He’d actually gone once to the nearer, eastern market the summer before, just to see it again. It had been a reckless, misguided thing to do. Getting there had taken him most of a day, limping and in pain, mocked by children. He’d fallen several times, and been stepped on, and had then been at real risk, at day’s end, of not getting back inside the ward when the drums began.
You were beaten by the gate guards for that.
He would ask someone to buy him lychees. There were several of the servants he trusted, and he would share his bounty. They had saved his life, after all. And surely there was value in any life, even one such as his?
Earlier today, Hwan had come out again, taking the long walk around to tell him someone else would be coming along Qin’s street tonight, and would need to be shown the tree and how to climb, and where the gazebo might be found.
“It is for her?” was all Qin asked.
“Of course it is,” Hwan said.
“Please bow three times. Tell her that her most humble servant in the world under heaven will ensure that it is done.”
That night a man did come walking, with five Kanlins. One of these, Qin saw, was the woman who’d come before. He knew because he didn’t need to call out to them, she came straight over to his tree. Since it was the woman who’d been here they didn’t need instructions. The man looked down at Qin in the darkness (they carried no torches). He saw the small shelter built for him.
He gave Qin two coins, even before going over the wall. Three of the Kanlin went with him, two remained in the street, on guard.
Qin wanted to tell them that he would have served as a guard, but he wasn’t a foolish man. These were Kanlin, they had swords across their backs. They wore black, as ever, and melted into the night. After a time he had no idea where they were, but he knew that they were there.
HER PIPA RESTS on the wide, smooth, waist-high railing. She is standing by one of the gazebo’s rosewood pillars, leaning against it. It is chilly now but she has a short jacket, green as leaves, with gold thread, to cover her bodice, which is gold. Her green, ankle-length skirt has stripes running down it, also gold. The silk is unexceptional. It would have been noted had she worn finer silk, with the master away.
She wears no perfume, same reason.
She is on her feet because she has heard someone coming—from the eastern side of the garden, where the oak tree can be climbed.
The one lantern casts an amber glow. The gazebo will seem like a cabin in a dark forest, she imagines, a refuge, sanctuary for a lost traveller. It isn’t, she thinks. There is no sanctuary here.
Footsteps ascend the two steps and he is here.
He kneels immediately, head lowered, before she can even see his face, register his presence properly. She has not expected him to do this. She’s had no real idea what to expect. No jade stairs, she reminds herself. No tears at window ledges.
He looks up. The remembered face. She observes little change, but it is not light enough to see closely here, and two years need not alter a man so much.
She murmurs, “I am not deserving of this, my lord.”
He says, “I am not deserving of what you did for me, Rain.”
The voice she also remembers, too vividly. Why, and how, does one voice, one person, come to conjure vibrations in the soul, like an instrument tuned? Why a given man, and not another, or a third? She hasn’t nearly enough wisdom to answer that. She isn’t sure if anyone does.
“Master Shen,” she says formally. “Please stand. Your servant is honoured that you have come.”
He does stand up. When he looks at her, his face, beneath the lantern, shows the intensity she recalls. She pushes memories away. She needs to do that. She says, “Are you alone, my lord?”
He shakes his head. “Three Kanlin are with me, to keep watch. Two more in the street. I’m not allowed to be alone any more, Rain.”
She thinks she understands that. She says, “Is the one I sent to you …?”
“Wei Song is here, yes. She is very capable.”
Rain allows herself a smile. She sees him register that. “I thought she might be. But did she … how did you survive?”
He hesitates. He has changed, she decides. Is weighing his words. “You know where I was?”
She nods. She is glad of the pillar behind her, for support. “I didn’t know, before. I had to have her find your home, start there. I didn’t even know where your father’s home was.”
“I am sorry,” he says, simply.
She ignores that. Says, “I know that Wen Zhou had Lun hire a woman to kill you.”
“Sent with Yan.”
“Yes. Is he all right?”
“He’s dead, Rain. She killed him. I was saved only by … by the ghosts. And Tagurans who came to help, when they saw riders.”
By the ghosts. She isn’t ready to ask about that, to know about it. Yan is dead. A hard thing to learn. A sweet man.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
He is silent, looking at her. She is accustomed to men looking at her, but this is different. He is different.
Eventually he says, “He was dead the moment she became his guard, I think.”
She wishes there was wine. She ought to have brought some. “So I did nothing at all?” she says.
He shakes his head. “There was a second attempt. At Chenyao. Wei Song fought a number of men alone, outside my room.”
“A very capable woman, then.” She isn’t sure why she’s said it that way.
Tai only nods. “As I said.” He hesitates again. He isn’t being awkward, she decides, he is choosing what to say. It is a difference from before. “Rain, you would have been killed if this had been discovered.” It is a statement, not a question.
“It was unlikely it would be,” she says. He hasn’t moved from under the lantern, neither has she, from her place by the pillar. She sees fireflies behind him. Hears crickets in the garden. No sign of the Kanlins he mentioned, or anyone else. There is a silence.
“I had to go away,” he says, finally.
This will become difficult now, she thinks.
“I know,” she says. “Your father died.”
“When did … when did he bring you here?”
She smiles at him, her smile has always been an instrument she could use. “Not long after his appointment.”
“As you tried to tell me.”
“As I did tell you, Tai.”
She hadn’t meant to say that so quickly. Or use his name. She sees him smile this time. He steps closer. She wants to close her eyes, but does not.
He says, “No perfume? I have remembered it for two years.”
“Have you really, my lord?” she says, the way she might have in the Pavilion of Moonlight.
He looks down at her, where the light touches her features, catches yellow hair. She has not posed herself, it was simply a place against a column where she could lean back for support. And be on her feet when he came.
He says, “I understand. You wear scent now only for him, and he’s away.”
She keeps her tone light. “I am not sure how I feel about you becoming this perceptive.”
He smiles only a little. Says nothing.
“I can also move more easily undetected without it,” she says. But she is disconcerted that he has so swiftly understood.
“Is that important?” He is asking something else now, she knows.
She lifts her shoulders again, lets them fall.
“Has he been cruel?” he asks. She hears strain in his voice. She knows men well, this one very well.
“No. Never,” she says.
A silence. He is quite close.
“May I kiss you?” he asks.
There it is. She makes herself meet his eyes.
“No. Never,” she says.
And sees sorrow. Not anger, not balked desire. Sorrow, which is—perhaps—why and how another’s voice or soul can resonate within you, she thinks.
“Never?” he asks.
H
e does not move nearer. There are men who would, she knows. She knows many of those.
No jade stairs, she tells herself.
“Are you asking my views on eternity and the choices of life?” she says brightly. “Are we back to discoursing upon the Sacred Path?”
He waits. The man she remembers would have been eager to cap her own half-witticism with a quip of his own. That, or take the exchange deeper, despite her teasing.
She says, to delay: “You have changed in two years.”
“Where I was,” he says.
Only that. He has not touched her.
She lifts a hand to his cheek. She had not meant to do that. She knows exactly what she’d meant to do among the fireflies tonight. It was not this.
He takes her hand in his, and kisses her palm. He inhales, as if trying to bring her back within himself after so long.
She closes her eyes.
SHE HAS NOT CHANGED, Tai thought, and he realized that it had been childish for him to imagine that she’d appear to him like some fragile princess abducted into sad captivity.
What had happened to Rain was not, he finally understood, his sister’s fate. It was a difficult truth. Had he merged the two of them in his mind, journeying east?
What, truly, was better about a singing girl’s life in the Pavilion of Moonlight? Serving any man who had money and desire? Compare that with existence in this compound with one powerful man she knew—clearly she knew—how to entrance and lure? As for when she grew older: also clear as moonlight on snow, her chances of a protected life were better here. This destiny was what the North District girls all longed to find.
He felt a wave of self-reproach, and sadness.
Then she touched his cheek, and then she closed her eyes.
He bent and kissed her on the lips. He did it gently, trying to acknowledge what had happened, the reality of it, and that he’d been away two years. Her mouth was soft, her lips parted. His own eyes closed.
He made himself draw back. He said, “Rain, there has never been a woman who reaches into me as you do.”
Her eyes opened. The gazebo was lit by only one lantern, so it was hard to see how green her eyes were, but he knew, he remembered. He wondered—a shockingly hard thought—if he’d ever see those eyes again.
For that was where this night was travelling, he realized.
She said, “I am sorry for it, my lord. And pleased. Am I permitted to be both?”
“Of course,” he said.
She had slipped, effortlessly, into the mixture of formality and intimacy that had characterized her manner in the Pavilion of Moonlight. He tried to match it. Could not.
He said, “Why did you come tonight?”
She shook her head, suddenly impatient with him. He remembered that, too. “Wrong question, Tai. Would you have me shame myself with an answer?”
He looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
She was angry now, he could see it. “I came because the Beloved Companion sent a note advising me not to sleep tonight, and she quoted the jade stairs poem.”
“I see.” He thought about it. “She told me you were alerted I might come. She kept Wen Zhou at Ma-wai. Gave me guards and a pass into the city after dark.”
“So we are both serving her needs?” He heard amusement under the bitterness. “How compliant of us.”
He smiled. “Rain, I would say the feel of your mouth, the taste of you, serves my needs very well.”
She looked up at him for a long time. Then away into the dark, and then she said, with finality, “I cannot be your lover, Tai. There is no proper way for it to happen. I did not send a Kanlin to you for that.”
“I know,” he said.
Sorrow in the quiet dark. The astonishing truth of this woman: proud and seductive, more subtle than he was. Needing to be more subtle, he thought, in the life she’d lived.
“I could accuse Zhou of trying to kill me,” he said. “It was almost said at Ma-wai today, not by me. He did have Yan murdered, and Lun. It might change your—”
“You would accuse the first minister of Kitai, governing this empire, of killing students or minor civil servants? And this would accomplish what, Tai? Who would care? How would you prove it?”
“Others would do that. Wen Jian has the man who killed Lun.”
“What? Feng?”
He saw that she was startled by this. “He was heading south to Wen Zhou’s family. She told us all that she had the man. There were important people in the room, including Prince Shinzu.”
He didn’t mention the emperor. It was not the sort of thing you spoke about. He said, “I think … we think … that she is giving her cousin a warning. He’s in difficulty, Rain, mainly because of Roshan.”
She crossed to the bench, sat down, looking up thoughtfully at him now. Moths darted around the one light. The air was cool. He remembered this about her, the way her mind could be so suddenly engaged.
“Who is we?” she asked. Not the question he’d expected.
“I was befriended on the road. Sima Zian has been with me since Chenyao.”
She stared. Then inclined her neck, as if in submission. “The Banished Immortal? Oh, my. How may a singing girl from the North District, a simple girl, ever hope to keep the interest of a man with such illustrious connections?”
Tai laughed softly. “For one thing, she isn’t simple at all. For another, she isn’t in the North District. And her own connections are more potent than his.” He grinned. “How else may I assist you?”
He saw her return his smile this time. “If I said, You could kiss me again, that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?”
He took the one step necessary, and did so. Her mouth came up to meet his. It was Rain who pulled back this time. She looked away. “That was wrong,” she said. “Forgive me.”
He sat on the bench beside her. He was aware that she’d left room for him to do so. “Rain, your life has changed. I have been foolish in my dreaming.”
“Most of us are foolish in our dreams,” she said, still looking the other away. “The trouble comes when we bring folly out of dream.”
“Rain, listen to me. If I am right, if Jian is sending a warning to her cousin and it has to do with me … does that endanger you?”
She thought about it. “I don’t think so. There is a servant who could destroy me, but he won’t. If you were seen here I would be killed.” She said it matter-of-factly. “But Wen Zhou is worrying about Roshan right now, not you. An Li left the city a few days ago, and so did his oldest son.”
“I know,” said Tai. “I spoke with him on the roadside, coming here.”
He saw that he’d shaken her again. He was young enough to feel a flicker of pride in that, and old enough to know it was unworthy.
She said, “Tai, what is all this? You are in a swift river.”
“Yes,” he said. “Because of the horses. Only that.”
“And the ghosts,” she said. “What you did.”
“The horses come from what I did. It is the same.”
She was silent, considering that, then said, “Sardian horses.”
“Second thing from that country to change my life.”
She smiled. “I haven’t changed your life.”
“You might,” he said. “Rain, we can’t know what the next days will bring us. Sima Zian thinks something grave is happening.”
He could see her thinking about it.
He said, “I have a house in the city now, in this ward. If you need to get word to me, can someone do that?”
“If I need to? Or if I wish to?” She turned to look at him.
His turn to smile. With every word they spoke some of the old manner was coming back, like the steps of another dance. It was unsettling.
He said, “You were always better at judging. You will know if there is danger for you, or something I need to be told.”
She took his hand. Looked at the interlacing of their fingers. “I think I am not so much better than you any more, Tai. If I e
ver was.”
“You were. You are. And you risked your life. What is it I can do? Please ask.”
He was wondering how many men had said I love you to this woman, late at night. He wondered what Zhou said to her.
Her head remained lowered, as if she were fascinated by their twined fingers on her lap. She wore no perfume. He’d understood why immediately, but there was a scent to her, to her nearness after so long, and it conjured desire, drew it forth.
She said, “I will have someone learn where your house is. If I need to send word, I can. The man by the wall may be trusted with messages. They will get to me. The servant here to approach is named Hwan. No one else.” She fell silent, still gripping his hand. When she spoke again her voice had changed. “I think … Tai, you need to leave, or I will relinquish my pride. This is more difficult than I thought it would be.”
He drew a breath. “And for me. I am sorry. But … Rain, I am also pleased. Am I permitted to be both?”
She squeezed his hand hard for that. It was painful, because a ring of hers bit into his skin. She meant to hurt him, he knew, for so neatly echoing her phrase from before.
“How clever,” she said. “You students are all alike.”
She released his hand. Clasped hers together in her lap. Her gaze remained lowered, as if submissively. He knew she wasn’t submissive at all. He didn’t want to leave, he realized.
There came a rustling sound from the trees, then a voice beyond the spill of light. “Gracious lady, Master Shen. Someone is walking past the lake. We can kill him, but it would not be wise.”
It was the Kanlin leader. “Where is Wei Song?” Tai asked quickly.
“Farther along the garden, awaiting instruction.”
“Kanlin, is the man carrying wine?” Rain asked.
“He is, gracious lady.”
She stood up. “That’s Hwan. Do not harm him. Tai, I mean it … you must go.”