She wrinkled her nose at the odor, but said nothing. He clearly intended her to hold them until he returned, but it occurred to her that if he did not return, she could use the clothes to send the dogs on the wrong trail. She glanced again at the scars across his back. She’d prepare to flee alone, but she realized how much she appreciated the big, silent farmer’s company. And the added protection he provided for Sao-Tauna. He would not admit as much, but he seemed genuinely concerned for her.
“Why would they lie to wardens?” Lee-Nin watched as the men rowed the boat up to the sand and rocks of the river’s edge.
“Because they look like militiamen or bandits,” Sha-Kutan said. “They will not speak the truth to such men.”
“What about Chu-Ki?” Lee-Nin scanned the riverbank for the man in question. “That pile of fetid feces will easily betray us, especially if they offer a reward.”
“Chu-Ki went into the forest.” Sha-Kutan glanced back at her and Sao-Tauna. “He will not return from his walk.”
“What do you mean?” Lee-Nin turned to Sha-Kutan as he faced her.
“He will not rejoin the pilgrims,” Sha-Kutan said.
“What did you do?” Lee-Nin found her heart beating even faster than the pace set by the arrival of the wardens. Had there been a confrontation between Sha-Kutan and Chu-Ki? Had he threatened the man or told him to leave? Had he done something to the man? Would their disappearance and Chu-Ki’s be tied together in the pilgrims’ minds? These questions faded in importance as she realized the true significance of Sha-Kutan’s words. Fao-Ashi and Gao-Pai would never need to fear that loathsome man again.
“I did nothing.” Sha-Kutan glanced again at Sao-Tauna, then turned his eyes back to Lee-Nin. “I must go. If I do not succeed, I will make certain the men cannot follow you. Take the girl and find another pilgrim band.”
“Take care,” Lee-Nin said.
Sao-Tauna reached out to briefly touch the big man’s hand. He nodded to them both, then turned and slid into the river, taking a deep breath and sinking beneath the water. Lee-Nin scanned the water’s surface, looking for any sign of his progress, but he swam too deeply to be seen in the shadowed waters. As she watched the wardens step from the boat and pull it up onto the shoreline, she wondered how he hoped to swim such a distance without surfacing for air. She sat the clothes on the ground and took Sao-Tauna’s hand in her own, counting the seconds since Sha-Kutan entered the water. As the numbers accumulated in her mind, she thought about his words regarding Chu-Ki. Had he killed the man? She would feel no sorrow if he had. She had strived to forget the ways she had known men like Chu-Ki. The world would not notice the absence of one black-hearted man, but the woman and girl he terrorized would. She could not forget, either, what it felt like to have such a man hold power over her, and how an unexpected death could change the course of one’s life.
SEVEN YEARS AGO
STARS GLISTENED through the haze of a thin, early autumn fog, the smoke of thousands of chimneys blurring the stars bright enough to burn through the mist above the roofs. Bon-Daanka watched the stars through the open window, focusing on the brightest one, the Fortune Star, the star sailors used to guide them on nights like these, when heavy air closed in around their ships and trimmed visibility to naught. She imagined what it would be like to sail on a ship, to cross a sea, ignoring the moment she lived in so she might live another for a brief time.
She disregarded the low flickering of a lamp with too little oil in its basin, the dank stink of sweat in the room, the lumpy mattress beneath her back, the grunting of the man atop her, the stench of ale and rotten teeth wafting from his mouth. She ignored all this to think about the legend of Ju-Nee, the woman pirate of the southern seas, a story she had read many times by lamplight in the small hours of the night, one of the stories in the old book hidden beneath the floorboards under the bed.
The man finished his rutting, disengaged himself from her, and sat on the edge of the mattress. He said nothing, standing to pull up his trousers, taking a coin from a pouch and tossing it in the clay jar on the stand by the window. He nodded to her and left, failing to close the door.
Bon-Daanka wiped herself clean and pulled a plain, faded blue cotton dress over her head. No one new entered, which meant the night grew late and the men too drunk to seek satisfaction for their other desires. She gathered up the coins from the jar, tucked them in the hidden pouch in the folded skirt of her dress. She did not need to count the money. It did not belong to her. Nothing belonged to her. Not the bed, not her dress, not her own body. Even the book beneath the floorboards had been stolen.
At age ten, her father sold her to a wealthy merchant family as a servant. She learned to read by eavesdropping on the lessons the tutor gave the merchant’s sons. After four years, she grew tired of the beatings and reading the same books and ran away, stealing her favorite collection of tales to take with her. To-Dang found her not long after her escape, living on the streets, thieving food from vendors during the days and hiding in alleys at night. He had offered her a bed and a meal in return for work cleaning. Accustomed to hard work, she accepted the offer. As the days passed, the labor her new master demanded of her changed. When she did not understand what he required of her, he took the time to show her. He showed her often. Other men showed her as well, and paid To-Dang for the privilege.
It did not take long for Bon-Daanka to run away and it did not take long for To-Dang to track her down. He beat her so badly that it took a week for her to recover. He did not care, as much of her work took place while lying in bed. The second time she fled, he found her again and it took two weeks to recuperate. The third time, he nearly killed her and promised to do so if she ran away again.
She did not run again, and as the days turned to months and the months to years, she forgot about the girl who ran away, did not remember what she looked like or thought like or desired. She became the husk of an abandoned fruit — the inner world of her mind growing to replace the outer world her body inhabited.
Bon-Daanka walked down the stairs of the small, two-story house, hearing familiar noises from the other rooms. She skipped the bottom stair, as if it didn’t exist, and headed through the door into the street. She wanted to find To-Dang and give him his money so he had no excuse to come looking for her later. He did not drink as much as other men and had appetites less easily sated than most.
She crossed the street, ignoring the calls of two men propping each other up as they stumbled over the uneven stones of the lane. Bon-Daanka headed for the alley directly across from the door of the tuss house, as the locals caustically named it. To-Dang would be there, making appointments for still sober customers, selling jinla weed to those looking for something other than ale to dull their existence for a few hours, and dealing with his other business endeavors while seated on an old ale barrel.
Bon-Daanka sensed a wrongness with her first footstep into the shadows. To-Dang did not sit at his customary place on the barrel at the opening of the alley. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her ears told her two people stood farther into the narrow path between houses. She heard someone struggling, fingernails scraping against stone, a gurgled breath.
“To-Dang?” She walked past the barrel into the alley, the scent of rotten wood and stale piss stinging her nose. She saw a woman pressed against the wall, To-Dang’s arm jammed against her neck, his hand squeezing at her throat. “To-Dang!”
Bon-Daanka did not know why her master strangled the woman, but she knew she needed to intercede. As she ran down the alley, she saw the cut of the woman’s dress in the dim light and realized To-Dang did not assault one of the other girls from the house. The trim of the cloth looked too fine, even in near darkness, to be a tuss girl’s attire. The woman must have gotten lost in the warren of streets on the west side of the town and ended up in the wrong alley.
“The coin, bitch, the coin!” To-Dang shook an empty leather bag in his other hand. The woman grasped at the man’s fingers on her neck, but coul
d not breathe enough to speak. Bon-Daanka noticed books and clothes lying in the dirt of the alley at the woman’s feet.
“To-Dang, yer kill’n her.” Bon-Daanka stepped forward, placing her hand on her master’s arm, hoping to calm him. When he got in a rage, he often did not think clearly. She had seen him beat a man to death once for not paying a girl. It had not been about the money but some other matter earlier in the day that left him angry.
“I’ll be killing you if ya don’t piss off.” To-Dang released the woman long enough to turn and punch Bon-Daanka in the stomach.
She crumpled to the ground, gasping for air. Through teary eyes, she watched To-Dang grab the woman and beat her about the head with one hand while strangling her with another. The woman went limp after the second blow.
“I knows ya gots more coin than that. Where’s it?” To-Dang shook the near unconscious woman. “That dress. The books. Ya got the coin. Is it under yer skirts?” To-Dang pulled up the woman’s dress, her pale legs flashing in the dim light.
Bon-Daanka struggled to climb back to her feet, pushing at the ground with her hands. As she rose, her fingers found something square and hard beside them. She clasped it in her hand as she stood to her feet, swinging her arm at To-Dang’s head. The brick came to an arm-shuddering stop, a wet cracking sound preceding To-Dang’s collapse to the ground, his hat flying from his head. She stared at To-Dang as he blinked and held his head.
“Yer dead, bitch!” To-Dang pulled his hand away from his scalp, red-black wetness oozing between his fingers.
Bon-Daanka’s limbs shook, fire burning her skin as ice numbed her muscles. What had she done? She looked into To-Dang’s eyes and her bladder went weak, urine dribbling down her inner thigh as he leaned forward to push himself up to his knees. In that moment, that half breath between thoughts and actions, a voice spoke in her mind, a voice long forgotten but with a tone and character that resonated within her. A voice that had once been hers. A voice that had once told her what she desired and what to say and what to do. That voice spoke to her with a simple command.
Hit him again.
Bon-Daanka swung the brick in her hand with all her strength, hitting To-Dang in the temple. He fell back to the ground, cursing. Bon-Daanka knelt swiftly at his side, bringing the brick once more down upon his skull. She hit him for every time he had beaten her. She hit him for every time he had raped her. She hit him for every time he took money to let other men rape her. She hit him until she realized he no longer moved, no longer had a face, and that blood now covered her arms.
She looked at To-Dang, but did not recognize his features. Little of his head remained intact. She dropped the brick and leaned back on her heels, her breath ragged and uneven. To-Dang no longer owned her. He lay dead before her. She had killed him. She no longer had a master.
Bon-Daanka’s heart beat faster at the thought of freedom. Could she run again? Would To-Dang’s associates try to find her? Could she get far enough away? It took her a moment to remember the woman, the reason she had begun this strange new journey.
She went to the woman, checking her breathing, placing her ear to the woman’s chest. The woman’s lungs did not move. Her heart did not beat. Her eyes did not see Bon-Daanka’s tears or her shaking hands as they closed the woman’s eyes.
As she turned away, Bon-Daanka noticed the books and clothes that had fallen from the woman’s leather bag. She wiped her bloody hands on her dress and slowly examined the books. She could barely read the ink on the inner pages in the dim alley light, but the words set her mind afire. The History of the First Dominion, The Philosophies of Fin-Han-Ro, The Pillars of Heaven, Grammar Rules and Forms, Legends and Fables of Hin-Ma-Ter. This last she recognized. The floorboard in her room hid a copy of the same text.
A folded piece of paper fell from between two of the books as she held them in her hands. A letter. She opened it carefully, using the edges of her dress sleeves to make sure she did not get blood on it. She held the paper up close to her eyes, straining to read the flowing script and sound out their words in the meager light of the alley.
“Mizen Lee-Nin. I have received your letter and those of your sponsors with great pleasure. Your services are much required. Tahn Taujin Lin-Pi’s children are in need of a tutor of high learning, superior breeding, and eloquent elocution. I believe you are the perfect candidate for the position and request you make all haste to arrive as quickly as possible so the children’s betterment may begin in earnest. Yours in all appreciation, Hu Pell-Nan, personal assistant to Tahn Taujin Lin-Pi.”
Bon-Daanka lowered the letter, looking down as her mind assessed its contents. The dead woman, Mizen Lee-Nin, slumped against the wall. A tutor. Her books and clothes sat piled in the ground. For children. To-Dang’s bloodied body lay crumpled in dust.
A phrase came to her mind. One To-Dang often repeated. Something he had picked up from a wealthy client. Best to quickly clasp Father Fortune’s surreptitious bounty and abscond before Mother Fate arrives with an offering of her own.
Bon-Daanka considered these words from a new perspective.
He cannot follow.
A tutor with a position.
I could disappear.
Clothes and books and a letter.
I could become this woman.
Bon-Daanka touched the money in the pouch of her skirts. She bent down and felt along To-Dang’s waist, finding his coin purse in his pocket. Two coin purses. The woman’s as well. She judged the weight of all the coins she held. Enough to rent a room in an inn on a better side of town. Bathe. Clean the woman’s clothes and hire a carriage to the capital city of Tsee-Kaanlin.
She cleaned herself with water from a nearby alleyway rain barrel. Then she pulled her dress off over her head and began to tug the woman’s clothes and boots free from her dead body. Once dressed in the woman’s clothes, and her own dress yanked haphazardly onto the dead woman’s limbs, she packed the clothes and books and letter into the leather bag. She took enough coins for a room, put them in one of the purses, placed it on top of the bag, and closed the flaps. She took the rest of the coins, put them in the second purse, and strapped it tightly to her inner knee, making sure it did not jingle.
Bon-Daanka looked down again at the bodies of the woman and To-Dang, her stomach souring as she realized the flaw in her plan. She hoped to leave the impression that robbers attacked herself and To-Dang, leaving both dead. Unfortunately, while she and the woman were of roughly equal size, no one who knew her would mistake the woman for her corpse. She bit her lip, dizziness making her swoon for a moment before she regathered her fortitude.
She picked up To-Dang’s hat, placed it over the woman’s face, and grasped hold of the brick. A few moments later, she pulled back the hat, retching, her mouth filling with bile as she saw the effects of her efforts. The dead woman could now be any girl, could be Bon-Daanka.
She stood up, straightening her skirt, the dress of a dead woman. She would take more than the dead woman’s dress and money and books.
“Ya can do this, Bon-Daanka,” she said aloud to firm her nerve. She stopped, took a deep breath, remembering the way her old merchant masters from her childhood used to speak, and breathed her words again.
“You can accomplish this, Lee-Nin.”
She followed the alley toward the back, carrying the leather bag, wincing at the pinch of the dead woman’s boots, walking out into the street, into the night, into her new life.
THE PRESENT
CAMPFIRES CAST ripples of flickering orange across dark, swift water, beneath a dun-black sky. Lee-Nin watched as the wardens spoke with the first group of pilgrims near a campfire. She recognized the warden commander’s face in the firelight. A persistent man. Too much so. Too often, men had determined her future. Her father. Her first master. To-Dang. Tahn Taujin Lin-Pi. And this warden commander. She determined her own future now, although she might accept help from one man.
She looked back to the river. Sha-Kutan still had not surfaced from his swim
. How could the man hold his breath so long? She noticed something in the water near the back of the wardens’ boat. Sha-Kutan’s head looked like a massive turtle risen from the depths of the river to bob beside the fishing vessel. As she watched, the boat slid away from the shore and into the current.
She flicked her eyes to the wardens at the campfire. The commander spoke to several of the pilgrim men. The majority of the pilgrims hung back, creating a ring around the armed men. Sha-Kutan appeared correct in his assessment of the pilgrims’ response to interrogation about a man, a woman, and a girl. She saw the men shaking their heads at the wardens and casting their arms wide to indicate the whole band of pilgrims. None of the wardens noticed the boat drifting downstream. The pilgrims kept their eyes turned away from the water to focus on the men with the swords standing in their camp.
The fishing boat floated a hundred paces downriver before the wardens discovered its absence. The commander shouted, and his men ran to the riverbank. Lee-Nin strained her eyes, but saw no sign of Sha-Kutan. She could not tell if he swam below the boat, or on the far side of it where the wardens could not see.
She clutched the big man’s clothes and boots to her chest, and slung the canvas bag over her shoulder, grunting slightly at the weight. It held little more than Sha-Kutan’s sword, but that weighed plenty. She took Sao-Tauna’s hand and led the girl through the trees along the water, farther north from the bend. She risked a glance back to see that the wardens had apparently abandoned the boat, turning their concerns and anger toward the pilgrims. She saw one of the wardens marching to where the pilgrims tied their horses for the night. They would likely steal the mounts they needed. As she led Sao-Tauna through the woods, she said a short, silent prayer that the wardens did not harm the pilgrims. Only after she prayed did she wonder what god she petitioned.
At the water’s edge, Sao-Tauna squeezed her hand tightly. The girl did not like to swim. Lee-Nin picked her up and waded into the water as the fishing boat approached. She looked again toward the pilgrim campsite, seeing nothing but the occasional flicker of firelight through the shadowed trees. The bend in the river protected them completely from view. Sha-Kutan stood up in the shallows next to the boat and guided it near the shore. Lee-Nin sat Sao-Tauna on one of the two benches and placed the clothes and canvas sack beside her. Five paces long and two paces wide, the boat held benches at either end with a wide-open middle piled with old nets. Two oars tilted from the oarlocks in the hull to rest inside the boat. Several leather bags also sat in the space normally occupied by fish. The wardens’ supplies, no doubt. Lee-Nin smiled at the small victory of robbing the men who wished her and Sao-Tauna dead.
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 55