The Sword Dancer (17 page)

‘One of the disciplines of a physician is the reading of faces. Does the young miss believe that there are only a few types of faces in the world? That the same patterns are repeated over and over?’

He was looking over her features as he spoke and the glance suddenly didn’t seem so professional or impersonal. The back of her neck heated under the prolonged scrutiny.

‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe we’re always searching for similarities. To find some trace of kinship, even if it’s from generations past.’

He looked impressed. ‘Well said, young miss.’

He stood to check on the tea and Li Feng lifted another piece of ginger. The exchange was becoming a bit strange and she was eager to drink whatever brew he offered and take her leave.

‘There is something this servant should tell the young miss.’ The physician was looking out the window again. ‘Someone is following her.’

Han. Her breath lodged in her throat. He’d come after her. If the physician had been holding her wrist then, he would have felt her pulse racing wildly.

‘He isn’t any trouble. He’s a…a friend.’

As she tried to figure out how to evade him again, Wu stepped away from the window and approached her, teapot in hand. ‘There are several men, actually.’

‘Several?’ Li Feng sprang to her feet. ‘How many?’

‘It looks to be about five or six, miss. This physician suspected she was being followed before inviting her into the shop, but he wasn’t certain until now.’

‘Is there a back door?’

‘Just beyond the storeroom.’

She didn’t bother to glance out the window. It was a waste of time and she didn’t want to alert whoever it was that she was aware of them. The men could be city guardsmen or more thief-catchers, but she had a feeling they were much more dangerous than that. With a hasty apology to the physician, she ducked through the curtain into the workrooms in back. A glance outside the door showed the lane was clear.

Li Feng found a narrow alleyway and began her climb upwards, leaping from corner to wall to balcony. In no time, she was up on the roof with the sun shining down on her. She stepped over to the shaded side and anchored herself against the roof ornaments, crouching low to keep watch over the alley below.

It wasn’t long before a man came into view. She didn’t need to see his face to recognise him. He was dressed as a wealthy merchant in a brocade robe with gold accents, but she knew him for what he was. Bao Yang, the perpetrator of the famous jade heist, scanned both ends of the alleyway before shifting his gaze upwards. He would know she was more likely to be up high than on the ground. She moved to the edge of the roof and dropped down behind him, rolling to absorb the impact. The sleeve sword was in her hand as she stood.

Bao Yang swung around. His gaze dropped to the blade before returning to her face.

‘I suppose this means things are over between us.’

‘Are you here to kill me?’ she demanded.

A frown creased his brow. ‘Why would you think such a thing?’

His features were angular and his nose slightly off centre, but there was something compelling in his imperfection. At least she’d always been enthralled by it.

He started towards her, but halted mid-step when she raised her weapon. Bao Yang feared nothing and no one. She should take it as a compliment that she was considered dangerous enough to be treated with caution.

‘You left so quickly without a word of farewell.’ He didn’t sound particularly saddened by it.

‘You always warned me that your work was dangerous. I had to keep quiet and it meant life or death.’

He was watching her, assessing her. ‘It wasn’t meant as a threat,’ he said quietly.

She affected a mock smile for him. ‘I don’t entirely believe you.’

He smiled back, a genuine one. Apparently there was still a tiny bit of warmth between them, but it was the last embers of a fire that had burned hot and fast and was now gone.

‘If you’re not here for me—’ she began. Bao Yang lifted an eyebrow at that and she was reminded of how she’d been lured in by enigmatic expressions and secret glances. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Wang Shizhen is coming to the city.’ His focus shifted behind her and she heard the approach of footsteps. ‘And we are here to kill him.’

The rest of his cronies had found them. She recognised her fellow jade thieves as they closed in, forming a net around her and Bao Yang. They appeared harmless for the most part. One short, one thin and tall. Chang-cheh always seemed to have a grin on his face, but he could throw a knife faster and truer than she could. They were dangerous, dedicated men and she was once again among her kind.

Chapter Fifteen

W
ith an efficiency that unnerved her, Bao Yang brought her to a private banquet room at a drinking house near the eastern edge of town. He was posing as a wine merchant, had already made connections under his assumed identity and likely had more informants within the city no one would ever know about.

He cleared the room so they could speak privately. The others would make a sweep of the outside to ensure no one was spying on them. Bao Yang was always very careful.

‘Why did you leave so suddenly after the heist?’ This time, the tone of his question almost sounded personal. Intimate.

She kept her response impassive. ‘I never wanted to be part of any rebellion.’

‘This is no peasant uprising. Wang Shizhen is a tyrant and he must be stopped.’

Li Feng had never discovered exactly who Bao Yang was or where he’d come from. She’d fallen into bed with him as she supposed many women had, drawn by his intelligence and charisma. During their brief period as lovers, she’d discovered an impenetrable wall around him. The sense of mystery that at first seemed so appealing quickly transformed into something cold and threatening beneath the surface.

‘Tell me something.’ She met his gaze. There was an intensity there that she’d once mistaken as passion. ‘Did you know what I was capable of before you came to me?’

When they had first met, they were in a tavern. Wang’s soldiers were taking up several tables and acting drunk and rowdy. One of them had tried to grab her, but she’d shoved him away.

Bao Yang took a moment before replying. ‘I saw you reaching for your sword,’ he admitted.

He had defused the situation by stepping in with his gentlemanly manners, claiming to be her brother, and had ushered her away with a deftness that had stunned her. They had begun their affair on so little beyond that and it had been ill fated from the start.

‘You used me,’ she accused.

‘You wanted to stand up against General Wang. You hardly needed any convincing.’

Bao Yang was so clever in his persuasiveness that she always felt as if she were doing exactly as she wanted. But then again, she had always been looking for a fight.

‘I knew that you would keep asking for more,’ she said. ‘Then one day, I would be in too deep to turn away. I knew you weren’t content with disrupting General Wang’s operations. You wanted him dead.’

He regarded her quietly, as if testing her defences for a weakness. ‘That is exactly what I have come here to do,’ he said finally.

‘You? Or your loyal followers? Do you know Wang Shizhen executed Ma Shan?’

She recalled what she’d heard from Han about their former companion being publicly beheaded.

His jaw tightened. ‘I do know of this.’

‘And of all of us, it was me that the thief-catchers came after.’

‘That wasn’t my intention. I would have protected you—and Ma Shan if I could have. I don’t take pride in sacrificing others. Everyone was a willing participant.’

‘But we are expendable while you are not. You’re too cunning to ever be implicated yourself.’

‘That is not true.’ A muscle ticked along his jaw. ‘I have come here to ensure this is done properly. With my own hands, if I must.’

The vehemence of his response startled her. It wasn’t the first time she’d suspected there was something personal in his hatred of the general. The more she questioned, the more he’d retreat.

Bao Yan watched for her reaction as he spoke. ‘Wang Shizhen is coming here to pay his respects to Prefect Guan, a man I believe you have some interest in.’

It was the prefect who had sent that shipment of jade to General Wang. The two of them were connected, but she wasn’t sure how. The warlord had taken military control over city after city. The prefect had to be aware of that, yet why then would he allow a tiger like Wang into the gates? The general would usurp his authority as he had done all the other districts under his control.

As Li Feng considered what she and Han had learned about the prefect and his corrupt dealings, a few small pieces of a vast puzzle came together.

‘I never knew what the source of your wealth was, but it’s quite easy to see now,’ she said to Bao Yang. ‘You’re a salt smuggler, aren’t you?’

His mouth twisted into a half-smile. ‘I prefer to call it trading. The private salt trade. As they say, the mountains are high and the Emperor is far away.’

Bao Yang possessed an endless supply of money. He’d even given her enough for her journey in silver before they parted ways. Though she had been raised outside of Fujian province, she was learning quickly how the illegal sale of salt created wealth and power.

‘Well, you and Wang Shizhen can fight out your battle. I don’t want any part of it.’

Li Feng needed to return to her brother, to family, and leave this power struggle behind. She had to leave Han behind too. She and Liu Yuan would never be free if they remained in Minzhou.

Bao Yang let her go, despite all they had discussed. It was a testament that he did indeed trust her to remain quiet. How had she fallen for a man she never completely trusted? Or rather, she thought she had fallen. Li Feng tried to tell herself that it had been different between her and Zheng Hao Han, but they’d only shared one night. She had wanted that memory of being in the arms of someone good and honest who wanted her for herself.

Part of her was afraid she couldn’t feel any deeper than that. Maybe she’d been wounded and broken since her family had been torn apart and scattered to the winds. And everything, all of her own mistakes as well as the crimes committed fifteen years ago, were finally coming back around.

* * *

Li Feng left the city by the late afternoon and hiked into the surrounding hills to the vantage point that Liu Yuan had pointed out to her. He was waiting for her there and acknowledged her arrival with neither surprise nor anger. She took his side and followed his gaze down to the former site of his camp. She could see movement below, through the canopy of the trees. Here and there, she caught the glint of metal. There were men sweeping through the area with swords and cudgels drawn.

‘The thief-catcher.’

It was the first time they had spoken since she’d escaped with Han. There was no reproach in his tone, but she could sense it in the stiffness of his posture as he stared down the ledge.

‘I know who he is,’ he told her. ‘He’s the Thief-catcher Han they tell stories about. What is he to you?’

It was the same question she had been asking herself all morning. What was more important, her duty to her family or her own heart? The answer was easy. What she wanted didn’t matter. She had lived for no one but herself for too long.

Liu Yuan was a head taller than her, but he wasn’t nearly as strong or imposing as Han. She hoped the two of them would never meet.

‘He means nothing to me.’ It pained her to say it. She tried to close off her heart and make it true. She had left with only a single farewell, hadn’t she? And without a single tear.

Maybe she was cold. She discarded places and people and memories as if they were nothing more than leaves floating by. Maybe she was a shell of a woman, unable to trust or to love. But she loved her brother, even though they had just been reunited. She knew it without knowing why and she couldn’t bear to lose him now.

‘Liu Yuan…brother.’ It was the first time she had called him such. ‘We should just leave. The past is done and gone.’

She had asked the same thing of him yesterday. Had it been only a day? The chase, the leap across the ravine and the long night in Han’s embrace had seemed an entire lifetime. A cycle of death and rebirth.

He didn’t answer. All she could see of him was the hard cut of his profile. His eyes were fixed on the valley below where Han was hunting for him, but his gaze was distant.

‘Leave the prefect to his own fate,’ she pleaded. ‘We can honour our parents through their memories.’

‘Have you seen the prefect’s mansion?’ Every muscle in his jaw tensed as he spoke. ‘He has three wives. Meat with every meal. Fate
rewards
men like Guan He.’

‘Revenge won’t bring back Father and Mother.’ It sounded empty even to her own ears, but she couldn’t let him sacrifice himself.

‘I can’t, Little Sister,’ he said.

A knot formed in the back of her throat. She blinked furiously, holding back tears. ‘I don’t want to lose a brother too.’

The wind over the ravine made a howling sound. Even the air seemed heavy around them.

His tone softened. ‘When you were little, you were always very stubborn. Mother would say you were that way from the moment you were born,’ he continued. ‘You had your own mind about things and once you had decided, nothing could sway you.’

She recalled a foolish, childish tantrum in the rain. She had been so angry about something and refused to come out of the cold, out of spite. Despite that, it was a warm memory now. Every time Liu Yuan spoke of the past, she was able to recover a little more of herself. How much of memory was exactly this? Turned vivid and real only by being shared with others. With her brother, she had a connection to everything she had lost. Maybe if she just gave him some time, he would reconsider.

She smiled a little, for him. ‘You seem very stubborn yourself.’

‘I think you always knew you would come to this one day. That there would be a time for retribution.’

‘I never—’

‘You studied the sword,’ he pointed out.

‘I learned many things from
shifu
,’ she protested.

‘But you chose to learn how to fight.’

She couldn’t deny it.
Shifu
had taught her to become strong and fast to defend herself, while teaching her about harmony and peace. But she’d accepted the physical lessons so much more readily than the spiritual ones.

Liu Yuan wasn’t finished. ‘Do you know that in ancient times, when a criminal was executed, they would also put his entire family to death? At least his sons would have to die. Because if any son was allowed to live, he would have no choice but to seek revenge. A son who does not avenge his father is not a son.’ He turned away from the ledge to look at her. His eyes were vacant as if his spirit were trapped elsewhere. ‘I have to do this, Little Sister. There is a reason that I could never leave Minzhou. And there is a reason why you found your way back.’

For as long as she could remember, she had dreamt about going back to that moment when those soldiers had taken her mother away. In her dreams, she wasn’t small or slow or weak. She didn’t stumble and she didn’t need to be lifted and carried. She was strong, strong enough to protect her mother.

‘This can’t be what they would have wanted for us,’ she said in desperation.

He raised his hand to stop her. He frowned, the lines of anger cutting deep into his face. ‘You have been on your own all these years, Li Feng. You’ve experienced too much for me to treat you like a child or a helpless woman. That is why I won’t ask you to stand aside, Little Sister. Give your brother the same respect.’

She stood there, stunned and shamed by his words.

This wasn’t his burden alone. They had both been children, both helpless to stop what was happening to them. But they’d both come back stronger.

Prefect Guan was in hiding behind a horde of guards and Han was searching for her brother. And even if Liu Yuan managed to kill the prefect and survive, what then? Could he ever start a new life? The mark of a thief had been inked upon his skin, but deeper than that, his heart had grown black with anger. Her brother wasn’t thinking of survival or a future. So she had to think of those things for him. She owed him that much. She owed it to her mother and father, who she now knew had gone to be with their ancestors a long time ago.

‘We do this together then,’ she said, linking her hand with his for the first time. ‘Brother and sister.’

Liu Yuan stiffened at her touch, but held on to her with a tenuous grip, as if she were made of fine porcelain. If they were still alive when this was over, they would be fugitives, but they would be fugitives together.