Part 11

It was a beautiful, clear, starry night. Quan and Fen were sitting side by side on the ledge admiring the hilly landscape to the north and the twinkle of the stars overhead. A wind came across the cliff in gusts, cooling the otherwise pleasant nighttime air. Fen shivered.

"Are you ok?" Quan asked.

"…It's a little chilly."

"You can have my blanket if you need."

"Don't be silly."

They sat in silence for a few seconds. Then they both spoke at once, their shared sentence a jumbled mess: "It's could beautiful share tonight warm."

They looked at each other and giggled. "Sorry," Quan apologized. "You first."

Fen smiled at him and his heart rate increased with each word she said. "If you wanted, we could share the blankets." She paused a second as he felt the blood rush to his head. "Body heat is the best way to stay warm after all."

"O…" he swallowed, forcing himself to speak clearly. "Ok. That's a good idea."

He rose, swept his blanket up into the air, and extended it over Fen, as she pulled her own blanket loose and allowed him to drape the two layers over top of them. They sat side by side, a few inches apart.

"I'm not quite all covered…" Fen complained.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Here…" Quan moved closer and the blankets fell into place. They were joined at the shoulders and knees, and Quan had never had so many emotions destroying his very essence.

"What were you saying?" Fen asked.

"Oh, um… just that it's very beautiful out tonight."

Fen nodded and stole a glance in his direction. "Yeah. Yeah it is."

They stared forward in silence for a while longer, the night completely still except for the wind keeping their faces cool. Fen's longer hair fluttered in the breeze and occasionally she reached up to push it out of her face. Every time she moved Quan's heart fluttered as well. He found it impossible to concentrate, even on the very serious task at hand of keeping watch for the bandits. His mouth was getting dry and he wanted to fidget very badly, but didn't want to disturb his proximity to Fen in the least. He tried a number of Keeper meditation techniques, but never got past the first few steps of any of them.

"So…" Fen brought up. "Do you want to take the first watch? I can if you want to sleep."

"No," Quan responded a bit too quickly. "No, I'm not tired."

Fen smiled again and Quan smiled back involuntarily. "Me neither," she replied. "I'm too excited."

"Me too," Quan admitted, though he wasn't sure the sources of their excitement were identical.

"Ok, let's stay up until one of us gets tired."

"Yeah. We can admire the view."

Fen leaned gently against him, their bodies swaying together. "Good idea," she grinned.

Quan tried to quell the speed of his heart, but it was in vain. Even just sitting beside her seemed to break his mind. He'd had crushes on other girls back in Bhuo, but most of the girls there didn't talk to Keepers-in-training, and all the really pretty girls had always liked Palden anyway. Quan was just the odd Imperial – a novelty, not a boy of interest.

And Fen was pretty. He turned his head just slightly and strained his eyes to get a good look at her in the moonlight. She wasn't the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, but he loved how she held herself, the pride she'd shown every step of their journey. He even admired the way she cared for her father so much, even the hostility she'd shown for his mother had been endearing in a way.

Fen's head started to move and Quan whipped his own back into a neutral position, but out of the corner of his eye he thought she was actually stealing a look back at him. He wanted nothing more than to confirm it, but being caught looking at her would be too embarrassing. Eventually he couldn't hold back and quickly glanced in her direction. She was staring at him. Their eyes locked and he reconsidered: she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. They both smiled and looked down.

"So, um…" Fen said once they were both staring ahead again. "What's it like in Zhosian?"

Quan thought for a moment. "Cold. Usually very cold."

"Yeah, it's the same here. We're not that far north you know."

"Do you get a lot of snow too? Sometimes we get two, three feet of snow in a day."

"Not that much, no," she admitted. "But the winds coming off the mountains. They're really cold."

"Yeah…"

"What else though, do you go to school?"

"Yes, but now that I'm training to be a Keeper I don't go with most of the kids I grew up with."

"A Keeper? So, you know magic?"

"…A little, yeah."

"Like what?"

"Small stuff mostly. They don't teach you the really good spells until you get older."

"That's so interesting."

"What about you?" He asked. "Do you go to school?"

"No, not anymore," her voice deflated slightly. "I actually had a tutor, but we had to let him go after we sold the house."

"Oh."

"I can read and write and everything though. I learned a lot. Poetry. Singing. Some of the classics. I might still try and take the exam one day. After Tan takes over the land."

"You want to become a bureaucrat?"

"Sure. It's a good career, safe. I won't have anything here once Tan inherits everything. So it'll be a good way to get out, live somewhere else in the Empire."

Quan nodded, thinking it over: her position, the way the Empire worked according to his mother. At one point Lian had told him the civil entrance exam was challenging even for students raised in the best families – a rural girl with a limited education probably didn't have a chance. But at that moment he believed in her and he pushed the doubt down. "I'm sure you'll do it," he said. "You seem like you can do anything you put your mind to." Fen looked at him and smiled.

"Thank you."

A few more moments of silence before Fen asked another question. "So, you're a Tiendu Shu… I mean, as a Keeper, you believe all that."

"All of what?" Quan asked, genuinely unsure what she meant.

"Well, like enlightenment and reincarnation and all that stuff…"

"To be honest," he admitted, "there are some parts of it I'm not sure about. Like reincarnation doesn't make much sense to me. Or at least, it doesn't matter, you know? Like if you're reincarnated but you don't remember anything about your past lives then how is that any different from just being born?"

Fen nodded. "But you do believe in most of it?"

"Yeah, I guess so. As a Keeper they train you to meditate, go inside yourself. That's where magic comes from, and it also, I don't know… shows you things."

"Like what?"

"It's hard to describe. When you touch magic for the first time, it's like being in touch with the Tiendu. That experience alone made me believe in a lot of it."

"What does Tiendu mean, anyway?"

"I don't know the Imperial for it, really. I think… maybe, oneness? It's basically the whole idea of our religion: that everything is connected into a single living entity called the Tiendu. You, me, the grass on the trees, even the rocks. It's all part of one giant life force."

"…That's nice," Fen responded, "I like that."

"Um, but what about you? You're not Tiendu Shu then?"

"No," she shook her head, "my dad raised us Shei. Not that we had anything against Tiendu Shu or anything, but it was what we were taught to believe."

"So you believe all those stories, about the Gods and Heaven and Hell and everything?"

"Maybe some of it," she admitted. "My dad used to say that the Gods were probably just important kings and queens and their stories got mixed up over the years. The stories turned them into Gods battling against evil, when really it was just people fighting, you know, nature and barbarians and those sorts of things."

"Yeah that makes sense."

"I don't know," she continued. "There are a lot of rules with being Shei. A lot of rules about family and praying and what you can and can't do."

"Is it… hard?"

Fen chuckled. "No, not hard or anything, just… restrictive. I don't know, I think I'd like to learn more about Tiendu Shu, is all."

Quan's chest almost broke at this point, swollen by the pressure in his lungs and heart. He was about to offer to teach her when she came up with a much better idea.

"My back's a little sore," she flexed it out and brushed more of her body against Quan. "Do you think we could lie down? Maybe look up at the stars?"

"Sure. Sure, yeah. Good idea."

"We'll hear the bandits coming on horseback right?"

"Yeah. Definitely."

They both leaned back slowly, keeping the blanket on them and kicking it out with their legs to cover their feet. The ground was hard and rocky, just as Lian had pointed out, but Quan barely noticed it. Now the full lengths of their sides were pressed against one another, and their heads fell close to one another, close enough for him to smell her. He looked up at the stars and they almost seemed to be spinning.

"So teach me…" Fen whispered, their proximity now enough to bring her voice directly into his ear.

"…About what?"

"Tiendu Shu."

"Oh, right. What do you want to know?"

"Well, why did they pick Shu as the word for love?"

"What do you mean?" He asked, puzzled.

"Well, there are two words in ancient Imperial for it, right? What's the word in Zhosian?"

"Umm… just 'love.' What do you mean there are two words?"

"What do you mean?" She asked back with a chuckle.

"My mom always told me 'Shu' means love. That's it. I didn't know there was another word for it."

Fen laughed aloud. Quan turned his head to find out what was so funny but only found himself grinning ear to ear at the sight of her being so happy. "What is it? What's funny?"

"How do you not know that?" Fen asked between laughs.

"Not know what?"

"Your adopted mother. She's a Shuli Go. Did you not ever ask what that meant?"

Quan thought for a moment. "No. I mean, she explained to me what a 'Go' was, like a division of some sort. But she never brought up Shuli. I thought it was just some nonsense ancient Imperial."

Fen's smile remained on her face, and she turned to face him and explain. "In ancient Imperial there were two words for love. Shu, and li. Shu is the love you have for family, mostly. It's a long-lasting love, almost more… dedication. Commitment. It's a love you have to choose to make every day. Li is the love that you can't help. Like… an intense love, where it takes over every part of you and you start doing stupid things because of it. Kind of like lust, but… more than that. It's the love you feel when you meet someone and all you think about is them."

Quan listened to her explain and understood everything, especially the part about 'li' because he was almost certain he was feeling it right then. Instead of being too cold, his entire body was on fire – he felt he was going to start sweating any moment – but he didn't care because this beautiful young woman was staring into his eyes and teaching him about love.

"I didn't know that," he admitted in a quiet voice, not wanting to disturb the way she looked at him right then.

Her smile slowly faded but her eyes remained on him. And then she asked him the question he'd hoped she would.

"Have you ever felt that kind of love? Li?"

"No," he admitted.

"No?" She asked. And then she moved closer, rolling her body slightly and pressing her leg on top of his, her hand squirming down to find his own. She wrapped her fingers around his palm and he squeezed them back as his heart raced. "Never?" Her whisper was almost inaudible.

Quan licked his lips and looked at hers as they came closer. He mumbled a silent phrase, "maybe right now," before she leaned in all the way and kissed him.

The fullness of her lips on his was more than he expected, almost draining the air out of his lungs. His first kiss. For some reason he told himself to remember this, every detail. The stars up above, the cool wind, the warmth of her hand, and the pleasure of her on his mouth. So committed to remembering every single aspect of the kiss was he, that it took him several moments to realize his eyes were open, and hers were not. He shut them and somehow that made it even better, his every sense attuned to the kiss.

She pushed harder against him, tilting her head slightly and sending new sensations into his brain. He had no idea what to do, but eventually he realized he should probably do something. He pushed into her, way too hard, and their teeth clashed painfully. He apologized quickly as he pulled back but she just smiled and moved back to kiss him again. He let her guide him, his body vibrating with the new sensations. Not just his body either, he realized. Through her hand, her lips, he could feel the rest of her, her other free hand moving up and stroking his cheek, his hair. Even with his eyes closed he knew her every move as her hand went back down to her own body and her other hand squeezed his.

This is what love is like, he thought. This is amazing. Then he felt her free hand and the blade of the knife pressed into his throat.

His eyes shot open and the girl he saw rising up from him was not the same one who had been kissing him a second earlier. Her eyes were stony, her face completely immobile; a face that had never smiled, not once. It was the same face she'd had when she'd displayed her father.

Quan stared at her and she stared back, the sharp edge of the small blade firm against his artery. The artery that was pumping blood in a frenzy, now from a different source of excitement than moments earlier. He didn't say anything for a while, mostly because he was too confused to think of anything. Fen said nothing either, just squeezed his hand in place and kept the blade tight against his skin. Eventually Quan knew what he wanted to say.

"This won't bring him back."

Fen's face turned into disgust. "You and your mother. You're both fucking idiots. It's not about him anymore. It's about her."

"My mother?"

"She got to go home. She was fine at the end of it. She didn't get any punishment. She deserved punishment."

"Maybe. Yeah." He admitted.

"She should have been forced to take the same beating. The same thing should have happened to her. She should be on a straw mat in a pile of her own shit right now. You should be the one feeding her fucking… gruel. Every day. For the rest of her life."

Fen started crying, not large, sobbing tears, but tears nonetheless. Quan made the slightest motion to move the hand she was still holding, but her face redoubled in anger and she pressed the knife right into the skin, piercing it just enough to elicit a terrified moan from Quan. He closed his eyes and relaxed. He couldn't kill her. He didn't want to either. But he didn't want to die.

Slowly he opened his eyes again and saw that she was actively frowning, her chest heaving as she fought whatever decision was going on through her head. The same kind of decision Lian had warned Quan about. A decision she couldn't possibly know the consequences to.

"You think this will hurt my mother?" Quan asked.

"Yes." Fen replied, firm.

"It would. And after she killed you, she'd feel bad about that too. That's a kind of pain, Fen. My mother already hurts because of what happened to your father."

"Not enough. Not the right kind of pain."

"Maybe not. But if you kill me it won't be the right kind of pain either. That'll be your pain. Not your father's."

Fen stared into Quan's eyes. "You're disgusting," she said. "You still have an erection you sick bastard."

Then she pulled back quickly, ripping her blanket off the boy and going to the wall of the ledge against the cliff. She rolled into a small ball there and covered herself with the blanket, her face to the rock.

"You can stay up all night. I'm going to sleep." A few more seconds passed, then she added. "And if you ever touch me again, I'll kill you."

Quan's heart kept racing for several more minutes. He reached to his throat and dabbed at the small bit of blood she'd brought out. By the time his breathing returned to normal, he felt exhausted. But he dared not sleep. He realized his lips were dry and he licked them. She was still there, on his lips, a different taste than he'd expected. He sat up and moved to the edge, looking out to the north, and focused on staying awake.