Instinct told her to run, but cold, pessimistic reason told her that running would dare them to pursue her. She understood in that instant what men most loved in hunting—the chase. They wanted their prey to flee, to show spirit—to challenge their skill. Their drunken skill…
Her lips curled and she drew in her breath.
Instead of running, she smoothed her robe, pushed her hair back from her face, and stepped boldly out from her hiding place. She walked toward the men, smiling demurely, but making sure to make firm eye contact—glazed and wandering as all their eyes were—with each of them.
“Well, a pretty Chinese doll,” smirked the one who had spotted her. He grinned, yellowed teeth dull in the flickering light.
“What are you doing back here, girl?” asked another. “Something we could assist you with?”
“I was merely taking a shortcut to bypass the crowd,” she said.
“A shortcut? Where to?” The first soldier staggered closer, and she feared he might try to grab her robe.
“It is none of your concern.” She held her chin high, trying to appear haughty and noble.
“Maybe you don’t have any place in mind,” suggested the third soldier, a man who looked and smelled as if he never bathed in his life. “Maybe you should stay with us. Tarry a while. Try your luck with the bones. And my bones…” He wiggled his fingers suggestively and laughed—awful and snorting.
“Come on, doll, stay a while. We’ll treat you good. Have a drink with us.” The second soldier held up one of the reddish-brown bottles. Lian gagged slightly as she imagined what fermented animal sludge might be inside.
“I am not a cheap whore,” she said, offering them the obvious in case they were too drunk to notice. “I belong to a rather august person, one who has the Khagan’s ear.” She intoned each word carefully. There was a way to extricate herself from this situation, if she could find the right gambit. Wasn’t she always telling Gansukh something similar? There is always a solution to any problem. However, she didn’t want to invoke Chucai’s name; that would be the equivalent of summoning him.
“Do you think the Khagan would be pleased to know you men are not at your posts? That you are gambling in this back alley?” Since she had begun training Gansukh, she found herself starting to think of conversation in terms of combat. It gave her rhetorical victories a certain rousing flair. She snapped the edge of her cloak, as if to suggest their presence was dirtying her, which was not far from the truth.
“Who’s to say that we’re even on duty?” The second soldier stood up, the humor fading from his face. A scar ran across his chin, and without his open-mouthed grin, he was even uglier. His face, with its wandering, half-sunken eyes, looked like the puffed-up visage of a poorly treated corpse.
“I doubt you even know what duty is,” she retorted. A risky response—such flippancy of the tongue—and it might provoke them, but showing fear would invite a response. Half of combat is causing your opponent to think you are stronger than you are, Gansukh had told her.
Scarface’s expression tightened, making his mouth gape even more. “Sharp tongue,” he said, his hand dropping to the hilt of the knife in his sash.
“Sharper than your knife,” she retorted, edging a step backward.
“Shall we see?” the man replied, half pulling his knife from its sheath.
“And then what?” she snapped. “Will you gouge out my eyes so that I won’t be able to point you out later to the Khagan’s Imperial Guard? Or will you just cut my throat and leave me here for the stray dogs to find?”
The man paused, her words cutting through the alcohol-suffused fog in his brain. His tongue poked at the edge of his lips, like a pale worm peeking out of a ragged crack in the ground. He glanced at his companions, who were no longer supporting him with their laughter.
“I can scream very loud,” Lian said. She made a show of inhaling deeply.
“Run along, bitch,” Scarface spat. He slammed his knife back into its sheath. The others glowered at her, their mood dark, but no longer ugly.
“Very well. I will take my leave of you, then.” She bowed slightly, keeping to her masquerade as a highly regarded companion of an important official. “If I pass this way again tonight, I hope I do not see you here.” She marched off, her steps a firm, rhythmic mince, miming a purpose she did not feel.
“Better you don’t pass this away again,” Scarface shouted after her. “Next time, it will cost you.” The men laughed, prompted by some physical action of Scarface’s, but she didn’t look to see what it was. She had a fairly good idea.
Let them laugh, she thought as she strode away. Let them think they got the better of me. Most importantly, let them not remember me.
The chaos of the festival might make it possible for her to escape, but it had its risks too. An unescorted female might be too much of an allure to drunken men. In the tumult of revelry, it wouldn’t matter if she was seen by someone who would tell Chucai. Much worse things could happen to her.
How could she slip out of the city unseen? Every encounter was a potential disaster. She had to figure out a way to vanish without being seen by anyone.
Or be in the company of someone who could protect her. Someone who, like her, was running away.
Gansukh.
Could she convince him to flee with her?
CHAPTER 32:
THE SECRET OF THE CAVES
The rough timbers of the monastery wall were aged and warped, and there were numerous gaps and holes in the wood. Covered in pitch, they were a poor defensive barrier, if they had ever been intended as such. Cnán and Finn approached the wood cautiously and dared to peek through the gaps.
Whereupon they discovered the source of the stench.
As they had climbed the rough path, the smell had gotten worse, as if they were climbing through veritable layers of stink. What little breeze there had been had fled, and now, in the torpid stillness of the afternoon, the smell clung to them. It seeped through the seams in her clothing and beneath her hair. Earlier, with the assistance of Yasper’s mint tincture, she had kept her stomach in order, but now… Steeling herself against a dangerous loss of her self-control, she leaned toward the stained and warped wall again and put her eye up to a spy hole.
Animal carcasses—so many she couldn’t bear to count them—littered the ground as though tossed there by the hands of some immense, thoughtless child. Most had been stripped of their hides and left to rot in the summer heat. Some of the bodies appeared to squirm and twitch, and she refused to let herself imagine that some of those bloody and flayed bodies might be alive… No, those were maggots and ants at work inside their ribcages.
“Hide workers,” Finn muttered, shaking his shaggy head. “Lazy and wasteful.” Waddling sideways, he gestured for her to follow him.
She crept along in his wake, breathing through her mouth.
Inside the wall, the one-storied buildings were arranged around a rectangular common. They were simple structures, and there was little art in their construction. One each for sleeping, eating, and praying, she thought, counting them. And one more for their grisly work… In the open courtyard, there was another structure, a narrow stone well house with a worn wooden door.