don’t believe you,’ he said.
‘It’s all for show, thief-catcher. A dance.’
It wasn’t just the skill with which she wielded a sword that had him convinced otherwise. The inner calm and confidence she exuded during their battle and the subsequent chase didn’t come without discipline.
‘Are you arresting me because of the sword?’ she asked. ‘It was fake, as you must know.’
‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of theft.’
‘I’m not a thief,’ she stated evenly.
‘Then you’ll be found innocent and released.’
She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘Do you really think that is how the tribunal works?’
Not many realised it, but Han had more knowledge of how the judicial halls operated than he had use for. The dancer wasn’t acting guilty, but she wasn’t quite acting innocent either. Not that it was his place to determine guilt or innocence. That was for the magistrate in Taining to decide.
The constable had finished transferring the other prisoners into a single cell. The dancer was the lone female who had been captured. Han had a feeling the others were harmless performers, but Wen Li Feng was something very different.
She’d fought ruthlessly, as if her life depended on it. But when he’d lost his balance on the rooftop, when she could have made her escape, she had reached out to stop his fall instead. That debt hung over him and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
Han wasn’t one to be swayed by the pleas or protests of his targets. He caught the criminals and brought them in. Yet the sword dancer was neither pleading nor protesting. His last vision was of her looking around the holding cell, her hands weighted down by thick chains that appeared grotesque and imposing over such a graceful figure.
Li Feng lowered herself to the floor of the prison cell, leaning her back against one wall. The floor was packed dirt and there was a bucket in the corner that she preferred to stay away from.
Her instinct was to get up, to move even if there was nothing to be accomplished by it. Fighting against the urge, she closed her eyes. She tried to breathe in deeply and then out, circulating the energy as shifu had taught her. Trying to stay calm. To stay focused.
It wasn’t working.
Li Feng raised her knees and laid her head down upon them. By nature, she didn’t like small spaces. She had grown up on a mountainside, away from the confines of the city.
She had been right to leave Bao Yang and his band of rebels. There was a time when she had thought she fit in perfectly among them. That they were the only people who would ever accept someone like her.
Shifu had taken care of Li Feng after finding her in hiding and alone in the woods, but he had always treated her like his disciple rather than a daughter. It suited her fine to call him shifu, to respectfully refer to him as her master, because she already had a mother and a father. They had been taken from her by force.
Maybe that was why she had been charmed so easily into Bao Yang’s cause as well as his bed. Two years ago, she had just left the isolation of Mount Wudang to venture back into civilisation. In her heart, she had always dreamed of one day finding her family, or at least discovering what had happened to them. She had been too young to remember anything but fleeing with her mother’s hand clasped around hers. Mother had told her to hide. Li Feng remembered they had been running, but she couldn’t remember why. She also remembered the men with the swords who were chasing them.
After an indeterminately long time, she raised her head. It was getting dark inside the cell. She heard the sound of a door opening, followed by footsteps which stopped outside. She stood and peered through the cell door to see a young man holding a tray of food.
‘This must be the most generous village in the province to feed prisoners so well,’ she remarked.
The boy lacked the grim countenance of a watchman. ‘This is from your admirer.’
Admirer? She read the answer from his lopsided grin. ‘Thief-catcher Han?’ she asked in disbelief.
He nodded. Apparently he found it funny as well. ‘The other prisoners in the next stall are eating watery rice porridge. Your dance must have made an impression.’
Zheng Hao Han must have had a strange sense of humour to lock her up yet see that she was fed.
‘Should I take this back?’ he asked.
Li Feng shook her head and he slid the tray through the opening in the door.
‘Tell me,’ she said as he turned to go. ‘Is the thief-catcher standing guard out there?’
‘No, he’s at the tavern drinking with his cronies.’
Celebrating, more like. The dog.
She had first noticed him during her performance. The intensity of his eyes had been enough to break her focus. There was a broadness to his nose and chin and he had an overall rough-boned look that was tempered by the subtle curve of his mouth. She’d noticed because he had been smiling at her, or rather smiling to himself while he was watching her. It was a sly sort of smile, with one corner lifted higher than the other, as if he’d figured out all her secrets.
And of all the thief-catchers that came for her, it had to be the famous Thief-catcher Han that captured her. The formidable warrior, the relentless hunter, the this and the that. Though Han was tall, he certainly wasn’t the giant ox of a man she’d expected, yet he was still strong enough and fast enough to catch her.
Zheng Hao Han had stood out from the surrounding crowd, dressed in a sombre dark robe, with the hilt of a weapon protruding from his belt. She should have known to flee then.
Her shifu had trained her to fight so she wouldn’t have to be afraid, yet seeing those men brought back not only that old fear, but also all of the untold anger she had kept inside her. All her life, she had hated those nameless, faceless strangers who had taken her mother away.
Her anger was without focus until she had met Bao Yang. He had provided the perfect target. General Wang was a tyrant, he’d told her. All of the local authorities were afraid to challenge him and he was intent on seizing more power.
So Li Feng had joined Bao Yang’s group of dissidents. They had disrupted the General’s supply lines, stolen back the grain and livestock he would commandeer to feed his garrison, and worked to cut away at General Wang’s stranglehold over the district in any way they could. But the moment she had seen that extravagant cache of jade and gold, Li Feng knew it was not the typical tribute demanded by General Wang of the local aristocrats and merchants. She had become involved in something more dangerous than she had realised.
Something else in that shipment had finally pulled her away from her alliance with Bao Yang and his rebels. Something that reminded her of why she had originally returned to Fujian province. For the first time in nearly twenty years, she had seen something that was possibly connected to her mother. It was a sign from heaven.
Li Feng knelt before the tray. There was a bowl of rice with a mix of bamboo shoots and mushrooms. It was a simple meal. The real extravagance was the small lamp set beside it. The flame danced within the saucer, providing a
