My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  He laughed. “So how do we marry, as soon as possible?”

  She inhaled. “We have to go to Kulja.”

  “Why Kulja?”

  Kulja was the seat of the governor of Ili, where she was increasingly past due. Three days she had traveled west with her Persian, in the direction opposite her destination. Making up for that was another three days. And according to him, six days had passed since the bandits’ ambush.

  In her mind she had been making generous allowances for possible delays. It was quite reasonable, wasn’t it, that she could have taken sick somewhere along the route and needed a few days to rest and recuperate? Also quite reasonable that she might have taken a detour, to investigate matters that might be of interest to Da-ren.

  Even so, she should have been back in Kulja two days ago. To make matters worse, she usually returned several days early. So from Da-ren’s perspective, by now she would have been missing for almost a week.

  “I have family in Kulja,” she said.

  “Then of course we will go to Kulja.” He suddenly looked anxious. “Do you think my gems would be enough of a bride price for you? I suppose my firearms are worth something, too—and my horse.”

  “Listen to yourself,” she chided. “Are you planning to walk back to India?”

  “I just want your family to know that a mountain of gold and a sea of wine is still too paltry a gift when I will have you in exchange.”

  Her eyes moistened. What were a mountain of gold and a sea of wine, next to such heartfelt esteem? She could almost imagine Da-ren’s shock as he looked both Ying-ying and the Persian up and down, trying to imagine what this mad foreigner saw in his wayward stepdaughter.

  One man’s burden was another’s treasure—that had ever been the case. Except Ying-ying had never dared hope it would be the case for her.

  But now it was. Now she was this man’s greatest treasure.

  He was already sitting up. “Let’s pack up and go. There are still five hours of daylight left and—”

  “You shouldn’t exert yourself so much.”

  She was almost entirely recovered, but the wound on his leg had not come along as well. It made her heart ache to think of how much work he had done, with an injury like that. The grass mattress hadn’t made itself. Their sustenance required that he either hunt or ride out to find the nearest nomad yurts. And though the waterfall was not far, it was quite a steep climb from the cave, with the descent even more treacherous—she could only guess at the number of trips he’d had to make, to keep them supplied with water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and the washing of bandages.

  He grinned and held out his hand. “I’ll rest when we are married.”

  She took his hand. But instead of letting him help her up, she pulled him back down next to her.

  He kissed her on her forehead. “Let’s get on the road for now. After we stop for the night, I’ll be all yours.”

  She tsked. “If I were starving, would you wait half a day to feed me?”

  His gaze slid down to her lips. “Are you starving now?”

  “Famished. And only you can satisfy my hunger.”

  He exhaled, a little unsteadily. “If you say it like that, then it becomes a moral obligation on my part, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  He kissed her on her lips as he fitted her body to his. “I take my moral obligations seriously. Always.”

  Ying-ying hummed to herself as she flitted around the cave, packing. She was alone, her husband-to-be having gone to hunt them something nice for supper. Husband-to-be, she winked at the kindly bodhisattvas on the wall. She never thought she’d have a husband-to-be. Or at least, she never thought she’d have one she liked.

  Tonight, after supper, she would tell him who she was—and prepare him for the ordeal that awaited a nobody who thought he was good enough to marry the stepdaughter of the governor of Ili. Da-ren would disdain him. He would be outraged that she dared to bring back a man she had found on her own, without having gone through any of the proper channels of matrimony. And he would question Ying-ying’s sanity and warn of dire fates in strange lands where she’d have no one to turn to, after the Persian had thrown her out of his household.

  In other words, they would be on their knees begging for Da-ren’s blessing and forgiveness—and would receive neither.

  But that she would endure. She owed Da-ren this much, to let him know what would become of her, to absolve him of all further responsibilities, and to perform her three kowtows of gratitude and leave-taking. He was the closest thing she had to a father.

  He was her father, in every sense that mattered.

  And now she would depart his household in disgrace, never allowed to darken his doorstep again. In the euphoria of her unofficial engagement, she had not thought through to the inevitable conclusion: In gaining the Persian, she would lose Da-ren.

  Not that she’d ever had Da-ren. And not that he’d ever spared a thought for her that wasn’t tinged with impatience and disapproval. But he was fair: He held his own flesh-and-blood children to no less stringent standards and meted out just as few words of praise. And he was—and probably always would be—the greatest man Ying-ying had ever known, incorruptible, farsighted, tireless, a man who thought only of his country and never of himself.

  She had always dreamed that someday he would tell her that he wished she had been his own. As long as she remained a member of his household, her dream, however foolish and improbable, was not completely impossible. But when she left with the Persian, that particular door would close and never open again.

  And if the Persian were to prove faithless . . .

  No, she must not think such thoughts. At every turn he had proved himself a man of the finest caliber. She would trust him, and they would be happy together.

  The packing took no time at all. Most everything in the cave had come in their saddlebags and would leave in those saddlebags. The grass mattress would be left behind, alas, and the bucket. But she wanted to take the blankets he had acquired from the nomads—it would probably be very, very cold tackling the Karakoram Pass, even at the height of summer.

  She examined the strips of clean bandages that hung on the makeshift rack he’d built and decided that it would be good to have some of those on hand. Now if she wrapped the bigger blanket around her bedroll, she might be able to stuff the thinner one into her saddlebag. Which meant that the bandaging would have to go into his saddlebag.

  She gathered and folded several of the longest pieces of bandaging. Then she opened his saddlebag and pushed them in. As she withdrew her hand, it brushed against the side of the saddlebag and there came a curious sound, rather like a piece of paper crinkling under the leather—a sound so faint that a person with less sensitive ears might not even have heard.

  She bent the leather of the saddlebag with some force. The sound came again. But her fingertips could not feel any loose flaps or openings of hidden pockets. Taking the saddlebag with her, she went outside for better light. Every seam of the saddlebag was perfectly in place. Perhaps it was just a bit of loose material that had been accidentally sewn into the—

  She saw it—one particular seam, instead of ending in a perfectly cut knot, disappeared into a tiny pouch. When she pulled, a dowel came up, a smooth, flattened wooden stick with thread wrapped around. And when she unwound the thread, and pulled on the seam, a little space opened up, enough for her to see the piece of paper that had been hidden.

  At that exact same moment she realized that she was snooping. Until then her curiosity had carried her along and she had not even thought that perhaps she was doing something she ought not to do.

  Don’t go around digging in other people’s things, Amah had once warned her. Dig long enough and you’ll always find things you wish you hadn’t.

  What if it were a letter from his wife? Wouldn’t she want to know now, rather than after she had burned her bridges with Da-ren?

  But then again, how would she know if it were
a letter from his wife? Persian and Indian languages probably all looked like what Chinese called demon notations.

  She stopped arguing with herself, extracted the paper, and opened it. It was no letter, but a map, a rather detailed one at that—the paper was as thin as the skin of an onion and opened to a far larger dimension than she had expected.

  The places were indeed labeled in demon notations, so she could not immediately make out what she was looking at. The next moment, however, a chill went down her spine. Was this a map of Chinese Turkestan, with the mountains surrounding the Takla Makan Desert?

  She had never used a map in her travels. Da-ren had maps at the governor’s residence, but she found them fairly useless. This map, however, concurred beautifully with the directions and distances she carried in her head.

  If this particular faint line marked the course of the Yarkand River, then the city at its southern end would be Yarkand. Going northwest lead them to Kashgar. Back east, around the northern rim of the Tarim Basin, the Heavenly Mountains. And farther to the north, the spines and ridges of the Altai, in the shadows of which was Kulja, the seat of the governor.

  But there was so much more on the map, from the larger settlements she knew to little hamlets she had barely given a glance as she rode past, lakes, rivers, changing from solid line to dotted line to indicate that they were seasonal. The Buddha caves at Kizil were marked with a stylized icon of a Buddha head.

  Underneath the map there were calculations done in Arabic numbers. She couldn’t make out what the calculation was about until she remembered rumors of English mapping expeditions, boasting of members so skilled in the art of pacing, that simply by counting their steps, they could measure great distances with only minuscule discrepancy.

  No, no, he was on horseback all the time she was with him. So he couldn’t possibly have been on the ground, pacing. But before she could relax, she remembered that he had said that he had come through this area on an earlier part of his visit.

  She had noticed nothing irregular about that comment then. If he was already up here in Chinese Turkestan, he might as well make a tour of Dzungaria—the region bound by the Heavenly Mountains to the south and the Altai Mountains to the north—even if Dzungaria didn’t exactly hop with wealthy men eager for jewels.

  What Dzungaria did hop with were men resentful of Ch’ing control, both Muslims of Chinese extraction and those of the various local ethnicities. A man fluent in Turkic could easily compile of list of warlords and chieftains who might be persuaded to rise up in arms.

  The very thing that Da-ren, and she, by extension, was trying to prevent.

  No, no, she was quite mad. Even if a man carried a better map than the governor of Ili possessed, that did not necessarily make him a spy.

  But was he any more likely to be a gem merchant? What kind of gem merchant went into a warlord’s compound to rescue prisoners? What kind of gem merchant could get rid of a band of bandits in two minutes? What kind of gem merchant would want to travel with someone who had boasted of being a master thief?

  Not to mention he had refused to give her his address, though he had been desperate for them to keep in touch. And she, the fool, had only thought in directions of wives and concubines, never in her remotest flight of fancy wondering whether his address would show his connection to the British Raj.

  Slowly she refolded the map and put it back, making sure that everything in the saddlebag was exactly as she had found it.

  She could present a lowly merchant to Da-ren, but not a spy for the British.

  Ying-ying sharpened her dagger.

  What should she do?

  The Persian was a spy. Why was she even asking the question? They had already agreed to head out for Kulja, two days of hard riding northwest. When they reached their destination, she would simply hand him over to Da-ren and let Da-ren deal with him.

  But the Persian would not confess, if she knew anything of him. Da-ren would have him tortured. She’d hear his screams of agony in her mind even if she took herself a thousand li away.

  It would be easier to kill him. A quick stab to the heart. A swift death.

  How? How could she possibly harm the man she loved?

  Or she could let him go. Just let him go. Leave in the morning as planned, except by herself. Or leave in the night, slipping away like a ghost, never to return.

  But she would be derelict in her duty to Da-ren, the man who should have been her father.

  “Looking to skin something?” came the Persian’s voice. He held an armful of firewood; a brace of hares dangled from his hands.

  “To cut your heart out and feed it to the dogs if you aren’t good to me.”

  She sounded deranged to herself. But he only chuckled, set down the firewood, and took out his own knife, getting ready to prepare the hares for roasting. “Don’t you know how to break a man’s heart? It’s much less messy that way.”

  “No, poisoning is less messy. I don’t know anything about men’s hearts.”

  He looked at her sidelong. “Not even mine?”

  She wanted to weep and howl. She wanted to pound on the hard floor of the cave until her fists bled. It was colossally unjust, even by her jaundiced standards. She did know what was in his heart, but it meant nothing now. He was a spy for the British, someone seeking to undermine Greater Ch’ing’s authority in the region. He worked against Da-ren. He worked against the interests of her country.

  He was an enemy.

  “Tell me again what’s in your heart,” she heard herself say.

  He gazed at her. Then he came, sat down next to her, and draped an arm about her shoulder. “You,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “Just you.”

  In the silence she could hear her heart breaking piece by piece. Why? Why must she give him up? Why must she turn him over to Da-ren?

  She turned her face to his. Their lips met. He kissed her. She whimpered, choked by indecision. He leaned into her, his hands cupping her face, and kissed her deeper.

  This was the perfect opportunity. He was defenseless. She had to but raise the dagger high. One great downward plunge and he’d be dead.

  She shuddered. The dagger fell from her hand and hit the rocky floor with a bright, harsh clang. She wrapped her arms about him.

  The opportunity was still ripe. A half dozen hard taps and he would not be able to reach for his gun. A half dozen more and he’d be as paralyzed as a ninety-year-old man after three strokes.

  He kissed the tip of her chin, the sensations warm and pure. Tears rose underneath her tightly shut eyelids. How could she turn him over to the torturers? How could she live with herself knowing that he’d either die at their hands or lose his mind completely, spending the remaining days of his life wandering in the wilderness, muttering to himself, terrified of the least noise and human contact?

  She went wild, kissing him, dragging his clothes up, her hands ravenous for him, for the feel of his muscles and sinews beneath the smoothness of his skin. It would be the last time. She would allow herself this one last time. To imprint him on herself, to savor the taste and scent and texture of him for the lonely eternity ahead.

  But though he let her pull him down atop her, he would not cooperate with the frenzy she desperately wanted. Instead he cupped her face between his hands and kissed her gently, soothingly. When she clutched at him, he took her wrists in one hand and pinioned them behind her head.

  “I am not going anywhere,” he said as he kissed her jaw.

  Maybe not, but she was. She was leaving as soon as he had his back turned. She caught his lower lip between hers and licked it. He sucked in a breath and kissed her more deeply.

  “I think of you every minute of every day,” he told her, his words hot and unsteady.

  She whimpered again, then cried out sharply as he took her nipple into his mouth. He played with that sensitive tip, rolling it around his tongue, making her writhe and tremble.

  He kissed her again. “You are so very beautiful. Your eyes, your hair,
your throat, your breasts—everything about you is beautiful.”

  Her nails dug hard into her palms. But a knife wound could not distract from the pain in her heart—or the dark, unbearable sweetness of his words.

  He kissed her throat, her shoulders, her arms. He kissed her breasts, sending a fresh jolt of desire through her. Then at last he came into her, and she moaned with the pleasure of it, the sheer necessity of it.

  She broke free of his restraint, wrapped her arms around him, and fastened her lips to his. She could not hold him close enough or kiss him deeply enough. Such pleasure, she could already feel the beginning of oblivion, that blessed state in which there were no harrowing choices, no forever sundering, no eternal regret.

  “I love you,” he whispered in her ear. “I will always, always love you.”

  And her oblivion descended like an avalanche.

  When it was over, instead of letting go, she clung to him even more tightly. Despair swamped her, quicksand and sinking mud everywhere she turned. She knew then that she had embraced the unthinkable: She had thought she would leave him; instead she would choose him, above everyone and everything else.

  “You will stay with me, always?” she asked in a small voice, shamed and disgusted by her frailty, loving him so much it hurt to breathe.

  “Of course,” he answered easily, in full sincerity. “Always.”

  She buried her face against his shoulder. “You promise?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. Her heart went cold, so cold.

  “I am beginning to wonder how many promises you will need,” he said. “But I am willing to promise as often as you’d like.”

  She exhaled weakly. He would honor his promise—she knew he would. She trusted him. “We are not going to Kulja.”

  “No?” He sat up halfway, surprised. “What about your family?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  He smoothed his hand over her hair. “What’s the matter? Please tell me.”

  She set her jaw. “I was too optimistic. We will find no blessing in Kulja.”