Under Heaven. Guy Gavriel Kay

life, too. Of course it was…

       A woman smooth as jade

       Waiting all night above marble stairs

       At a rice paper window wet with autumn rain.

      Tai shook his head. He remembered looking at her beside him on the low couch, wanting simply to enjoy beauty and intelligence and nearness, but wrestling with what she’d said.

      He murmured, “Women have usually been better at this than men, haven’t they? Pursuing these subtleties?”

      “Women have no choice but to be this way if we want any kind of influence, or simply a little control of our own lives.”

      “That’s what I meant,” Tai said. He tried a smile. “Do I get credit for subtlety?”

      She didn’t respond to the smile. “A child can know that much. You will be, if you ever decide to study enough to pass the examinations, among grown men who use words like blades and are in mortal combat with each other for position every day and night.”

      And to that he remembered saying, quietly, “Men like my brother, you mean?”

      She’d just looked at him.

      Sprinting across the autumn grass from the shaman’s grave, Tai thought about screaming a warning, then about running around the front to summon the others. He didn’t do either. He couldn’t have said, after, that he’d been thinking with clarity. This was an utterly remote, terrifying place. He’d unearthed a murder, and he was very young.

      Those truths didn’t entirely address why he broke into the cabin alone.

      When pressed—and he was, by his officers later—he’d say that if they were going to save Meshag, which was their reason for being where they were, it was unlikely to happen if he alerted those inside by shouting, and he didn’t think he had enough time to go around the front.

      It sounded true. It was true, if you considered it. He didn’t remember considering anything at the time, however. You could say his instincts had been at work. Tai didn’t have any idea if that was so.

      His sword was on his saddle, so was his bow. There was a shovel leaning against the back cabin wall. He had a fair guess by then how that had been used.

      Without pausing to think, plan, to do anything coherent at all, he seized it, grabbed the door latch, and pushed, with no idea what he’d find, what he would actually do in there.

      Or what they were doing, whoever these people were who had killed the shaman, buried her in earth to deny her soul access to the sky, and deceived them out in front.

      It wasn’t locked, the back door. He stepped inside.

      It was dark in the cabin. It had been very bright outdoors, he was nearly blind. He stopped. And just made out the shape of someone turning towards him from within the room.

      Tai stepped forward and swung the shovel as hard as he could.

      He felt it bite—the sharp spade edge—into flesh, and sink. The figure, still only half seen, threw up an empty hand as if in entreaty or placation, and slumped to the earthen floor.

      Soundlessly. Which was good.

      Tai had never killed anyone at that point in his life. He didn’t have time to consider what had just happened, what it meant, if it meant anything. He blinked rapidly, willing his eyes to adjust to shadow and dark.

      Heart pounding, he made out an interior archway, a curtain over it, no actual door. A two-room cabin. He stepped over the fallen man, then—tardily—turned back and exchanged the shovel for the man’s sword.

      He did kneel and check, cautiously, he was aware enough to do that. The man was dead. Another brief disturbance: how swiftly, smoothly, silently life could be present, pulsing, and then be gone.

      That thought pushed him forward, treading lightly, towards the fabric curtain. He shifted a corner of it.

      There were candles burning in the other room, for which Tai gave thanks. Three men. Two near the front door, whispering fiercely to each other. Tai saw that the door was barred. They wouldn’t have been able to crash in that way. Not without giving a great deal of warning.

      Meshag lay on a pallet near the hearth. Tai saw that his tunic had been cut open, exposing his chest. His eyes were still closed. He looked terribly vulnerable. The third figure, tall and bulky, with animal horns attached to his head, was standing over him.

      This one wore mirrors and bells and was softly beating a drum and chanting, rocking from side to side, occasionally spinning completely around. A kind of dance. There was a sickly-sweet smell in the room, something burning on a brazier. Tai had no idea what it was.

      But he did not believe for a moment that this third man—it was a man, the woman was dead in the garden—was doing anything benevolent for the unconscious figure. They had killed the shaman who dwelled here. They weren’t trying to help Meshag.

      They hadn’t killed him yet. Tai didn’t know why. Why should he understand any of this? But, watching through the slightly lifted curtain, breathing carefully, Tai had a disturbing sense that what was happening here was intended to be worse than killing.

      He was a long way from home.

      That was his last clear thought before he screamed at the top of his voice and exploded through the curtain into the front room.

      He went straight for the shaman, not necessarily what an experienced soldier would have done (take out the guards!) but he wasn’t experienced, and surely his task was to try to stop whatever was being done with drum and chant and gathered powers to the man on the pallet.

      He had not yet been on Stone Drum Mountain—his time among the Kanlin was a result of what happened that autumn day in the north—but he was the son of a soldier. He had been trained from earliest memory in ways and means of fighting, the more so since his older brother, soft and slightly plump even as a child, had made clear that his own inclinations and path in life did not involve swords or spinning, twisting manoeuvres against other armed men.

      The dead nomad’s sword was slightly curved, shorter than Tai’s own, heavier as well, meant for downward blows from horseback. No matter. You used what you had. He had time to see the shaman turn, see fevered eyes open wide, blazing surprise and rage, before he struck a slashing blow above the metal mirrors draping the shaman’s body, protecting it.

      A part of Tai, his bearings lost so far away from everything he’d ever thought he knew, enmeshed in sorcery, was surprised when the sword bit the way it should.

      He felt it grind on bone, saw blood, heard the shaman cry out and fall (a sound of bells), dropping drum and mallet on the hardpacked floor. He shouldn’t have been startled: they’d killed a shaman woman, hadn’t they? These mirror-and-drum people, they were holy and feared, but they weren’t immortal.

      Of course it was also possible that killing one put a curse on you for life. Not a matter Tai was in a position to address just then.

      He wheeled and dropped, fear giving him urgency. He saw the nearer of the guards—the one who’d pretended to be a servant outside—rushing to where a bow lay against a wall. Tai sprang after him, twisting to dodge a knife thrown by the other man. He heard shouts outside.

      He screamed again, words this time: “Treachery! Get in here!”

      The false servant scrabbled for his bow, for an arrow, turned, dodging to avoid Tai’s thrust sword—or trying to avoid it.

      Tai caught him in the shoulder instead of the chest, heard the man shriek in pain. Tai jerked free his blade and—instinctively—dropped and rolled again, careful of the sword he held. He banged against objects scattered on the floor (their offered gifts) but the second enemy’s sword sweep whistled over his head.

      First time in his life for that sound: the sound of death averted, passing close. He heard thudding outside, and wild cries