The others? There had been half a dozen of them at the Willow Inn, fabled for the partings it had witnessed. None of the others were with Yan on the road, were they? They’d been happy enough to get drunk when Tai left, and then praise Yan and improvise poems and give out more willow twigs at that same inn yard when he set out two years later, but no one had volunteered to go with him, had they? Not even when the expected journey was only ten days or so, to Tai’s family home.
Hah, thought Chou Yan, many hard days west of that estate. At this point, he decided, he himself could fairly be called heroic, a testament to the depth and virtue of friendship in the glorious Ninth Dynasty. They would have to admit it when he returned, all of them: no more wine-cup jests about softness and indolence. It was too pleasing a thought to keep to himself. He offered it to Wan-si as they rode.
As idle an expenditure of mortal breath and words as there had ever been. Black clothing, black eyes, a stillness like no one he’d ever known, this warrior-woman. It was irritating. A tongue was wasted on her. So was beauty, come to think of it. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen her smile.
That night she killed a tiger.
He didn’t even know it until morning when he saw the animal’s body, two arrows in it, at the green edge of a bamboo grove, twenty paces from where they’d slept.
He gaped. Stammered, “Why didn’t…? I didn’t even…”
He was in a sweat, hands shaking. He kept looking at the slain beast and quickly away. The dreadful size of it. Fear made him dizzy. He sat down, on the ground. He saw her walk over and reclaim her arrows. A booted foot on the tiger’s flank, twisting the shafts free.
She’d already packed their bedding and gear on the third horse. Now she mounted up and waited impatiently for him, holding his horse’s reins out for him. He managed to stand, to get up on the horse.
“You never even told me last night!” he said, unable to take his eyes off the tiger now.
“You complain less when you’ve slept a night,” she said, which counted as a long sentence. She started off, the sun rising behind them.
They reached the fort at Iron Gate Pass two evenings later.
The commander fed them for two nights (mutton stew and mutton stew), let Chou Yan entertain with gossip from the capital, and sent them west, with advice as to where to spend three nights on the way to Kuala Nor, so as to arrive at the lake in the morning.
Yan was entirely content with this counsel, having no interest at all in encountering ghosts of any kind, let alone angry ones and in the numbers (improbably) reported by the soldiers at the fort. But Wan-si disdained belief in such matters and did not want to spend an unnecessary night in the canyon among mountain cats, she said bluntly. If his friend was alive by the lake, and had been there for two years…
They pushed on through two long, light-headed days (Yan was finding it difficult to deal with the air this high), past the commander’s suggested stopping places. On the third afternoon, with the sun ahead of them, they ascended a last defile between cliffs and came suddenly out of shadows to the edge of a meadow bowl, of a beauty that could break the heart.
And moving forward through tall grass, Chou Yan had finally seen his dear friend standing at the doorway of a small cabin, waiting to greet him, and his soul had been glad beyond any poet’s words, and the long journey came to seem as nothing, in the way of such trials when they are over.
Weary but content, he brought his small horse to a halt in front of the cabin. Shen Tai was in a white tunic for mourning, but his loose trousers and the tunic were sweat- and dirt-stained. He was unshaven, darkened, rough-skinned like a peasant, but he was staring at Yan in flattering disbelief.
Yan felt like a hero. He was a hero. He’d had a nosebleed earlier, from the altitude, but you didn’t have to talk about that. He only wished his tidings weren’t so grave. But then he wouldn’t be here, would he, if they weren’t?
Tai bowed twice, formally, hand in fist. His courtesy was as remembered: impeccable, almost exaggeratedly so, when he wasn’t in a fury about something.
Yan, still on horseback, smiled happily down at him. He said what he’d planned to say for a long time, words he’d fallen asleep each night thinking about. “West of Iron Gate, west of Jade Gate Pass / There’ll be no old friends.”
Tai smiled back. “I see. You have come this long distance to tell me poets can be wrong? This is meant to dazzle and confound me?”
Hearing the wry, remembered voice, Yan’s heart was suddenly full. “Ah, well. I suppose not. Greetings, old friend.”
He swung down stiffly. His eyes filled with tears as he embraced the other man.
Tai’s expression when they stepped back and looked at each other was strange, as if Yan were a ghost of some kind himself.
“I would not ever, ever have thought…” he began.
“That I would be one to come to you? I am sure you didn’t. Everyone underestimates me. That is supposed to confound you.”
Tai did not smile. “It does, my friend. How did you even know where…?”
Yan made a face. “I didn’t think I was coming this far. I thought you were at home. We all did. They told me there where you had gone.”
“And you carried on? All the way here?”
“It looks as though I did, doesn’t it?” Yan said happily. “I even carried two small casks of Salmon River wine for you, given me by Chong himself there, but I drank one with your brother and the other at Iron Gate, I’m afraid. We did drink to your name and honour.”
The ironical smile. “I thank you for that, then. I do have wine,” Tai said. “You will be very tired, and your companion. Will you both honour me and come inside?”
Yan looked at him, wanting to be happy, but his heart sank. He was here for a reason, after all.
“I have something to tell you,” he said.
“I thought that must be so,” his friend said gravely. “But let me offer water to wash yourselves, and a cup of wine first. You have come a long way.”
“Beyond the last margins of the empire,” Yan quoted.
He loved the sound of that. No one was going to be allowed to forget this journey of his, he decided. Soft? A plump, would-be mandarin? Not Chou Yan, not any more. The others, studying for the examinations, or in the North District laughing with dancing girls as a spring day waned, listening to pipa music, drinking from lacquered cups…they were the soft ones now.
“Beyond the last margins,” Tai agreed. All around them, mountains were piled upon each other, snow-clad. Yan saw a ruined fort on an isle in the middle of the lake.
He followed his friend into the cabin. The shutters were open to the air and the clear light. The one room was small, trimly kept. He remembered that about Tai. He saw a fireplace and a narrow bed, the low writing table, wooden ink-block, ink, paper, brushes, the mat in front of them. He smiled.
He heard Wan-si enter behind him. “This is my guard,” he said. “My Kanlin Warrior. She killed a tiger.”
He turned to gesture by way of proper introduction, and saw that she had her swords drawn, and levelled at the two of them. His instincts had been dulled by solitude, two years away from anything remotely like blades pointed towards him. Keeping an eye out for wolves or mountain cats, making sure the goats were penned at night, did nothing to make you ready for an assassin.
But he’d felt something wrong about the guard even as Yan had ridden up with her. He couldn’t have said what that feeling was; it was normal, prudent, for a traveller to arrange protection, and Yan was sufficiently unused to journeying (and had enough family wealth) to have gone all the way to hiring a