He had not moved or opened his eyes since falling unconscious by another fire to the south weeks before.
It was not his remembered laughter. The way he stood and moved was appallingly different, this shambling, slack-limbed, unnatural posture. The Kitan soldiers, in an alien place among burning and the dead, stopped wheeling their horses about, stopped shouting. They clustered together, close to Tai again as if for protection, keeping their distance from Meshag.
Looking at this man—if he was still a man—Tai understood that the evils of this day had not ended.
He heard sounds beside him, arrows clicking from sheaths, nocked to strings. He stirred, he rasped an order—and was not sure if what he did was right. He might die not knowing, he would decide on the ride back south.
“Hold!” he cried. “No man shoots an arrow!”
What was left of Meshag, or what had become of him, turned, cumbersome and slow, to look at Tai, tracking the sound of his voice.
Their gazes locked through smoke. Tai shivered. He saw a blankness in those eyes, something unfathomable. Cold as the end of all life. It occurred to him, in that same moment, that his task, his duty to what had once been a man, might be to grant him the arrows’ release.
He did not. He knew—he could not deny knowing—that something evil had been happening in that cabin (still burning, a red, roaring chaos) before he burst in and killed the shaman. It might have been interrupted, incomplete, but what that meant, what it implied for the figure standing stiffly before him, holding his gaze, as if committing Tai to memory, he couldn’t hope to grasp.
“Like the swans,” he said loudly to his cavalry. “Killing it might curse us all. This is not our affair. Let it … let him go. He will find his fate without us.”
He said that last as clearly as he could, staring at the soul-wracking figure of Meshag. If the creature moved towards them the soldiers would panic, Tai knew. He’d have to allow the arrows to fly, and live with that.
He didn’t believe his own swan comparison. He hadn’t even believed killing a swan would curse them … that was Bogü fear. The Kitan had their own animal legends and fears. But the words might offer something to his men, a reason to listen to him. They didn’t normally need reasons: soldiers followed orders, as simple as that. But this northward journey and today’s ending to it were so remote in all ways from their normal lives and world that it seemed necessary to offer one.
As for why, in his own mind, it felt proper to give this dead-eyed, impossibly reawakened figure the chance to leave this place and live—if living was what it was—Tai could only call it pity, then and after.
He wondered if that came through in his voice, in the look they exchanged. He wouldn’t have said it was an entirely human gaze, Meshag’s, but neither would he have said it wasn’t, that there was some demon in there. Meshag was altered, and it seemed to Tai he might well be lost, but he didn’t know.
Killing him might have been the truest answer to what had been done to him, offering the kindness of release, but Tai didn’t do it, and didn’t allow his soldiers to do it. He wasn’t even sure this figure could be killed, and he really didn’t want to test that.
After a long stillness, barely breathing, he saw Meshag—or what had been Meshag—move one hand, in a gesture he could not interpret. The figure turned away from him, from all of them, living and dead and burning. Meshag didn’t laugh again, and he never did speak. He loped away, around the burning cabin and then along the shore of the lake, towards the fire-coloured autumn trees and the distant, almost-hidden mountains.
Tai and his men stayed together, watching him through the smoke until he passed from sight, and then they started the other way, towards home.
They had left the silk farm and the orange flare of the fox far behind.
The sun was going down, also orange now. Tai realized he’d been wrapped in reverie for a long time, tracing memory, the paths that had led him here.
Or, one particular path, that journey north: past Wall, past river’s loop, beyond the steppes to the edge of winter’s land.
In the eye of his mind, riding now with six companions on a glorious Sardian horse, he still saw Meshag, son of Hurok—or whatever he had become—shambling away alone. It occurred to him that, having seen this, having been a part of that day, he ought not to be so quickly dismissive of someone else’s belief in fox-women.
Or, perhaps, because of his own history, that was why he needed to be dismissive? There were only two people in the world with whom he could even have imagined talking about this feeling. One of them was in Xian and it was very likely he would never be able to speak with her again. The other was Chou Yan, who was dead.
No man can number his friends
And say he has enough of them.
I broke willow twigs when you left,
My tears fell with the leaves.
Wei Song was still up front. The stream they were following was on their left, a wide valley stretching from it, fertile lands, both banks. The forest that had flanked them to the south had receded. This was farming land. They could see peasant huts clustering into hamlets and villages, men and women in the fields, charcoal burners’ fires against the darkening trees.
Tai had come this way heading west, approaching Kuala Nor two years ago, but he’d been in a strange state of mind then—grieving, withdrawn—and he hadn’t paid attention to the land through which he rode. Looking back, he couldn’t say he’d begun to think clearly about what he was doing, what he intended to do, until he’d ridden beyond Iron Gate Fort up the long ravine and come out and seen the lake.
He needed to become a different man now.
Spring Rain had warned him so many times about the dangers of the Ta-Ming Palace, the world of court and mandarin—and now he had the army, the military governors to consider as well.
Someone wanted him dead, had wanted that before he’d received the horses. He couldn’t keep them, he knew he couldn’t keep them.
Not in the world as it was. The issue was what he did with them, and—before that—how he could live long enough to claim them back at the Taguran border.
He twitched Dynlal’s reins and the big horse moved effortlessly forward to catch up to the Kanlin woman. The sun was behind them, shining along the plain. It was almost time to stop for the night. They could camp out again, or approach one of these villages. He wasn’t sure where the next posting station was.
She didn’t turn her head as he pulled up beside her. She said, “I’d be happier inside walls, unless you object.”
It was the fox, he guessed. This time he didn’t make a jest. He still carried the long day’s dark remembering, a smell of burning in his mind from a northern lake.
“Whatever you say.”
This time she did look over, he saw anger in her eyes. “You are indulging me!”
Tai shook his head. “I am listening to you. I retained you to protect me. Why hire a guard dog and bark yourself?”
Not calculated to appease her, but he didn’t exactly feel like doing that. It did occur to him to mildly regret hiring her. The soldiers from the fort would surely have been enough protection. But he hadn’t known that he’d be given a military escort.
There was more … person in her than he’d expected. She’d been chosen by Spring Rain, he needed to think about that. He had many things to think about, it seemed.
He said, “You never did tell me that night if Rain knows anything, or told you, about why someone sent a Kanlin to kill me.”
A weak question … he’d have been informed by now, if she knew. He expected a remark to that effect, didn’t get one. “A false Kanlin,” she reminded him, reflexively. Then added, “If the Lady Lin Chang knew, I do not. I don’t believe she did know. Your friend was bringing you tidings, and it seemed you weren’t to know them.”
“No.” Tai shook his head. “It is more than that. Or they’d have killed Yan before he reached me. It would have been easy to have him die along the way. They were al
one.”
She looked at him. “I never thought of that.”
“They didn’t want me alive to act on whatever he was coming to tell me, if I found it out some other way.”
She was still staring. Tai grinned suddenly. “What? You are astonished I can think of something you didn’t?”
She shook her head, looked away. Watching her, Tai felt his mood darken. The joking felt shallow. He said, not sure why he was confiding, “He was a dear friend. Never harmed a soul in life that I know of. I am going to want to know why he died, and do something about it.”
She turned again to look at him. “You may not be able to do anything, depending on what you discover.”
Tai cleared his throat. “We had better choose a village soon, if you want to negotiate for shelter.”
Her turn to smile, as if to herself. “Look ahead.”
Tai did so. “Oh,” he said.
The land rose slightly before them. He saw that the road widened, three lanes now, the middle one reserved for imperial riders. In the distance, caught by the setting sun, he could just make out the walls of a fair-sized city, with banners flying.
Chenyao. They had arrived. And closer to them, beside the road, obviously waiting, Tai noticed a small group of men. They had horses but had dismounted, respectfully. One of them, formally dressed, lifted a hand in salute.
“You are being met outside the walls,” Wei Song murmured. “It is an honour. Iron Gate sent word of your coming, with the courier.”
“The horses,” Tai said.
“Well, of course,” Song replied. “You will probably have to meet with the military governor and the prefect, both, before you can go find a woman. So very sorry.”
He couldn’t think of a rejoinder.
He lifted a hand in a return salute to those waiting. They immediately bowed, all of them, as if pulled downwards by his gesture, like puppets in a street theatre.
Tai drew a breath and let it out. It was beginning.
CHAPTER VII
It might have been thought that the most beautiful and talented of the singing girls, the courtesans who could break a man’s heart or bring him to a climax in ways he had never imagined, would all be in Xinan, with its world-dazzling wealth and the palace by the northern walls.
That would have been a fair assumption, but not an accurate one. Market and canal-side towns could emerge as celebrated or notorious for a variety of reasons, and the grace and skill of their women was one. The south had its own traditions in the matter of lovemaking, as far back as the Fourth Dynasty, some of these sufficiently subversive to be discussed only in whispers or after too much wine.
The northeast was a wasteland in this regard, of course: soldiers and camp followers in the wind-scoured fortresses by the Long Wall, repressive cities (also wind-scoured) dominated by an ascetic aristocracy that saw the last three imperial dynasties as new arrivals, barely worth acknowledging.
Chenyao, however, was at the other end of the empire, and the Silk Road passed through it, becoming the imperial highway, bringing traders and trade goods into the market square and pleasure district of a prosperous, lively city.
Lying so far west, Chenyao also had a reputation for Sardian girls—the fair-haired, blue- or green-eyed goddesses from beyond the deserts, so very appealing in Ninth Dynasty Kitai.
One such woman was called Spring Rain, who was in Xinan, and whose name now appeared to be Lin Chang, and who belonged as a personal concubine to the new first minister of the empire.
There were a number of reasons, Tai decided, that it was past time for him to become extremely drunk.
One was a friend’s death. He kept reclaiming images of Yan: laughing until he spluttered and choked in a wine-cup game in the North District, or studying on a bench next to Tai, in ferocious concentration, chanting under his breath to memorize a passage, or the two of them climbing a tower outside the walls during the Festival of Chrysanthemums, which was about friendship. And now this friend was lying in a lakeside grave beside the assassin who had killed him. The second reason for needing wine (good wine, one might hope) was that someone had tried to kill him and he didn’t know who, or why.
The third was Rain.
She had foreseen her departure from the North District more than two years ago, had warned Tai about it. He hadn’t believed it could happen—or had denied it to himself. Not the same thing.
Against his will, he found himself remembering a night in the Pavilion of Moonlight, Rain and three other girls entertaining the students, laughter and music in the largest room.
A silence had fallen. Tai’s back had been to the doors.
He’d seen Rain glance over, and then—without the slightest hesitation—stand up and, carrying her pipa, walk away from them towards the man Tai saw in the doorway as he turned to watch her go.
Wen Zhou had not been first minister then. But he was wealthy, well-born … and a favourite cousin of the emperor’s favoured concubine, which mattered most of all. He was a big man, handsome and knowing it, elegantly dressed.
He could have had any woman in Xinan sent to him. He’d wanted Rain. It amused him to come to her in the city, and there was no question of scholars claiming any kind of priority once such a man arrived—the idea was laughable.
Tai remembered that night, though it wasn’t the only time. Zhou’s gaze had flicked over the party of students before turning to Rain, accepting her graceful homage. She’d led him out, towards a private room.
Tai tried to sort out why that memory was the one that had returned, and decided it was because Zhou’s gaze had actually held his a moment, a too-long moment, before looking away.
There was a poem by Chan Du about powerful men and women of the court enjoying a feast in Long Lake Park, suggesting that with certain men it was better if they never noticed you.
He’d been noticed that night.
He didn’t want a yellow-haired girl in Chenyao.
He did need a woman, after so much time alone. And, he decided, assorted ghosts and malign spirits could choose amongst themselves which would torment the smug Kanlin Warrior he’d mistakenly hired at Iron Gate.
He’d arranged with the escort waiting outside the walls that he would call upon the prefect and the military governor—in that order—in the morning. They both wanted him tonight. He declined, politely.
Tonight was his own.
They were inside a city patrolled by soldiers, safe from roaming bandits—or spirit-world fox-women. He’d had Wei Song book the best available inn for the seven of them.
He’d also decided to keep the cavalrymen from Iron Gate. It was a small enough gesture of acknowledgement to Commander Lin, who had given him cash for the road, including the inn here, and what turned out to be a handsome room with a good-sized bed and sliding doors leading out to a garden.
Five guards from a border fortress were not going to link him too closely to the Second Military District when he got to the capital, but their presence with Tai might be of use to the commander who had assigned them.
There had been competing invitations from the welcoming party on the way into the city, to be the honoured house guest of both the men in power here: a competition that made it easier for Tai to take his own lodging. The governor was more powerful (they always were, these days) but the prefect had the title that signified in protocol, and Tai had studied in Xinan long enough to know how this matter needed to be dealt with, come morning.
THERE WERE GIRLS at his inn, of course, in a pavilion behind the first building, red lanterns hanging from the eaves there. One of the women, he noticed, when he strolled across the courtyard and looked in, was charming—or could that be due to his not having been close to a silk-clad woman in two years?
There was a pipa being played, and another girl with wide red sleeves was dancing. He stayed a few moments to watch in the doorway. But this was a comfortable inn, not the entertainment district, and Tai had been cheerfully advised by the escort sent out to meet him which o
f the courtesan houses was most likely to please a man of taste with some reserves of cash.
He left the inn to make his way there.
The night streets of Chenyao were crowded, lit by hanging lanterns on walls and carried by torches. That was something else he hadn’t experienced for a long time: men pushing the darkness back, so the nights might hold more than fear. He wouldn’t have denied feeling a measure of aroused anticipation.
In Xinan, nightfall marked the curfew, the city gates and those of each ward locked until the dawn drums, but this was a market town on the merchants’ road and rules were slack here, of necessity. Men, many of them foreigners, emerging from the hardship of the long passage around the deserts, would not readily submit to limits on their movements when they finally arrived at a civilized place, knowing their journey was over.
They’d pay their duties and taxes, submit to inspection of goods, bribe clerks—and the prefect—as required, but they wouldn’t stay in one place after dark.
There were enough soldiers in Chenyao, this close to the Taguran border, to ensure relative good order even if travellers were abroad at night. Tai saw clusters of soldiers here and there, but they looked relaxed, not oppressive. Moonlit carousing was encouraged here: men feasting and drinking spent money, left it in the city.
Tai was prepared to be one of those.
Music, graceful women dancing, good food and wine, and then a chosen girl, eyes dark with promise, the nearly forgotten scent of a woman, legs that could wrap themselves around him, a mouth and fingers skilled in provoking, in exploring … and a candlelit private room where he could begin to feel his way back into the world he’d left behind at Kuala Nor.
He was distracted, he would later decide, his thoughts running too far ahead through the noisy streets, or else he’d not have been so easily trapped.
He ought to have been alerted when the short laneway he turned down, following directions given, was suddenly not noisy, or thronged. He was alone, he realized.