Page 14 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

Love killed your mother,Guma had always warned her.Give your heart and you lose your soul.She believed that to love another was towalk the edge of an abyss, and she had vowed never to let Xifeng fall. Not when the fates had marked her for something much greater.

But how could I help loving Wei?Xifeng thought, with mingled fear and sorrow. Already she could feel him relenting, his body relaxing into her arms.

“Please don’t be angry with me anymore,” she whispered.

“I’m not angry. Not with you.”

And that, Xifeng thought as the horses left the encampment, had to be enough.

The week passed by uneventfully, and on the final morning before they reached the gates of the Great Forest, they dismounted to stretch their legs, sore from riding. They walked the horses uphill toward the trading post where they would replenish their supplies.

Wei and Hideki took the lead, and Xifeng found Ken beside her at once. “We’ll be in the Imperial City soon enough,” he reassured her, seeing her grimace of pain. “By the time we arrive, you’ll be a trained horsewoman.”

She laughed. “Well, if the Emperor’s new concubine can travel this far, so can I... though she did ride in a palanquin. I wonder how she’s faring.”

“Likely better than she did in her old life. Do you envy her?”

“Why do you say that?” she asked, a bit defensively.

“I didn’t know whether her position was a desirable one. It seems concubines never have any choice in the matter. The Emperor summons them, and they go.”

Xifeng smiled, with a tinge of bitterness. “It’s a woman’s duty to obey.” She and the concubine shared that, excepthermasters were Guma and the spirits of magic.No, not Guma,she reminded herself.Not anymore.

The trading post proved to be small, but busy and well stocked. There were six or seven stalls and booths, each offering different goods. One merchant sold bolts of rough fabric for sacks and saddle blankets, and another displayed shoes and boots of supple leather. Another booth had wooden troughs boasting every grain imaginable: wild rice, millet, sorghum, broomcorn, and wheat.

I wish Guma could see this,she thought. It pained her that she could still care so much for someone she ought to hate. Wei came up beside her, and she pushed her aunt from her mind.

“I wish we could live here,” she said brightly. “We’d have everything we needed.”

He chuckled. “You wouldn’t like the thieves, though. It’s a dangerous place to be after dark, with all of this money and merchandise.”

Shiro and Ken went off to look at the leather boots, and Hideki planted himself at the crowded stall selling fragrant roasted meat. Wei stopped at a table displaying beautiful metalwork: pots and pans polished to a high sheen beside weapons of iron, steel, and bronze. One corner of the table even showcased a tiger skin, warm and soft beneath Xifeng’s fingers. She had never seen anything more beautiful—like fire and ink together in perfect, variegated stripes.

“Warhorses wear them for protection in battle,” Wei explained.

She could easily picture the tiger’s heart beating beneath this glorious skin. Had its killer grieved over its death, or had he taken its life without another thought, as she had done to the rabbits days ago?

As Wei began haggling over the price of a blade, Xifeng turned andsaw a booth covered with shining metal pieces. She pushed through the crush of sweating bodies to examine them and found a collection of gleaming bronze mirrors. They winked invitingly at her in all shapes and sizes, some with ornate carvings and others simple and functional. A few were large enough to hang on a wall, but most were small enough to hold in her hand.

“May I help you?” The craftsman’s leering smile lacked five teeth, and his bloodshot eyes roamed down her body. “With a face like yours, you need an equally beautiful mirror, no? I’ll give you anything for half the price. Free of charge, even, if you ask me nicely.”

Two women with copper skin approached, chatting in another language, and the craftsman turned grudgingly to them. He seemed to understand what they said, but responded in the common tongue: “No discounts. Everything is full price.” The women frowned, muttering, and the man gave Xifeng an obvious, obscene wink to let her know his offer still stood.

She ignored him and examined a small, simple hand mirror with a rounded edge. Her reflection greeted her beneath a thin layer of dust, looking distorted in the polished bronze, like a stranger’s face.

Xifeng touched her smooth, blooming cheek, and something in the mirror caught her eye.

Over her shoulder, through the reflection of the teeming crowd, a man watched her. A bald, powerfully built man in plain monk’s robes, with flashing eyes like dark gems.

She spun, her pulse racing, but there was no such person behind her. She nearly screamed when she turned back to the mirror, for not only was he still there, but he now stood right behind her, close enough for his breath to stir the hairs around her face.

Her face...

The welt on Xifeng’s left cheek glared like a hideous sun. It was three times as big as before, stretching from her eye to her jaw, and wept green-tinged blood. She opened her mouth in a silent shriek, her reflection blurring as her hand shook. But the skin beneath her fingers was as perfect and smooth as ever. Behind her, the monk bowed and disappeared into the throng.

“Are you all right, my beauty?” the craftsman asked. He and the two customers were staring at her. “Shall I catch you if you faint?”

Xifeng threw the mirror down and rushed away. Her mind whirled with the memory of the two monks at the encampment who had vanished before daylight. She had dreamed about one of them, but that had only been a nightmare.

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