A Dance with Danger

‘Not if one is prepared,’ he assured her.

Jin-mei looked out into the night. ‘I think I would worry about you all the time.’

Once again, a heavy, sinking feeling weighed down his chest. Jin-mei had a claim to him when no one else had in a long time.

‘What...?’ Yang paused with the question lingering on his tongue. ‘What has your father told you about my family?’

‘He told me you’ve made your fortune on the transport of salt and grain.’

Perhaps now wasn’t a good time to reveal his secrets, but he was beginning to wonder if Jin-mei already suspected what sort of shady underworld activities he was also involved in. Magistrate Tan certainly knew enough to destroy him, but he seemed content to remain quiet. With this wedding, their futures were now intertwined.

The best arrangement Yang had ever made. He had the magistrate’s protection, his silence, his daughter... Surely it couldn’t be this easy?

‘When will we go back north to your home—I mean, to our home?’ Jin-mei blushed a little as she fidgeted in the sedan chair.

He found it irresistibly charming, which made the next part more difficult. ‘I’ve arranged with your father for you to remain here after the wedding.’

She frowned at him. ‘I won’t be coming to live with you?’

‘Of course you will, Wife.’ He used the endearment to assuage her doubts, but the word felt awkward on his lips. ‘There’s some business I must attend to. Afterwards, I’ll return and we’ll travel north together.’

She nodded, but didn’t look entirely satisfied. He had been accountable to no one but himself for a long time, which made it easy to engage in questionable activities without being exposed. That would all change now with Jin-mei at his side. She had a keen eye. She was clever. And from what little he knew of her, she didn’t seem to bite her tongue very often.

Maybe there would be no more reason to hide by the time he returned. Wang Shizhen would be lying cold in his grave and Yang could leave his days of plotting behind. Or the outcome could be the exact opposite with him being the one left dead. Yang had been fully prepared to accept failure—until now.

‘I won’t be away long,’ he promised, which was a lie. The slight curl in Jin-mei’s lip told him it wasn’t a good lie either.

They arrived at the guest villa which had been decorated with red banners. Once again, they were swept up in the festivities. They lit incense and bowed to an altar set up for his ancestors this time. Then they drank honeyed wine from two cups joined by a red ribbon before Jin-mei was ushered away by her female attendants. Meanwhile Yang was surrounded by wedding guests intent on pouring more wine down his throat.

* * *

The next hour was a blur. Though the guests were all strangers to him, apparently Magistrate Tan had many friends. The official was the happiest man at the banquet, refilling Yang’s cup time and time again and drinking to his health, his happiness and many grandchildren.

Repeatedly, Yang tried to escape to the bridal chamber between the ribald taunting and innuendo that was required of any wedding. Each time he was dragged back and plied with more wine until he was in a state that he rarely allowed himself to be in. Yang was drunk.

‘Get him to his wife while he can still perform his husbandly duties!’

Yang had no idea who said that, but he raised his cup in thanks and drank. A firm hand clamped over his shoulder, startling him. It was Tan, now his father-in-law, who regarded him with an intense look. The magistrate’s face was flushed red from the wine, but his gaze was still sharp.

The grip tightened on Yang’s shoulder. ‘Jin-mei is my daughter,’ Tan said, serious once more. ‘My treasure.’

‘I’ll take care of her,’ Yang vowed.

The magistrate nodded, unsmiling.

A swarm of young men grabbed hold of Yang then, laughing as they escorted him down the hallway to the wedding chamber. Tossing him inside, they shut the door behind him before retreating.

He expected to see his bride there waiting, but the room was empty. The bed was a magnificent one, fashioned out of dark wood with a large canopy overhead. The servants had taken the care to drape the bed in red silk and scatter flower petals and seeds upon it. For fertility.

‘Jin-mei?’ he called softly.

He crouched to search beneath the bed, in case she was hiding coyly there. That was when he realised how drunk he must be. He fought a wave of dizziness as he straightened.

Perhaps she was away for some womanly preparation he wasn’t aware of. He’d certainly never been married before to know.

There was a flask of wine set up on the table beside the bed. He filled both cups and waited beside the bed, thinking of, among other things, performing his ‘duties.’ When his bride had still not arrived in the next few minutes, he started getting impatient.

Though the event had been unplanned, it was still his wedding. The banquet had lightened the weight from his shoulders for a few hours, and Jin-mei had looked rather tempting while she scolded him in the sedan chair. She also had looked quite charming the first time he’d seen her that evening; so nervous.

He’d never been with a virgin before. He needed to take things slowly. Kiss her hair, her mouth, her throat. Lead her into desire step by step—where was she? Had she become frightened? Maybe her amah and stepmother were providing some final instruction on matters of yin and yang. Funny, Jin-mei didn’t seem the shy sort.

By now, Yang was getting very impatient. Watching the door, he picked up the wine cup and took a sip, rolling the wine on his tongue out of habit. The drink had been sweetened with honey and steeped in spices. A faint trace of bitterness only came in right as he was about to swallow.

He spat it out, staring at the wine flask and the remaining cup. Poison?

The fog of drunkenness lifted from his mind as his survival instinct came alive. Opening the front of his robe, he closed his hand around the knife he’d hidden beneath his clothes. With the sort of illegal and insurgent activities he was involved with, it was wise to always be armed. It was always wise to taste anything he wasn’t sure of very carefully for poison.

His first thought was to find Jin-mei. Someone had taken her.

Yang was nearly to the door when he stopped himself, his head swimming in circles, but still able to function. He recalled how Tan Li Kuo had refilled his wine cup over and over at the banquet. This was the magistrate’s private villa. His servants had set up the chamber and all of the guests were his friends.

That two-headed snake.

The wily magistrate had found a way to both preserve his daughter’s reputation and exact revenge on Yang all at once. After all, being widowed was a perfectly honourable state for his daughter to be in.

But if Tan wanted him dead, drugging his wine in the wedding chamber was a clumsy way to go about it. There were no guarantees with poison. The magistrate had to have something else planned as well. Someone tasked with making sure the job was completed.

A scraping sound came from the wall. No, it came from behind the wall. With one hand, he felt along the wooden panels. His other hand gripped his knife. It wasn’t hard to find the edge of the hidden door and he swung it open, preparing to strike.

A man dressed in a red wedding robe stared out at him from a small compartment.

‘That scheming bastard!’ Yang seethed.

His mirror image attempted to step out from the hiding space, but Yang stopped him with a menacing shake of his knife. ‘What were you going to do? Strangle me? Stab me?’

‘No, of course not!’ the man cried, staring at the blade. He had gone pale. ‘I was just supposed to run from this room screaming.’

‘That’s nonsense.’

‘It’s true. I was paid to do it.’

‘And that’s it?’

The impostor nodded, shaking.

Yang struggled to clear his head enough to piece the magistrate’s plan together. It was possible Tan had been planning his death all along. They were accomplices in a failed assassination plot, after all. He alone could implicate Tan in the conspiracy.

He’d been swindled. If this man wasn’t the one hired to cut his throat, then an assassin was certainly nearby, closing in for the kill as they spoke.

Yang grabbed the impostor by the robe to drag him out of the compartment. ‘It’s time to do what you were hired for, my friend. Start running.’

Chapter Four

There was trouble outside.

Jin-mei sat in the bridal chamber while Lady Yi tried to give her final words of advice, telling her ‘not to worry if it’s not like what you expect the first time’ when Jin-mei had no idea what to expect. Suddenly the hum of noise from the banquet turned into shouting.

She started for the door, but it swung open before she could reach it. Father stood before her with a group of men gathered behind him. She saw one of them holding a club.

‘Stay here,’ Father told her. ‘It’s not safe outside.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

She might as well have not spoken. Father pulled the door shut, and she heard him giving orders on the other side. ‘Search the house. Search the woods.’

Search the woods for what?

Lady Yi stayed with her, and they huddled together on the bed. The cover had been sprinkled with lotus seeds and flower petals for good luck, but the symbols were meaningless now. What had happened to disrupt her wedding? And where was Bao Yang...?

Every so often, Lady Yi would say, ‘Everything will be all right.’ Then a little later she’d repeat it. ‘Everything will be all right.’

With each repetition, Jin-mei’s heart sank. More time had passed, another empty assurance given and still there was no news. She had started drifting off to sleep on the bed when the doors opened.

Again, it was Father. His face was sunken, defeated. ‘Jin-mei—’

‘Where’s Bao Yang?’

‘Jin-mei,’ he said again, gently this time. Too gently, and she knew.

She started trembling so hard she had to sit down. ‘What happened, Father?’

Lady Yi wrapped her arms around Jin-mei as her father told the entire story. A madman had come to the villa wielding a knife. The guests had seen a man chasing Yang into the woods, but then both of them had disappeared.

‘That’s impossible.’ A wave of dizziness passed over her. She reached out to brace herself against the enclosure over the bed.

‘I summoned every constable to search the woods. It’s possible they fell into the ravine. The river is high from the plum rains and with the rocks down below—’

Jin-mei couldn’t listen to any more. She wanted to go to the river herself that very moment, but that was impossible. It was too dark. There was possibly a madman on the loose.

The next morning, Jin-mei did accompany Head Constable Han and his search party as they scoured the ravine. With her heart in her throat, she searched the rocks below for a sign of Yang’s red wedding robe, but there was nothing but the waters of the Min River rushing by.

It was improper for her to be out there in the sun, among so many strangers, but she was no longer a sheltered young girl to be hidden away. A married woman was granted more freedom. The thought made her want to weep.

But Jin-mei didn’t weep. Everything had happened all too suddenly for her to know what to feel. Drained and exhausted from lack of sleep, she finally turned away from the search and found herself unable to mourn properly for her husband of only a few hours. All she could do was think of the few fleeting moments they’d shared together, and the kiss beneath a bridge she’d only imagined. A kiss that would now never come to be.

* * *

For the first seven days, Jin-mei remained shut away, dressed in pale sackcloth and lighting incense for a husband she had barely known. When she finally ventured outside, it was only at her father’s insistence. She had replaced her white mourning robe with a sombre grey one and dutifully set one foot in front of the other as she accompanied the constable’s wife through the city. All she wanted was to return to bed and wake up in a month when the wound wasn’t so new and raw.

Constable Han’s wife was close to Jin-mei in age and it was said that she had once been a dancer who had travelled throughout the province. Li Feng was long-limbed, poised and moved with a confidence that Jin-mei envied. Along with being graceful, the other woman was also full of energy and life. Even her eyes were animated, catching the light as she spoke. In contrast, Jin-mei felt as grey and lifeless as her robe.

Their morning consisted of a visit to the temple to light incense and pray for the spirits of the deceased. Afterwards, Li Feng had suggested a walk through the park, but Jin-mei refused. It was too soon. Not even two weeks had passed since she had met Bao Yang there. Only two weeks to become a wife and a widow.

‘Along the market, then,’ Li Feng replied, refusing to let her mope. ‘I’ll take you to my favourite tea house.’

Jin-mei trudged along, a poor companion in every way. It was her first time out in public since Yang’s death and she was at a loss. With Yang gone, she had no new family to go to, no wifely duties, no future.

Her life was no different than it had been before. She had returned to her father’s house to live and no one spoke of what had happened that night. It was nothing but a dream. Her hopes and fears before the wedding were nothing but clouds that had been blown away with the breeze.

‘How long have you been married to Constable Han?’ Jin-mei asked, attempting conversation.

‘Not long. Only a little over a month now.’

‘A month?’ Jin-mei’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. ‘I should have sent you a gift.’

She hadn’t even known there had been another wedding so recently. A magistrate and his constable were so far apart in status that Jin-mei and Li Feng had little reason to socialise. Even this short outing felt awkward and forced.

‘There’s no need to apologise. My husband has been so busy with his duties as the new constable, sometimes I wonder if we’re married after all.’

Jin-mei attempted a smile at the jest, but once again her thoughts returned to Yang. In one part, it was due to grief, but another part was the strange circumstances of how he’d disappeared.

‘I apologise for being so forward, but has Constable Han made any progress on the investigation?’

‘Han hasn’t said much about it, but don’t you worry. My husband will find out who is responsible. He was relentless as a thief-catcher.’

‘It’s so hard to believe that no one was found; not my husband or his attacker. If I could at least see him—if we were able to lay his body in the ground—maybe I wouldn’t feel so empty, as if things were unfinished.’ Jin-mei knew she was being morbid to dwell on it, but she had so few memories of Yang. The details of his disappearance loomed large in her mind. ‘There are moments when I forget that my husband is dead and I have to remind myself that he really is gone.’

Li Feng touched her sleeve sympathetically. ‘Do you want to cry? I can find a private place for us and you can cry as much as you like. I won’t think less of you for it.’

‘No, I don’t want to cry. I don’t know if I even should cry. Everything that happened was so strange, I don’t know what to do with myself now.’

‘I lost my father unexpectedly when I was very young,’ Li Feng confided. ‘And then I was separated from my mother for years. There were many days when I felt part of myself was gone and floating in the ghost world with them. I had so few memories of them, but the few I possessed, I held on to them like pearls.’

‘You understand then!’ Jin-mei’s throat tightened. That was how she felt: like half a ghost herself. ‘My husband was a long-time associate of my father’s, but he never paid any notice to me until right before we were married. But then it was as though he could see me so clearly, when no one else could. The last words he said to me were that we would suit each other quite well.’

For the first time since the tragedy, Jin-mei felt tears gathering. A woman never knew whether her marriage would be one of love, but in that moment Yang’s expression as he looked at her was far from cold and far from uninterested. There had been a half-smile upon his lips and a wicked lift to his eyebrow.

Jin-mei had believed then that her husband was indeed capable of loving her and she him. She could sense the possibility heavy in the air between them as they swayed upon the sedan chairs. She could feel it in the way they spoke with one another, phrases chasing and dancing with one another. Yet hours later, she had gone to wait anxiously on her bridal bed for a husband who would never come.

‘He sounds like a good man,’ Li Feng said gently.

Jin-mei knew it was just something to say, but she appreciated it none the less. It was good to talk about him. ‘Bao Yang was always so charming and clever.’

Li Feng halted in the middle of the busy market and shot her an odd look. ‘Your husband’s name was Bao Yang?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘How curious. I once knew someone by that name.’ She gave her head a little shake. ‘No matter. It’s such a common name.’

But it wasn’t. Before Jin-mei could answer, a loud crash came from the drinking house across the street. A brawl must have broken out on the second floor.

Li Feng grabbed hold of her arm. Startled by the rough treatment, Jin-mei tried to pull away, but the constable’s wife directed her out of the street and into the doorway of one of the shops.

Li Feng glanced over her shoulder as two city guards hurried towards the disturbance. ‘Stay here,’ she instructed. ‘I’ll be back.’

At that, Li Feng flew across the street and disappeared into the drinking house, leaving Jin-mei to stare after her in bewilderment. There was nothing to do but do as she was told. Jin-mei watched the stream of market-goers flow by, oblivious to whatever was happening in the tavern.

A man appeared on the far corner and something about him caught her attention. He was tall and lean of build with a slight crookedness to his nose. She only saw his face for a second before he turned away, but her heart leapt in her chest.

It was him. It was Bao Yang.

He glanced about briefly before stepping into the street. Jin-mei rushed after him, but with his longer stride, he pulled ahead of her until he was just another head in the crowd.

‘Yang!’ Several people turned to stare at her, but she didn’t care. She tried to shove through, but it was no use. Yang was gone.

* * *

Jin-mei was still searching the marketplace when Li Feng found her. ‘I apologise, Lady Tan, but my husband was in there—’

‘I need to go home,’ Jin-mei interrupted. ‘I need to speak to my father.’

The constable’s wife seemed to have lost any desire for an outing as well. The magistrate’s residence was only a few streets away. Jin-mei attempted a hasty farewell once they reached the gates, but Li Feng stopped her.

‘Your late husband... I apologise if this brings up painful memories, but was he from around here?’

‘He was a merchant from the north. Taining County.’

There it was again. The tiniest of frowns flickered over the other woman’s face. Li Feng held her breath for a beat too long before responding. ‘My condolences on your loss, Lady Tan.’

‘Thank you for your kind thoughts.’

They exchanged polite bows and Li Feng hurried away while Jin-mei rushed through the gates into her home.

Their residence was a part of the walled compound of the magistrate’s yamen. Every morning, Father would have his tea in their private courtyard before passing through the gate that connected the living quarters to the judicial offices and tribunal. Jin-mei had never gone through the gate before, but she did so now.

The guards patrolling the grounds of the yamen raised their eyebrows, but otherwise gave her no trouble as she started down the corridor towards the main courtyard. There, a series of buildings and offices spread out before her and she was at a loss. Jin-mei knew petitioners lined up for the tribunal and prisoners were kept in cells at the back of the compound, but it was intimidating to see it all at work.

She had to ask a clerk for the location to her father’s office, but it was surprisingly empty when she arrived. Her father returned a few moments later, surrounded by guards. Constable Han was beside him, engaged in a heated discussion that fell silent when they saw her.

Jin-mei might never be able to read faces as well as her father, but some mannerisms were easy to interpret. Constable Han bowed hastily and excused himself. Father made an effort to compose himself before approaching.

He ushered her into his office and shut the door. ‘Jin-mei, what brings you here?’

‘Bao Yang is alive.’ Her pulse was still pounding. ‘I saw him out on the street, but he moved away so quickly, I couldn’t catch him.’

‘My dear daughter. I know how saddened you are by his loss.’ Her father took hold of her hands and his expression was one of anguish. ‘It is my own failing that I haven’t been able to find his killer.’

He wasn’t listening. ‘Yang isn’t dead. I saw him,’ she repeated fervently. ‘Right outside of the drinking house in the centre of the Seven Alleys.’

Father nodded, but it wasn’t a nod of agreement. It was an obliging nod, a nod of forbearance. ‘Jin-mei, you have always been clear-headed, but this tragedy is one very close to your heart. And with it being so soon after both your wedding and his death... Seven days after a person dies, his spirit returns home.’

‘I didn’t see a ghost. It was him!’ she insisted.

‘I believe you saw something your heart wanted to see.’ Again that nod and a pained look. ‘I know you’ve been lost these last few days. Lonely.’

He drew her into his arms, something he hadn’t done since she was a child. For a moment, she closed her eyes and let her father embrace her. It was reassuring to be held close. Jin-mei had indeed been feeling lost. And she was lonely all of the time now, even in their house among family.

‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ he began, stroking her hair gently. ‘But after your mother passed, I saw her. I was in the garden one morning, drinking tea, and I could feel her there. Then I turned and there she was, just for a moment. I tried to speak to her and she was gone. Not faded away like smoke, just there in one blink and gone in the next. After that I only saw her in dreams, but we never are able to speak to one another, as much as I want to. Is that how it was for you, Jin-mei?’

She was so caught up in her father’s story that she had nearly forgotten about Yang. ‘I called out to him but...but he disappeared.’

Had she imagined it? That was what her rational mind was telling her to accept. She pulled away from her father. ‘I saw him very clearly.’

‘I know,’ he replied with a sad smile. ‘It was the same way with your mother.’

Father looked away and her heart went out to him. It was as Lady Yi had said, Mother was the love of his life and she always would be. Slowly he returned to his desk and made an attempt to organise his case records to compose himself.

A moment earlier she had been so certain Yang was alive, but Father had cast doubt over everything she’d seen. If Yang had survived the fall, why hadn’t he returned to her? She knew of cases where people hit their heads and forgot all their memories. The fall from the ravine could have caused such an injury, but if her husband was indeed wandering through the city in confusion, certainly he would have been found by one of her father’s constables.

‘I was thinking for a while that it might be good for you to spend some time away,’ Father went on. ‘Perhaps a trip to the mountains with Lady Yi.’

‘During the mourning period? That would be disrespectful—’

Jin-mei caught herself. Once again, she was talking about Yang as if he were indeed dead.