The governor’s daughter was sitting on the edge of his canopied bed, alone in the room. She wore gold, open-toed sandals. Her toenails were painted red, Tai saw. She smiled, stood up, moved towards him, exquisite.
It was still unfair, in almost every possible way.
“My Kanlin guard … she’s just outside the door,” he lied.
“Then shouldn’t we close it?” she asked. Her voice was low, amused. “Would you like me to do that? Is she dangerous?”
“No. No! Your father … would be very unhappy if his daughter was in a closed bedchamber with a man.”
“My father,” she murmured, “sent me here.”
Tai swallowed.
It was just possible. How urgently, how desperately, did the military leader of two western districts want to keep Tai—and his horses—from rivals? From Roshan, as an example. As the best example. What would he do to achieve that?
He’d given an answer, hadn’t he, earlier tonight? I would sooner kill you, Xu Bihai had said, over saffron wine.
Was this—a lissome daughter sent to bind him—an alternative short of murder? It would preserve the horses for the empire. And for the Second and Third Military Districts. If Tai was killed the horses were lost. And Governor Xu, if known to have caused that to happen, was likely to be exiled, or ordered to end his life, for all his power and accomplishment.
But a man could be seduced by an elegant daughter with the worldly skills of well-bred women in Ninth Dynasty Kitai. Or he could be compromised, perhaps, forced to behave with honour after a night … lacking honour, defined by skills. There was that possibility.
And daughters—like sisters—could be used as instruments.
He was not, he realized, tired any more.
The governor’s daughter, tall, slender, came slowly up to him. Her perfume was delicious, expensive, disturbing, and the red gown was cut as low as the green one had been earlier tonight. A green dragon amulet still hung between her breasts on a golden chain.
Silk brushing against him, she glided past, to close the half-open door.
“Leave it! Please!” Tai said.
She smiled again. She turned towards him, very close. Large eyes, looking up, claimed his. Her painted eyebrows were shaped like moth wings. Her skin was flawless, cheeks tinted with vermilion. She said, softly, “She might become envious or aroused, your Kanlin woman, if we leave the door ajar. Would you like that? Would that add to your pleasure, sir? To imagine her looking in upon us from the dark?”
If, Tai thought, a little desperately, she was doing this on the instructions of her father, she was a very dutiful daughter.
“I … I have already been to the White Phoenix Pleasure House tonight,” he stammered.
Not the most poised or courteous thing to say. Her fingernails were also red, and they had golden extensions, a fashion he remembered from two years ago in Xinan. The fashion had reached this far west. That was … that was interesting, Tai thought.
It wasn’t, really. He wasn’t thinking very clearly.
Her breath was sweet, scented with cloves. She said, “I know where you were. They are said to be well trained, the girls there. Worth the cost to any man.” She cast her eyes down, as if shyly. “But it is not the same, you know it, my lord, as when you are with a well-born woman you have not bought. A woman who has risked a great deal to come to you, and waits to be taught what you know.”
Her right hand moved, and one of those golden fingernails stroked the back of his hand, and then, as if carelessly, moved slowly up the inside of his forearm. Tai shivered. He didn’t believe there was a great deal this one needed to be taught. Not by him, not by anyone.
He closed his eyes. Took a steadying breath and said, “I know this is foolish, but are you … could a daiji be within you?”
“That took longer than it should have!”
A third voice—from the small porch leading to the garden and the river.
Tai and the governor’s daughter turned, very quickly.
Wei Song stood framed in the space between the sliding doors. One sword was drawn, levelled at the girl.
“I can be a little dangerous,” he heard his Kanlin Warrior say calmly. She wasn’t smiling.
The other woman lifted shaped eyebrows, then turned, very deliberately, away from Song, as if from someone inconsequential.
“My name,” she said to Tai, “is Xu Liang. You know it. My father introduced us tonight. I am flattered you think me fair enough to be a daiji spirit, but it is an error. It would be another error if your woman-servant harmed me.”
It was said with the utmost composure. There really was something, Tai thought, about being well-born. You could call Kanlin Warriors woman-servants, for one thing.
It is an error. He glanced towards the porch. Song was biting her lower lip; he doubted she was aware of it. He was trying to remember if he had ever seen her look this uncertain before. It might have been diverting at any other time. She kept her sword levelled, but without force or conviction now, he saw.
He was still trying to define a proper target for his own rising outrage. Was there no privacy in a man’s life when he travelled with a guard? Or, for that matter, when some military leader encountered on the road decided to bind him with a daughter? Everyone could just wander into his room as they pleased, when they pleased, day or night, eliciting embarrassing fears of shape-changing spirits?
The daughter in question murmured, still not bothering to look at Song, “Did you not see my guards, Kanlin, in the garden? They rowed me here, to the water gate of the inn. I am surprised, and a little unhappy, that neither of them has killed you yet.”
“It would be difficult for them, my lady. They are unconscious, by the trees.”
“You attacked them?”
She turned to glare at Song. Her anger was pretty clearly unfeigned, Tai decided. Her hands were rigid at her sides.
“I found them that way,” Wei Song said, after a hesitation.
Lady Xu Liang’s mouth opened.
“They are not dead,” Song added. “No blows that I could see, no cups or flasks for poison, and they are breathing. If you have not been claimed by a fox-spirit, governor’s daughter, and used for her purposes, it may be … because something kept the daiji away.”
Tai had no idea what to make of this. Shape-shifting fox-women were the subject of erotic legends going back to the earliest dynasties. Their beauty impossibly alluring, their physical needs extreme. Men could be destroyed by them, but in such a manner, spun of world-changing desire, that the tales aroused fear and inchoate longings.
Further, not every man made the nighttime recipient of a daiji’s fierce hunger was destroyed. Some of the tales suggested otherwise, memorably.
Wei Song hadn’t yet lowered her blade. Tai said, first of half a dozen questions jostling in his head, “How did you know to come back?”
She shrugged. “You couldn’t smell that much perfume through the door?” A cool glance at the governor’s daughter. “And I was quite certain you hadn’t asked for another courtesan. You did say you were tired. Remember, my lord?”
He knew that tone.
Xu Liang folded her arms across her low-cut gown. She looked younger suddenly. Tai made his decision. This was not a girl possessed by a fox-spirit that had chosen to make use of her body—and his—for what was left of tonight. He didn’t even believe in fox-women.
That did mean, if you were functioning well enough to consider the matter, that the governor’s older daughter was remarkably seductive and alarmingly poised. He’d address that issue later.
Or, perhaps better, he wouldn’t.
He concentrated on his black-clad guard, not much older than Xu’s daughter. “So you went …?”
Song rattled it off impatiently. “I came back around on the garden side. I saw the two guards in the grass.” She looked at Liang. “I never touched them.”
The governor’s daughter looked uneasy for the first time. “Then what? How were they �
��?”
A footfall on the porch, behind Wei Song.
“I’d have to agree it was probably a daiji,” said Sima Zian.
The poet came up the steps into the room. “I just had a look at the two of them.”
Tai blinked, then shook his head in indignation.
“Shall we,” he asked caustically, “wake our soldiers and invite them in? Oh, and perhaps the governor’s men out front might want to join us?”
“Why not?” grinned Zian.
“No!” said Xu Liang. “Not my father’s guards!”
“Why? You said his soldiers brought you here. It won’t be a secret,” Song said dryly. These two, Tai realized, had decided not to like each other.
“You are wrong, again, Kanlin. It is secret, my being here. Of course it is! The two in the garden are men I can trust,” Liang said. “My own guards all my life. If they have been slain …”
“They are not dead,” the poet said. He looked around. Probably hoping for wine, Tai thought. “If I were to shape a conjecture, and I confess I enjoy doing that, I would say that Master Shen was the target of a daiji, that our clever Kanlin is correct.” He smiled at Song, and then at the governor’s daughter. “Your arrival, gracious lady, was exquisitely timed for the fox-spirit—or was guided by her.” He paused, to let that thought linger. “But something here, perhaps within our friend, kept the spirit away—from him, and from you. If I am correct, you have cause to be grateful.”
“And what would something be?” asked Xu Liang. Her painted eyebrows were arched again. They really were exquisite.
“This is … this is nothing but conjecture!” Tai snapped.
“I did say that,” Sima Zian agreed calmly. “But I also asked if you saw ghosts at the White Phoenix tonight, when first we spoke.”
“You are saying that you did?”
“No. I have only a limited access to the spirit world, my friend. But enough to sense something about you.”
“You mean from Kuala Nor? The ghosts?”
It was Wei Song this time, her brow furrowed. She was biting her lower lip again.
“Perhaps,” said the Banished Immortal. “I would not know.” He was looking at Tai, waiting.
Another lake, far to the north. A cabin there. A dead shaman in the garden, mirrors and drum. Fires, and then a man, or what had once been a man …
Tai shook his head. He was not about to speak of this.
When pressed, ask a question. “What could my being at Kuala Nor possibly mean to a daiji?”
The poet shrugged, accepted the deflection. “You might draw one as you passed by. She could become aware of your presence, conscious of those protecting you, hovering.”
“There are spirits attending upon Master Shen?”
Xu Liang didn’t sound fearful. You could say, if you wanted, that she appeared to find the notion intriguing, engaging. She’d uncrossed her arms again, was looking at Tai. Another appraising glance, not dissimilar to ones she’d given him from by the door in her father’s reception room.
He really had been away from women too long.
“There are spirits near all of us,” Song said from the porch, a little too emphatically. “Whether we see them or not. The Way of the Sacred Path teaches as much.”
“And the Dialogues of Master Cho assert that this is not so,” murmured the woman in the red gown. “Only our ancestors are near us, and only if they were improperly consecrated to the next world when they died. Which is the reason for our rituals.”
Sima Zian glanced happily from one woman to the other. He clapped his hands. “You are both splendid beyond description! This is a wonderful night. We must find wine!” he cried. “Let us continue this across the way, there is music.”
“I am not entering a courtesan pavilion!” said Xu Bihai’s daughter with immediate, impressive propriety.
The fact that she was standing, scented and bejewelled, in a man’s bedchamber and had been on the verge of closing the door (lest someone be made envious by what was apparently to transpire) seemed entirely beside the point, Tai thought, admiringly.
“Of course! Of course you aren’t,” the poet murmured. “Forgive me, gracious lady. We’ll bring a pipa player here. And perhaps just one girl, with cups and wine?”
“I think not,” said Tai. “I believe that Wei Song will now escort the Lady Xu Liang back to her father’s mansion. Is the boat waiting for you?”
“Of course it is,” Liang said. “But my guards …”
Tai cleared his throat. “It appears, if Sima Zian is correct, and my Kanlin, that they may have encountered a spirit-world creature. I have no better explanation. We are told they are alive.”
“I will return and watch over them myself,” Song said, “and tell them when they wake that their lady is home and well.”
“They won’t believe you if I’m not here,” Xu Liang said.
“I’m a Kanlin,” said Song simply. “We do not lie. They will know that, if others, less experienced, do not.”
The poet, Tai thought, looked ridiculously pleased by all of this.
Liang, he realized, was looking at him again, ignoring the other woman. Tai didn’t entirely mind that. He was briefly tempted by the notion of agreeing with Zian, summoning music and wine.
But not really. His sister was a long way north, beyond the Wall by now. And tonight, here in Chenyao, men had—
“I did say earlier,” Xu Liang murmured, eyes demurely downcast, “that my father had sent me. You have not asked why.”
Indeed. Well, he’d had what seemed a good notion why.
“My apologies.” He bowed. “Is it permitted for your servant to ask now?”
She nodded. “It is. My father wished to advise you privately that those two men, when encouraged to discuss their adventurism tonight, suggested only one name of possible significance before they each succumbed, sadly, to the exacting nature of the conversation.”
She looked meaningfully at the poet, and then at Song on the porch. Tai understood. “One is my guard,” he said. “The other my companion.”
Liang inclined her head. She said, “The assassins were bandits from the woods south of here. The man they named lives in Chenyao. He, in turn, when invited for a conversation, was kind enough to offer another name—from Xinan—before lamentably expiring.”
Tai was listening very closely. “I see. And that other name is?”
She was crisp, efficient. She said, “Xin Lun—a civil servant at court, we understand—was the name given. My honoured father offers his deepest regret that he was unable to be of greater assistance, but dares to hope this will be of some use to Master Shen.”
Xin Lun. Again. Yan had spoken that name before he died. He’d been killed as he said it.
Lun. Drinking companion, fellow student, convivial and clever. Not a student any more, it seemed. If he was in the palace he’d passed the examinations while Tai was away. A card and dice player once, ballad singer at night, a lover of—as it happened—Salmon River wine. Wearing the robes of a mandarin now.
Because of Yan, it wasn’t a revelation, not devastating news of betrayal. More a confirmation, an echo. He’d been waiting for a different name, perhaps two, behind these assassins … and had been deeply afraid to hear one of them spoken aloud.
He showed none of this in his face, he hoped.
He bowed to the governor’s daughter. “My thanks to your father. And to you, gracious lady, bearing these tidings so late at night. I do understand why Governor Xu would not trust them to anyone else.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” she murmured.
She looked directly at him as she said it, then let that slow smile shape her lips, as if the guard and the poet weren’t in the room. As if she and Tai were continuing a conversation interrupted earlier, and so unpleasantly, by another girl with a blade.
THE OTHER GIRL escorted her out the sliding doors and through the garden. Sima Zian walked them down to the river. Standing on the porch, Tai watched the th
ree of them go towards the trees and the water beyond. He lost them in the dark, then saw the one man come back a short time later and head across towards the music again, head lifted, steps quickening, hearing it.
Tai waited in silence for a time, listening to the night. He caught the scent of flowers, citrus. There were peonies. A slight breeze from the north, towards the river. The stars that ended the night this time of year were rising.
“Daiji?” he called, greatly, recklessly daring.
He couldn’t say why, but it felt as if there might be an answer to something, to part of this story, out in the garden.
Nothing stirred in the dark but fireflies. Flashing go the night-travellers. The old song about them. He thought of the tale of the poor scholar who could not afford oil for lanterns, gathering fireflies in a bag each evening, studying by their light. They used to joke about that story, in Xinan, the students. Chou Yan, Xin Lun, Shen Tai, the others.
There were other night-travellers tonight. He wondered where his sister was, where in a too-wide world. A hard pull upon the heart. His father was dead. This would not have happened, otherwise.
Deaths, even quiet ones, had consequences.
Three men had died in Chenyao tonight under questioning. For attempting to have him killed.
No movement in the garden, no approach to his call, his foolishness. He didn’t believe there had been a fox-creature following him, though it was interesting that Wei Song seemed to fear them. He hadn’t noticed her biting her lower lip that way before. He had thoughts about how those two guards had ended up unconscious.
Wind in leaves. Distant music. The bright, low star he’d seen before was still there. It felt as if a great deal of time had passed since he’d come into this room, but it wasn’t so.
Tai didn’t call again. He turned and went back inside. He washed and dried himself using the filled water basin and towel. He undressed, put out the three lights burning in the room, drew the sliding doors and hooked them shut. Some air came in through the slats, which was good. He closed the main door, which was still ajar.
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