Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  “I can take care of myself,” she said.

  Edyk could not honestly quarrel with her superb if arrogant self-confidence. Neither was he ready to acknowledge defeat. “You know what the roads are becoming, now that the Great Khan is dead.”

  “Shasha and Jaufre will be with me.”

  “Jaufre!" he exclaimed. “Jaufre is going with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I might have known,” he said bitterly.

  Johanna looked surprised. “Certainly you might have known,” she agreed. “We grew up here together, children of foreigners. We have suffered the shunning of the people of the Son of Heaven all our lives. He wants to leave as badly as I do, and unlike you he is free to do so. And he is my best and oldest friend.”

  “Johanna.” He took both her hands in his and held them tightly. “I know I’ve never said the words, but I thought you knew. I love you, Johanna. I want to marry you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Don’t leave me here all alone.”

  The sadness in her eyes was displaced again, this time by laughter. “And what would Blossom and Jade have to say to that?”

  “But they love you!" he protested. “They always have.”

  “As your friend, yes,” she said. “As a third wife?” She shook her head, and the corners of her mouth quirked upwards.

  Watching the generous curve of her lips he felt again that sharp, fierce tug of desire, and this time he let it show in his eyes. “Is it the bride price?” he said roughly. “I’ll double it. Triple it, even.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to be bought,” she said gently. “And Edyk, you know you don’t want to buy me.”

  “Then come to me freely,” he said. “Come to me naked, I don’t care. I want you for my wife, Johanna.”

  She shook her head again, a final, negating movement.

  He recognized the signs. Johanna had a kind of determined, implacable ruthlessness Edyk had never before encountered in a woman. In Johanna’s world, there were the people she cared for, and then there was everyone else, worthy of curiosity, certainly, perhaps even of courtesy…perhaps. The people she cared for—he totted them up mentally and even before one was dead could fit them all on the fingers of one hand—were worthy of any sacrifice, mental, emotional, physical.

  There has never been such a woman, he thought, looking at the gallant chin, the squared shoulders, the bronzed hair escaping its braid to curl riotously around her face, the eyes the color of the sky over Kesmur just before dawn. He let his eyes drift down her body, over the swell of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the long legs. “But I want you,” he said at last, hazarding his all in a voice gone thick with need. “Johanna, I want you.”

  “Then take me,” she said huskily. His eyes met hers and he felt a shock of recognition at the desire he saw reflected there. “I want you, too. I need you. And I want something for myself. Something for my very own, to take away with me, to keep me warm on the long dark nights away from you.” He was frozen with disbelief and she took a step forward and caught at his hand. “Edyk, please,” she said, and raised his hand to her breast. “Please love me.”

  He felt the rich weight of her breast, the nipple already hard beneath the palm of his hand, and pulled her into his arms, bringing his mouth down on hers so roughly her lip split. He tasted blood and lifted his head to see her eyes half-closed, her skin flushed, her lips parted. Her tongue came out to touch the cut, and with a groan he was unable to suppress cradled himself between her thighs, sliding his hands over her bottom to lift and rub her against him. She responded, eagerly if inexpertly, and such was his instantaneous need that he would have taken her then and there, on the floor, if she had not called to him in a voice soft and shaken with desire. “Edyk, Edyk, not here. Not here,” she repeated when he raised his head again, dazed, almost uncomprehending. She smoothed his hair back with one trembling hand. “Anyone could come in.”

  He pulled away from her. “Where, then?” he demanded, unsmiling, the planes of his face hard and strained.

  “The lake. The summerhouse. We will be alone there.”

  He looked at her, his eyes burning, his mouth compressed. “The summerhouse is two hours from here, Johanna.”

  She smiled at him, a rich, bewitching smile of shared desire that promised him everything she had to give and more. “Then we’d better get started, hadn’t we?”

  At her smile his body responded promptly and he cursed her. She laughed. He flung open the door and bellowed for Chiang, who appeared almost immediately, still with that carefully nurtured expression of disinterest. “Saddle North Wind,” Edyk snapped, and turned back to Johanna.

  She was still laughing. “North Wind?” she said. “You actually ride North Wind?”

  “He’s the fastest horse in my stables and he doesn’t race again until next week,” he said grimly.

  Her smile was provocative. “And he lets you ride him?”

  “He will if you’re with me.” And indeed when Chiang brought the horse around from the stables he caught Johanna’s scent and whinnied eagerly, almost trotting with Chiang dangling at the end of his reins. He almost danced to a stop and nosed eagerly at the front of her tunic. She laughed and fed him a piece of carrot and rubbed his ears.

  “I should never have let you near him as a colt,” Edyk said grimly. He threw Johanna up into the saddle without ceremony, yanked the reins from Chiang and vaulted up after her.

  “The Shrimp!" Johanna said protestingly.

  “The Shrimp! Great Khan! You rode the Shrimp up here? I’m surprised either of you finished the trip alive.” He pulled her back against him, and heard her gasp. “Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “You want to go to the summerhouse, fine, but we’ll ride the Wind there together, Johanna.” He kicked the white stallion into a canter. North Wind, a horse with a mind of his own, thought it should be a gallop and Edyk was only too willing to oblige.

  All the same, it was the longest, most torturous journey Edyk the Portuguese, veteran of many crossings of the Taklamakan Desert, was ever to make. Once out of the city the road narrowed to a rough trail and became steep and rocky. North Wind of necessity slowed to a walk. Johanna leaned back in the cradle of Edyk’s arms, her body rubbing against his with the Wind’s every step. By the time they reached the lake, hidden at the head of a small valley south of Cambaluc, Edyk was frantic with the need to get at her, to lay her skin bare to his eyes and his touch.

  Johanna was no less frantic to let him. All the long way up to the lake, Edyk’s hands and lips were never still, and his voice, husky with desire, had whispered in between kisses and bites exactly what he was going to do to her, and how. When his feet hit the ground she hurled herself forward into his arms, almost knocking him over. She could feel him press into her belly and she rubbed up against him, moaning.

  He slid his hands over her hips and held her still. He let his head fall back and drew a great rush of air into his lungs, holding it, and then letting it expel from his chest in an explosive rush. “Johanna, wait,” he said. Loving had always been enjoyable for him, sweet, a mutually-pleasing frolic. With Johanna the pleasure was so intense it was almost pain, a demon that had him by the scruff of the neck who wouldn’t let go until he had satisfied it, and he knew he must slow himself down or he would hurt her. He clenched his teeth and made an effort to speak intelligibly. “This is your first time, isn’t it?”

  “You know it is,” she muttered, licking at the drop of sweat that had collected in the hollow of his throat, sliding her hands down his back to pull him tightly against her. He caught her hands and she made a frustrated sound and tried to pull free. “I want to touch you, Edyk. Let me.”

  He raised her chin with one hand and looked into the clear eyes that were now dark with thwarted desire. “I want to let you,” he said softly. “But I’m all sweaty from the ride, and so are you. Let’s swim first.”

  “I don’t want to swim,” she said crossly, urging him forward again.

>   He gave a laugh that turned into a shaken groan. Again he caught her hands and said with difficulty, “Stop that. I don’t want to swim either, but we have to slow this down a little.” He looked into her eyes and whispered, “Trust me to do this right, Johanna.”

  She closed her eyes tightly for a moment. When she opened them again the desire was still there but on a leash. “All right,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

  He pulled her towards the lake. “We have to take off our clothes to swim, don’t we?”

  She brightened, marched down to the water’s edge and without further ado pulled her tunic over her head. The setting sun played over her flushed skin, gilding her nipples. Her trousers followed her tunic and the sun turned the soft curls between her long legs to gold. The sight nearly drove him to his knees. “Johanna,” he said, his throat thick. “You’re as beautiful as I thought you would be. No. More beautiful than I ever dreamed.”

  She reached for him with impatient hands, pulling his tunic over his head, finding the ties of his trousers and slipping them down. She stood back to look at him, from dark eyes to wide shoulders to strong arms to narrow hips to sturdy legs and back up to rampant, strutting desire. “So are you.”

  She stretched out a hand to touch him. He grabbed it and used it to lead her into the lake. The water was lukewarm, but to their overheated skins still a shock. They cupped it in trembling hands and smoothed it over their bodies. Johanna leaned forward to follow her hands with her lips, sipping the water from his skin from mouth to chest to thigh, to touch her tongue to the length of flesh upright and hot and hard against his belly.

  He pulled her out of the lake and into his arms. Her skin, cool from the water, shivered delightfully against his and he bent his head and placed his lips to her breast. One hand knotted in her hair, the other slipped between her legs to find her wet and hot, and with a groan he kissed his way down her body to bury his mouth in her. She cried out her pleasure, back arching like a bow, and would have fallen but for his arms steadying her.

  “Johanna, Johanna,” he muttered against the soft skin of her belly. “I’m sorry, I can’t wait any longer.”

  “Finally.” He almost laughed at the breathless exasperation in her voice, and forgot to when she slid to her knees, her mouth seeking out his, her hands exploring. “Please, Edyk,” she sobbed, clutching at his shoulders. “Please.”

  “All right,” he said through gritted teeth, and pulled her down on him, so that for the first time she felt all that heat and pride pressed up inside her. If there was pain she never felt it. She came to climax at once, crying out in sheer delight, opening her eyes afterwards to see him staring at her, his eyes burning, his body still hard within her, and then she felt the cool grass against her spine as he laid her down.

  He brushed the hair back from her face, kissed her, tiny, teasing kisses, holding himself inside her as the sweet shuddering of her body slackened. Then he began to move, long, deep strokes, pushing slowly all the way up, then pulling as slowly out, loitering both within her heated flesh and without, teasing her, taunting her, urging her on to renewed desire. She gasped at the return of feeling, staring up at him with wide astonished eyes and parted lips. He smiled. Her hips began to lift to his and he threw back his head. “Yes.” When he drew almost all the way out she dug her nails into his back in protest and her inner muscles closed around him. He groaned and began thrusting faster and harder and deeper. She wrapped her legs around him and met him thrust for thrust. When he plunged inside her for the last time she convulsed and cried out, a low, disbelieving sound joined to his own growled pleasure.

  They lay speechless in the light of the rising moon for a long time afterward. When he had recovered he shifted his weight. Wordlessly she clutched him to her, silently protesting, and he subsided, content to remain where he most longed to be.

  Presently she stirred, and he raised his head to see her eyes sparkling in her flushed face, tendrils of hair clinging to her skin, her braid damp and tangled against her neck. In a voice lazy with pleasure she observed, “Now I know what Jade and Blossom have been giggling about for the last three years.”

  “What!”

  She said reasonably, “Well, we had to talk about something, and they can’t ride and I don’t embroider, and all we had in common was you.”

  He stared at her for a long, long moment. She grinned, and he threw back his head and shouted with laughter. She laughed with him, and the sound of it pealed across the still water of the lake and lingered beneath the boughs of the drooping willow trees.

  Thinking of it afterwards, he supposed they must have eaten and slept, but all he could remember was the laughter and the loving, on the floor, in the grass, in the lake, sometimes they even made it as far as the bed. She gave him everything her smile had promised and more. His thoughts, his hands, the strands of his hair, the pores of his skin, his nostrils were filled with the taste and texture and smell of her. He memorized the straight, arrogant bridge of her nose, the sultry curve of her mouth, the vulnerable hollow of her throat, the sweet slope of her breast, the silken texture of her skin, the seductive smell of her femininity. She responded completely, openly, wholeheartedly, without reservation or shyness, her astonished pleasure at each new sensual delight a reward in itself. He taught her the difference between loving and rutting, he seduced her sweetly and showed her how to return in kind, every skill he had learned from every woman he had ever loved he exerted to show her how much he cared, how much he needed, how much he wanted this one woman in his arms, in his life.

  He could not bear to think of life without her, and so he didn’t think of it. “We will build a home in Kinsai,” he murmured into her hair late into their second night at the summerhouse. “We will have many sons, and we will teach them to bargain and to trade, and take them with us when we travel. I love you, Johanna.”

  “I love you, Edyk,” she whispered.

  His last thought before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep with her locked securely in his arms was, she’ll never leave me now.

  But when he woke the next morning, she was gone.

  So was North Wind.

  9

  NORTH WIND WAS NOT the only priceless possession to have gone missing in Cambaluc that morning.

  The house of the late, honorable Wu Li was in an uproar as his widow stormed through every room, leaving chaos in her wake. Drawers were yanked out, their contents dumped on the floor, the drawers tossed aside. Shiny lacquered boxes were wrenched open, found wanting, and hurled against the wall. Tall porcelain vases were turned upside down and shaken in vain for anything that might have been secreted there, and when they proved empty were shattered into a hundred pieces on every hearthstone.

  “Where are they?” the widow said. Her voice rose to a shriek. “Where are they!”

  The kitchen was a scene of bedlam by the time she finished there. The undercook bled from four parallel scratches on his cheek from the widow’s nails. Every pot was taken from its hook, every pan from its shelf, the spit pulled from the wall and used as a club to strike the drab assigned to turn it. The drab lay unconscious in a corner, breathing stertorously through bubbles of blood that extended and retracted through her nostrils. One of the maids was blinded, possibly permanently, having caught the brunt of the widow’s rings across her eyes. The rest of the servants had fled, or were cowering beneath tables and chairs and behind doors and bureaus, hoping against hope to escape her notice.

  Gokudo was made of sterner stuff. “My lady,” he said.

  She snarled and whirled, both hands curled into bejeweled claws. “Where are they?” she shouted, advancing on him.

  “I do not know, my lady,” he said.

  She raised a hand, long, now broken fingernails already stained with blood. “Tell me where they are! The stables!” She stepped forward. “Get out of my way!”

  Gokudo stood his ground. “Wu Li’s daughter is gone,” he said.

  She didn’t appear to hear him, at fi
rst, the mad light in her eyes undiminished, the claw of a hand still upraised to strike. He repeated himself, raising his voice, enunciating each word in a slow, clear voice. “The daughter of the honorable Wu Li is gone from this house. As is Shu Shao, the kitchen drudge, and Jaufre, the stable boy.”

  This time she heard him.

  They stood there, facing each other, motionless, no sound in the kitchen except for the heavy breathing of the widow, the whimpers of the undercook, and the crackle of a cinder, raked out from the hearth in the struggle over the spit and now doing its best to set fire to the floor.

  Her hand dropped. “Show me,” she said.

  It was the first time she had been in the little mongrel’s room. The smallness of the room, the shabbiness of its furnishings did not register with her.

  What did register was the narrow bed, neatly made, and the box resting in the middle of the plumped pillow with the carefully mitered corners. Clad in layers of black lacquer, scarlet leaves twined around the join between lid and base, the box was in itself a work of art a handspan square. It had been made for its purpose, and it looked well used, and well loved.

  Wu Li’s widow had no thought for the craftsmanship of the thing. She snatched it up and tugged. The lid was so well made that the seal created a vacuum that resisted her efforts. She tugged in vain. She even broke another nail. Tears of rage began to course down the widow’s painted cheeks, and she flung the box at Gokudo. “Open it!”

  Gokudo got his hands up just in time to stop the box from hitting him in the face. He found the catch on the lid, and it opened with a huff of sound, the lid standing up on its intricately hand-crafted brass hinges. He held the box out at arm’s length so she could see inside. He could already tell what it contained by its weight.

  She remained bent over the box, staring inside it with burning eyes.

  There was a commotion at the front of the house. The widow didn’t move, and Gokudo swore and went to see what it was.

  Edyk the Portuguese was struggling with the door man. “Where is she? Where is North Wind? Where are they? Tell this fool to let me go!”