Tai, looking towards shadow, had a sudden image of a little girl sitting on his shoulders, reaching up to pick apricots in the—
No. He pushed that away. He could not let himself be so cheaply sentimental. Such maudlin thoughts were for slack poets improvising at a rural prefect's banquet, for students struggling with an assigned verse on an examination.
He would conjure, instead, mornings when General Shen Gao had been home from campaigning, images of the wilful girl who had listened at a doorway—letting herself be seen or heard, so they could dismiss her if they chose—when Tai spoke of the world with their father.
Or, later, after the general had retired to his estate, to fishing in the stream, and sorrow, when Tai had been the one coming home: from the far north, from Stone Drum Mountain, or visiting at festivals from studying in Xinan.
Li-Mei was not some earnest, round-faced little girl. She had been away from home, serving the empress at court for three years, had been readying herself to be married before their father died.
Another image: northern lake, cabin aflame, fires burning. Smell of charred flesh, men doing unspeakable things to the dead, and to those not yet dead.
Memories he would have liked to have left behind by now.
He became aware that he was clenching his fists. He forced himself to stop. He hated being obvious, transparent, it rendered a man vulnerable. It was, in fact, Eldest Brother Liu who had taught him that.
He saw Sima Zian looking at him, at his hands, compassion in the other man's face.
"I want to kill someone," Tai said.
A pause to consider this. "I am familiar with the desire. It is sometimes effective. Not invariably."
"My brother, her brother, did this," Tai said.
The women had withdrawn, they were alone on the platform.
The poet nodded. "This seems obvious. Will he expect you to praise him for it?"
Tai stared. "No," he said.
"Really? He might have done so. Considering what this does for your family."
"No," Tai said again. He looked away. "He will have done this through the first minister. He'll have had to."
Sima Zian nodded. "Of course." He poured himself more wine, gestured towards Tai's cup.
Tai shook his head. He said, the words rushing out, "I have also learned that First Minister Wen has claimed for himself the woman I... my own favoured courtesan in the North District."
The other man smiled. "As tightly spun as a regulated verse! He'd be another man you'll want to kill?"
Tai flushed, aware of how banal this must seem to someone as worldly as the poet. Fighting over a courtesan now. A student and a high government official! To the death! They performed this sort of shallow tale with puppets for gaping farmers in market squares.
He was too angry, and he knew it.
He reached over and poured another cup after all. He looked around the room again. Only a dozen or so people still awake. It was very late. He'd been riding since daybreak this morning.
His sister was gone. Yan was dead by the lake. His father was dead. His brother... his brother...
"There are," said Sima Zian gravely, "a number of people in Xinan, and elsewhere, who might wish the prime minister... to be no longer among the living. He will be taking precautions. The imperial city is murderously dangerous right now, Shen Tai."
"I'll fit in well then, won't I?"
The poet didn't smile. "I don't think so. I think you'll disturb people, shift balances. Someone doesn't want you arriving, obviously."
Obviously.
It was difficult, despite everything, to picture his brother selecting an assassin. It was painful as a blow. It was a crack, a crevasse, in the world.
Tai shook his head slowly.
"It might not have been your brother," said the poet, as if reading his thoughts. The Kanlin woman, Wei Song, had done the same thing a few nights ago. Tai didn't like it.
"Of course it was him!" he said harshly. There was a dark place beneath the words. "He would know how I'd feel about what he did to Li-Mei."
"Would he expect you to kill him for it?"
Tai slowed the black drumming of his thoughts. The poet held his gaze with those wide-set eyes.
At length, Tai shrugged his shoulders. "No. He wouldn't."
Sima Zian smiled. "So I thought. Incidentally, there's someone on the portico, keeps crossing back and forth, looking in at us. Small person. Wearing black. It may be another Kanlin sent after you..."
Tai didn't bother to look. "No. That one is mine. Kanlin, yes. I hired a guard at Iron Gate. A Warrior who'd been sent by someone in Xinan to stop the assassin."
"You trust him?"
He thought of Wei Song in the laneway tonight, when the governor's men had come for him. He did trust her, he realized.
Once it would have irritated him, to have someone post herself so visibly on guard: the loss of privacy, the assumption that he couldn't take care of himself. Now, with what he'd learned, it was different. He was going to need to think that through, as well.
Not tonight. He was too tired, and he couldn't stop his thoughts from going to Li-Mei. And then to Liu. First Son, elder brother. They had shared a room for years.
He pushed that away, too. More sentimentality. They were not children any more.
"It is a woman," he said. "The Kanlin. She'll have seen the governor's soldiers leave with their prisoners, decided someone needed to be on watch. She can be difficult."
"They all can. Women, Kanlin Warriors. Put them in one..." The poet laughed. Then asked, as Tai had half expected, "Who is the someone in Xinan who sent her?"
He had decided to trust this man, too, hadn't he?
"The courtesan I mentioned. Wen Zhou's concubine."
This time the poet blinked. After a moment, he said, "She risked that? For someone who's been away two years? Shen Tai, you are..." He left the thought unfinished. "But if it is the first minister who wants you dead, even costing the empire your horses might not change his mind."
Tai shook his head. "Killing me now, after word of the horses has arrived, Zhou or my brother runs the risk of someone—you, Xu Bihai, even the commander at Iron Gate—linking it to him. The loss of so many Sardian horses would make my death important. His enemies could bring him down with that."
The poet considered it. "Then what is this about? There was nothing you could do for your sister from Kuala Nor, was there? You were much too far, it was already too late, but an assassin was sent. Was this about eliminating a new enemy before he returned?" He hesitated. "Perhaps a rival?"
There was that.
Her hair by lamplight.
And if someone should take me from here when you are gone?
He said, "It might be."
"You are going on to Xinan?"
Tai smiled, first time since coming back down the stairs. Mirthlessly, he said, "I must, surely? I have sent word. I will be anxiously awaited!"
No answering smile, not this time. "Awaited on the road, it might also be. Shen Tai, you will accept an unworthy friend and companion?"
Tai swallowed. He hadn't expected this. "Why? It would be foolishly dangerous for you to put yourself..."
"You helped me remember a poem," said the one called the Banished Immortal.
"That's no reason to—"
"And you buried the dead at Kuala Nor for two years."
Another silence. This man was, Tai thought, all about pauses, the spaces between words as much as the words themselves.
Across the room someone had begun plucking quietly at a pipa, the notes drifting through lamplight and shadow, leaves on a moonlit stream.