Tai said, “Judged, but not admired?”
Sima Zian grinned again. A smile seemed to be his natural expression. “Not by all. The same is true, of course, of the first minister himself. We live in challenging times. Assessments are going to be made.”
Tai looked quickly around. Only the two girls with their wine were in possible range of hearing this.
The poet laughed. “You are concerned for me? What would Wen Zhou do? Exile me from Xinan again? He would like to, I suspect. So would others. It was decided by friends who care for me that this might be a good summer to absent myself from the capital. That’s why I’m drinking in a pleasure house in the west. In part.”
A deliberate pause, an obvious invitation. Taking it, Tai murmured, “In part?”
That laughter again, uninhibited, infectious—though Tai was not in a state to share amusement. “The prefect was kind enough to tell me of your arrival, over dinner this evening. He mentioned that you’d inquired about where the best courtesan house in town might be. A sensible query. I wanted to meet you.”
“I am … I am humbled …” Tai heard himself stammering.
“No,” said Sima Zian. “Not after that lake beyond borders. What you did there.” His wide gaze was suddenly direct.
Tai nodded, a single awkward bob of the head. He felt flushed. Wine and the room’s warmth, the intensity of the eyes holding his.
The poet murmured:Alone among the pines,
He is a servant of no man.
How could I dream
Of ascending such a mountain?
From below that starlight
I bow my head.
The lines were well known. Zian had written them himself for a friend, years ago. Another poet, older, now gone.
Tai lowered his eyes. “You do me too much honour.”
Sima Zian shook his head. “No,” he said again. “I do not.” Then, quietly, “Do you see ghosts here tonight?”
It was a real question. Tai was startled, looked at the other man and then away. Zian held up his cup and one of the women came forward. She gestured at Tai’s and he shook his head. The poet made a face.
Tai tried to ignore that. He said, “I never saw them. At Kuala Nor.”
“Heard?”
Tai nodded, more slowly. “Every night. Once … once only, by day.” Last afternoon, sun going down. A wind that was not wind.
“Are they angry?”
The girl had stepped back down again, with the wine.
This was difficult. “Some of them. Others are lost. Or in pain.”
The poet looked away this time. At length, he shook his head. “Did you ever write about it?”
“How did you know that I …?”
The smile again, more gently. “You were studying for the examinations, I understand, when your father died. All of you write poetry, son of Shen Gao.”
“Or we try,” Tai amended. “I had paper and ink. Wrote little I judged worth keeping. I am not equal to their story.”
“Perhaps none of us are.”
Tai drew a breath. “What else did the prefect tell you?”
He wanted, he badly wanted, a man he could trust. He wanted it to be this man.
Sima Zian hesitated for the first time. Then, “He did inform me about your Sardians, the Heavenly Horses. The princess’s gift.”
“I see,” said Tai.
It was too large a tale to keep, he thought. Every man who heard it would tell.
“They will probably know in Xinan soon,” the poet added.
“I hope so. I sent word ahead.”
The eyes were thoughtful. “Because?”
“The horses are being held for me at the border. The gift is revoked if I do not claim them myself.”
“Clever,” the other man said, after a moment. “It might save your life.” He didn’t smile now.
“A Taguran captain thought of it.”
Tai wasn’t sure why he’d said that.
“A friend, clearly.”
“I think so. While we’re at peace.”
“Ah. You believe we might not be?”
Tai shook his head, suddenly uneasy. “I’ve been away two years. I have no information. What should I know?”
Abruptly, he lifted his cup. It seemed he did want another drink. The poet waited until a girl had come with wine and withdrawn, slender and young, in wine-coloured silk that rustled as she moved.
Sima Zian’s gaze drifted across the crowded, lamplit room, came back to Tai. “As to saving your life,” he murmured, under the music, “don’t look away from me, but is there a chance uncivilized men would be here with ill intent towards you?”
His voice was relaxed, almost lazy, as if they were discussing poetry or world affairs.
“It is possible,” Tai said carefully. He felt his heart beginning to hammer. Kept his gaze on the poet’s.
“Even with that message you sent ahead? The loss of the horses should you die? Of course, they might be here for me.”
“Truly?”
The poet shrugged. He was deceptively broad-shouldered; the softness hid it. “Unlikely. I offended the prime minister and the chief eunuch in the same room, which is difficult, but I don’t believe it was a deadly insult for either. Remind me to tell you the story later.”
“I will,” said Tai. Later. That meant something, didn’t it?
He cleared his throat. It took some effort not to look around. He made a decision. He would acknowledge, after, that some of it had to do with the sense of the person that came through in the poetry, and that this might not be a sound basis for judging a man. Nonetheless: “There was an assassin sent west for me, before the gift of the horses was known.”
Sima Zian’s expression changed again. Watching him, Tai saw curiosity and then—unexpectedly—a hint of pleasure.
“You killed him?”
It was widely reported that the poet had been an itinerant warrior in his youth, two horses, two swords and a bow, sleeping in caves or under stars, defending peasants against landlords and tax collectors like one of the hero-bandits of folk tales. There were stories—legends, really—about his deeds along the Great River in the wild country by the gorges.
“It was a woman,” Tai said. “But, no, I didn’t. She was killed by the Tagurans and … and the ghosts.”
You had to trust some people in life.
The poet considered this, then: “Look now! Near the door. Do you know them?”
Tai turned. There were two men to the left of the entranceway. They were in profile, engaged by three girls. Neither man was dressed for an evening in the pleasure district, let alone the best house there. Their boots and clothing were dusty and stained. They carried two swords each. One of them glanced over his shoulder just then—directly at Tai. Their gazes met, the man flicked his eyes away. It was enough, however. They were here for him.
He looked back at the poet. “I don’t know them.”
Sima Zian said, “They know you.” The poet gestured to the girl whose turn it was with their wine. “Sweet joy, are those two often here?” he asked, indicating with his chin. “Are they ever here?”
She was a composed young woman. Would have stature among the girls, to have been chosen to serve the poet. Her glance towards the door was brief, appraising. She poured the wine and murmured, “I have never seen them.” She made a disapproving face. “They are not dressed suitably.”
“Not at all,” Zian agreed cheerfully. He looked at Tai, a brightness in those eyes now. He stretched, like a big cat. “I wouldn’t mind a fight. Shall we kill them together?”
“I could ask the mistress to have them escorted out,” said the girl, quickly, “if they distress you, my lord.”
The proper thing to say. Fights were bad for a pleasure house. Killing was, obviously, worse. The poet made a face, but nodded reluctantly, was in the process of agreeing, when Tai spoke.
He heard the anger in his own voice, sharp, like the spikes of an assault ram breaking through a gate.
He was tired of being acted upon: threatened, attacked, treated as an object of malice—or even apparent benevolence—with no resources of his own. No chance to shape his own course. He did have resources in Chenyao tonight, and not just his sword.
“No,” he said. “Be so good as to go out to the governor’s sedan chair in front. Advise the soldiers there that two men are inside with ill intent towards me, and that this threatens the Second Military District, the governor’s authority, and the security of the empire. I would like them detained and questioned. I wish to know who sent them. I will await the governor’s answer later tonight at my inn. Can you do that?”
The girl smiled. It was a slightly cruel smile. She set down the wine flask on a low table. “Of course I can, my lord,” she murmured. She bowed to him, withdrawing. “Please excuse a brief absence.”
She walked down the two steps and crossed to the entrance. They watched her go. Her movements were graceful, unhurried.
“I believe,” said Sima Zian thoughtfully, “that one would make a memorable companion.”
Tai found himself nodding.
“Do you know the military governor yet? Xu Bihai will not be gentle with them,” said the poet.
“I met him tonight,” Tai said. “Not by my own choice. And so I believe you. I need to know these things, however.” He hesitated.
“The assassin who came to the lake? She killed the friend of mine she guided west under the pretext of serving him. I buried him at Kuala Nor.”
“A soldier?” asked Sima Zian.
Anger still, sorrow returning.
“Nothing like. A scholar taking the examinations with me. A man without harm in him.”
The poet shook his head. “I am sorry to learn of it. We live in troubled times.”
Tai said, “He was coming to tell me something. Came all that way to do it. She killed him before he could.”
A clattering from near the doorway. They turned. Six soldiers entered the White Phoenix.
There was a stir, but not an unduly disruptive one. The room was crowded and large. Men came in and went out all the time. The girl, who had come back with the soldiers, pointed to the two men Zian had noted.
They were approached. A brief, intense conversation ensued. One of the two went—foolishly—for his sword.
He was carried out a moment later, unconscious. The other man was hustled through the doorway between soldiers. It had only taken a moment. The music and laughter from the other side of the room hadn’t even paused. Two girls were dancing, a flute was being played.
This, Tai thought grimly, was the way of life in cities. An assault could occur in a public place and not even be noticed. He needed to remember this, relearn it. Xinan would be more of the same, and infinitely worse. The dust of the world.
Sima Zian had turned back to look at him.
“I’d have enjoyed a fight,” the poet said.
“I believe you.” Tai forced a smile.
“It is unlikely those two can tell them anything. You do know that?”
“Because?”
“If this is from Xinan, from power, there will be many people between the order and those sent to execute it.”
Tai shook his head. He was still angry. Too much wine, too much helplessness, and the memory, the image, of Chou Yan.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not so many people, if this is being kept quiet for whatever reason.”
Zian grinned happily. “For someone without any rank and two years away from the world, you know more about such things than you should.”
Tai shrugged. “My father. And my older brother advises the prime minister, as you noted.”
“He does do that, doesn’t he?” said the poet thoughtfully. “An honour for your family.”
“A great honour.”
He knew his voice didn’t match the words, and that the other man would hear it.
Sima Zian said, softly, “If these two are in Chenyao looking for you, they’ll have been given their orders some time ago. To watch for you coming back east. Probably in the event the assassin by the lake should have failed.”
The voice of his own thought.
He stared at the other man. “I still don’t know why anyone would have wanted me dead. Before the horses.”
The poet did not smile. “I do,” he said.
In the dense, canopied forests along the Great River, gibbons swung and shrieked at the boats bobbing and spinning east with the current or being pulled upstream along the gorges. Birds wheeled, crying, above the water and the crags. Tigers lived among the trees and killed men in the dark, should they be foolish enough to be abroad at night.
It was easy to see a tiger in the wide eyes holding his, Tai thought. For all the wit and worldliness of the poet, there was also something feral, a link to the wilderness that lay outside the walled and guarded cities. Sima Zian had been a bandit, on rivers and roads, never entirely a part of court or courtesan district.
You could see it.
The poet smiled again, compassion in his face now. But tigers weren’t like that, Tai thought. They never looked kind. You are going to have to do better with your images, he told himself. There was too much complexity here for a jungle cat.
The other man said, gently, “You came here for a woman, I must imagine. It has to have been a long time, and that is not good for any man, let alone one with hard decisions to make. Go upstairs, Shen Tai. I will do the same. Make use of tonight, because you can. Let us meet here a little later. We will both be the better for it, then we can decide what we will do with what I have to tell you.”
What we will do.
Tai cleared his throat. “I … whatever this is, it is surely not your trouble, or task.”
The smile deepened. “Call it wisdom in the cup, if you like, which is not always wisdom, as we know. But I have lived my days making decisions this way and I am too old to change. Poetry, friendship, wine. The essence of a man’s life. And then there is …”
The poet rose, smoothly enough, but he swayed a little when upright.
He looked down at Tai. Spread his feet a little. Rumpled, food-stained, greying hair inadequately tied. The wide eyes afire, though. He said, “You will know the passage: There is another world / That is not the world of men.”
He looked around unsteadily for the girl they’d sent to carry the message. She was beside him already. She bent, took his sword, handed it to him. She said, with a slow smile of her own, “Though it is your other sword I want now, my lord, in all truth.”
Sima Zian laughed aloud, and went with her down the two steps and then from the room through the nearest of the curtained doorways.
Tai sat a moment longer, then stood, uncertainly, claiming his own sheathed sword as he rose.
A scent was beside him in that same moment, musk, ambergris. A slender hand at his waist again. He looked at her. Crimson silk.
Her hair was gathered with pins of ivory and jade, some of it artfully allowed to fall.
“I have been patient,” she murmured. “Not without distress.”
He gazed at her. She was as beautiful to him just then as moonlight on a high meadow, as the Weaver Maid herself, as everything he remembered about the grace and mystery of women, and she did not have golden hair.
“I may not be as patient,” he said, hearing the change in his voice. Her expression altered, a darker note in the dark eyes. “That will please me, too,” she said. His pulse responded. “Please honour my need and come upstairs, my lord.”
Pipa music, quiet singing, flutes. Laughter and talk in a carefully lit room fading behind him, behind them, as she led him up the stairs to a room with a very wide bed and lamps already burning, lit by servants, flickering light waiting for them (for whoever it was who came), incense on a brazier, a window open to catch the late-spring breeze. There was a pipa on a table.
“Shall I play for you, my lord?”
“After,” Tai said.
And took her in his arms with hunger and ne
ed, with fear beneath those, and an urgency that came from all of these and found its centre in the rich red of her mouth tasting his and the slipping down of silk as she let it fall and stood before him, jewelled at ears and throat, wrists and fingers and ankles, the lamplight playing with and over the beauty of her body.
He had a sense, even as she began to disrobe him and then drew him to her upon the bed, that after this, after he went back downstairs, his life would change yet again, as much as it had when the horses were given to him. And therein lay his fear.
She was skilled and clever, unhurried, intricately versed in what it was that women were to do here, and to know about men and their needs (hidden or otherwise), in a house this well appointed. She made him laugh, more than once, and catch his breath in quick surprise, and draw breath sharply (he saw her smile then), and cry aloud, both times she took him to, and through, the long-deferred crescendo of desire.
She washed him after, using water from a basin on the table. She murmured the words of a very old folk verse as she did, and her movements were languid, replete, slow as aftermath should be. And then she did play for him, quietly, upon the pipa left in the room, bringing him back with all of these, movement by movement, mouth, fingers, fingernails, with whispers in his ear of shocking things and subtle things and, finally, with music—back from Kuala Nor to the world.
At length, Tai made himself get up. He clothed himself again as she watched, still naked on the bed, posed artfully to let him see her to best effect in the muted light, breasts, belly, the dark, inviting place between her thighs. She would attend to herself, come downstairs after him, that was the way it was done properly.
He finished dressing, found his sword, bowed to her, which was something Chou Yan had initiated among their circle: a tribute to the woman, even when one didn’t know her name and might never see her again, if she had given of herself beyond expectation and reached to needs held deep within. He saw that she was surprised.
He went out of the room and down the stairs towards the next change of his life.
The poet was on the platform, same place, likely the same cup in his hand. The two girls were there again. He wondered idly if they’d both been with him upstairs. Probably, he thought.