His expression darkened and his light, casual demeanour disappeared. Everyone knew the story. Two Dragon Lo had murdered every other thief-catcher who had gone after him. His gang had even defeated a constable and his entire squad of hired swordsmen. Yet Zheng Hao Han had ventured alone into the forest that was Lo’s stronghold and had killed the notorious bandit with his own hands.
‘Two Dragon Lo was a different matter.’
Tension gathered in his shoulders as Han came forwards and wrapped a hand around her ankle. His touch was firm, but oddly gentle. She considered kicking him out of spite, but their gazes locked and he gave her a sharp and pointed look that was full of warning. In brusque, efficient movements, he coiled another length of rope around her ankles before extinguishing the lamp. She heard the sound of him settling on to the ground not too far away.
She didn’t know if Han deserved his reputation for being the god of thief-catchers, lowly god that it was, but he had thwarted her on her one advantage. Her joints, which had always been flexible, were made more so by rigorous discipline and practice. Irons were easy to slip out of. Coils and coils of rope, less so.
After some time passed, his breathing grew deep and steady. Quietly, she tried to wriggle her hands free beneath the ropes. Perhaps one of his knots could be worked loose.
‘Go to sleep.’ Han’s voice sliced through the darkness. ‘The sound of you struggling is keeping me awake.’
With that, he settled down again. She scowled at him, even though there was no light for him to see it.
Chapter Three
When Han had originally decided to go after Wen Li Feng, his primary reason was that she was an oddity. She was too skilled with the sword to be just a dancer and she had demonstrated the ability to bypass heavy chains and locked doors.
Now, he was certain she was hiding something. Her behaviour was suspect, with her numerous visits to jade merchants. The same instinct that told him Li Feng was more than a dancer also told him that she wasn’t motivated by greed and that there was more at hand than theft.
His father had always told him to find the one detail that was out of place and start his search from there. Father always seemed more concerned with how things fit neatly together rather than any specific moral code. Right and wrong were values that were subject to interpretation. Order was the natural intended state of heaven and earth and to commit a crime was to violate that state. Their household had once been kept with that same philosophy in mind.
Father also believed that every time a crime went unpunished, society was one step closer to ruin and decay. It had been several years since Han had spoken to the man, but he was sure Father’s ideals hadn’t shifted one bit.
If Han didn’t hunt the sword dancer down, he was certain no one else would or could. So now that his prisoner was trussed up before him, society was safe from ruin.
‘This is absurd,’ Li Feng muttered.
She was face down and draped over the saddle in front of him with her wrists and ankles tied
‘It will take at least a week to reach Taining.’ She tried to lift her head, but failed. ‘Are you going to keep me like this the entire time?’
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t try to run away. You’d just capture me again.’
‘Liar.’
Han looked down to where she lay practically in his lap, squirming. He was trying very hard not to notice the squirming or the flush of warmth it brought to his lower half. She was his prisoner. Not a dancer. Not a woman. Definitely not a somewhat pretty woman with exceptional skills.
He still had an ache in his side. His ribs were likely bruised after their wrestling match. Li Feng might be slight, but she struck with purpose. If he untied her, if he even allowed her to have a single finger free, he had no doubt she’d somehow get her hands on a knife and leave it protruding from his heart.
‘I should thank you for providing the horse,’ he added jovially.
She called him something impolite under her breath. He’d been called worse, but not much worse.
‘You’re no hero, picking on the small and weak.’
‘You’re far from weak, Miss Wen.’
‘Aren’t there more evil and loathsome villains for you to chase after?’
Li Feng looked neither evil nor loathsome at the moment. More troubling than the fact that he found her not unpleasant to look at—and that she had a very well-formed backside—was that he found her interesting. How did a young woman acquire such an extraordinary set of skills? Why would she be involved with thieves and vagabonds?
At the next rest stop, he slipped her from the horse like a sack of grain and propped her against a tree. After tending to the horse, he poured water into a cup and brought it to her.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the trunk with a sigh. ‘The indignity.’
Han waited. Without its cynical expression, her face was delicately shaped, tapering only slightly towards her chin. Wen Li Feng was much easier to deal with when she was coming at him with a sword or spitting venom. This show of helplessness made him as uncomfortable as it did her. After a moment, she opened her eyes and tilted her head to accept the water. He had to kneel beside her to place the cup to her mouth. Her lips parted and she looked away as she drank. Han watched the lines of her neck as she swallowed, his own throat going dry.
‘Thank you.’ Her eyes were closed again.
The first time he’d seen her, her face had been heavily accented with make-up for the performance. Without it, her features were softer. A dancer’s true beauty was in the lines of her body and the way she moved. Her face was one that Han might never have noticed if he hadn’t seen her dance. Like the rest of her, its beauty was in movement. It was an expressive face, quick to show anger or amusement. Granted he’d seen more anger than any other emotion during their short acquaintance, but even that was beautiful in its intensity and fire. No one had ever schooled her to hide her emotions, to not let her face display her thoughts. It made one vulnerable to reveal so much, so easily.
When Li Feng performed, her expressions were coy and full of fire, but there was no such artifice now in stillness. Since he’d observed her so closely, the features which he might have considered plain or pleasant before took on a mysterious quality. Her eyelashes were long against her cheeks. Her skin was smooth, the tone of it warm with a natural flush. The shape and curves of her face were so subtle one might need to touch her to truly experience them.
He moved back, further away than he needed to, and seated himself on the grass opposite her. She opened her eyes, perhaps after sensing he had moved away, and had to lift both her arms to wipe her mouth with her sleeve. Then they just sat there, both watching each other warily.
‘Tell me how you caught Two Dragon Lo,’ she said after a pause.
His back stiffened. ‘Why would you want to know that?’
‘I want to hear your account.’
‘You mean whether I indeed walked on water or flew through the trees?’
She gave him a reluctant smile that was really just a twitch of her mouth.
Everyone asked him about the bandit lately and it seemed the stories were getting more fanciful no matter how much he denied them. Han settled his arm across his knees. ‘There isn’t much to say. I went into the woods to find him. We fought. I won.’
‘You don’t know how to tell a story, thief-catcher,’ she complained.
‘I think a more interesting story—’ he fixed his gaze on her ‘—would be why a girl who seems to like jade so much would steal it, yet not take any for herself. Save