Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (12 page)

“No,” Shasha said grimly. “She most certainly can’t.”

JOHANNA SLID DOWN FROM
the Shrimp’s back, patting her heaving sides. Patiently she lifted the mare’s right front hoof and dug out an offending piece of rock that had become wedged in her hoof. The Shrimp rewarded her efforts by leaning her entire weight on her back.

“You,” Johanna said, “are an ungrateful wretch and you should have been turned into fertilizer years ago.” She jabbed the horse’s belly with an elbow and the Shrimp huffed out an indignant breath and shifted her weight enough for Johanna to finish the task.

Johanna let the Shrimp’s hoof fall, and straightened, stretching.

Beneath her Cambaluc stretched on forever, its many rooftops glittering in the afternoon sun, the palace of the Great Khan bulking large to overshadow its neighbors. Johanna stood still, looking her fill. In her expression was appreciation for the beauty of the great city, and respect for the industry and achievement of its citizens, but there was no affection, no pride of place, and none of the sorrow one might expect from one anticipating a permanent exile.

Chiang, Edyk’s manservant, answered her knock and bowed her into the house at once. Hearing her voice Edyk jumped up with a glad smile and held out both hands. “Johanna!”

Johanna waited for Chiang, loitering next to the door with a carefully disinterested look on his face, to leave the room. When he at last he did, with a reluctant, backwards glance, she said without preamble, “My father’s widow tells me you have offered to marry me.”

Edyk’s welcoming smile changed to a frown and his hands dropped. He looked at her searchingly. “The offer was made to your father last year. He told me it was for you to decide, but that in any case I must wait until you were older. He didn’t tell you?”

The breath went out of her on a long sigh and she shook her head. “No. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t want to pressure me, and he knew his second wife and I were not…close.”

He touched her shoulder, a gentle, comforting touch. “I know.”

She reached up to caress his hand lightly. His arms went out but before he could embrace her she stepped away. “I have come here to explain why I must refuse, Edyk.”

He stood very still, his breath caught in his throat, even his heart seemed to cease beating. Jaufre could have told him that Johanna always had that effect on the men in her life, but it had been a long time since Edyk had been willing to listen to anything Jaufre might have to say about Johanna. “What?” someone said, and Edyk realized the stranger’s voice was his own. “Johanna, what did you say?” He started forward.

She held up one hand, palm towards him. “Don’t! Don’t touch me, not yet. Listen. Listen to me, please, Edyk.” She stretched out a hand to slide a rice paper door to one side. The plum trees in the garden beyond were flowering and the aroma of their blossoms slipped into the room, curling into every corner, pervasive and bittersweet. Edyk would never be able to smell a plum blossom again without remembering this moment.

Her back to him, Johanna said in a steady voice, “I can’t marry you, Edyk. It would be impossible. For both of us.”

Now his voice was hard and angry, with an undercurrent of fear. “That’s nonsense and you know it. We’ve grown up side by side, we were friends before we ever, well, you know. Before.”

She almost smiled at his stutter over how their relationship had changed. “I know.”

“And,” he added, “we’re both foreigners, in a land that is determined to keep us that way.”

“My father was as Chinese as the Son of Heaven himself,” she said, an edge to her voice.

“But your mother was half Chinese and half Venetian,” he said flatly, “the same as mine is Chinese and Portuguese. Look in your mirror. The Venetian won out. It doesn’t matter that we were born here. We are strangers in a strange land, as Bishop John taught us from the book of the Christian god. And we always will be.”

“No,” she said carefully, back in control. “I won’t be. At least I won’t be a stranger in this land.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m leaving, Edyk.”

“What?”

She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the blossoms. “I’m leaving Cambaluc, Edyk, and Everything Under the Heavens.”

“What!” He was really frightened now. He jerked her around to face him. “You’re leaving? You’re leaving me?”

“Yes.”

“To go where? And why?”

“Perhaps,” she said, considering, “perhaps I will look for my grandfather.”

He snorted. “He’s been gone, how long now, thirty years? You never met him, you don’t know him. He may be dead, he most likely is, and then where will you be? And even if he is alive, what makes you think he’d want anything to do with you, when he never bothered to stay in contact with his own daughter, your mother?”

“Edyk,” she said, her expression relaxing a little. “Have you never wanted to get up of a morning and start walking west?”

He looked at her, a veteran of trading trips north, south, east and, yes, west, and raised an eyebrow.

“All right,” she said. “But have you never wished to keep going, to follow the sun to where it sets? To see the fountains of fire in Georgiana? To visit the enchanters of Tebet? To fight the dragons at the edge of the ocean?” The sadness in her eyes faded, to be replaced by excitement and anticipation. It was a look Edyk had seen before, and did not rejoice in now.

She waited, part of her hoping he would agree with her, part of her hoping he would offer to dower his wives and children, sell his business and come with them on the road. When he didn’t, she sighed, although it didn’t hurt as much as she had imagined it would. “It doesn’t matter if my grandfather is alive or dead, Edyk. He is merely an excuse to start me on my way. You know me.” She smiled. “You know me better than almost anyone else. Would you expect anything less?”

He took a hasty step away from her, and then back. “And who will take care of you?”

“I can take care of myself,” she said.

Edyk could not honestly quarrel with her superb if arrogant self-confidence. Neither was he ready to acknowledge defeat. “You know what the roads are becoming, now that the Great Khan is dead.”

“Shasha and Jaufre will be with me.”

“Jaufre!" he exclaimed. “Jaufre is going with you?”

“Yes.”

“I might have known,” he said bitterly.

Johanna looked surprised. “Certainly you might have known,” she agreed. “We grew up here together, children of foreigners. We have suffered the shunning of the people of the Son of Heaven all our lives. He wants to leave as badly as I do, and unlike you he is free to do so. And he is my best and oldest friend.”

“Johanna.” He took both her hands in his and held them tightly. “I know I’ve never said the words, but I thought you knew. I love you, Johanna. I want to marry you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Don’t leave me here all alone.”

The sadness in her eyes was displaced again, this time by laughter. “And what would Blossom and Jade have to say to that?”

“But they love you!" he protested. “They always have.”

“As your friend, yes,” she said. “As a third wife?” She shook her head, and the corners of her mouth quirked upwards.

Watching the generous curve of her lips he felt again that sharp, fierce tug of desire, and this time he let it show in his eyes. “Is it the bride price?” he said roughly. “I’ll double it. Triple it, even.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to be bought,” she said gently. “And Edyk, you know you don’t want to buy me.”

“Then come to me freely,” he said. “Come to me naked, I don’t care. I want you for my wife, Johanna.”

She shook her head again, a final, negating movement.

He recognized the signs. Johanna had a kind of determined, implacable ruthlessness Edyk had never before encountered in a woman. In Johanna’s world, there were the people she cared for, and then there was everyone else, worthy of curiosity, certainly, perhaps even of courtesy…perhaps. The people she cared for—he totted them up mentally and even before one was dead could fit them all on the fingers of one hand—were worthy of any sacrifice, mental, emotional, physical.

There has never been such a woman, he thought, looking at the gallant chin, the squared shoulders, the bronzed hair escaping its braid to curl riotously around her face, the eyes the color of the sky over Kesmur just before dawn. He let his eyes drift down her body, over the swell of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the long legs. “But I want you,” he said at last, hazarding his all in a voice gone thick with need. “Johanna, I want you.”

“Then take me,” she said huskily. His eyes met hers and he felt a shock of recognition at the desire he saw reflected there. “I want you, too. I need you. And I want something for myself. Something for my very own, to take away with me, to keep me warm on the long dark nights away from you.” He was frozen with disbelief and she took a step forward and caught at his hand. “Edyk, please,” she said, and raised his hand to her breast. “Please love me.”

He felt the rich weight of her breast, the nipple already hard beneath the palm of his hand, and pulled her into his arms, bringing his mouth down on hers so roughly her lip split. He tasted blood and lifted his head to see her eyes half-closed, her skin flushed, her lips parted. Her tongue came out to touch the cut, and with a groan he was unable to suppress cradled himself between her thighs, sliding his hands over her bottom to lift and rub her against him. She responded, eagerly if inexpertly, and such was his instantaneous need that he would have taken her then and there, on the floor, if she had not called to him in a voice soft and shaken with desire. “Edyk, Edyk, not here. Not here,” she repeated when he raised his head again, dazed, almost uncomprehending. She smoothed his hair back with one trembling hand. “Anyone could come in.”

He pulled away from her. “Where, then?” he demanded, unsmiling, the planes of his face hard and strained.

“The lake. The summerhouse. We will be alone there.”

He looked at her, his eyes burning, his mouth compressed. “The summerhouse is two hours from here, Johanna.”

She smiled at him, a rich, bewitching smile of shared desire that promised him everything she had to give and more. “Then we’d better get started, hadn’t we?”

At her smile his body responded promptly and he cursed her. She laughed. He flung open the door and bellowed for Chiang, who appeared almost immediately, still with that carefully nurtured expression of disinterest. “Saddle North Wind,” Edyk snapped, and turned back to Johanna.

She was still laughing. “North Wind?” she said. “You actually ride North Wind?”

“He’s the fastest horse in my stables and he doesn’t race again until next week,” he said grimly.

Her smile was provocative. “And he lets you ride him?”

“He will if you’re with me.” And indeed when Chiang brought the horse around from the stables he caught Johanna’s scent and whinnied eagerly, almost trotting with Chiang dangling at the end of his reins. He almost danced to a stop and nosed eagerly at the front of her tunic. She laughed and fed him a piece of carrot and rubbed his ears.

“I should never have let you near him as a colt,” Edyk said grimly. He threw Johanna up into the saddle without ceremony, yanked the reins from Chiang and vaulted up after her.

“The Shrimp!" Johanna said protestingly.

“The Shrimp! Great Khan! You rode the Shrimp up here? I’m surprised either of you finished the trip alive.” He pulled her back against him, and heard her gasp. “Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “You want to go to the summerhouse, fine, but we’ll ride the Wind there together, Johanna.” He kicked the white stallion into a canter. North Wind, a horse with a mind of his own, thought it should be a gallop and Edyk was only too willing to oblige.

All the same, it was the longest, most torturous journey Edyk the Portuguese, veteran of many crossings of the Taklamakan Desert, was ever to make. Once out of the city the road narrowed to a rough trail and became steep and rocky. North Wind of necessity slowed to a walk. Johanna leaned back in the cradle of Edyk’s arms, her body rubbing against his with the Wind’s every step. By the time they reached the lake, hidden at the head of a small valley south of Cambaluc, Edyk was frantic with the need to get at her, to lay her skin bare to his eyes and his touch.

Johanna was no less frantic to let him. All the long way up to the lake, Edyk’s hands and lips were never still, and his voice, husky with desire, had whispered in between kisses and bites exactly what he was going to do to her, and how. When his feet hit the ground she hurled herself forward into his arms, almost knocking him over. She could feel him press into her belly and she rubbed up against him, moaning.

He slid his hands over her hips and held her still. He let his head fall back and drew a great rush of air into his lungs, holding it, and then letting it expel from his chest in an explosive rush. “Johanna, wait,” he said. Loving had always been enjoyable for him, sweet, a mutually-pleasing frolic. With Johanna the pleasure was so intense it was almost pain, a demon that had him by the scruff of the neck who wouldn’t let go until he had satisfied it, and he knew he must slow himself down or he would hurt her. He clenched his teeth and made an effort to speak intelligibly. “This is your first time, isn’t it?”

“You know it is,” she muttered, licking at the drop of sweat that had collected in the hollow of his throat, sliding her hands down his back to pull him tightly against her. He caught her hands and she made a frustrated sound and tried to pull free. “I want to touch you, Edyk. Let me.”

He raised her chin with one hand and looked into the clear eyes that were now dark with thwarted desire. “I want to let you,” he said softly. “But I’m all sweaty from the ride, and so are you. Let’s swim first.”

“I don’t want to swim,” she said crossly, urging him forward again.

He gave a laugh that turned into a shaken groan. Again he caught her hands and said with difficulty, “Stop that. I don’t want to swim either, but we have to slow this down a little.” He looked into her eyes and whispered, “Trust me to do this right, Johanna.”