Tai felt his heart thump.

"Lun?" he repeated.

"Yes. He arranged for the assassins sent to kill you."

Tai swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. "How do you know this?"

"He told me himself."

"When did he ... what did happen to him?"

A mistake, perhaps, asking this. It created an obligation of courtesy if the other man answered.

The other man answered. "He was killed some nights ago."

"Oh," said Tai.

"The same night word came that you were on your way to Xinan, and the news of the White Jade Princess's gift. The horses. Your own is magnificent, by the way. I assume you will not sell him?"

"The same night?" Tai said, a little stupidly.

The vast, incongruous face reappeared in the carriage window like the moon from behind clouds. "I said that. He sent me an urgent request for sanctuary, explaining why. I offered it. He was murdered on his way from the Ta-Ming to my house." A fat finger appeared, pointed at Tai. "Master Shen, you know your trouble isn't with me. It is with the first minister. Your life depends on realizing that. It is Wen Zhou who is trying to kill you. You need friends."

Tai was badly shaken. Lun was dead. Drinking companion, fellow student-a man he'd intended to kill himself, in Yan's name. Discharging an obligation to another ghost.

One less obligation now? Was that good? Did it free him?

It didn't feel that way. There was a letter. It might tell him the other thing he needed to know-and feared to learn.

"Get in," said Roshan. Impatience in the voice, but not anger.

He swung open the carriage door again.

Tai took a breath. Sometimes you just went with the way the wind was blowing. He dismounted. He handed Dynlal's reins up to the poet, who said nothing. Tai jumped down into the ditch, and accepted the hand of an officer of the Ninth District to climb to the other side.

He entered the carriage, closed the door himself.

IT WAS A RESPONSE to the realities of the main imperial roads that in most of the posting inns along them the stables were larger than the accommodations available for travellers.

Civil service messengers and military couriers, the most regular users of the staging inns, were constantly wearing out and changing horses, often not lingering for the night. A meal, back in the saddle. The whole point was to ride through the darkness down the middle of the road, not to seek out a feathered bed, let alone wine and a girl. Time mattered in a far-flung empire.

There were merchants and army officers on the roads, aristocrats going to and from country estates, moving with rather less urgency, and there were civil servants travelling to or returning from postings to various prefectures, or on tours of inspection there. For these, of course, rooms and adequate food were required.

The inns nearest to Xinan tended to be different. Their wine was generally excellent, and so were the girls and music. High-ranking mandarins making short journeys from the capital didn't need their carriage horses changed but did demand a better quality of chamber and meal if, for example, they wished to time a return to the city for the hours before curfew fell.

The Mulberry Grove Rest House, not far from Xinan, qualified as one of the more elaborately appointed places to spend a night on the main east-west road.

Mulberry trees were long gone from the environs of the inn, as were the silk farms associated with them. The inn's name evoked quieter days many hundred years ago, before Xinan had grown into what it now was. There was a plaque in the main courtyard, inscribed in the Fifth Dynasty: a verse extolling the serenity of the inn and its countryside.

It made for some irony. By the time Tai and his company rode into the inn yard, well after darkfall, it was as noisy and crowded as the road had been. Two riders had been sent ahead to arrange their stay, or finding rooms would have been doubtful.

Torches were lit in the inn yard. The night had been starry as they approached, the Sky River showing, a sliver of moon. These were lost in the smoky, clattering chaos of the main courtyard.

Tai's horsemen were bunched around him. On guard, aggressively alert. He imagined Song had given the orders. Issues of rank in their company had been worked out; his Kanlin Warrior could speak for him. The soldiers might hate her for it, but that would have always been the case with a woman. In any event, Song didn't seem inclined to worry about being well liked by soldiers.

Tai was too preoccupied as they rode in to be unhappy about how protective they were. In fact, with some ruefulness, he realized that he didn't even mind it any more. He'd been frightened in that carriage by the road, and was still disturbed.

The two advance riders they'd sent reported to Song and their captain. Their company had three rooms, seven or eight to a room. There was a chamber for Tai and Sima Zian to share. The other soldiers would sleep in the stable. There were to be guards posted tonight, Tai learned, listening without much concentration to orders being given in his name. He ought to be paying closer attention, probably. He found it difficult.

He had no problem sharing a room with the poet. For one thing, Zian hadn't made it to their chamber from the pleasure pavilions in the other inns where this had happened. This was a man who had earned legendary status in diverse ways. Tai could never have sustained the hours and the drinking the poet managed-and Sima Zian had to be twenty years older than Tai was.

They dismounted in a clatter of weapons and armour and the stamp and snort of tired, hungry horses. Servants ran in every direction through the courtyard. It would not, Tai thought, be difficult to kill him here. One suborned servant, one assassin with a knife or on a rooftop with a bow. He looked up. Smoke from torches. He was very tired.

He forced himself to stop thinking about it. Held to the core truth underlying all of this: killing him now, with word of the Sardian horses already in Xinan, represented a reckless, possibly suicidal act for anyone.

Even an enormous, and enormously powerful, military governor of three districts. Even the first minister of Kitai.

He looked around, trying to bring himself into the present, not let his thoughts run too far ahead, or linger behind. Song was at his elbow. So, until a moment ago when Tai dismounted, had been the gap-toothed soldier from Iron Gate.

He shook his head, suddenly irritated. "What is the name of that one who always takes Dynlal?" He spotted the man, leading the horse towards the stables. "I should know it by now."

Song tilted her head a little, as if surprised. "A border soldier? Not really. But he's called Wujen. Wujen Ning." He saw her teeth flash. "You'll forget it again."

"I will not!" Tai said, and swore under his breath. He took immediate steps to fix the name in memory. An association: Ning was the metalsmith in the village near their estate.

He looked at the woman in the flickering light. Torches were above them, over the portico. Other lights moved through the yard. Insects were out now after dark. Tai slapped at one on his arm. "We are less than a day from your sanctuary," he murmured. "Do you wish to go home, Kanlin?"

He'd caught her by surprise, he saw. Wasn't sure why, it was an obvious question.

"Do you wish to dismiss your servant, my lord?"

He cleared his throat. "I don't think so. I have no cause to question your competence."

"I am honoured by your trust," she said formally.

Zian strode over from-predictably-the direction of the music, to the right of this first courtyard.

"I have arranged a table," he said cheerfully, "and I have requested that their best saffron wine be heated, seeing as we have had a long, difficult day." He grinned at Song. "I trust you will approve the expense?"

"I only carry the money," she murmured. "I don't approve the spending of it, except for the soldiers."

"Make sure they have wine," Tai said.

The poet gestured with one hand, and Tai went with him through the crowd. Song stayed beside them, her expression alert. It made him weary, this need for vigilance. It was not a life he'd ever wanted.

How many men were allowed the life they wanted?

Maybe this one, he thought, looking at the poet moving eagerly ahead of him towards where they could just hear a he thought, looking at the poet moving eagerly ahead of him towards where they could just hear a pipa pipa being played, in a room beyond the courtyard noise. being played, in a room beyond the courtyard noise. This one, or maybe my brother. This one, or maybe my brother.

"YOUR BROTHER," Roshan had said without preamble, as Tai closed the carriage door and sat opposite him, "is not named in the letter. It was read to me several times. I do not," he'd added, "read, myself."

It was widely known. A source of derision among the aristocrats and the examination-trained mandarins. It was regarded as a principal reason why the endlessly subtle Chin Hai, once first minister, once feared everywhere, now gone to his ancestors, had allowed Roshan and other barbarian generals to acquire so much power on the borders. An illiterate had no chance of threatening him at the centre of his webs in the Ta-Ming, the way an aristocrat with an army could.

Such, at any rate, had been the view of the students taking the examinations, or preparing to. And, of course, whatever they agreed upon had to be true, did it not?

Settling into the carriage, Tai had immediately felt out of his depth. Which was, he was certain, the point of Roshan's remark.

"Why would you imagine I'd consider that possible? That my brother could be accused of anything regarding me?"

He was delaying, trying to get his bearings. The governor leaned back against a profusion of cushions, eyeing him. An Li was, from this close, even more awesomely vast. A size that seemed mythic, a figure of legend.

He had, when not yet promoted to the rank of general, led three companies of Seventh District cavalry through five brutal days and nights of riding to turn the tide of battle against an incursion from the Koreini Peninsula. The Koreini of the far east, ambitious under their own emperor, had elected that spring to test the Kitan emperor's commitment to the building of garrison forts beyond the Wall.

They had been given an answer, to their very great cost-but only because of Roshan. That was twenty years ago. Tai's father had told him about that ride.

He had told Liu, as well, Tai remembered.

An Li shifted on his cushions again. "Your brother is principal counsellor to the first minister. Shen Liu has made his choice of paths. The letter-you may read it-indicates that Prime Minister Wen had his reasons for wishing you no longer among us, or in a dear woman's thoughts. Or perhaps able to disrupt your brother's plans for your sister. He does, after all, depend on Shen Liu for a great deal. It was the first minister who formally proposed your sister's elevation to exalted status. You did know that?"

Tai shook his head. He hadn't, but it made sense.

The governor sighed, fluttered a hand. His fingers were unexpectedly long. He wore a sweet, floral scent, it filled the carriage. He said, "Spring Rain? Is that the charming creature's name? It will puzzle me until I draw my last breath how men can be so undone by women." He paused, then added, thoughtfully, "Not even the highest among us are immune to the folly of that."

Nothing he says is unplanned, Tai told himself. And that last remark was treason, since Tai told himself. And that last remark was treason, since the highest among us the highest among us could only mean the emperor. could only mean the emperor.

Tai said, possibly making a mistake, "I might risk such a course myself for a woman."

"Indeed? I had thought you might be different. This Lin Chang-that is her name now?-is she so very very appealing? I confess I grow curious." appealing? I confess I grow curious."

"I never knew that name. We called her Rain. But I am not speaking of her, my lord. You have mentioned two women."

Roshan's eyes were slits. Tai wondered how well the man could even see. The governor waited. He shifted in his seat again.

Tai said, "If you can bring my sister back from the Bogu lands before she is married there, I will claim and then assign all of my Sardian horses to the armies of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Districts."

He hadn't known he was going to say that.

An Li made a small, involuntary movement of one hand. Tai realized he'd startled the other man. The general said as much: "You are more direct than your brother, aren't you?"

"We have little in common," Tai said.

"A sister?" the other man murmured.

"And a father of distinction, as you were gracious enough to mention. But we see different paths to extending the family honour. I have made you a formal proposal, Governor An."

"You would do this, you would give them to me, all all of them, for a girl?" of them, for a girl?"

"For my sister."

From outside Tai heard sounds again: traffic on the roadway had resumed, creaking cartwheels, laughter, shouts. Life moving, on a spring day. He kept his gaze on the man opposite.

At length, Roshan shook his head. "I would do it. For two hundred and fifty Sardian horses? Of course I would. I am thinking now, right here, of how to do it. But it is impossible. I believe you know that. I might even accuse you of toying with me."

"It would be untrue," Tai said quietly.

The man across from him shifted yet again, stretching a massive leg to one side, with a grunt. He said, "Five horses would have been generous as a gift. Princess Cheng-wan has shaken your life, hasn't she?"

Tai said nothing.

"She has," the governor went on. "Like a storm shakes a tree, or even uproots it. You have to choose what to do now. You might be killed to stop stop you from choosing. I could do it here." you from choosing. I could do it here."

"Only if it did not get back to the Ta-Ming, to the first minister, whose action cost the empire those horses."

An Li stared at him with those slitted eyes.

"You all want them too much," Tai said.

"Not if they go to an enemy, Shen Tai."

Tai noted the word. He said, "I just offered them to you."

"I heard you. But I cannot do it, since it cannot be done. Your sister is gone, son of Shen Gao. She is north of the Wall by now. She is with the Bogu."

He grinned suddenly. A malicious smile. No sense of any genial, amusing figure of the court, the one who'd allowed himself to be swaddled like a baby by all the women. "She may be with child to the kaghan's son as we speak. At the least she will know his inclinations. I have heard stories. I wonder if your brother knew them, before he proposed her as wife to the kaghan's heir."

The sweetness of the perfume was almost sickening suddenly. "Why be uncivilized?" Tai said before he could stop himself.

He was fighting anger. Reminded himself again that the other man was not saying these things-was not saying anything anything-without purpose.

Roshan seemed amused. "Why uncivilized? Because I am! I am a soldier all my life. And my father's tribe warred with the Bogu. Shen Tai, you are not the only one to be direct by inclination."

"Let me see the letter," Tai said. Being direct.

It was handed across without a word. He read, quickly. It was a copy, the calligraphy was too regular. No mention of Liu, as Roshan had indicated. But ...

Tai said, "He is clear, Xin Lun. Says he expects to be killed that night. Begs you to guard him. Why did you not send men to bring him to you?"

The expression on the other man's face made him feel, again, out of his depth. Childlike.

An Li shrugged, turned his neck one way and then the other, stretching it. "I suppose I could have. He did ask for protection, didn't he? Perhaps you are right."