He looked from her to Lin Fong. The commander’s expression was alert. This was all news to him, of course, and news was bright coinage this far west.
Tai really didn’t want his life discussed in an open courtyard. She probably knew that, he thought. She had ignored his question about why she’d been sent here. That could be discretion, or a way to get him into a smaller space.
His life had been very simple, just a few days ago.
“The commander can have someone search me,” she said in that low, crisp voice. It was as if she’d read his thoughts.
She added, “I have a dagger in my right boot. Nothing else. They can also tie my wrists so we can talk in a private place, with the commander present or not, as you wish.”
“No,” said Lin Fong, glaring. He wouldn’t like a woman being so decisive. No military officer would. “I will be present. You do not set conditions here. You are both under my jurisdiction, and it seems people have been killed. I have questions of my own, there are reports to be filed.”
There were always reports to be filed. The empire could drown in the reports that were filed, Tai thought.
The woman shrugged. Tai had the feeling she’d anticipated or even intended this. He needed to make a decision.
He sheathed his arrow and bow. Looked up to his right. The gap-toothed, balding guard was still on the wall, looking down. Tai gestured. “That one to look to my horse. Walk, water, feed him. I remember that he knows horses.”
The man’s expression of joy would have been gratifying, at any easier time.
HE HAD A FEW MOMENTS ALONE to wash and change his clothes. He switched from riding boots to brocaded slippers they provided. A servant—one of the border people serving the soldiers—took his clothing and boots to clean them.
It had occurred to Tai many years ago that one usually expected important decisions in life to emerge after long and complex thought. Sometimes this was so. But on other occasions one might wake in the morning (or finish drying one’s hands and face in a dusty border fort) with the abrupt, intense realization that a choice had already been made. All that was left was putting it into effect.
Tai could see no clear pattern in his own life as to this. Nor was he able to say, that morning, why he was suddenly so sure of something.
A waiting soldier escorted him through two courtyards to the commander’s reception pavilion at the eastern end of the compound. He announced Tai’s presence and drew back a canvas flap that covered the doorway, blocking the wind. Tai walked in.
Lin Fong and the Kanlin woman were already there. Tai bowed, then sat with them on a raised platform in the centre of the room. He settled himself on a mat, crossing his legs. There was tea, unexpectedly, at his elbow, on a blue, lacquered tray decorated with a painting of willow branches and two lines from a poem by Chan Du about willow trees. The pavilion was sparely decorated.
It was also more beautiful than any space Tai had entered in two years. There was a pale-green vase on a low side table behind the commander. Tai stared at it for a long time. Too long, probably. His expression, he thought wryly, was probably something like the soldier’s on the wall had been, looking down at the horse.
“That is a very fine piece of work,” he said.
Lin Fong smiled, pleased and unable to hide it.
Tai cleared his throat and bowed at the waist without rising. “Untie her, please. Or don’t bind her on my account.”
Folly, on the face of it. He was alarmingly certain it wasn’t.
He looked at the woman, who had been carefully trussed at both ankles and wrists. She was sitting placidly on the other side of the platform.
“Why?” Commander Lin, however happy with a compliment to his taste, evidently didn’t like making adjustments.
“She isn’t about to attack me with you here.” He’d realized this while washing his face. “The Kanlins exist because they can be trusted, by both court and army. They have lasted six hundred years because of that. But that trust is badly damaged if one of them kills the commander of a military fort, or someone under his protection. Their sanctuaries, their immunity, could be destroyed. And besides, I think she’s telling the truth.”
The woman smiled again, large eyes downcast, as if the amusement was private.
“The commander could be part of my plot,” she said, looking down.
In the intimacy of the room, out of the courtyard wind, her low voice was unsettling. It had been two years since he’d heard this sort of voice, Tai thought.
“But he isn’t,” he said, before Commander Lin could express outrage. “I’m not important enough. Or I wasn’t, before.”
“Before what?” the other man said, distracted from whatever he’d been about to say.
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
“Where 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 th
ings 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.