Free Spirit Hunter by Katy Moran Page A

wind rushing through bamboo in the Forbidden Garden. Swiftarrow sighed.
    In a few hours, I will be free of this hateful task.
    Yet he knew it was not true. She would always be there to remind him of the life he had blighted. Perhaps Autumn Moon would send the girl to learn the Shaolin Way in the Great Temple at the foot of Mount Shaoshi, many moons’ ride east from the capital. But the Empress would surely want to keep her barbarian Shaolin, her new toy, in Chang’an.
    Swiftarrow made for the wagon where his prisoner lay, weaving his mount amongst the desert-weary soldiers. The T ’ang conscripts were now just as sun-browned and hard-eyed as General Li’s Horse Tribers.
The Entertainment Ward will be drunk dry of rice wine this night and the concubines’ mistresses will be rich by morning.
Swiftarrow frowned as he thought of his sister.
None of these fools can afford the attentions of White Swan. Not even General Li.
It was thin comfort.
    Dismounting, saddle sore, Swiftarrow ignored the ache in his legs, patted the mare on her skinny flank and sprang up into the wagon, pushing aside the deer-hide covering.
    “La, child – you do make me jump!” The concubine patted her moth-eaten hairpiece as Swiftarrow let the deer-hide fall into place behind him. Some of her real hair had escaped from beneath the lacquered coils, wispy and fine. She smiled, showing the remains of her teeth. “Poor lass – what’s to be her fate, then? I’ve grown fond of the girl, tending her like a babe.”
    “Ask no questions, Mistress Orchid, and you shall be told no lies,” Swiftarrow said. She shrank away from him, retreating to the far end of the wagon to gaze into her mirror. Swiftarrow looked down at his prisoner, kneeling before her. She lay so still, wreathed in drugged sleep, dressed in the ragged, travel-worn shift she’d been wearing when he’d found her with an arrow through her shoulder. Mistress Orchid had washed it, and now only a faint brown patch betrayed the bloodstains. Again, Swiftarrow saw the girl as she had been that day in Samarkand, running from him through twisting streets, full of bright, burning life.
And now look at what I’ve done to her.
    “You have done good work,” he said to Mistress Orchid. “I will make sure you are well paid.”
    She turned from her looking-glass and smiled again. “Anything for a pretty face,” she said. “And I don’t mean hers – not that she is pretty, poor wench. It’s what got me into this trade, I warn you. Did your mother never tell you to stay clear of ladies like me?”
    Swiftarrow did not trust himself to reply. Leaning back on his heels, he watched the girl sleeping. She was much thinner, despite the broth Mistress Orchid had been spooning between her lips as she slept, and the morsels of boiled rice and dried pork Mistress Orchid had coaxed her to swallow while she was awake. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised now: purple-grey, like the inside of a shell. The flesh had melted from her face; her cheekbones stood out like knife-blades. Her hair was combed and coiled about her shoulders; Swiftarrow felt a burst of sorrow for Mistress Orchid and her unlooked-for kindness. There was many a whore longing for a lost child. At the back of his mind clung shadowy memories of the House of Golden Butterflies. The other concubines used to look at him and White Swan with such great hunger in their eyes, pulling him up onto their laps, patting his head, combing White Swan’s hair and pinning flowers to her skirt. He remembered the rose-oil scent of their heavy silk robes, their painted eyebrows and jangling bracelets.
    Come, take my hand,
White Swan used to say
. Let’s hide in the dancing hall. They are bringing a leopard to show the men tonight. Maybe Cook will give us some meat to feed him.
Now she was one of them, a Golden Butterfly. Now she danced for the richest men in Chang’an. Swiftarrow drew his breath sharply; if he did not take care, the anger would burn