The morning came with a gentle damp in the air, an autumnal chill next the water. A boat passed. The voices of the rivermen and the splash of oars pierced the stillness.
They lay close beneath the clammy quilts, for nothing other than warmth, and Shoka tried to keep his coughing still—wishing not to disturb Taizu and not to attract notice. But Taizu coughed too, and it was a long time before either of them stirred out, to make a breakfast their throats were too sore to enjoy, to cut grass for fodder and tend to the horses, and to huddle in damp quilts and reckon their situation—how much food they had, how long they could avoid discovery.
Jiro and the mare made acquaintance—too much noise and too much stubbornness for two fevered, exhausted human beings to trust; and the mare too close to her own home to trust she might not bolt—excepting the attraction of Jiro, who was less inclined to desert them and go kiting off to the dikes—excepting the horses were as sore and tired as their owners, willing to rest and fill their bellies while their owners huddled in a nest of blankets that would not quite dry and coughed and sneezed til their sides ached.
"It was like this in Shangei," Shoka said, in what of a voice he had left, "the year we had to ferret the rebels out. Never stopped raining."
"What rebels?" Taizu said, a croak of a voice that might have been a man's.
"Lord Mendi had a nephew," Shoka said, and tried to tell the story, except he took to coughing, and it never would stop until Taizu brewed up willow-tea and he got a little warmth on his throat.
He coughed when he talked, so did she, and mostly their noses ran. So they heated up the rags they had, turn and turn about put them on chests and backs and throats, drank willow-tea for the fever and the sore throats and mostly stayed under covers, while the boats passed, and the rains spattered on the willow-leaves, and winds swayed the trees and shook down water to keep the blankets damp and keep their clothes from drying.
The third day it was better. Taizu trapped some minnows on the riverside and made a hook and used some of their saddlery cording; that night they had their fill of fish and rice with wild herbs, risking a larger fire than usual. A man felt he might live after that supper; and he said:
"I think tomorrow night we might ride back to Ygotai."
She said nothing for a long moment. His heart began to beat faster, because he reckoned that she was not thinking about Ygotai and the south, but about slipping off north tonight, and leaving him and the horses and everything behind.
Except she no longer looked like a peasant. She had not her basket to hide her sword, her shirt was too fine, her shape was not a man's: she could look the peasant squatting on the riverside to fish, and wave at the boatmen and feel quite smug in her deception while he suffered in hiding—
But not on the road, not under close scrutiny.
He had time to think of that. He almost said it out loud, but she sighed and said:
"Yes. We could."
It was not the absolute affirmative he hoped for. He thought of saying: Well, will you? But that would start her arguing, and arguing could send her off to Hua. So he nodded placidly, as if he had never had such a thought. "After moonset. We might have trouble at Ygotai. But once across the bridge—there's no worry."
"Where will we go?"
He shrugged. "Wherever we find pleasant. It's what I say: let our enemies worry." He coughed. That was still with them. "Wherever it is, high ground and drier."
There was fish for the next day. They were almost out of rice, so they saved that. And come dusk of that sunny, warmer day, they saddled up and put on their armor and tied up their hair—"No need to look like brigands," Shoka said.
"It's dark," Taizu said. "We're hiding. I thought no one was supposed to see us."
"No need to act like brigands, then," Shoka said; and made her stand still, sulking as she was, until he had arranged her hair. Then he turned her around aad made her lift her chin. There was a furious scowl on her face. And her eyes glistened.
"Where's your center?" he asked her quietly.
She gave him no answer for a moment. It was a dangerous moment. Everything could break.
But she said: "Next year. Next year, master Shoka."
Not husband. "Am I divorced, then?"
A long, deep breath. "No." Her voice still broke into hoarseness. "I don't break my promises. Any of them."
And she walked off to sit on the riverside and wait for full dark.
So he came and sat by her on the rocks. Cranes were flying in the dusk. From somewhere there was the smell of smoke. But they had had that before. Perhaps it was all the way from Ygotai, perhaps from some farmhouse they had never found.
"We'll find a place in Hoisan," he said, "set up a camp just like the bandits. We'll set ourselves for winter. We won't plan to stay there. Let them send after us. —I'll tell you: you're better than most. And you're getting smarter."
She said nothing. She only stared at the darkening water, dusky profile against that shimmer. He saw her look toward him, and expected her to say something—but her head lifted subtly, her shadowy face showing dismay at something behind him.
His muscles tensed. He did not turn at once, thinking someone might be there. He waited for her to cue him, and she said:
"Master Shoka, the sky. ..."
He did turn. The sky beyond the willows, above the dikes, held a red taint like a beginning dawn. And the smoke had been there all along.
Fire. A huge one.
"That's toward Ygotai," he said, getting to his feet. The ache in his knee bothered him still, but it was inconsequence of a sudden, against the cold suspicion of disaster.
Taizu headed down the shore, around the willows, up the slope of the dike. He followed, slower, feeling the climb in his knee, slipping on the grass, seeing the glow brighter and brighter until he reached the crest and saw the red with no bright rim of near fire.
Not toward Ygotai. At Ygotai. Not some burning straw-stack. Much, ominously much more than that.
"It's in the town," Taizu said.
"Come on," he said. "If we're going to get through, let's make a try at it."
She followed him down the slope and down beneath the willows where the horses waited. They led the horses up again, a slanting course up the tall face of the dike, and mounted up, feeing toward that glow.
Taizu did not speculate aloud. He did not. But he put them to a faster pace than he would have, thinking that if the fire was accidental, some cooking-pit blazing up to catch a house—it might still draw the soldiers the judge had talked about; and if they came there early enough in the commotion they might pass, two shadowy figures on horseback, along the fringes of calamity, to the bridge and across, while the town was still occupied.
It might be, aside from the calamity of the property-holder, a piece of luck too good to let pass.
But he feared otherwise. He feared shapeless things—like rumor and birds. . . .
The further they rode, the brighter the glow, the more pungent the smoke, until there appeared a seam of yellow fire along the horizon, and it was abundantly clear it was more than one house or one barn.
"It must be the whole town," Taizu said at that sight. "The whole town's burning."
He thought of accident. He thought of their transit through the place.
And the bridge, which was one narrow bridge, and the way anyone who wanted to escape the province south would have to go—if they had no boat.
They might perhaps give up the horses, and hope to steal a boat at Ygotai's riverside. They might cross the Hoi, and be afoot in Hoisan with only their armor and their weapons. —Give up Jiro and the mare, in the hope that they could get away and escape the traps laid for two riders....