Guy Gavriel Kay - Under Heaven

“Why would you be sent to kill another Kanlin?”

“Because she isn’t Kanlin.”

The fortress commander turned and looked at her.

The woman said, “She went rogue half a year ago. Left her assigned sanctuary near Xinan, disappeared into the city. Started killing for a fee, then was hired by someone, we learned, to travel here to do the same.”

“Who hired her?”

The girl shook her head. “I wasn’t told.”

He said, “She was a Kanlin. She wanted to fight me, said the only reason she didn’t was strict orders.”

“And you think those orders could have been given to someone still serving the Mountain, Master Shen Tai? Really? You were at Stone Drum. You know better.”

He looked from her to Lin Fong. The commander’s expression was alert. This was all news to him, of course, and news was bright coinage this far west.

Tai really didn’t want his life discussed in an open courtyard. She probably knew that, he thought. She had ignored his question about why she’d been sent here. That could be discretion, or a way to get him into a smaller space.

His life had been very simple, just a few days ago.

“The commander can have someone search me,” she said in that low, crisp voice. It was as if she’d read his thoughts.

She added, “I have a dagger in my right boot. Nothing else. They can also tie my wrists so we can talk in a private place, with the commander present or not, as you wish.”

“No,” said Lin Fong, glaring. He wouldn’t like a woman being so decisive. No military officer would. “I will be present. You do not set conditions here. You are both under my jurisdiction, and it seems people have been killed. I have questions of my own, there are reports to be filed.”

There were always reports to be filed. The empire could drown in the reports that were filed, Tai thought.

The woman shrugged. Tai had the feeling she’d anticipated or even intended this. He needed to make a decision.

He sheathed his arrow and bow. Looked up to his right. The gap-toothed, balding guard was still on the wall, looking down. Tai gestured. “That one to look to my horse. Walk, water, feed him. I remember that he knows horses.”

The man’s expression of joy would have been gratifying, at any easier time.

HE HAD A FEW MOMENTS ALONE to wash and change his clothes. He switched from riding boots to brocaded slippers they provided. A servant—one of the border people serving the soldiers—took his clothing and boots to clean them.

It had occurred to Tai many years ago that one usually expected important decisions in life to emerge after long and complex thought. Sometimes this was so. But on other occasions one might wake in the morning (or finish drying one’s hands and face in a dusty border fort) with the abrupt, intense realization that a choice had already been made. All that was left was putting it into effect.

Tai could see no clear pattern in his own life as to this. Nor was he able to say, that morning, why he was suddenly so sure of something.

A waiting soldier escorted him through two courtyards to the commander’s reception pavilion at the eastern end of the compound. He announced Tai’s presence and drew back a canvas flap that covered the doorway, blocking the wind. Tai walked in.

Lin Fong and the Kanlin woman were already there. Tai bowed, then sat with them on a raised platform in the centre of the room. He settled himself on a mat, crossing his legs. There was tea, unexpectedly, at his elbow, on a blue, lacquered tray decorated with a painting of willow branches and two lines from a poem by Chan Du about willow trees. The pavilion was sparely decorated.

It was also more beautiful than any space Tai had entered in two years. There was a pale-green vase on a low side table behind the commander. Tai stared at it for a long time. Too long, probably. His expression, he thought wryly, was probably something like the soldier’s on the wall had been, looking down at the horse.

“That is a very fine piece of work,” he said.

Lin Fong smiled, pleased and unable to hide it.

Tai cleared his throat and bowed at the waist without rising. “Untie her, please. Or don’t bind her on my account.”

Folly, on the face of it. He was alarmingly certain it wasn’t.

He looked at the woman, who had been carefully trussed at both ankles and wrists. She was sitting placidly on the other side of the platform.

“Why?” Commander Lin, however happy with a compliment to his taste, evidently didn’t like making adjustments.

“She isn’t about to attack me with you here.” He’d realized this while washing his face. “The Kanlins exist because they can be trusted, by both court and army. They have lasted six hundred years because of that. But that trust is badly damaged if one of them kills the commander of a military fort, or someone under his protection. Their sanctuaries, their immunity, could be destroyed. And besides, I think she’s telling the truth.”

The woman smiled again, large eyes downcast, as if the amusement was private.

“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.”