First time in his life for that sound: the sound of death averted, passing close. He heard thudding outside, and wild cries as his companions tried to get in, pounding against the barred front door.

"Around the back!" he screamed. "It's open!"

But in the same moment he took another chance, hurtling to the door. He flung the heavy wooden bar back. Just in time he dodged again, avoiding a downward slash that bit past him into wood.

He was sent staggering as the door flew open, hitting him in the back, but something-pride and anger and fear interwoven like threads in silk-made him step towards the man left standing. Tai slashed at him, parried a hard return as the others spilled into the room behind him.

"They killed the shaman!" he cried over his shoulder. "She's dead out back! Meshag's over there! Watch the one on the ground! I only wounded him!"

The one on the ground was seized by three men and dragged upright, off the ground, held like a child's doll. He received a bone-splintering blow to the side of his head. They didn't kill him, however. Tai noticed that. And in the same moment he heard one of the Bogu say, "Leave the last one, too. We will use him."

At those words, the man facing Tai abruptly changed his expression. Tai would remember that look, as well. He could sometimes see it when he closed his eyes in years of nights to come.

The man moved back towards the curtain. He reversed his sword, fumbling for the grip with both hands. He was trying to stab himself, Tai realized. But before that could happen, two carefully placed arrows took him one in each shoulder. The sword fell to the ground.

The man screamed then. A terrible sound, beyond any possible pain of his wounds, Tai thought.

A little later he would begin to understand.

HE'D HAVE SCREAMED like that, he found himself thinking on the ride back south (they had left that same evening, unwilling to remain by the lake, needing as much distance from it as possible).

He'd have tried to kill himself, too, if he'd had any idea what was to come before he was allowed to die. And the man had clearly known. In some ways, that was the most horrific thing.

The Kitan cavalry-Tai's own men-had come rushing down the slope when the shouts and screaming had begun, but it was all over within the cabin before they were near enough to do anything.

Tai had walked across the grass to join them when he came out. It had been disorienting, to be back in mild sunshine with so little time having passed. The world could change too swiftly.

The thirty Kitan riders had remained apart, together, to see what the nomads would do. Watching in impassive silence at first, then with increasingly intense, shattering revulsion.

The Bogu began by claiming the body of the old shaman from out back and burning it on a pyre they built between cabin and lake. They did this respectfully, with chants and prayer. She had been defiled by murder and burial under ground, it seemed. She had to be returned to the sky-left in the open to be devoured by wolves and other animals-or she could be consumed by flame and rise with the smoke.

They chose fire, because they were beginning a greater burning. They set the outbuildings alight, and then the cabin itself, but not before they brought out Meshag upon his pallet and laid him down in the yard. They dragged out the two men Tai had killed, the guard and the shaman, and finally they brought forth the two who were still alive. They were drinking by then, the Bogu: there had been kumiss kumiss in the cabin. in the cabin.

The shaman's bells chimed as they pulled his body across the trampled grass. His mirrors glinted, splintering sunlight. Tai had wondered if he'd transgressed in killing this man. It was not so, he understood now. He had done something, in the nomads' eyes, that marked him as a hero. He was to be honoured, it seemed.

They invited him to join in what was now to follow, with the two dead men and the two left deliberately alive. He declined. Stayed with his men, his own people, from a civilized place.

He was physically sick, wrackingly so, when he saw what came next. What he had been invited to share. Many of the Kitan cavalry became violently ill, stumbling or riding away, retching into the grass.

The empire of Kitai had not been shaped through nine dynasties by a placid, pacifist people. Theirs was a violent, conquering grandeur, built upon slaughter through nearly a thousand years, in their own civil wars, or carrying warfare beyond shifting borders, or defending those borders. Such was their history: fires such as these, or greater burnings by far, blood and blades.

There were texts and teachings as far back as the First Dynasty about the tactical utility of massacre, killing children, mutilation, rape. The useful fear all these could spread in foes, the overcrowding of besieged cities as terrified refugees fled before advancing armies. These things were a part of what men did in warfare, and warfare was a part of what men did in life.

But the Kitan did not roast dead enemies over fires and eat their flesh with invocations to the sky. Or cut off slices from men still living, staked out naked upon the ground, and let them watch, screaming, as their own body parts were consumed, cooked or raw.

There was a great deal of smoke, spilling thickly upwards, hiding the sun. A stench of burning in a once-serene space beside a northern lake. The crackling of several fires, howls (humans, not wolves), ritual chants, and someone's desperate, slowly fading plea for death replaced the sound of birds and wind in leaves. The ugliness of men erasing solitude and autumnal beauty.

It went on for some time.

One of the nomads eventually approached the Kitan where they waited, gentling their nervous horses a distance apart. He was bare-chested, grinning widely, and he was waving the severed forearm of a man. Blood dripped from it, and from his chin.

Unsteady on his feet, he extended the human flesh towards Tai, as to a hero worthy to partake of this great bounty. Giving the Kitan, the stranger, one more chance.

He took an arrow in the chest as he stood before them. He died instantly.

Tai could not, for a moment, believe what had happened. It was entirely entirely wrong, shockingly so. He stood in numbed disbelief. Which was, however brief, too long an interval for a commander of men in a place such as this one had become. wrong, shockingly so. He stood in numbed disbelief. Which was, however brief, too long an interval for a commander of men in a place such as this one had become.

His soldiers, as if released by that single arrow to their own demons, their frenzied response to the horror they were being made to witness, mounted up suddenly, all of them, with smooth, trained efficiency, as if an order had been given.

Seizing bows and swords from saddles, they swept forward-avenging spirits, in and of themselves-into the fires and smoke, infused with a clawing fury, with the sense that this hideous savagery could only be expunged, erased, with savagery of their own.

This understanding of events came to Tai only afterwards. He wasn't thinking clearly at the time.

His cavalry knifed into and among the outnumbered, on-foot, drunk-on-kumiss nomads, the stumbling, blood-soaked men they'd come north to aid-and they slaughtered them between the fires. nomads, the stumbling, blood-soaked men they'd come north to aid-and they slaughtered them between the fires.

And when it was done, when none of the Bogu were left alive amid the black smoke and the red burning, the blurred sun setting west now, the lake a dark, cold blue, the next thing happened.

Meshag, son of Hurok, stood up.

He looked around the unholy scene created by men in that place. He had been a graceful man. He wasn't any more. He had changed, had been been changed. He moved awkwardly now, as if oddly jointed, had to shift his whole body to turn his gaze, moving stiffly through a full circle. Black smoke drifted between him and where Tai stood rooted to the ground with a gaping horror. He was seeing this, and refusing to believe what he saw. changed. He moved awkwardly now, as if oddly jointed, had to shift his whole body to turn his gaze, moving stiffly through a full circle. Black smoke drifted between him and where Tai stood rooted to the ground with a gaping horror. He was seeing this, and refusing to believe what he saw.

Meshag stared towards the Kitan riders for a long moment. The last men alive here. Then, shifting his shoulders as if trying to throw back his head, he laughed. A low, distorted sound.

He had not moved or opened his eyes since falling unconscious by another fire to the south weeks before.

It was not his remembered laughter. The way he stood and moved was appallingly different, this shambling, slack-limbed, unnatural posture. The Kitan soldiers, in an alien place among burning and the dead, stopped wheeling their horses about, stopped shouting. They clustered together, close to Tai again as if for protection, keeping their distance from Meshag.

Looking at this man-if he was still a man-Tai understood that the evils of this day had not ended.

He heard sounds beside him, arrows clicking from sheaths, nocked to strings. He stirred, he rasped an order-and was not sure if what he did was right. He might die not knowing, he would decide on the ride back south.

"Hold!" he cried. "No man shoots an arrow!"

What was left of Meshag, or what had become of him, turned, cumbersome and slow, to look at Tai, tracking the sound of his voice.

Their gazes locked through smoke. Tai shivered. He saw a blankness in those eyes, something unfathomable. Cold as the end of all life. It occurred to him, in that same moment, that his task, his duty duty to what had once been a man, might be to grant him the arrows' release. to what had once been a man, might be to grant him the arrows' release.

He did not. He knew-he could not deny knowing-that something evil had been happening in that cabin (still burning, a red, roaring chaos) before he burst in and killed the shaman. It might have been interrupted, incomplete, but what that meant, what it implied for the figure standing stiffly before him, holding his gaze, as if committing Tai to memory, he couldn't hope to grasp.

"Like the swans," he said loudly to his cavalry. "Killing it might curse us all. This is not our affair. Let it ... let him go. He will find his fate without us."

He said that last as clearly as he could, staring at the soul-wracking figure of Meshag. If the creature moved towards them the soldiers would panic, Tai knew. He'd have to allow the arrows to fly, and live with that.

He didn't believe his own swan comparison. He hadn't even believed killing a swan would curse them ... that was Bogu fear. The Kitan had their own animal legends and fears. But the words might offer something to his men, a reason to listen to him. They didn't normally need reasons: soldiers followed orders, as simple as that. But this northward journey and today's ending to it were so remote in all ways from their normal lives and world that it seemed necessary to offer one.

As for why, in his own mind, it felt proper to give this dead-eyed, impossibly reawakened figure the chance to leave this place and live-if living was what it was-Tai could only call it pity, then and after.

He wondered if that came through in his voice, in the look they exchanged. He wouldn't have said it was an entirely human gaze, Meshag's, but neither would he have said it wasn't, that there was some demon in there. Meshag was altered, and it seemed to Tai he might well be lost, but he didn't know.

Killing him might have been the truest answer to what had been done to him, offering the kindness of release, but Tai didn't do it, and didn't allow his soldiers to do it. He wasn't even sure this figure could be killed, and he really didn't want to test that.

After a long stillness, barely breathing, he saw Meshag-or what had been Meshag-move one hand, in a gesture he could not interpret. The figure turned away from him, from all of them, living and dead and burning. Meshag didn't laugh again, and he never did speak. He loped away, around the burning cabin and then along the shore of the lake, towards the fire-coloured autumn trees and the distant, almost-hidden mountains.

Tai and his men stayed together, watching him through the smoke until he passed from sight, and then they started the other way, towards home.

They had left the silk farm and the orange flare of the fox far behind.

The sun was going down, also orange now. Tai realized he'd been wrapped in reverie for a long time, tracing memory, the paths that had led him here.

Or, one particular path, that journey north: past Wall, past river's loop, beyond the steppes to the edge of winter's land.

In the eye of his mind, riding now with six companions on a glorious Sardian horse, he still saw Meshag, son of Hurok-or whatever he had become-shambling away alone. It occurred to him that, having seen this, having been a part of that day, he ought not to be so quickly dismissive of someone else's belief in fox-women.

Or, perhaps, because of his own history, that was why why he needed to be dismissive? There were only two people in the world with whom he could even have imagined talking about this feeling. One of them was in Xian and it was very likely he would never be able to speak with her again. The other was Chou Yan, who was dead. he needed to be dismissive? There were only two people in the world with whom he could even have imagined talking about this feeling. One of them was in Xian and it was very likely he would never be able to speak with her again. The other was Chou Yan, who was dead.

No man can number his friends No man can number his friends And say he has enough of them.

I broke willow twigs when you left, My tears fell with the leaves.

Wei Song was still up front. The stream they were following was on their left, a wide valley stretching from it, fertile lands, both banks. The forest that had flanked them to the south had receded. This was farming land. They could see peasant huts clustering into hamlets and villages, men and women in the fields, charcoal burners' fires against the darkening trees.

Tai had come this way heading west, approaching Kuala Nor two years ago, but he'd been in a strange state of mind then-grieving, withdrawn-and he hadn't paid attention to the land through which he rode. Looking back, he couldn't say he'd begun to think clearly about what he was doing, what he intended to do, until he'd ridden beyond Iron Gate Fort up the long ravine and come out and seen the lake.

He needed to become a different man now.

Spring Rain had warned him so many times about the dangers of the Ta-Ming Palace, the world of court and mandarin-and now he had the army, the military governors to consider as well.

Someone wanted him dead, had wanted that before before he'd received the horses. He couldn't keep them, he knew he couldn't keep them. he'd received the horses. He couldn't keep them, he knew he couldn't keep them.

Not in the world as it was. The issue was what he did with them, and-before that-how he could live long enough to claim them back at the Taguran border.

He twitched Dynlal's reins and the big horse moved effortlessly forward to catch up to the Kanlin woman. The sun was behind them, shining along the plain. It was almost time to stop for the night. They could camp out again, or approach one of these villages. He wasn't sure where the next posting station was.

She didn't turn her head as he pulled up beside her. She said, "I'd be happier inside walls, unless you object."

It was the fox, he guessed. This time he didn't make a jest. He still carried the long day's dark remembering, a smell of burning in his mind from a northern lake.

"Whatever you say."

This time she did look over, he saw anger in her eyes. "You are indulging me!"

Tai shook his head. "I am listening to you. I retained you to protect me. Why hire a guard dog and bark yourself?"

Not calculated to appease her, but he didn't exactly feel like doing that. It did occur to him to mildly regret hiring her. The soldiers from the fort would surely have been enough protection. But he hadn't known that he'd be given a military escort.

There was more ... person person in her than he'd expected. She'd been chosen by Spring Rain, he needed to think about that. He had many things to think about, it seemed. in her than he'd expected. She'd been chosen by Spring Rain, he needed to think about that. He had many things to think about, it seemed.

He said, "You never did tell me that night if Rain knows anything, or told you, about why someone sent a Kanlin to kill me."

A weak question ... he'd have been informed by now, if she knew. He expected a remark to that effect, didn't get one. "A false Kanlin," she reminded him, reflexively. Then added, "If the Lady Lin Chang knew, I do not. I don't believe she did know. Your friend was bringing you tidings, and it seemed you weren't to know them."

"No." Tai shook his head. "It is more than that. Or they'd have killed Yan before he reached me. It would have been easy to have him die along the way. They were alone."

She looked at him. "I never thought of that."

"They didn't want me alive to act on whatever he was coming to tell me, if I found it out some other way."

She was still staring. Tai grinned suddenly. "What? You are astonished I can think of something you didn't?"

She shook her head, looked away. Watching her, Tai felt his mood darken. The joking felt shallow. He said, not sure why he was confiding, "He was a dear friend. Never harmed a soul in life that I know of. I am going to want to know why he died, and do something about it."

She turned again to look at him. "You may not be able to do anything, depending on what you discover."

Tai cleared his throat. "We had better choose a village soon, if you want to negotiate for shelter."

Her turn to smile, as if to herself. "Look ahead."

Tai did so. "Oh," he said.

The land rose slightly before them. He saw that the road widened, three lanes now, the middle one reserved for imperial riders. In the distance, caught by the setting sun, he could just make out the walls of a fair-sized city, with banners flying.

Chenyao. They had arrived. And closer to them, beside the road, obviously waiting, Tai noticed a small group of men. They had horses but had dismounted, respectfully. One of them, formally dressed, lifted a hand in salute.

"You are being met outside the walls," Wei Song murmured. "It is an honour. Iron Gate sent word of your coming, with the courier."

"The horses," Tai said.

"Well, of course," Song replied. "You will probably have to meet with the military governor and the prefect, both, before you can go find a woman. So very sorry."

He couldn't think of a rejoinder.

He lifted a hand in a return salute to those waiting. They immediately bowed, all of them, as if pulled downwards by his gesture, like puppets in a street theatre.

Tai drew a breath and let it out. It was beginning.

CHAPTER VII.