Something inside him wasn’t willing to turn away yet. He couldn’t honestly discern whether he was here for the sake of truth and justice or because he wanted to see her again.
‘Li Feng—’ The words, whatever they were going to be, got caught in his throat and were lost.
‘Don’t worry. It won’t be easy to capture me,’ she taunted.
‘I look forward to the chase.’
There was a group of men at the main building. Han crept forwards on the branch to get an unobstructed view. Li Feng did the same.
He pointed out the man wearing a blue robe. ‘The tall one could be him.’ Lotus had given him a description of a man of around forty years of age.
‘Who is that beside him?’
‘From the uniform and headdress, he’s likely the agent from the Salt Commission.’
Lotus had spoken of private meetings between Cai Yun and the official from the Commission which had immediately made him suspicious. Corruption was rampant within the bureaucracy surrounding the salt trade.
The two men spoke briefly to the foreman before heading to the gate where the guards let them out. At the same time, a group of men entered the compound with a wagon laden with supplies.
‘Provisions from the nearby village,’ he concluded. ‘It wouldn’t be too difficult to get inside…if one were inclined.’
He had caught his share of salt smugglers and had learned a few of their tricks.
‘Thief-catcher Han, are you planning an illicit activity?’
He turned to her. Her eyes were large in her face and alight with mischief. She was very, very close and her lips were curved in a smile that was both teasing and sensual.
‘Only with you,’ he replied.
Her eyes narrowed speculatively on him. They were dangling in mid-air, but she might very well be worth the fall.
* * *
A few hours later, they sat in the tea house in the adjacent village. An arrangement of dishes had been fanned out between them. Han watched as Li Feng plucked a morsel from each one into her rice bowl, wooden chopsticks flying.
‘What is this?’ She lifted a cut of meat from a pool of brown sauce.
‘Snake,’ he replied.
With a lift of her eyebrows, Li Feng placed the bite into her mouth. She chewed carefully before grabbing a few more pieces of snake into her bowl. Then she began to eat in
earnest.
‘You have a healthy appetite.’
‘With Wen
shifu,
I ate rice and pickled vegetables every day,’ she said between bites. ‘Everything tastes so good in comparison. Besides, you never know when you’ll need the strength to outrun someone.’
He turned his chopsticks over and selected a few items on to his rice before turning the sticks back to eat. Li Feng watched him, amused.
‘What is it?’
‘Even if you hadn’t told me you were the son of a public officer, I would have guessed it from watching you eat.’ She straightened her back and squared her shoulders to illustrate the point. ‘You know there are places where your manners alone would single you out for trouble.’
‘I can act the vagabond when needed,’ he insisted. ‘But I’m in the presence of a lady.’
That seemed to please her. She took a few dainty bites for show, glancing at him for approval. It was impossible not to smile.
The village was a secluded and tight community, though not unwelcoming to strangers. They saw a trickle of visitors from the salt activity as well as the occasional traveller stopping by due to the location near the river.
In the short time they had been there, Han had already found out that Cai Yun was not a local and that he and the agent were staying at the village headman’s house.
‘Our mysterious friend is likely involved in the salt trade. It’s not difficult to guess why a wealthy merchant would send such an extravagant cargo to Wang Shizhen. It could be a bribe.’
‘Or Wang could have bullied it out of him.’
He fixed his gaze on her. ‘Why would you…would anyone steal so much jade if no one cared to profit from it?’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps so that warlord wouldn’t have it.’
It was the most direct answer he’d got from her. Han had already given up trying to get Li Feng to reveal her accomplices. Loyalty meant everything to people who lived by the sword. He found it difficult to think of her that way. She lacked the hard-edged desperation of an outlaw on the fringe of civilisation. Li Feng had been raised outside the confines of society, as a child of the mountains and the open road. His own upbringing had been one of structure and discipline.
‘We’re outside Wang’s domain,’ Han said. ‘This conspiracy spans across two separate prefectures. There’s something underhanded at work here.’
‘A much greater crime than the theft of, say, a few pieces of jade?’
Must she keep reminding him? Li Feng might be a talented thief, but she was far from a clever one if she wanted to evade capture.
‘There is no such thing as an insignificant crime.’ His father’s words reached through the years to take control of him. ‘Let’s take, for example, the stealing of a horse. You may think it nothing, but for most families, a horse is their greatest asset and crucial to their livelihood. He is the only way they can take their goods to market or travel from city to city. They made sacrifices for that horse, buying and feeding and caring for it, sacrifices that you did not make.’
‘But it was a state-owned horse,’ she countered. ‘One can say I was performing a spiritual service by releasing it from burden. Like freeing birds on festival days to promote good karma.’
‘If one was attempting a very corrupted line of reasoning.’
Like his own faulty logic regarding Li Feng, a known thief with a dubious sense of morality.
‘What did you do with that horse?’ he asked as an afterthought.
‘I gave it to a farmer.’ She reached to put more food in her bowl. ‘So he could care for it and feed it and take his crops to market.’
Han frowned at her while Li Feng continued eating, oblivious. When she glanced up, his arms were folded over his chest as he regarded her. He couldn’t tell whether she was mocking him or telling the truth.
‘You should have become a magistrate,’ she commented, taking in his stern expression. ‘Thieves would tremble before you.’
He relented and resumed the meal. As fast as she was with her chopsticks, he was going to end the night hungry if he didn’t put up a good fight.
‘Why didn’t you pursue an office like your father?’ she asked once the dishes were empty.
‘It’s not so easy being an official. There are studies and then the local exams, the provincial exams, the imperial exams in the capital to become
jinshi.
After that, one must catch the attention of the right people to get an appointment—’
Li Feng was leaning towards him, hanging on every word. He could see from the glaze in her eyes that much of it was foreign to her, yet she made an earnest effort to try to take it all in.
‘I proved to be a very poor scholar,’ he concluded, cutting his explanation short.
‘How so?’
‘Well, once for my daily lessons, I wrote out a single line that read, “I do not want to be a high ranking official”.’
She choked back a laugh behind her tea cup. ‘What happened then?’
‘I was promptly beaten by my tutor. Twenty-five times with a bamboo switch. And when my father came home, I was beaten again. You like that, do you? Hearing about my suffering?’
Li Feng was laughing outright now. The laughter lit up her entire face and the sound of it wrapped around him and puffed out his chest. They were drinking tea, but he felt as if he were filled with wine, his spirits were so lifted.
As much as she challenged and teased him, she was an easy companion. Even when they were fighting, he felt more alive when she was around. It didn’t make any sense.
He had grown silent without realising it. Li Feng was watching him curiously, so he lifted the teapot to refill her cup. It gave him something to do.
‘You like me,’ she said into the awkward lull in the conversation. ‘But you don’t want to.’
There was nothing to say to that so he drank his tea while her eyes continued to dance over him. He was not so easily lured by a pretty face, yet he was more than lured by her. He was utterly charmed.
He had liked Two Dragon Lo as well, when they had been drinking as strangers in a remote tavern much like this one. Had he been among outlaws for so long that he was starting to find kinship with bandits and thieves? This life in the grey border between civility and disorder was starting to become a new home to replace the one that he had left behind. Never was he in more danger of losing his way.
Chapter Seven
T
he tavern doubled as an inn, or rather there was an area in the loft over the main room that the tavern keeper offered to them. Li Feng sat waiting inside the tiny enclosure while Han dealt with particulars downstairs.
The space couldn’t quite be called a room. There was no door, only a passageway through which two wide and curious eyes were watching her. A little boy gripped the entrance with one small hand and peered inside, revealing the top of his head to the tip of his nose. Large brown eyes blinked at her.
‘Ping!’
The boy went running downstairs at the sound of his father’s voice just as Han appeared.
‘I think he likes me,’ she said.
The keeper’s wife had brought a bamboo mat and an oil lamp before leaving them to their privacy. Han had fashioned a quick tale around them being a man and wife returning to his hometown. As much as she’d travelled, trading one set of companions for another, she was rarely alone with someone, let alone a man. It wasn’t hard to imagine herself a young woman waiting for her husband and feeling the same hitch of anticipation in her chest as Han stood by the entrance.
He pulled off his boots and left them outside. Then he entered and settled on the opposite side of the mat, which wasn’t far given the tight confines of the enclosure. Looking around, he stashed his weapon, which had been bundled in cloth, against the wall. He had hidden his
dao
before they had entered the village. The sight of it would immediately identify him either as a mercenary or some other form of rough character that would raise suspicion. She kept her own sword hidden beneath her sleeve for that reason.
‘We’ll try to find out more about our friend tomorrow,’ he said.
‘What if he leaves the village?’
‘Then we’ll follow.’
The relentless thief-catcher. Han had made this his new mission, determined to expose some grand scheme, but all she wanted to know was Cai Yun’s connection to the jade and whether he knew anything of why the one pendant had come into her mother’s hands. The answer was so close after all these years.
She wanted to break into the headman’s house and interrogate Cai Yun that very night, but that would be foolish. It was possible, and highly likely, that this man was one more step along the path. She needed to adopt Han’s sense of patience and bide her time.
Li Feng reached beneath her sleeve to untie the bindings that held the scabbard to her arm and set it down beside her. She could feel Han’s gaze on her as she pulled the wooden pins from her hair. Heat rose up the back of her neck and she ran her hands through her hair to give her some time to compose herself. Then she took in a deep breath before turning around.
Han was reclined back on to his elbows. His eyes were dark as he watched her.
‘Why did you leave Wudang Mountain?’ he asked.
She didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. ‘I wanted to find out what happened to my family.’
‘But why at that moment? Was there something that happened that made you decide to leave?’
How interesting that Han would ask in that way. Something had happened to her.
‘The mountain was a tranquil place, very quiet and solitary. There were days when
shifu
would barely speak.’ Li Feng settled her back against the wall as she recalled the tale. ‘I had always imagined how my life would be if I was with family. I wondered how it would feel to play with a brother or a sister. Then one day I heard the sound of someone playing a flute on the mountainside. It was the first time I had heard any music in a long time, other than the song of birds. The sound was so lonely and lovely.’
She could hear the melody now. The foothills where her
shifu
lived were open and empty. The sweet, piercing sound had travelled without any barriers to dampen the sound. She’d never seen who it was who had affected her so.
‘I knew then that I belonged in a different place,’ she admitted. ‘A place with people and voices and music.’
Han remained quiet, his expression thoughtful as he absorbed her story. She had to look away. Her cheeks burned hot with embarrassment. The seemingly harmless tale had revealed too much about her feelings of isolation, of abandonment. The oil lamp was on the floor just beyond the bamboo mat. She leaned over to extinguish it and hide herself in darkness, but as she brushed past Han, he reached out and gently took hold of a lock of her hair.
He ran the strands through his long fingers as if testing the texture of fine silk. Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. She could hear his breath deepening. Her own heart was beating fast as she faced him. Dark eyebrows framed his eyes, intensifying even the slightest glimpse of emotion.
When she lowered her mouth to his, he stopped her. He stopped himself.
‘Coward,’ she whispered.
‘I didn’t seek you out because of this.’ Despite the denial, his voice was rough with desire.
So Thief-catcher Han was honest to everyone but himself.
She couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘I’m surprised to see such restraint, given your reputation in the bedchamber.’
He frowned, a deep crease lining his brow. ‘That’s nonsense. I have no such reputa—’
Boldly, she closed the space between them, fitting her lips to his. With their first touch, a shudder ran down her spine. Han tasted better than she remembered. His mouth was warm and sensual, yet he refused to yield completely. His hands closed over her shoulders and remained there. Han didn’t push her away, but he wouldn’t allow her any closer.
‘Li Feng.’ The way her name rumbled in his throat made her want to renew her efforts.
Instead, she fell back. She knew better than to fight force with force. If he was stone, she would be water. Han’s eyes followed her every movement, his pupils as black and endless as the night. They both spoke at once.
‘Why can’t we—’
‘We can’t—’
‘Stubborn man,’ she muttered, blowing out the lamp.
Han tensed in the darkness, but she moved past him to lie down on the mat, her eyes pointed sightlessly at the ceiling. After a long, heavy pause, Han laid himself down beside her.
She could hear him swallowing to clear his throat. ‘Who was it that—’
‘Lotus,’ she replied before he could finish.
More silence. She wriggled her toes restlessly.
He was the first to break their standoff. ‘Lotus and I have never—’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said hastily.
But secretly Li Feng was relieved. The courtesan was beautiful and elegant and charming. If Lotus was the sort of woman Han preferred, then no wonder he should overlook her so easily.
She’d had one lover before. Though the affair with Bao Yang had come and gone, she missed the moments of closeness. The feel of strong arms around her. And Han beguiled her with his manners and his careful regard. Laughing with her. Touching her hair. She wasn’t expecting poetic declarations of love and longing, just…something to not feel so empty inside.
Infuriating and stubborn man.
If she touched him now, what would he do? But she didn’t want to have him that way, pursuing him like a love-starved fox-demon.
‘Li Feng,’ he began softly. ‘I can’t take advantage of you.’
‘How do you know I’m not the one taking advantage?’ she challenged.
There was a pause. ‘You grew up in a monastery on
Wudang, sheltered.’
She made a face in the darkness. ‘I didn’t grow up in a monastery. I grew up by a lake in a hut that
shifu
built himself.’ She nudged him with her foot as a reprimand. ‘I was raised as a hermit, not a nun.’
They said nothing for the next moments. In the embarrassed silence, she felt Han turning one way. Then with a grunt, he turned the other way. She smiled. At least he was showing some signs of frustration.
‘There were other girls at the Nightingale Pavilion besides Lotus,’ she baited.
His pause stretched out for two heartbeats. ‘I thought courtesans were supposed to be discreet.’
‘Not to other women.’
‘Such a headache,’ he muttered.
‘The accounts were favourable.’
‘Li Feng.’
He turned again in agitation, presumably away from her. ‘Go to sleep.’
She chuckled, her mood lightened somewhat. Let him think she was a nun now.
* * *
Li Feng woke up to the stroke of fingers over her brow. Opening her eyes, she blinked in the morning light and found Han leaning over her.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
His fingers came to rest on her cheek, as light as a butterfly. The gesture only irritated her after the missteps of the night before.
‘What is this about?’ She started to rise, but he pressed her firmly back down to the mat.
‘You should rest…
wife
.’
She scowled at him, then saw the tavern keeper’s wife standing by the door with a tray in her hands and a concerned look on her face. The tiny woman must have decided at that moment that Han’s care was inadequate because she edged in between them and managed to push Han to the corner.
‘Ah, Little Sister.’ She knelt beside Li Feng and set down the tray. ‘I brought a soup made of steeped wolfberries and longan. Very cooling.’
The wife patted Li Feng’s hand like an older sister, enquiring about her comfort and telling her to be careful going down the stairs. Li Feng remained lying flat until the woman left them alone.
Her eyes darted to Han. ‘What did you do?’
He had a hand over his mouth, but his eyes were bright with amusement. ‘I had to tell them you were ill to give us a reason to remain in the village.’
‘She thinks I’m with child!’
‘I may have given enough hints for her to assume that.’
In addition to the herbal soup, the tray also held two generous bowls of congee along with a boiled egg to go with the rice porridge.
Han sat down beside her and arranged the tray between them. ‘I’ll be approaching Cai Yun today. See what I can find out about him.’ He split the egg in two, putting the larger half in her bowl. ‘For the child,’ he added with a smirk.
He took his bowl in hand and spooned rice into his mouth, looking quite pleased with his ruse. She let her own bowl sit, growing cold as she regarded him accusingly.
‘If I’m supposed to be ill, that means I’m confined here.’
‘Only for the morning. You can claim to be feeling better later in the day. My mother was that way with my brother.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You don’t trust me.’
‘I trust you enough to leave you with my
dao
.’ Their weapons were still stowed away.
So much depended on this. She needed to know why her mother had left her, and who they had been running from. Without her past, she couldn’t have a future. She was stronger now and faster, but in so many ways she was still that little girl.
‘Hao Han, I’ve longed for this for over fifteen years—’
The words caught in her throat. How could she express how she felt to someone who was her constant tormentor, but also the one person she had confided in? The man who desired her, but refused to kiss her.
‘Li Feng, I know.’ He didn’t say anything more.
The congee was still warm when she picked up her bowl. They ate together and the silence was almost companionable. She recalled how Han had sent food to her while she was locked up in the prison cell. Perhaps he had been paying her a compliment, a sign of respect that he didn’t think of her as just another thief.
In the world of rivers and lakes, one showed the greatest regard towards the worthiest of adversaries. Han didn’t seem like the enemy any more as he sat across from her. She truly hoped that he wouldn’t have to be.
* * *
Han found out from the villagers that the distinguished visitor from out of town was drinking by the river with the government official. Throughout his travels, he had discovered that the local people were often more helpful when they didn’t know he was a thief-catcher there to stir up trouble. His profession often dredged up animosity rather than support.
In these troubled times, local outlaws were often treated like local heroes. Even worse was the case of privateers and smugglers. They were wealthy from illegal activity and appeared more respectable than a thief-catcher chasing an arrest warrant. He was almost certain Cai Yun fell into that lot, a merchant who bought his influence with bribes.
Han had followed the river bank and it wasn’t long before he found Cai Yun and the salt agent sitting beneath an open pavilion, drinking wine. They were speaking casually to one another. Han stopped at a polite distance, far out of hearing range, and waited for them to acknowledge him with a glance. Finally the conversation halted and Cai Yun looked in his direction.
‘Sir.’ He bowed at the waist. ‘This servant apologises for the intrusion.’
Cai Yun cast a disdainful eye at him. ‘Who are you?’
Lotus had described him as thin and long, with a face that was always pinched as if smelling something funny. She had a way with words. He fit the description perfectly.
‘I am here regarding the theft of a shipment of jade.’
‘Well?’ His tone was haughty. ‘What of it?’
‘General Wang Shizhen has apprehended one of the thieves.’
At the mention of the warlord, Cai Yun’s eyes widened with alarm. He glanced fearfully towards the salt agent before rising and pulling Han aside so they could speak privately.
‘What does he want?’ Cai Yun asked through his teeth.
Han kept his tone neutral. ‘The general still seeks the jade.’
‘Tell him—’ He stopped himself, lowering his voice just above a whisper. ‘Tell him we will need more time.’
Cai Yun must have assumed Han was sent by the general. Though Cai Yun said very little, Han assessed his mannerisms. The man’s superior manner had disappeared and tension gathered along his jaw as they spoke.
‘Wang Shizhen is not a patient man. Your master should know that,’ Han ventured.
‘He’ll get nothing more out of threatening us,’ Cai Yun retorted. ‘Or interfering with our business here.’
‘There is one other matter.’ He hadn’t forgotten Li Feng. ‘A jade pendant engraved with a phoenix was recovered. There was speculation as to whether it was part of the shipment.’