Kui Yu! It had to be him. Who else would be so fierce and silent?
The man who held her bellowed to his fellows before he was ripped away from her. She stumbled and pressed herself against the damp wall. She could not help her husband if she fell down right in the middle of things, so she clung to the wall and searched for their best escape route.
She saw nothing but more soldiers rushing from the guardroom. She teetered forward into their path. Anything to delay them. But such a ruse was useless. She had no purchase on her bound feet; she weighed next to nothing compared with their bulk. She was slammed against the wall hard enough that her head bounced on the stone. She whimpered in pain.
"Shi Po!"
She focused on Kui Yu's bellow, finally separating form from shadow enough to understand. Two soldiers lay on the ground behind him. His face was matted with grime, but his fists were large, his shoulders broad as he met the newest attackers.
He fought like a demon. No, he fought like a street boy, all fists and kicks and raining fury. He was too fast for her to see, but she heard. Grunts. Growls. Bestial sounds of men at war. The smack of fist against flesh. The thud of body against leather.
The ring of many swords being unsheathed.
She screamed. Kui Yu was unarmed, and he would die here. Seven against one? He had no chance. "No," she sobbed. "Stop. Please, stop!"
They did. But not because of her. They stilled because they won. Because Kui Yu was on his knees, one sword at his neck, others pricking his side and back. Even in the dim light, she could see blood dripping from his face and sides.
"Stop," she whispered. Tears obscured her vision.
"Are you all right?" rasped Kui Yu. Then he grunted as one of the soldiers kicked him in the side. He fell over with a moan, and Shi Po lurched forward, falling to her knees before her husband. Her skirt widened, fluttering around her, but she curled herself around Kui Yu, twisting to glare at their captors.
She said nothing. No words came to her mind. But she reached up to push a sword point aside. The soldier let her do it, though he laughed at her stupidity. She could only push one sword away at a time, and though they allowed her to move whichever she touched, their weapons returned a bare second later. They returned and cut tiny nicks into her husband's body no matter what she did to stop them.
In the end, she saw it was futile, so she looked to her husband. He was holding her clothing closed for her and his eyes burned with a fury she had never seen.
"We'll go inside the cell now," she said to the guards. To Kui Yu: "We'll go," she repeated, but she couldn't move her husband as long as the blades prevented it. So she waited, her chest tight, her every breath shallow with fear.
Then Kui Yu spoke in hard, cold warning. "She is General Kang's woman. He'll kill anyone who touches her."
Shi Po's breath thickened in her throat. Was it true? Had he given her over to General Kang? It was possible. Life was everything to Kui Yu. He would indeed hand her over to the general rather than watch her hang. She wiped away her tears at those words, struggling to regain some composure. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers nodded, and another pushed the door to the cell wide. Then the swords lifted, but not very high.
They were forced to crawl into the cell. Shi Po kept her one arm around her husband. She could feel the bunching and release of his muscles. She knew the tension he restrained. He still wanted to fight, so she tightened her hold on him. He had no protection except her body; the soldiers had weapons and armor. She would not let him do anything so foolish.
Apparently, he understood, because his head dipped on a low growl. Together they crawled across the threshold into their cell.
Kui Yu was on his feet the moment the last sword left his leg. He jumped up with a speed that surprised Shi Po almost as much as it startled the guards. They jumped back and slammed the door as hard as they could. Seconds later, she heard the jingling of the keys as the cell was locked tight. Kui Yu was at the door, his hands wrapped around the bars, but he said nothing. He merely watched the soldiers retreat, his body tensed, his breath harsh and short.
He pushed once on the door, a furious shove that achieved nothing except expending his yang fire. And then, to her surprise, he moved quickly to her side. She had not shifted from the floor. She had dropped to her bottom as he sprang up, and she had remained there, her thoughts heavy, her body too weary to do more than wrap her arms around herself.
She watched him approach, and surprised herself by flinching when he touched her shoulder.
"Shi Po?" he asked in a whisper. "Shi Po, where are you hurt?"
She shook her head, stunned that she had no voice. In her mind, she spoke clearly to him. She reassured him that she was unharmed, while she assessed his wounds. She knew he had been hurt in the fight. She ought to be cleaning his cuts, seeing to his pain. But she simply sat.
"Why did you give me to him?" she whispered.
He glanced over his shoulder to the door, and then along the wall. He was trying to tell her something, but her mind was too fogged to understand.
"I had to. He wants you. He might even marry you." He spoke loudly, but as he did, he reached out and stroked a character on the back of her hand.
She knew it was a word, but she couldn't decipher it. The lines were too hurried.
"Stand up, Shi Po. Come sit on the bed."
He reached around, drawing her upright. She shrank away from him, not wanting anyone's touch, but he was insistent. He guided her to sit on the dirty straw pallet. Then he shook out their single, thin blanket and sat beside her. When he put the covering on her shoulders, his arms remained—he held her despite the way she shrank from him.
"He cares for you," Kui Yu continued. "He knows of you, of your skills. He wants you for his own." He reached forward and gently brushed aside the remains of her skirt to touch her bare thigh. "He will pay well for you," he said.
But on her thigh, he wrote one character: Lies.
He wrote it over and over as he expounded on a pretend reason for their capture.
"He's arrested us to intimidate me. To make me sell you to him."
Lies, he wrote again and again.
"I have agreed, but we must settle upon a price."
Lies.
"You must keep yourself pretty. You are very important to him."
Lies.
She grabbed his hand, stilling his frantic writing. He looked at her firmly, sliding his gaze to the door. His message was clear: The soldiers were to listen to what was said. Why else would this cell be so close to the guardroom?
She nodded in understanding. "I'm so tired," she said out loud.
Hurt? he wrote on her leg.
She shook her head, but could see that he didn't believe her. So she reached out and touched his jaw. He flinched when she found a bloody cut.
He grabbed her hand and pressed it to his lips. "I'm fine," he whispered.
She didn't believe him, either. Abruptly her fears overwhelmed her, and she shuddered. He tightened his hold and pressed his forehead to hers, his lips against her cheek.
What do we do? She wrote quickly on his chest.
He shook his head, and she struggled to hold back tears.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. She stroked the word repeatedly on his chest. This was all her fault. She had thought her aunt imagined spies in every corner. She had thought General Kang would not seize them out of spite. She had thought she could ascend to Heaven, and that with her death, any threat to Kui Yu would disappear.
But she had been wrong, and now everything was lost. Her children would be orphaned, her students abandoned. All she had ever done would be wiped away; everything Kui Yu had accomplished would be destroyed.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
He gripped her hand to stop her furious strokes. Leaning back against the wall, he tucked her tightly to him. She went easily; she had no strength to fight him. And as she settled against him, he turned her hand over and wrote an answer in her palm.
Hope. Message. B
rother. Hope.
She sighed. If he had sent a message to Lun Po, they were well and truly doomed. She stroked her answer onto his chest.
My brother. Idiot.
Kui Yu chuckled, tightening his hold on her. He returned his fingers to her arm, stroking this time on the inside of her wrist: Hope, he repeated. Then: Sleep.
Shi Po raised her eyes, making sure her disbelief was clear. Her husband simply shrugged and tucked her close again, even as he continued to write his message on her skin:
Hope.
They slept.
* * *
Shi Po laughed. The sound bubbled out of her, slipped free of her lips, and flew high above her into a beautiful blue sky. She was seven years old again, her hair in pigtails that flopped about her shoulders whenever she turned. She hated them because her brothers would always grab them and hold her still with a single fist. Her aunt also delighted in such tricks.
But not today. Today, her relatives reached for her but she was too fast. She could run. Like a bird, like the wind—she was that fast and that happy.
She felt each heavy thump as her heel hit dirt, each impact quickly lost as she pushed forward. Her toes spread, and her foot pressed into the ground. Shi Po loved the way the dust burst up around it. She giggled at the feel.
Where was she going? she wondered. Where would a child run to with such gleeful abandon, especially when her family waited behind, their hands stretched out to grab her? She didn't know, but then again, she truly didn't care. She knew this was a dream, and saw her conscious mind as yet another hand stretching to hold her back.
Where are you going, little dream girl? she asked herself. Then she laughed as she shook her pigtails and pushed herself to greater speeds.
Then she saw it: her destination stretching far off in the distance. First she saw the black carpet of glittering lights. Her toes tingled as she ran through. She pushed down on the black fabric and felt the stars sway and hop as they squished through her toes. So beautiful. And so far behind her now, for she ran faster. The gateway was ahead. Heaven. Blindingly bright and just out of reach. But she was nearly there.
The gate was barred! She could see that from here, but it didn't bother her. She was fast enough now to leap over it. One mighty jump, and she would vault inside. It was coming now. It was time.
She bent her knees, scrunching her tiny body as small as it would go. Then, one last deep breath and she exploded upward. She thrust with her spine, pushed with her knees, vaulted with her ankles, and then the final touch: She rolled through her arches to push with her toes.
She could do that in her dream. Because here, her feet were large and healthy and so very, very strong.
Except, they weren't. Or she wasn't. Because she stopped. She grabbed the gate, high up, just before the top but not quite there. She hung there like a fly stuck to honey strips. Her arms trembled. She would not be able to hold on much longer, much less climb. But she would try. She would haul and grab and bite, anything to gain another inch and reach the top.
She knew she wouldn't make it. She realized she'd had this dream many times. And yet, each time, she tried again. Every dream, she struggled with all her will to go a little farther, to at last reach that glorious other side. Heaven, even a dream Heaven, was worth any sacrifice.
But always her struggles toppled her backward. No matter how careful she was, no matter how she clung to the wall with fingers and toes, the urge to climb higher always ended with her tumbling backward into the dirt.
This time, she did something different. This time, she looked through the bars and into Heaven. Always before she had looked up and focused on her goal: the very top. This time, she looked through the bars to see what was on the other side.
Not just a bright, beautiful light. That's what Heaven had always been in her dreams: beautiful, bright, and very, very indistinct. But this time she saw a person. Two people. They were vague and indistinct, but grew clearer with every moment.
She shifted her energies. She stopped struggling for the top of the gate, but instead clung to the barrier while trying to sort form and meaning from what she saw.
Two people. She knew them. Kui Yu. And the Goddess Kwan Yin, the female angel of hope.
"Kui Yu!" she screamed. "Kui Yu!"
He heard her. Both husband and goddess turned to see her, flattened like an insect against the gate. She saw Kui Yu's eyes narrow as he made out her distant shape. Then she saw him grin, his eyes lighting with delight.
She laughed, thrilled that he had seen her. He would help her.
He waved. She didn't dare wave back; she would fall off the wall. She watched his face fall. He continued to wave, but with more desperation, more determination.
"Kui Yu!" she called. "Kui Yu!"
But he was growing disappointed with her lack of response. His arm lowered, his face grew grim.
"I can't wave!" she screamed. "I'll fall!"
He didn't understand. In the end, he shrugged and turned away from her, his attention once more on the goddess.
"Kui Yu!" she bellowed, but he was gone. He'd walked deeper into Heaven with the goddess, leaving her alone on the wall. So she risked it. She chanced it even though she knew what would happen.
She released one hand and pulled herself tight against the bars. Then she waved and waved and waved. "Kui Yu! Look now! Kui Yu!"
He didn't come back for her, and she tumbled off the wall. She landed with jarring force on her feet, which broke, crushed beneath her weight. And soon her entire body collapsed into the cloying stench of muddy earth.
She tried to get out. She pushed with her broken feet, but only slipped and fell deeper in. She pulled with her slender feminine arms, but her hands had nothing to grasp and she sank further. She fought and gasped and pulled and struggled, but every effort pushed her deeper in, further encased in mud, buried well above her head.
And then everything collapsed down upon her.
She woke with a scream.
Arms tightened around Shi Po, holding her down. She screamed again, but this time with fury. Somewhere in her mind she knew it was Kui Yu holding her. Her husband restrained her. But that only made her fight harder.
Gathering all her strength, she shoved, throwing herself away from him. She tumbled to the floor. A rat squealed as it fled.
"Shi Po!" her husband called. "It's a dream."
She shook her head. Her body trembled, her breath coming in harsh gasps.
"It's a dream," he repeated. "You're safe."
She laughed. Safe? Here in a stinking cell at the mercy of a spiteful general? Or safe here on Earth where she was so encased that she curled into herself, barely daring to breathe for fear of what she would inhale?
She stared about her. She was out of control, her mind spinning in hysterics. And yet, she couldn't stop the horror. She knew that whatever she did, however she struggled, she would fail. No one would help her, not even Kui Yu. He might try. He might even see her and reach out for her. But in the end, he would turn away because he didn't understand.
Shi Po burst into tears.
July 9, 1880
Kui Yu—
My father will not change his mind, and will beat me if I bring up the topic again. My gravest apologies, old friend, but there is nothing I can do. But in the name of our long friendship, I beg you to help me with the examination essay. I have received the topic question, but I cannot form the words.
I have saved some money. I could pay you for your time.
In great fear,
Lun Po
* * *
July 12, 1880
Lun Po—
I have no need of your money. My English boss gives me more gold than I have time to spend. Unless, of course, I had a woman on whom to shower my wealth. A wife of noble ancestry. A woman to father my children and bring light to my dreary life. My joy would be such that, of course I would be happy to share my time and skills with you. I would offer any assistance I could as you prepare for your examinati
on.
Anxiously,
Kui Yu
A ferry boat was once crossing a river when it struck a rock and water began pouring into the cabin. All the passengers were terrified except for one man who laughed at the others' fear.
"Don't worry. It's not our problem," he said. "This isn't our boat."
Chapter 9
Kui Yu stared at his wife, saw her tears, and felt fury rage through him. His wife never cried; her strength defied tears. General Kang would die for the pain he'd caused her. Yet, as much as a vow of vengeance eased his spirit, it did nothing for his wife. And so Kui Yu slowly slid to the floor, feeling every bruise as he knelt before her on the cold stone.
"It was just a dream, Shi Po," he said. "It's over now."
She shook her head, and he saw that she trembled. He reached out to touch her, but she flinched away.
"The bastard hurt you." He hadn't meant to speak aloud, but the words came out on a low growl.
"No!" Her word was a soft hiss, but he heard it anyway. Then she repeated herself, her voice growing stronger. "I am to be Kang's concubine. You're going to sell me. Why would he hurt that which he intends to buy?" she asked angrily.
Kui Yu frowned. She understood, didn't she? She knew he had made up that story to keep the guards away. She knew that, didn't she? But with one look at her rapidly drying eyes, he wasn't so sure. There was anger there, and a hatred that glittered in her gaze. And most of all, he saw pain and fear.
"We will be all right," he whispered. "There is hope."
She swallowed, her face pale as she slowly pushed to her feet. "What did she say, Kui Yu? What did the goddess say to you?"
He, too, pushed to his feet, wincing as he did. His ribs burned with every breath and his back ached, making it difficult to focus. "There is no goddess here."
"There was last night," she hissed. "You were there. I saw you. You were there before me in Heaven." Her voice broke. "What did Kwan Yin say to you?"
He sighed. Now he knew why she was so angry. Still, it was hard to answer, so he took a moment, filling it with the agonies of sitting down, of trying to find a soft spot on the moldy straw, of trying to sit and breathe without pain.
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