her. His left arm hung rigidly against his side, the fingers of his hand withered and gnarled like a pigeon’s claw. She tore her gaze away with sudden embarrassment.
Auntie beckoned her along. ‘Master Li would want Ling Guifei to have the most luxurious of accommodations. We hope the lady will be pleased.’
The image of the blind gardener and his crippled assistant lingered. In the palace, even the lowliest of servants were chosen for physical beauty to perpetuate the illusion of perfection.
In the eastern section of the house, Auntie led Suyin up a staircase. Her assigned guard stayed outside the double doors as they entered the apartments.
‘Good light. Positive energy from all directions.’ Auntie walked in first, opening door after door. ‘In the mornings Ling Guifei can watch the sun rise over the cliffs.’
The woman reminded her of the elder servants who had served in the palace for so long they nearly held rank. Their speech and manner might be subservient, but they possessed all the cunning in the world after the secrets their eyes had seen. In the palace, Suyin had learned never to underestimate the servants. She had formed alliances wherever she could.
Auntie took her through the sheer curtain on to the balcony. From there she could see the ridge of the grey cliffs in the distance. The clean, crisp air of the forest surrounded them. Gripping the wooden rail, Suyin peered at the yard below.
Li Tao had imprisoned her on the second floor. A vast gorge opened up beyond the edge of the stone tiles. The granite walls plunged sharply to disappear into oblivion. Even if she were brave enough to make the climb from the balcony, there was nowhere to run.
She had been through all of the possibilities. The warlord could be holding her hostage, which was unlikely as she no longer had any allies in the empire. His capture of her could be purely an act of defiance against imperial authority. More likely he thought she held some vital secret. There had been a time when she had had many secrets at her fingertips.
Suyin called out as Auntie started to sink behind the curtain, ‘How long have you served the Governor?’
‘Fifteen years, my lady.’
From the beginning, then. Suyin leaned once more over the rail and breathed deep, catching the scent of moss and dampened earth.
From the very first time anyone had ever heard of a man named Li Tao.
Chapter Two
Li Tao loosened the leather strap that secured the sheath against his arm. He was alone in his study, shut away from his soldiers, the servants, and from her. The illustrious Ling Suyin was deep within his stronghold and far from the grasp of his enemies. Now he had time and space to think. To consider.
He drew the thin blade concealed beneath his sleeve and set it across the desk amongst the folded letters. A pile of grey ash lay beside the candle, the remains of the note that had sent him beyond the barricade on a whim. The message had been unsigned and the language obscured. Deliberately so, no doubt, in order to make it impossible to gauge its significance. The report informed him that the military governor, Gao Shiming, had sent men to capture Ling Suyin, or Ling Guifei as she had been titled by the late August Emperor.
The former Precious Consort. A woman who should have meant nothing in the schemes of courts and men now that her benefactor was dead. She had been installed at an isolated river bend to live out the rest of her days in exile. What would Gao want with such a woman?
His instincts told him it was a ploy, but for once Li Tao ignored them. The cryptic message had held a warning, but also something else. Almost a promise. It insinuated he’d regret it if he didn’t act quickly. The Precious Consort’s name stood out among the characters. Ling Suyin.
At the height of her fame, gossip had streamed from the imperial city of Changan about her. She was a seductress, a fox spirit, the most beautiful woman in the empire. In the prosperity of the old regime, poets and courtiers could fixate on a single woman and make her into a goddess.
Li Tao had caught a single glimpse of her the first time he had been to the palace. The hunger that had gripped him had been immediate and all-consuming. He had been a young man then and had hungered for many things: acclaim, respect and power. The sight of her now, more than a decade later, stirred nothing but a faint echo of that forgotten desire.
At first, he had assumed the old wolf must have been obsessed with Lady Ling after seeing her on the Emperor’s arm for so many years. Perhaps Gao wanted the unattainable beauty and glory she represented. But Li Tao had intercepted assassins stalking toward the river bend. Shadow men sent to kill swiftly.
The assassins had died before they could be interrogated. The last of them had fallen on to his own blade to avoid being taken alive. It required money and influence to hire men with that level of dedication. Lady Ling apparently still held some value. A rival warlord wanted her dead, someone else wanted her alive, and he had been lured into the centre of it.
He sat down behind the desk and pinched the space between his eyes, trying to ease the gathering tension. A pile of papers lay stacked before him. A summons demanding his presence in the court at Changan lay on top. Below that, more proclamations stamped with imperial seals.
Over the past years, the imperial forces had diminished while the border armies under control of the jiedushi had grown stronger. The imbalance frightened the ministers in the court enough to try to limit the power of the military governors. As if crippling a strong limb would mask the weak one.
Li Tao ignored the decrees and edicts. His duty was to protect this domain, as the late Emperor had decreed. He’d do it even if it meant defying Emperor Shen and his meddling court. He had kept the borders secure and maintained peace within his district, putting down potential uprisings and keeping his captains in line. And he’d built up his army.
Gao had accused him of treason for these actions. The coward had made his claim a thousand li away before the imperial court. Li Tao needed to switch tactics to face such an enemy. He needed to use subterfuge and artfulness. He needed someone like Ling Suyin. That must have been why he’d been compelled to bring her here.
It was a lie. He shoved the proclamations aside. Lady Ling was here because she had been alone when he found her. She’d been abandoned. She’d been pale with fear when she’d seen him, yet the courtesan had regarded him with elegant resolve, as if she still held the empire in her thrall. He could have interrogated her by the river. He could have left her at the provincial seat in Chengdu. He could have simply ignored the cryptic warning. Instead he had taken her with him into his domain, to the place he’d worked so hard to keep away from outsiders.
He’d placed her in the south wing in the same room where his once-intended bride had stayed. The arranged marriage to the Emperor’s daughter had collapsed before they’d ever set eyes upon each other. How Gao must have delighted in that failure. In the last year, he had been visited by nothing but disaster and now Lady Ling had materialised like another ill omen.
This agitation of his senses was nothing more than the draw of any male to an alluring female. Yang to yin. But he would never make the mistake of thinking of Ling Suyin as a mere woman. She was a seductress and a shrewd manipulator. A she-demon in the guise of a beautiful woman.
Her treatment was extravagant for a prisoner. Auntie brought tea and ordered a wooden tub brought to her apartments. The bath water had to be heated in cauldrons in the courtyard and hefted up the stairs in buckets, but the guardsmen
