Under Heaven (41 page)

It might have helped if he could have sung, or told tales, or even served as a scribe ... but he had no singing voice, was a small, shy man, and his writing hand (he'd been taught by Wen Zhou's father's steward how to write) was the one that was twisted and useless after the beating.
He'd have been better off dying, Qin thought for a long time. He shaped such thoughts in the street behind Wen's compound, where the other servants had placed him after he was dismissed. It was not a busy thoroughfare, not a good place for a beggar, but the others had said they'd look after him, and they had done so.
Qin would limp on his crutch to the shady side of the street in summer and then cross as the sun moved, or huddle in an alcove in rain or winter winds. Begging brought little, but from the compound each morning and many evenings food and rice wine came out for him. If his garments grew threadbare, he would find that one day the person bringing his meal would be carrying new clothes. In winter they gave him a hooded cloak, and he even had boots. He became skilful with the crutch at beating off dogs or rats eyeing his provisions.
Last autumn his life had even changed for the better, which was not something Pei Qin had thought was possible any more.
One cold, clear morning, four of the household servants, walking the long distance around from the south-facing front doors, had come along the street towards where Qin kept his station against the compound wall. They carried wood and nails and tools, and set about building a discreet shelter for him, set in a space between an oak tree and the stone wall, not easily seen from the street, not likely to offend.
He asked, and they told him that the new concubine, Lin Chang, had heard Qin's story from one of Zhou's other women--apparently meant as a cautionary tale. She had made inquiries and learned where he was.
She had given instructions that he be provided with a shelter, and his food rations became more substantial after that. It appeared that she had assumed responsibility for him, freeing the servants from the need to feed him out of their own allocation.
He never saw her. They told him she was beautiful, and on five occasions (he remembered them perfectly) he heard her play the
pipa
towards the back of the garden. He knew it was her, even before they confirmed for him that it was Mistress Lin, of all the women, who played and sang best, and who liked to come alone to the gazebo.
Qin had decided she was playing for him.
He would have killed, or died for her, by then. Hwan, the servant who most often brought his food or clothing, clearly felt the same way. It was Hwan who told him she'd been bought from the North District, and that her name there had been Spring Rain. He also told Qin what the master had paid for her (it was a source of pride). Qin thought it an unimaginable sum, and also not enough.
It was Hwan who had told him, at the beginning of spring, that a Kanlin Warrior would be coming to meet privately with Mistress Lin.
Hwan--speaking for the lady, he made clear--asked Qin to show this Kanlin how to get over the wall using his own shelter-tree, and to give her directions to the gazebo from there (it was a distance back west in the compound).
It brought intense joy to Qin's battered body and beating heart to be trusted with such a service for her. He told Hwan as much, begged him to say so to Mistress Lin, and to bow three times in Qin's name.
The Kanlin came that night (a woman, which he hadn't expected, but it made no difference). She looked for Qin in the darkness, carrying no torch. She'd have had trouble seeing him, had he not been watching for her. He called to her, showed her the way over the wall, told her where the gazebo was. It was a cold night, he remembered. The woman climbed with an ease Qin would never have matched even when he had his legs and a straight back. But Kanlin were chosen for their aptitude in these things, and trained.
Qin had been chosen for intelligence, but had overheated wine one night.
You might call the world an unjust place, or make of life what you could. He was grateful to the servants, in love with a woman he would never see, and he intended to live long enough to celebrate the death of Wen Zhou.
He watched the Kanlin woman disappear over the wall and saw her come back some time later. She gave him a coin--silver, which was generous. He was saving it for an extravagance. Lychees would be in season now in the south, where he'd been born. The court might have them already, the Xinan marketplaces would see them soon. Qin intended to ask someone to buy him a basket, as a way of remembering childhood.
He'd actually gone once to the nearer, eastern market the summer before, just to see it again. It had been a reckless, misguided thing to do. Getting there had taken him most of a day, limping and in pain, mocked by children. He'd fallen several times, and been stepped on, and had then been at real risk, at day's end, of not getting back inside the ward when the drums began.
You were beaten by the gate guards for that.
He would ask someone to buy him lychees. There were several of the servants he trusted, and he would share his bounty. They had saved his life, after all. And surely there was value in any life, even one such as his?
Earlier today, Hwan had come out again, taking the long walk around to tell him someone else would be coming along Qin's street tonight, and would need to be shown the tree and how to climb, and where the gazebo might be found.
"It is for her?" was all Qin asked.
"Of course it is," Hwan said.
"Please bow three times. Tell her that her most humble servant in the world under heaven will ensure that it is done."
That night a man did come walking, with five Kanlins. One of these, Qin saw, was the woman who'd come before. He knew because he didn't need to call out to them, she came straight over to his tree. Since it was the woman who'd been here they didn't need instructions. The man looked down at Qin in the darkness (they carried no torches). He saw the small shelter built for him.
He gave Qin two coins, even before going over the wall. Three of the Kanlin went with him, two remained in the street, on guard.
Qin wanted to tell them that he would have served as a guard, but he wasn't a foolish man. These were Kanlin, they had swords across their backs. They wore black, as ever, and melted into the night. After a time he had no idea where they were, but he knew that they were there.
HER
PIPA
RESTS on the wide, smooth, waist-high railing. She is standing by one of the gazebo's rosewood pillars, leaning against it. It is chilly now but she has a short jacket, green as leaves, with gold thread, to cover her bodice, which is gold. Her green, ankle-length skirt has stripes running down it, also gold. The silk is unexceptional. It would have been noted had she worn finer silk, with the master away.
She wears no perfume, same reason.
She is on her feet because she has heard someone coming--from the eastern side of the garden, where the oak tree can be climbed.
The one lantern casts an amber glow. The gazebo will seem like a cabin in a dark forest, she imagines, a refuge, sanctuary for a lost traveller. It isn't, she thinks. There is no sanctuary here.
Footsteps ascend the two steps and he is here.
He kneels immediately, head lowered, before she can even see his face, register his presence properly. She has not expected him to do this. She's had no real idea what to expect.
No jade stairs
, she reminds herself.
No tears at window ledges.
He looks up. The remembered face. She observes little change, but it is not light enough to see closely here, and two years need not alter a man so much.
She murmurs, "I am not deserving of this, my lord."
He says, "I am not deserving of what you did for me, Rain."
The voice she also remembers, too vividly. Why, and how, does one voice, one person, come to conjure vibrations in the soul, like an instrument tuned? Why a given man, and not another, or a third? She hasn't nearly enough wisdom to answer that. She isn't sure if anyone does.
"Master Shen," she says formally. "Please stand. Your servant is honoured that you have come."
He does stand up. When he looks at her, his face, beneath the lantern, shows the intensity she recalls. She pushes memories away. She needs to do that. She says, "Are you alone, my lord?"
He shakes his head. "Three Kanlin are with me, to keep watch. Two more in the street. I'm not allowed to be alone any more, Rain."
She thinks she understands that. She says, "Is the one I sent to you ...?"
"Wei Song is here, yes. She is very capable."
Rain allows herself a smile. She sees him register that. "I thought she might be. But did she ... how did you survive?"
He hesitates. He
has
changed, she decides. Is weighing his words. "You know where I was?"
She nods. She is glad of the pillar behind her, for support. "I didn't know, before. I had to have her find your home, start there. I didn't even know where your father's home was."
"I am sorry," he says, simply.
She ignores that. Says, "I know that Wen Zhou had Lun hire a woman to kill you."
"Sent with Yan."
"Yes. Is he all right?"
"He's dead, Rain. She killed him. I was saved only by ... by the ghosts. And Tagurans who came to help, when they saw riders."
By the ghosts.
She isn't ready to ask about that, to know about it. Yan is dead. A hard thing to learn. A sweet man.
"I'm sorry," she says.
He is silent, looking at her. She is accustomed to men looking at her, but this is different. He is different.
Eventually he says, "He was dead the moment she became his guard, I think."
She wishes there was wine. She ought to have brought some. "So I did nothing at all?" she says.
He shakes his head. "There was a second attempt. At Chenyao. Wei Song fought a number of men alone, outside my room."
"A
very
capable woman, then." She isn't sure why she's said it that way.
Tai only nods. "As I said." He hesitates again. He isn't being awkward, she decides, he is choosing what to say. It is a difference from before. "Rain, you would have been killed if this had been discovered." It is a statement, not a question.
"It was unlikely it would be," she says. He hasn't moved from under the lantern, neither has she, from her place by the pillar. She sees fireflies behind him. Hears crickets in the garden. No sign of the Kanlins he mentioned, or anyone else. There is a silence.
"I
had
to go away," he says, finally.
This will become difficult now, she thinks.
"I know," she says. "Your father died."
"When did ... when did he bring you here?"
She smiles at him, her smile has always been an instrument she could use. "Not long after his appointment."
"As you tried to tell me."
"As I did tell you, Tai."
She hadn't meant to say that so quickly. Or use his name. She sees him smile this time. He steps closer. She wants to close her eyes, but does not.
He says, "No perfume? I have remembered it for two years."
"Have you really, my lord?" she says, the way she might have in the Pavilion of Moonlight.
He looks down at her, where the light touches her features, catches yellow hair. She has not posed herself, it was simply a place against a column where she could lean back for support. And be on her feet when he came.
He says, "I understand. You wear scent now only for him, and he's away."
She keeps her tone light. "I am not sure how I feel about you becoming this perceptive."
He smiles only a little. Says nothing.
"I can also move more easily undetected without it," she says. But she is disconcerted that he has so swiftly understood.
"Is that important?" He is asking something else now, she knows.
She lifts her shoulders again, lets them fall.
"Has he been cruel?" he asks. She hears strain in his voice. She knows men well, this one very well.
"No. Never," she says.
A silence. He is quite close.
"May I kiss you?" he asks.
There it is. She makes herself meet his eyes.
"No. Never," she says.
And sees sorrow. Not anger, not balked desire. Sorrow, which is--perhaps--why and how another's voice or soul can resonate within you, she thinks.
"Never?" he asks.
He does not move nearer. There are men who would, she knows. She knows many of those.
No jade stairs
, she tells herself.
"Are you asking my views on eternity and the choices of life?" she says brightly. "Are we back to discoursing upon the Sacred Path?"
He waits. The man she remembers would have been eager to cap her own half-witticism with a quip of his own. That, or take the exchange deeper, despite her teasing.
She says, to delay: "You have changed in two years."
"Where I was," he says.
Only that. He has not touched her.
She lifts a hand to his cheek. She had not meant to do that. She knows exactly what she'd meant to do among the fireflies tonight. It was not this.
He takes her hand in his, and kisses her palm. He inhales, as if trying to bring her back within himself after so long.
She closes her eyes.
SHE HAS NOT CHANGED
, Tai thought, and he realized that it had been childish for him to imagine that she'd appear to him like some fragile princess abducted into sad captivity.
What had happened to Rain was not, he finally understood, his sister's fate. It was a difficult truth. Had he merged the two of them in his mind, journeying east?
What, truly, was better about a singing girl's life in the Pavilion of Moonlight? Serving any man who had money and desire? Compare that with existence in this compound with one powerful man she knew--
clearly
she knew--how to entrance and lure? As for when she grew older: also clear as moonlight on snow, her chances of a protected life were better here. This destiny was what the North District girls all longed to find.
He felt a wave of self-reproach, and sadness.
Then she touched his cheek, and then she closed her eyes.
He bent and kissed her on the lips. He did it gently, trying to acknowledge what had happened, the reality of it, and that he'd been away two years. Her mouth was soft, her lips parted. His own eyes closed.
He made himself draw back. He said, "Rain, there has never been a woman who reaches into me as you do."
Her eyes opened. The gazebo was lit by only one lantern, so it was hard to see how green her eyes were, but he knew, he remembered. He wondered--a shockingly hard thought--if he'd ever see those eyes again.
For that was where this night was travelling, he realized.
She said, "I am sorry for it, my lord. And pleased. Am I permitted to be both?"