Under Heaven

“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 (#ulink_4f6cc6e9-0b21-5464-9c12-5c41364d3f80)

“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.”