son and a daughter. They died beside their mother when the red sickness came.”
Vaelin bit down on a sigh. He had intended to enquire why a married man would dishonour himself by falling in love with a foreigner, but suddenly the cruelty of it shamed him. He didn’t hate this man; he envied him. “The Merchant King told me you have been in love with Sherin ever since you escorted her to his court,” he said. “Was your love returned?”
Sho Tsai came to a halt, hands slipping to his sides as he turned to face Vaelin. “That is not your concern.” The captain’s tone was mostly void of emotion save for a grim sense of purpose.
“You wanted to marry her, I assume?” Vaelin went on. He also stopped, positioning himself three steps below the captain, a fair distance to evade the attack he knew to be imminent. Even though the mist concealed Sho Tsai’s face, Vaelin had long attuned himself to the posture of those intent on his death. “But the Merchant King forbade it, didn’t he?” he enquired, maintaining an affable tone. “One of his favourite officers sullying his honour by marrying a foreigner. Unthinkable, yes?”
Sho Tsai’s gathering rage showed in the hunch to his shoulders and the slow shift of his hands. “Unthinkable,” he agreed, voice clipped. “As unthinkable as me allowing her to set eyes on you again. You ask about her love? What do you know of it? Do you have any notion of what you did to her? The wound you opened in her heart?”
“I did what I had to . . .” Vaelin trailed off, the words fading under the weight of truth, a truth he had always known but rarely allowed himself to hear. “I was a coward,” he said. “And a fool. I allowed myself to fall victim to the folly of prophecy and the arrogance of believing destiny actually possesses any meaning. My only defence is that in that time and place, I had no doubts. She had to leave and I had to stay.” The blood-song allowed only certainty. “I am not here to regain her love. I know I lost it many years ago. I am here to preserve her life, for that is what I owe her.”
Sho Tsai’s hands paused in their course, his occluded form taking on a stillness that made him appear part of the indifferent rock of the mountain. “Know this,” he said, the anger in his voice replaced by an unnerving, implacable sincerity. “She is paramount to me. She is above all else and I will allow no further injury to her, in body or in soul. If the Stahlhast have her, I will kill them all to retrieve her. If you reopen her wounds, I’ll kill you too even though she may hate me for it.”
He turned away and resumed his climb, moving with a renewed swiftness and surely deaf to any reply Vaelin might offer.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The High Temple lay under a bright sun that dappled its tiled roofs with gold. Vaelin thought it as impressive an example of architecture as he had ever seen, in the sheer unlikeliness of its construction if not in scale. The various buildings, large and small, seemed to blossom out from the mountain’s summit like the petals of a monumental flower. Balconies and roofs extended out above the surrounding mantle of cloud around a raised centre where a tower six storeys tall rose into the sky.
“Who built this place?” he asked Sho Tsai as his gaze roved the marvellous spectacle of it all.
“Many hands over many years,” the captain said. “Warlords, emperors and kings all contributed wealth and labour to craft the home of the Jade Princess. It has changed with the passage of years. She was the only eternal thing here.”
Sho Tsai led him through an outer ring of gardens towards the central tower, passing a number of gardeners along the way. Vaelin took note of the manner in which they went about their duties, each one grim faced and stooped as they clipped bushes or swept leaves, offering only cursory bows to the two visitors and vaguely curious glances at Vaelin. Once he and Shao Tsai were within the confines of the temple proper, the atmosphere grew yet more sombre. Plain-robed servants swept floors with desultory dutifulness, one even weeping openly as she worked her broom across the stones. Grief, Vaelin thought, recognising the pitch of her sobs.