by Jeannie Lin
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 casted 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 that 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 to 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.
“It’s only because you can’t have her.” Ruan spoke in Khitan. His grin was back, but there was a dark wisdom in his eyes.
“I’m no fool. I just need to get her to the khagan,” Kwan-Li retorted.
An-Ming looked expectantly between them, not understanding. She pouted when neither of them offered any explanation. “You have to teach me your language once we reach the central capital,” she said to Kwan-Li.
That stopped him short. “I am not staying, Princess.”
Confusion crossed her face, then alarm. “But I thought—”
Ruan conveniently backed away to help the others with the provisions.
An-Ming looked so lost that he was reminded of his own journey long ago into a foreign land. He’d been left adrift there, practically a hostage trapped in the imperial city.
He and An-Ming had embarked on this journey together. He had never considered she would expect him to stay with her. He had never considered she would ever want him to.
His throat clenched. What she was asking for was impossible. He was the one who had negotiated the peace marriage from his position within the imperial court. The responsibility lay in his hands, but duty and honor weren’t enough to keep him away from her. His control had already slipped once and if Ruan wasn’t hovering nearby now…
“There are others within the khagan’s court who speak your language. They can teach you.” He shouldn’t have to explain, but he did anyway. “I have my own tribe to return to. My own kinsmen.”
For the first time, he saw a break in her resolve and the loneliness underneath. He wanted to protect her. If this fire inside him were nothing but desire, An-Ming wouldn’t have such power over him. He was angry at himself for this weakness.
“I don’t suppose I can command you to stay,” she said softly.
He responded with an iron look. “I am not your servant to command, Princess.”
* * *
Kwan-Li took the lead that day. Ruan had explained the route. They would follow the river north to where the ravine opened into a valley. From there they
would be only days away from the khagan’s camp.
An-Ming chose not to speak with him, favoring Ruan’s company instead. She was pointedly asking the Old Wolf to teach her Khitan.
The day was otherwise uneventful, until around midday as they navigated along the inclines of the ravine. Kwan-Li noticed movement in the pass ahead. A dark shape moved out of the shadows followed by another.
“Riders,” he called out.
Ruan came up beside him. “A hunting party?”
A low sound punctuated the air. Kwan-Li knew it at once and his heart seized. One of their companions doubled over in the saddle, the shaft of an arrow protruding from his chest.
“Stay back!” Kwan-Li commanded.
There was a startled cry from behind him. The princess.
Confusion spread as the additional horses became untethered. Ruan moved to the front, bow in hand to return fire, while Kwan-Li positioned himself between An-Ming and the intruders in the distance. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with shock.
“Head for the other side of the river. Go!” He leaned over to strike her horse’s backside.
An-Ming held on as the horse took off while he followed behind her at a gallop. There was little cover in the ravine. She needed to get out of range of the archers.
He led An-Ming behind a growth of brush by the bank. Her horse pranced in agitation, his hooves splashing in the shallow of the river. She was fighting to keep her hands from shaking, but she managed to steady the animal.
