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 for one small trinket.’
She stared at him blankly, or at least she tried to. There was much, much more lurking there beneath the surface. If he could just feel along her smooth exterior, turn her this way and that to look for imperfections.
‘You were betrayed and cut out of the stake,’ he suggested.
Li Feng looked away, seemingly absorbed by the play of sunlight on the grass.
‘Your mother is aged and sick and you were stealing to save her,’ he threw out lightly.
Her gaze snapped back to him with a tinge of annoyance that told him he was wrong, but had hit upon something. ‘Is this effective, asking so many questions with no direction?’
His laugh was directed at himself. ‘I’ve actually been told by a very wise man that it is always best to say as little as possible.’
Criminals tended to reveal themselves. It was in their nature to want to confess, the crime staining their soul as it did.
‘I was only curious,’ he admitted. ‘And it’s a long way to Taining.’
Han usually wasn’t so interested in knowing the reasons behind the crime. That was for the tribunal to sort out, if the motivations of the accused were even pertinent. Han found that in most cases, the reasons were quite clear. Only in a few instances did the accused ever confound him. The bandit Lo was one. Wen Li Feng was another.
There was another reason Han wanted information. Once he handed the dancer over to the authorities in Taining, she would inevitably be questioned about her accomplices. If she was more forthcoming to him, she might avoid a more ruthless interrogation at the hands of the magistrate.
Li Feng shifted her weight from one shoulder to another against the tree, her bonds constricting her movement. The dancer was not one for remaining still.
‘Were
