by Jeannie Lin
When the palanquin stopped, she lifted a heavy head to peer out the window, searching first for Kwan-Li, but not finding him.
The settlement resembled a village. About thirty yurts, large circular huts wrapped in felt, were arranged around a cistern at the center. Plumes of smoke vented from the huts and pale-colored sheep flocked in pens around the camp.
Dao stared in fascination at the women and children milling about the dwellings. She wanted to explore, but was ushered discreetly from the palanquin into one of the yurts. Princesses weren’t meant to be seen.
The yurt was luxurious compared to the sparse tents they had slept in during the journey. A sturdy lattice-work frame and a fan of wooden beams, much like the spines of an umbrella, provided the structure. While the outside had been wrapped with a plain canvas, the inside was furnished with a low bed and sitting area. Woven rugs in rainbow colors covered the floor and the yurt was heated with a central stove. A precious basin of water was brought to her. Not enough for a bath, but Dao was able to wash away the layer of dust from her skin.
Several attendants came in bearing trays laden with bowls and pots trailing steam. Dao took a sip of a pale, thick drink that they explained was mare’s milk. She managed to keep her face still until the attendants left before washing the sour taste away with a dose of strong tea.
There was no rice with the meal, but there were plates of golden pastries and thick stews and generous portions of roasted lamb. As delicious as the food looked and smelled, Dao was only able to finish a few bites before exhaustion claimed her again and she fell into a deep, restless sleep. When she awoke, the yurt was dark and she was alone.
Curse that skittish horse and her insistence on riding it! She’d meant to summon Kwan-Li after dinner, but the day had taken everything out of her. From outside she could still hear the drone of conversation along with the muted wail of strings singing an unfamiliar song. Perhaps it wasn’t too late.
She crawled out of bed and felt her way through the darkness until she reached the flap that covered the entrance. Dao opened it to let herself out into the night. A scatter of torches lit the settlement and a blanket of stars greeted her overhead. More stars than all the people in the empire.
She stared up at the dots of light, feeling dizzy beneath their watch. It was said that the stars told of celestial designs, the will of the heavens. Had they always known she would be here, on a journey to be presented to the ruler of Khitan? She, who was born to a mother who was the lowest of servants and a father who never recognized her as daughter.
The sound of a male voice startled her. Dao recognized the young man as one of her guardsmen.
“Where is Kwan-Li?” she asked.
He responded with a string of sounds that meant nothing to her. Dao hadn’t learned enough of the Khitan language to make her purpose known so all she could do was shake her head in frustration and move toward the sound of voices. The guardsman could do nothing but trail after her. She wove around the dwellings. The settlement was still very much awake and the voices grew louder. Soon she arrived at a gathering around a fire pit. She stopped at the edge of the light, not wanting to intrude.
An elderly man pulled a bow across a stringed instrument with a long, thin neck. The wailing sound she’d heard earlier now took on an effusive, resonating quality, filling the entire circle with a racing song, like the stomp of hooves across the plains. The music was as indecipherable and mysterious to her as the language and customs of this land.
She scanned the crowd and her skin flushed as she caught sight of Kwan-Li. Dao wasn’t one to be taken by romantic notions. She had agreed to pose as princess to elevate herself from a life of servitude. Still—to be kissed without restraint, without warning. Kissed almost savagely by a man who was always so impeccably well-mannered. Any woman, whether she be a lowly maidservant or a princess would weaken a little.
He had traded the blue deel for one of tanned felt, similar to what the other nomads wore. A fur cap hid his topknot. He could have easily blended in as Khitan, yet he stood at the edge of the circle. An outsider.
Dao had been set apart throughout the entire journey. When night came, her attendants would see to her needs and then disappear. She was left isolated in her sleeping tent while the entire caravan gathered around a fire to trade stories. She could have called them back to provide her company, but she used to enjoy that small peace at the end of the day when she was a servant. When there were no more demands on her and her time was her own. Besides, what did attendants have to say to a princess? She could sense their discomfort whenever she tried to converse with them. It always left her feeling so lonely, but she understood the boundaries of status. This was the price of her deception.
Kwan-Li spoke more directly with her than the others, but even he treated her with a sense of detachment. Until today.
He turned then, as if sensing her presence, and found her among the shadows. His eyes glowed in the firelight as he moved toward her. Her palms began to sweat.
“Kwan-Li,” she began.
“Princess.”
His voice was low and quiet. She was at a loss at what to say now that he stood before her. There was a wariness to his expression. These next moments would dictate how they moved on from all that had happened that afternoon.
She stared at the curve of his mouth. How long had the kiss lasted? No longer than a heartbeat or two. Not even as long as this strained silence between them, yet it had changed everything forever.
“How fast can we ride to the central capital?” she asked. “If we didn’t have to carry all those trunks and so many people, how long would it take?”
He appeared relieved. “With a small group on horseback we can be there in perhaps two weeks, but it would be a tough journey. Staying in the saddle all day is not easy.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I can ride a horse.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I said stay in the saddle.”
Humor now? From Kwan-Li? She didn’t know whether to scowl or laugh.
“It was your clan that negotiated the peace marriage. This alliance is as important to you as it is to the empire.”
He sobered at that. “It is very important to us,” he agreed.
“Then we’ll ride out tomorrow morning. No barbarian princess is going to take my place.”
His expression, as usual, was unreadable. “As the princess commands.”
With nothing else to say, the memory of the kiss once again loomed between them. Her stomach twisted into a thousand knots. Dao considered retreating to the safety of her bed, but her gaze drifted to the fire pit surrounded by song. The yurt was a dark and lonely place by comparison.
The musician began another song. There was an accompanying melody in a low drone that sounded like some sort of pipe or winded instrument. It took her a moment to realize that the man was somehow creating the sound in his throat. The sound of it was eerie, ethereal in quality. A sense of freedom filled her. She was no longer hidden away in seclusion. After the long journey through the plains, she had only now arrived.
“I never thought I would ever leave the walls of Changan,” she said, lost in the warmth and laughter of the gathering.
“I never thought I would stand before the Son of Heaven in Daming Palace,” Kwan-Li replied. “Then after several years in your capital, I thought I would never return here.”
She stood very still beside him as they let the music encompass them, very much aware of how his shoulder was just a touch away from hers. The chill of the night air vanished.
Kwan-Li knew what it was like to leave his homeland behind. He had lived in a foreign land and adopted a different language and way of life.
“How old were you when you were sent to the empire?” she asked.
“Fifteen.”
She was only a handful of years older
than that. “What did you study while you were there?”
“I learned the ways of the Tang Empire—its laws and methods of governing. For the betterment of our land. There are many in Khitan who would be content to become subjects to the empire. To accept its protection and adopt its culture.”
She had indeed seen Khitan nomads living among her own people in the settlements they had passed through the borderlands.
“Did you long for Khitan, being away for so long?”
His shoulder lifted in a gesture that wasn’t a yes or a no. “I never forgot where I came from,” was all he admitted.
He was a tough Khitan tribesman. Of course he wouldn’t admit to being homesick. The realization that she would never return to Changan finally settled into her heart. This was her new home: the open frontier, a place without walls, without roads. But she had chosen this life. She would learn what she needed to know to become a part of it just as Kwan-Li had done in the empire.
She had already learned a lot that day. They spoke of the Khitan as fierce warriors, savages even, but Dao could feel the spirit of openness and generosity around her. Life on the steppe was harsh, yet they found ways to celebrate.
She studied Kwan-Li more carefully now. There were so many things she hadn’t known about him. Kwan-Li was educated, cultured, well-mannered. He was an expert horseman who rode off to rescue princesses. And the way he kissed...
It was a good thing she wasn’t a swooning romantic.
“I should go now,” she said in a rush. “We have a long journey tomorrow.”
He moved to accompany her without being asked. Would he be so attentive if she weren’t a princess? If it wasn’t his duty to watch over her?
As they neared the yurt, she realized he was no longer beside her. He held himself back, out of arm’s reach.
The darkness highlighted the hollows of his face and the distinguished shape of his cheekbones. He was striking with a rugged handsomeness that she had somehow overlooked. He was impossible to overlook now.
“I should be punished for what happened today,” he said grimly.
It took a moment to find her voice. “It was my fault. I didn’t know what to do when the horse started running.”
“I wasn’t speaking of that.”
“Oh. That...”
A wind picked up and rustled through the grass, punctuating their conversation.
“That was an accident,” she said faintly. “Wasn’t it?”
He straightened. “It will never happen again, Princess.”
She could see his chest rising and falling while the rest of his body remained still, tense. Some part of him didn’t want to leave and some part of her didn’t want him to either.
She should have kissed him back. They had been alone out on the plains and no soul but the earth and sky would know what happened. They were alone now beneath the light of the stars.
Her pulse quickened and she took a step toward him. No. Heaven and earth, no! She immediately took a step back with two additional ones for good measure.
She wasn’t nearly brave enough for that.
Kwan-Li didn’t move from his position. Not a hair. He was watching her curiously.
“Sleep well,” she said, her tongue struggling with those two simple words.
He nodded.
Dao retreated into the yurt and lay down, staring up into the darkness for a long time. Finally she closed her eyes and tried to recapture that perfect storm of heat and pressure and touch. Kwan-Li was probably too honorable to ever attempt another kiss, even if she happened to once again be caught on a runaway horse. And that itself was highly unlikely. A shame.
CHAPTER THREE
Kwan-Li enjoyed the freedom of riding from sunrise to sunset unburdened for the next week. This was the land he remembered from his youth. Princess An-Ming rode beside him while the sun cast its final rays of the day. The golden light washed over her and she glanced over at him with a soft and fleeting look. A look drunk with warmth and the pleasure of the open air. He wanted to touch her so much he ached with it.
The single touch of her lips he’d stolen continued to torment him. He buried that feeling most days, but there were moments, like this one, when something burned hotter inside him than desire. The spirit of the steppe was seeping back into his blood and An-Ming was there for every rediscovery. He could see in her face how the sight of the earth and sky affected her. He was coming home while she was a stranger to the steppe. Yet here they were...fellow wanderers between worlds.
They were flanked by Ruan and three of his fellow tribesmen. Each of them led two additional horses by a tether, providing a small fleet for their use. The horses were rotated throughout the day to distribute the burden of carrying a rider. This allowed them to cover a greater distance with shorter rest periods in between.
“Old Wolf!” the princess called out to Ruan who had taken the lead.
“Young Dragoness!”
“How does anyone find their way in this land with no roads?”
Ruan laughed. “The sun, the rivers and the distant hills tell us where we are.” He went on to describe how to use the shadow of the sun to determine direction.
The hidden language of the steppe had once been second nature to Kwan-Li. He, too, knew how to read the clouds and sky. The rhythm of the wind across the plains was in his blood. But for the last twelve years, he had lived in the imperial city of Changan, confined within walls surrounded by more walls. He had studied a new sort of knowledge that came from scrolls and books. The same books had proclaimed that his people were barbarians. That they had no language of their own. That they worshipped the sun like savages.
At times he had almost believed that his people were ancient and primitive. The Tang Empire had swallowed his spirit whole and he had come back changed.
Before sundown, Ruan navigated them down into a ravine and they set up camp beside the river. Belu and Ruan took care of setting up the sleeping tents while Kwan-Li brought the horses to water and refilled their gourds and waterskins in preparation for the next day’s journey.
An-Ming came and knelt at the edge of the stream, dipping a cloth into the water. He watched, transfixed, as she washed the dust from her face. Her skin had taken on a warm golden tint from the sun, with a faint scattering of freckles appearing on her cheekbones. The Han women he’d known in the empire had valued pale skin as a sign of beauty. They used powders to appear like porcelain dolls and hid behind parasols and curtains at the faintest ray of light.
When he had first seen An-Ming in the palace, her face was similarly powdered. Her lips were painted red, her cheeks unnaturally pink. Her hair was pinned and laced with ornaments and she was encased in silk and gold. He had only caught a glimpse before she was shut away.
The princess had been impossible at the beginning of the journey, insisting on delicacies at every meal, baths at inconvenient times because she was hot, entertainment because she was bored. Such behavior was expected of a spoiled princess, but An-Ming seemed to grow weary of it. On the steppe, where the journey became most difficult, she was no longer willful and demanding. She’d become curious to learn their ways.
Her hair had fallen loose as she sat by the river. The ends of it trailed over her shoulder to tease at her breast. He watched in fascination as she gathered it up and twisted it into a knot, exposing a slip of pale skin at her neck. His chest tightened, as well as other, more insistent parts of him.
“You’re staring at me.”
She had stopped what she was doing to meet his gaze. The washcloth was still pressed to her cheek. He was caught.
“There is not much else to look at out here.”
Her lips curved into a mischievous smile that once again revealed her dimple. “Where I come from, there’s a penalty for that.”
“What would th
at be?”
“Twenty lashes.”
It would be worth the risk. His heart was beating fast from nothing more than this careless banter. He willed himself to show nothing.
An-Ming filled a basin with water and disappeared into the sleeping tent while he forced his attention elsewhere. He turned to find old Ruan grinning at him. There was no escape.
“You need a wife, Tailuo.” Ruan used his name. His true name.
He scowled at the elder tribesman.
“A woman, then,” Ruan amended.
He’d had lovers during his time in the empire. Courtesans who knew how to smile and speak and sway in ways that made a man burn. This was a different sort of woman. This heat within him, a different kind of fever.
Kwan-Li regarded the elder tribesman with a grave look. “This agreement with the Tang Emperor. Will the khagan honor it?”
Ruan’s grin faded. “We have served as vassals of the Uyghur Empire for nearly a hundred years.”
“But their hold is weakening. We can be free of them.”
“By paying tribute to the Tang Emperor instead? Many of the chieftains of the eight tribes don’t see the difference.”
The Uyghurs were another tribal confederation. They wanted Khitan land and horses and men to fight in their wars. With the Tang Empire, there was at least chance for diplomacy. For peace. That was why his father had sent him there to learn from them.
“You must be discussing serious matters.”
An-Ming returned from the tent and settled in beside them at the fire without a moment’s hesitation. Her hair was damp and pinned up in a loose knot with a few strands pulling free. Beads of moisture remained on her, pooling at the hollow of her throat.
“Princess.” Kwan-Li bowed his head in deference. What he really wanted to do was put his mouth on her and run his tongue over her neck. He swallowed forcibly.
