Interesting view, too. He gave her the appreciative stare it deserved as she passed him up Jiro's reins; she looked down and pulled her wet shirt away from her body.
"Don't you ever think about anything else?"
He grinned. "Not with a sight like that in front of me."
She thought it was funny, then. A grin spread slowly, bright as sunrise and disquietingly wicked, before she laughed and swaggered up the bank to the flat of the road.
With a decided sway of her hips.
Like she had just found out her sex had a certain power—
—with a certain self-restrained and honorable fool.
The world would teach you otherwise, girl.
No, the world's already tried, dammit. She's not fragile.
Memory of her naked, pale dancer and bright steel, beset by shadows. Of her armored and blood-spattered, plundering the dead.
Of her arms and her body around him—
Of her going tense and panicked at the damnedest times—
And she walked now in her wet clothes with a deliberate twitch of very visible hips.
A girl trying out womanhood, trying out a sense of amusement about the mysteries and the to-do people made of it— Of course. With Taizu things were grimly serious—or not. Honesty—was grimly serious. And she would not, he thought, not deliberately cheat him.
I'm not your wife, it's because I'm scared and I don't like being scared, so I do it until I'm not. . . .
Fool. The girl warned you what she's doing. What does it take?
This morning she was a demon, Now she's a—
—damned tart.
She's—
—a kid. A scared kid who trusts me to treat her decently.
—Master Shoka—
He hurt. That was what. He had better sense than she did. He saw where they were going and he foresaw her lying dead on the road, foresaw himself giving a fair account of himself against whatever nest of trouble they had met. But himself lying on the road thereafter. And the farmers nearby saying: Well, there goes a fool. And the nobles in Chiyaden sighing and saying: With a peasant girl. Whatever can he have intended to do?
And others saying: Maybe he went a little crazy, living off on that mountain.
Boiled rice for supper, a decent fire, a good dinner. And Taizu fell asleep afterward, just—nodded off sitting there, her back against the rock, her rice-bowl empty in her lap.
It wouldn't be much good, Shoka thought; she had walked so far and run so hard; and she looked so damned innocent like that—
He put their mats by her, he said: "Taizu," and waked her before he took her in his arms—safest. "Lie down, you'll get a stiff back," he said, slipping his arms around her. She put her arms around him and muttered something, and nodded off against his shoulder.
Damn.
"Mmm," she said later, stirred and shifted over. He was not asleep, not quite. He had not dared in this place.
"My turn to sleep," he said muzzily. "Can you stay awake awhile?"
She brushed her fingers through his hair.
"If you do that," he said, "you're going to wake me up."
"I'm sorry," she snapped and shoved at him. "Go to sleep, then."
He blinked, rolled onto an arm, rubbed his eyes. "Don't ask profound philosophy of a man in the middle of the night, out of a sound sleep. What are we doing?"
Perhaps he embarrassed her. There was a long silence.
Damn, she had thought she was being seductive.
He fumbled down her arm and found her hand. "Sorry." She let him do that, so he reached further and rested his hand on her shirt, on her stomach, just friendly.
She took his hand in hers and put it up under, against her heart.
Which was all right for a while. Then the shirt went; and his did; and the breeches.
He took his time. And when he slumped down close to her ear and said, with all the deliberate timing of a courtesan: "Be my wife."
"O gods—" she breathed. And eventually, shortly: "No."
He muttered an army obscenity and sank off to the side, disappointed, discouraged, but not defeated.
A few more breaths. "You say I'm your wife. I sleep with you. What more do you want?"
He knew the answer. It was plain to him as day and night. But it was hard to say to a hostile woman. So he said nothing.
"What would your wife have to do?"
"I suppose what you do now. I've had no luck stopping you."
"Then why do you want me to marry you?"
"Because," he retorted, "if you don't they can cut your damn hand off for carrying that sword!"
"Well, you lie about it all right! I don't know why you couldn't lie to a magistrate!"
Caught, he said: "I suppose I could."
"So you don't need to marry me."
"I don't need to marry you."
"Then why? What would be different? That you'd tell me what to do?"
He asked himself that, not for the first time. "I wouldn't stop you."
"Well, why, then?"
He traced a line down her shoulder. And did not find it any easier for being down to his last excuses. "Because it'd please me. Because—" Because after two Emperors and someone else's wife, I'd like to know someone loyal to me, as well as the other way around.
She said, angrily: "It's stupid! You've gone crazy!"
She had her own hurts. He allowed that. His own pained him at the moment, sharp as the old wound when it ached, and he was not willing to get into an argument.
"Master Shoka?"
That hurt.
He turned his back to her. But she grabbed him by the shoulder and leaned over his arm. He was angry enough to have thrown her clear to the riverside.
But she said: "I just want to know."
It took forty years worth of self-control to be very calm and say: "Because it's decent."
"What does decent have to do with it?" she hissed. "Because master Saukendar doesn't like to be sleeping with his student, but his wife is all right?"
He took several careful breaths. He did not hit her.
"I just want to know why," she said.
"It's decent for people to make promises to each other, and keep them. I want—" Once to have someone promise me something, and mean it. "—to go to sleep. You wear me out, girl."
"Wear you out! I'm the one carrying the baggage!"
There was no romantic instinct in the girl. None.
She threw her arms around his neck, knelt there and rested her head against his shoulder. "I'm a peasant," she said. "The first time you see the ladies in Chiyaden you'll hate the sight of me."
"Damn if I will." He turned over and clipped her chin by accident. "Taizu, for the gods' sake—" He touched the offended chin.
"You will."
He was pushing too hard, trying to compel her. That was no good. It had nothing to do with the loyalty he wanted. "No," he said. "No." And sighed and gathered her into his arms, determined to go to sleep. "Let it be. Let it be. You don't believe me. And that's the end of it."
"What would I have to do? Do what you say?"
"Hush, go to sleep."
"Why do you want me to marry you?"
"Because I love you," he said. It was more complicated than that. But it shut her up for a while. Maybe she was thinking. Everything Taizu did was tangled.
Finally she said: "Are you going to say I have to do what you say?"
"No," he said, weary of this endless dicing of the matter; but patient. It took that, with Taizu. He knew her mind. They would be arguing when they got to Hua.