, will do this every night. But then, after staring towards her in the almost-lost gloaming, his features difficult to see, he orders her to lie face down on the short grass by the pond.
She obeys.
Now it begins
, she thinks, her heart beginning to race against her will. (How does one control a heartbeat?)
But she is wrong, again. He comes to her, yes, but not in need, or hunger. He kneels beside her and begins to work the muscles of her back, his fingers mingling pain with the easing of pain. When she tenses, wincing, he slaps her lightly, the way you might slap a restive horse. She tries to decide if she's offended. Then makes herself settle into his hands. She is going to be riding again soon, this is no time or place to carry pride. What can
offended
mean here? His movements remain stiff, but very strong. She cries out once, apologizes. He says nothing.
She wonders abruptly--perhaps an illumination?--if his physical restraint, this indifference to her being a woman, is caused by what happened to him those years ago. Could it be he has been rendered incapable of desire, or the accomplishment of it?
She knows so little about this, but it is possible, surely. And it would explain ...
Then, at one point, as his hands slow, and then slow again, and linger near her hips, she becomes aware that his breathing has changed. She cannot see anything by then, is face down in the grass, can only be aware of him as a presence, touching her.
And though Shen Li-Mei, only daughter of an honourable house, has never shared a bed or couch with any man, or explored very far along even the first pathways of lovemaking, she knows--with instinctive certainty--that this man is not indifferent to her as a woman in the dark with him, and alone. Which means, if he is holding himself back it is not because he cannot feel--
And in that moment she understands another part of what is happening. Now, and since he came for her between the campfires, back west. She closes her eyes. Draws her own slow breath.
His is, in truth, a gesture, from a largeness of spirit she's not been prepared for. These are barbarians. Everyone living outside the borders of Kitai is a barbarian. You didn't expect ... grace from them. You couldn't, could you?