Under Heaven

The Taguran was staring. Tai poured more wine for him from the flask on the brazier. He drank from his own cup, then filled it. A friend had died here today. There was blood on the bedding. There was a new hole in the world where sorrow could enter.

“Everyone knew this about you? The time with the Kanlins?”

Tai shook his head. “No.”

“You trained to be an assassin?”

The usual, irritating mistake. “I trained to learn how they think, their disciplines, and how they handle weapons. They are usually guards, or guarantors of a truce, not assassins. I left, fairly abruptly. Some of my teachers may still feel kindly towards me. Others might not. It was years ago. We leave things behind us.”

“Well, that’s true enough.”

Tai drank his wine.

“They think you used them? Tricked them?”

Tai was beginning to regret mentioning it. “I just understand them a little now.”

“And they don’t like that?”

“No. I’m not a Kanlin.”

“What are you?”

“Right now? I’m between worlds, serving the dead.”

“Oh, good. Be Kitan-clever again. Are you a soldier or a court mandarin, fuck it all?”

Tai managed a grin. “Neither. Fuck it all.”

Bytsan looked away quickly, but Tai saw him suppress a smile. It was hard not to like this man.

He added, more quietly, “It is only truth, captain. I left the army years ago, have not taken the civil service exams. I’m not being clever.”

Bytsan held out his again-empty cup before answering. Tai filled it, topped up his own. This was beginning to remind him of nights in the North District. Soldiers or poets—who could drink more? A question for the ages, or sages.

After a moment, the Taguran said, also softly, “You didn’t need us to save you.”

Outside, something screamed.

It wasn’t a sound you could pretend was an animal, or wind. Tai knew that particular voice. Heard it every night. He found himself wishing he’d been able to find and bury that one before leaving. But there was no way to know where any given bones might lie. That much he’d learned in two years. Two years that were ending tonight. He had to leave. Someone had been sent to kill him, this far away. He needed to learn why. He drained his cup again.

He said, “I didn’t know they would attack her. Neither did you, coming back.”

“Well, of course, or we wouldn’t have come.”

Tai shook his head. “No, that means your courage deserves honour.”

Something occurred to him. Sometimes wine sent your thoughts along channels you’d not otherwise have found, as when river reeds hide and then reveal a tributary stream in marshland.

“Is that why you let the young one shoot both arrows?”

Bytsan’s gaze in mingled light was unsettlingly direct. Tai was beginning to feel his wine. The Taguran said, “She was flat against the cabin. They were going to crush the life from her. Why waste an arrow?”

Half an answer at best. Tai said wryly, “Why waste a chance to give a soldier a tattoo, and a boast?”

The other man shrugged. “That, too. He did come back with me.”

Tai nodded.

Bytsan said, “You ran outside knowing they’d help you?” An edge to his voice. And why not? They were listening to the cries outside right now. And screams.

Tai cast his mind back to the desperate moments after Yan died. “I was running for the shovel.”

Bytsan sri Nespo laughed, a quick, startling sound. “Against Kanlin swords?”

Tai found himself laughing too. The wine was part of it. And the aftermath of fear remembered. He’d expected to die.

He’d have become one of the ghosts of Kuala Nor.

They drank again. The screaming voice had stopped. Another bad one was beginning, one of those that seemed to still be dying, unbearably, somewhere in the night. It hurt your heart, listening, frayed the edges of your mind.

Tai said, “Do you think about death?”

The other man looked at him. “Every soldier does.”

It was an unfair question. This was a stranger, of an enemy people not so long ago, and likely again in years to come. A blue-tattooed barbarian living beyond the civilized world.

Tai drank. Taguran wine was not going to replace the spiced or scented grape wine of the best houses in the North District, but it was good enough for tonight.

Bytsan murmured suddenly, “I said we had to talk. Told Gnam that, remember?”

“We aren’t talking enough? A shame…a shame Yan’s buried out there. He’d have talked you to sleep, if only to find a respite from his voice.”

Buried out there.

Such a wrong place for a gentle, garrulous man to lie. And Yan had come so far. Carrying what tidings? Tai didn’t know. He didn’t even know, he realized, if his friend had passed the exams.

Bytsan looked away. Gazing out a window at moonlight, he said, “If someone sent an assassin they can send another—when you get back or while you are on the way. You know that.”

He knew that.

Bytsan said, “Iron Gate saw them come through. They will ask where the two of them are.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“And they will send word to Xinan.”

Tai nodded. Of course they would. A Kanlin Warrior coming this far west as an assassin? That had significance. Not empire-shaking, Tai wasn’t important enough, but certainly worth a dispatch from a sleepy border fort. It would go with the military post, which was very fast.