12 Part 11

The next morning Lian woke up with her mind aflame, going through all the possibilities: all the ways their plan could go right and the many, many ways it could go wrong. She made a mental list of all the things she needed to do. Buy clothes, buy bedding for if they got stuck out on the open after the first night. Buy food enough for themselves and their horses to last a few days. Buy the horses. The list went on. A shred of anxiety sat underneath her, that she'd forget something critical and Mei would die as a result. But that tiny bit of fear incited her to action, igniting a fire just like the one Mei had initially quenched so thoroughly and expertly their first night together.

Mei, for her part, was calm. Almost at peace. She woke calmly in the morning, got dressed and cleaned herself patiently. She told Lian to meet her at a home – Mei's home – as soon as Lian was finished preparing. It was in a far corner of Yiwu that Lian wasn't familiar with, but Mei gave detailed instructions.

"It's in a corner. Quiet, out of the way. You won't be able to ask the neighbors about it. Half of them don't even realize there's a house there. But I'll be there."

Lian kissed Mei once, full of feeling, then sprinted out to do all her tasks.

Lian was so energetic in her work she completed it all before the day was even half done. The horses were bought and paid for, saddled with the right equipment and food, and scheduled for pickup at a place Lian marked on a map of the city and countryside she'd also purchased. The stableman who sold them to her said he knew the spot well, knew all the spots around the city for good riding. She asked him how far the horses could make it at full speed without stopping.

"Thirty miles, easily."

"And how long will it take?"

"Flat country like out east. Shouldn't be more than six, seven hours if you push the horses. But they're good for it."

"And is there a place to trade the horses thirty miles out."

"Oh yeah, we see animals brought in from the east all the time. A town called Fuching would be your best bet. Big stable, lots of choice. They'll have ones good for another thirty miles."

She nodded, satisfied, and paid him an extra ten silver on top of the cost of everything else to ensure he actually showed up. She had him swear he would, and examined every facet of his face. There was no lie.

The rest of the preparations were simple: she locked up her new apartment, folded away the fancy clothes Jiang had convinced her to buy, and donned her swords. The guard Duan sent to follow her was too stupid to realize Lian knew about him, and not big enough to be intimidating in the least. She caught, out of the corner of her eye, the fear and surprise on his face when she emerged from her apartment bearing her two swords. She didn't want to kill him, but she wouldn't have any issue doing so if he threatened Mei in the least.

Her nervous energy was almost overwhelming her when she forced herself to stop at Mei's favorite noodle house for a meal. She ate alone and pretended not to notice the guard who ate across the hall. As she ate the energy seemed to drain out of her, but her fears remained, flooding over her until she felt their heavy presence all the way up to her throat.

What if she was wrong about time being a part of the curse? What if distance was all that mattered? Would she be able to get Mei back to save her from the fatal end of the curse? Did Mei need to spend nine days at the Golden Slumbers before she could leave for a whole day? What if the stableman reneged on their contract and didn't show up? How could they possibly cover a hundred miles without the horses? What if Duan had Mei's escape route locked down in some way? What if they tried to stop them before they even made it to the wall?

Lian's mind raced over every scenario – and to each she devised a solution to the problem, laying them out in a great grid of networks and connections, cycling through each sequence of outcomes until she arrived at her goal.

That cycle of preparing for the worst and then fixing it was what they taught her in school, except the lesson wasn't for planning at all. It was taught as a way to find the truth. A Shuli Go was expected to assume that everyone was lying, while believing firmly that everyone was telling their own truth. It was the core of one of the very first lessons in her school, and one Lian would never forget. It wasn't the magic teacher with her wordplay standing up in front of the class, but Instructor Wong – one of the few real Wongs left in the world – who taught ethics to all the children, before they were separated by sex.

"Everyone has a truth in their head that they believe. You can never see that truth, but you have to know it's there somewhere. All you see and hear is what they say and what they do. All we can teach you is whether their words match with their truth. We can never tell if their truth is the same as everyone else's."

Most of which obviously flew over ten-year-old Lian's head, but which nonetheless stuck with her through all her years: the idea that figuring out the distance between what was in someone's head and their words could help you pinpoint just how close to reality they were. Viewing people that way meant problems weren't insurmountable. They were expected. Manageable. People were variables, to be sure, but they never varied as much or as little as everyone else seemed to assume they would. So long as you kept the distance between their words and their truth in mind.

Lian left the noodle house calmer, but still expectant; her energy was focused now, dedicated. She set about following the instructions Mei had given her, locating the other woman's house. It took her time, first to find the tiny secluded neighborhood, then to locate the house itself, wedged between two stone walls and accessible only by the long dirt path.

She got to the simple wooden door and knocked three times. She heard Mei stroll across the courtyard within, and just as clearly she heard the guard scurry away from the end of the path, no doubt reporting to Duan that Mei had broken her promise. A new, quick fear struck into Lian – that Duan would attack them both there, in that quiet corner of the city. But Lian had a solution to that particular problem too. The heft of her swords was a familiar reassurance.

Mei opened the door without a word, saw Lian and smiled. Her face was calm, pleasant, almost serene. That serenity passed to Lian as she walked into the courtyard and closed the door behind her.

Mei looked small, dressed in formal robes too big for a hurried escape from the city.

"You'll probably have to change," Lian informed her.

Mei just smiled to say "of course" and stepped forward to hug Lian. Mei's arms were loose, flowing. Lian almost thought she was drunk, but there was no hint of alcohol in the air. She hugged back tight, hoping to reassure.

"Let me show you around," Mei whispered and broke off the hug, walking in front of Lian towards the home itself.

Inside was not exactly like Lian had pictured. Mei's house was tidy but not sparse, the decorations few but extravagant. It reminded her more of the Golden Slumbers than she'd expected. She'd assumed Mei would want to keep a house as different from her work as possible.

Mei explained the rooms, almost justified them to Lian. "I don't use this lounge really, but sometimes if the sun is coming in just right I'll sit in here when I'm reading. In the summer usually." A little bit of history embedded in every explanation, through which Lian realized she had only owned the house for a few years.

"I own it, but it's not really mine," Mei said. "Duan bought it for me, he'll sell it for me. They move me around, never keep me anywhere for very long."

"Do you like it here?" Lian asked.

"…Yes. I mean it's not too bad. It's quiet. I can just sit here if I want. No one knows I'm here really. No one bothers me. I like that."

Mei brought Lian to her study – overcrowded with books, several gold coins worth of old and young books lined the shelves and lay scattered on the other surfaces. The chair in the corner – next to which sat the table with her copy of The Shuli Go Training Guide atop – was the only even semi-weathered surface in the house. It was the only part she used regularly. Mei said nothing in that room, just watched Lian surveying its contents.

Lian looked up afterwards and felt an apology arise from her stomach. "We can get you a new library. Wherever we end up. I promise."

Mei smiled the serene grin she'd had the first night they spent together. A practiced grimace that Lian still could not penetrate. "It's fine. I don't mind leaving them behind." Lian had missed the curse those first eight nights, and she was worried what she was missing something this close to the end of one week with Mei. "I've read them all. They're already with me."

Mei walked over to Lian and took her hand, then led her to the bedroom. It was a small place, just the bed, a small fireplace, and a closet. The bed was simple, undecorated, utilitarian. Mei sat them both down on it and patted the sheets on top, then ran her fingers over the cotton fabric, relishing the basic texture of it compared to all the silk she was forced to wear and wallow in at the Golden Slumbers.

"I've never slept with anyone in this bed," she said out of the blue, her voice distant and her words not really directed at Lian. The Shuli Go recognized this and just let them hang.

"I've never had a real lover," Mei's voice was almost a whisper. "I mean, never someone I really cared about. At least no one I can remember. Someone to love…" she trailed off.

"Is that what I am?" Lian asked quietly, hoping she wasn't intruding in a private moment. "Is that who I am?"

Mei stared at the bed for several more seconds before meeting Lian's eyes. Her face betrayed every confusion that lay under the surface, and Lian knew at least part of Mei's response was a lie. "Yes. Yes that's you."

But Lian didn't care which part or parts of it weren't true, she knew part of it was. Somewhere inside Mei was a sprout of affection that had grown into something more, and Lian wanted to nurture it until it matched the love she felt in her own heart. She leaned and kissed Mei on the lips, her lips firm against Mei's soft response, willing her own strength and belief to transfer to the other woman.

"Make love to me," Mei pleaded, her voice on the verge of tears but her face solemn and focused. "Make love to me right here."

Lian tried. She tried to direct the fountains of her emotions toward Mei, as if she was a vessel to be filled. She kissed with passion, touched with desire, and moved fast enough to show how deeply she wanted Mei but not so quickly it reverted to that first night together – all sex and no emotion. She treasured every inch of Mei's body and pressed against it with her own, their heats and coolness blending to a level Lian felt was perfection. She tasted and felt and moaned as she pulled both of them together.

But almost from the start she felt Mei's disappointment. Lian realized she had done all this already, the third night, when she'd first fallen in love with Mei. When the woman took over every portion of Lian's brain and she'd committed herself to spending every single coin she would ever earn on seeing Mei until one of them died. Lian was doing all the same things she'd done that night, when she'd finally felt womanly enough to please her partner, to be considered in some way her equal. But Mei wanted something else entirely now. She expected something new, some rich sensation or distinct caress that differentiated love from the sex she had every night. Some physical discrepancy which Lian simply couldn't produce. Lian had already made love to Mei, but Mei was just trying the action out for herself for the first time in a long while, and it was too similar to sex with a hundred other customers, a hundred climaxes each different in their own way but alike in the hollowness that existed in her afterwards.

Lian felt like crying when it was over, but held back because Mei seemed even worse off. Not heartbroken, per se, but despondent. She'd saved this personally momentous thing – sex outside the brothel – for Lian, and it hadn't been any different than sex inside the brothel. Lian comforted her but couldn't say a thing. They lay in bed, Lian stroking Mei's cheek and hair, over and over again until the warmth of the room and the midday sun lulled them both into an uneasy sleep.