Johanna slid down from the Shrimp’s back, patting her heaving sides. Patiently she lifted the mare’s right front hoof and dug out an offending piece of rock that had become wedged in her hoof. The Shrimp rewarded her efforts by leaning her entire weight on the girl’s back. Johanna jabbed her belly with an elbow and the Shrimp huffed out an indignant breath and shifted her weight enough for Johanna to finish the task. She let the foot fall, and straightened, stretching.

Beneath her feet Chandu stretched on forever, its many rooftops glittering in the afternoon sun, the palace of the Great Khan bulking large to overshadow its neighbors. Johanna stood still, looking her fill. In her face was appreciation for the beauty and industry of the great city, but no possessiveness, no pride of place, and none of the sorrow one might expect from a prospective and permanent exile.

Chiang, Edyk’s manservant, answered her knock and bowed her into the house at once. Hearing her voice Edyk jumped up with a glad smile and held out both hands. “Johanna!”

Edyk the Portuguese was a brawny young man, thickly-muscled, and like Jaufre he moved with the graceful assurance of someone accustomed to an active life. He had his mother’s tilted almond eyes and his father’s dark curls and a charming smile all his own. He was a trader, as the honorable Wu Li had been a trader, and traveling the trade routes with him Johanna had watched that smile melt feminine hearts from Taitu to Kinsai.

Johanna waited for Chiang, loitering next to the door with a carefully disinterested look on his face, to leave the room. When he at last he did, with a reluctant, backwards glance, she said without preamble, “My father’s widow tells me you have offered to marry me.”

Edyk’s welcoming smile changed to a frown and his hands dropped. He looked at her searchingly. “The offer was made to your father last year. He told me it was up to you, but that in any case I must wait until you were older. He didn’t tell you?”

The breath went out of her on a long sigh and she shook
her head. “No. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t want to pressure
me, and he knew his second wife and I ”

He touched her shoulder, a gentle, comforting touch.
“I know.”

She reached up to caress his hand lightly. His arms went out but before he could embrace her she stepped away. “I have come here to explain why I must refuse, Edyk.”

He stood very still, his breath caught in his throat, even his heart seemed to cease beating. Jaufre could have told him that Johanna always had that effect on the men in her life, but it had been a long time since Edyk had been willing to listen to anything Jaufre might have to say about Johanna. “What?” someone said, and Edyk realized the stranger’s voice was his own. “Johanna, what did you say?” He started forward.

She held up one hand, palm towards him. “Don’t! Don’t
touch me, not yet. Listen. Listen to me, please, Edyk.” She turned away from him and stretched out a hand to slide a rice paper door to one side. The plum trees in the garden beyond were flowering, and the aroma of their blossoms slipped into the room, curling into every corner, pervasive and bittersweet. Edyk would never be able to smell a plum blossom again without remembering this moment.

Her back to him, Johanna said steadily, “I can’t marry you, Edyk. It would be impossible. For both of us.”

Now his voice was hard and angry, with an undercurrent of fear. “That’s nonsense and you know it. We’ve grown up side by side, we were friends before we ever before well, you know,
before.”

She almost smiled. “I know.”

“And,” he added, “we’re both foreigners, in a land that is determined to keep us that way.”

“My father was as Chinese as the Son of Heaven himself,” she said, the slightest edge to her voice.

“But your mother was half Chinese and half Venetian,” he said flatly, “the same as mine is Chinese and Portuguese. Look in your mirror. The Venetian won out. It doesn’t matter that we were born here. We are strangers in a strange land, the way Father Xavier taught us from the book of the round-eyed god. And we always will be.”

“No,” she said carefully, back in control. “I won’t be. At least I won’t be a stranger in this land.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“I’m leaving Chandu, and Everything Under The Heavens, Edyk.”

“What!” He was really frightened now. He jerked her around to face him. “You’re leaving? You’re leaving me?”

“Yes.”

“To go where? And why?”

She was silent for a moment. “Perhaps I will look for my grandfather.”

He snorted. “He’s been gone, how long now, twenty-five, thirty years? You never met him, you don’t know him. He may be dead, he probably is, and then where will you be? And even if he is alive, what makes you think he’d want anything to do with you, when he never bothered to stay in touch with his own daughter, your mother?”

“Edyk,” she said, her expression relaxing a little. “Edyk, Edyk. Have you never wanted to get up of a morning and start walking west? And to keep on going, to follow the sun to where it sets? To see the fountains of fire in Georgiana? To visit the enchanters of Tebet? To fight the dragons at the edge of the ocean?”

The sadness in her eyes faded, to be replaced by excitement and anticipation. It was a look Edyk had seen before, and did not rejoice in now.

She waited, part of her hoping he would agree with her, part of her hoping he would dower his wives and children, sell his business and come with them on the road west. When he didn’t, she sighed, although it didn’t hurt as much as she had imagined it would. “It doesn’t matter if my grandfather is alive or dead, Edyk. He is merely an excuse to start me on my way. You know me.” She smiled a little. “You know me better than almost anyone else. Would you expect any less?”

He took a hasty step away from her, and then back. “And who will take care of you?”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, and Edyk could not honestly quarrel with her superb if arrogant self-confidence. Neither was he ready to acknowledge defeat. “You know what the roads are like now that the Great Khan is dead, Johanna.”

“I’ll have Olan and Jaufre with me.”

“Jaufre!” he exclaimed. “Jaufre is going with you?”

“Yes.”

“I might have known,” he said bitterly.

Johanna looked surprised. “Certainly you might have known,” she agreed. “We grew up here together, the three of us children of foreigners. We have suffered the shunning of the people of the Son of Heaven all our lives. He wants to leave as badly as I do, and unlike you he is free to do so. And he is my best and oldest friend.” She looked at him and said tenderly, “Next to you.”

“Johanna.” He took both her hands in his and held them tightly. “I know I’ve never said the words, but I thought you knew. I love you, Johanna. I want to marry you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Don’t leave me here all alone.”

The sadness in her eyes was displaced again, this time by a twinkle. “And what would Blossom and Jade have to say to that?”

“But they love you!” he protested. “They always have.”

“As your friend, yes,” she said. “As a third wife?” She shook her head, and the corners of her mouth quirked upwards.

Watching the generous curve of her lips he felt again that sharp, fierce tug of desire, and this time he let it show in his eyes. “Is it the bride price?” he said roughly. “I’ll double it. Triple it, even.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to be bought,” she said gently. She did smile this time, and he felt his heart rate increase. “And Edyk, you know you don’t want to buy me.”

“Then come to me freely,” he said. “Come to me naked, I don’t care. I want you for my wife, Johanna.”

She shook her head again, a final, negating movement. He recognized the signs. Johanna had a kind of determined, implacable ruthlessness Edyk had never before encountered in a woman. In Johanna’s world, there were the people she cared for, and then there was everyone else, worthy of curiosity, certainly, perhaps even of courtesy….perhaps. The people she cared for he totted
them up mentally and even before one was dead could fit them all on the fingers of one hand were worthy of any sacrifice, mental, emotional, physical.

There has never been such a woman, he thought, looking at the gallant chin, the squared shoulders, the bronzed hair escaping its braid to curl riotously around her face, the eyes the color of the sky over Kesmur just before dawn. He let his eyes drift down her body, over the swell of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the long legs. “But I want you,” he said at last, hazarding his all in a voice gone thick with need. “Johanna, I want you.”

“Then take me,” she said huskily. His eyes met hers and he felt a shock of recognition at the desire he saw reflected there. “I want you, too. I need you. And I want something for myself. Something for my very own, to take away with me, to keep me warm on the long dark nights away from you.” He was frozen with disbelief and she took a step forward and caught at his hand. “Edyk, please,” she said, and raised his hand to her breast. “Please love me.”

He felt the rich weight of her breast, the nipple already hard beneath the palm of his hand, and pulled her into his arms, bringing his mouth down on hers so roughly her lip split. He tasted blood and lifted his head to see her eyes half-closed, her skin flushed, her lips parted. Her tongue came out to touch the cut, and with a groan he was unable to suppress cradled himself between her thighs, sliding his hands over her bottom to lift and rub her against him. She responded, eagerly if inexpertly, and such was his instantaneous need that he would have taken her then and there, on the floor, if she had not called to him in a voice soft and shaken with desire. “Edyk, Edyk, not here. Not here,” she repeated when he raised his head again, dazed, almost uncomprehending. She smoothed his hair back with one trembling hand. “Anyone could come in.”

He pulled away from her. “Where, then?” he demanded, unsmiling, the planes of his face hard and strained.

“The lake. The summerhouse.”

He looked at her, his eyes burning, his mouth compressed. “The summerhouse is two hours from here, Johanna.”

She smiled at him, a rich, bewitching smile of shared desire that promised him everything she had to give and more. “Then we’d better get started, hadn’t we?”

At her smile his body responded promptly and he cursed her. She laughed. He flung open the door and bellowed for Chiang, who appeared almost immediately, still with that carefully nurtured expression of total disinterest. “Saddle North Wind,” Edyk snapped, and turned back to Johanna.

She was still laughing. “North Wind?” she said. “You actually ride North Wind?”

“He’s the fastest horse in my stables and he doesn’t race again until next week,” he said grimly. When Chiang brought the horse around Edyk threw Johanna up on the pure white Arabian’s back without ceremony and vaulted up after her.

“The Shrimp!” Johanna said protestingly.

“The Shrimp! Great Khan! You rode the Shrimp up here? I’m surprised either of you finished the trip alive.” He pulled her back against him, and heard her gasp. “Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “You want to go to the summerhouse, fine, but we’ll ride the Wind there together, Johanna.” He kicked the white stallion into a canter. The Wind, a horse with a mind of his own, thought it should be a gallop and Edyk was only too willing to oblige.

All the same, it was the longest and most agonizing journey Edyk the Portuguese was ever to make. Once out of the city the road degenerated into a trail and became steep and rocky. North Wind of necessity slowed to a walk. Johanna leaned back in the cradle of Edyk’s arms, her body brushing against his with the Wind’s every step. By the time they reached the lake, hidden at the head of a small valley south of Chandu, Edyk was frantic with the need to get at her, to lay her skin bare to his eyes and his touch.

Johanna was no less frantic to let him. All the long way up to the lake, Edyk’s hands and lips were never still, and his voice, husky with desire, had whispered in between kisses and bites exactly what he was going to do to her, and how. When his feet hit the ground she hurled herself forward into his arms, almost knocking him over. She could feel him press into her belly and she rubbed up against him, moaning.

He slid his hands over her hips and held her still. He let his head fall back and drew a great rush of air into his lungs, holding it, and then letting it expel from his chest in an explosive rush. “Johanna, wait,” he said. Loving had always been enjoyable for him, sweet, a mutually-pleasing frolic. With Johanna the pleasure was so intense it was almost pain, a demon that had him by the scruff of the neck who wouldn’t let go until he had satisfied it, and he knew he must slow himself down or he would hurt her. He clenched his teeth and made an effort to speak intelligibly. “This is your first time, isn’t it?”

“You know it is,” she muttered, licking at the drop of sweat that had collected in the hollow of his throat, sliding her hands down his back. He caught her hands and she made a frustrated sound and tried to pull free. “I want to touch you, Edyk. Let me.”

He raised her chin with one hand and looked into the clear eyes that were now dark with thwarted desire. “I want to let you,” he said softly. “But I’m all sweaty from the ride, and so are you. Let’s swim first.”

“I don’t want to swim,” she said crossly, urging him forward again.

He gave a laugh that turned into a shaken groan. Again he caught her hands and said with difficulty, “Stop that. I don’t want to swim either, but we have to slow this down a little.” He looked into her eyes and whispered, “Trust me to do this right, Johanna.”

She closed her eyes tightly for a moment. When she opened them again the desire was still there but on a leash. “All right,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

He pulled her towards the lake. “We have to take off our clothes to swim, don’t we?”

She brightened, marched down to the water’s edge and without further ado pulled her tunic over her head. The setting sun played over her flushed skin, gilding her nipples. Her trousers followed her tunic and the sun touched the hair at the apex of her long legs to gold. The sight nearly drove him to his knees. “Johanna,” he said, his throat thick. “You’re as beautiful as I thought you would be. No. More beautiful than I ever dreamed.”

She reached for him with impatient hands, pulling his tunic over his head, finding the ties of his trousers and sliding them down. She stood back to look at him, from dark eyes to wide shoulders to strong arms to narrow hips to sturdy legs and back up to rampant, strutting desire. “So are you.”

She stretched out a hand to touch him. He grabbed it and led her into the lake. The water was lukewarm, but to their overheated skins still a shock. They smoothed it over their bodies with hands that shook. Johanna leaned forward to follow her hands with her lips, sipping the water from his skin from mouth to chest to thigh, to touch her tongue to the length of flesh upright and hot and hard against his belly.

He pulled her out of the lake and into his arms. Her skin, cool from the water, shivered delightfully against his and he bent his head and placed his lips to her breast. One hand
knotted in her hair, the other slipped between her legs to find her wet and hot, and with a groan he kissed his way down her body to bury his mouth in her. She cried out her pleasure, back arching like a bow, and would have fallen but for his arms steadying her.

“Johanna, Johanna,” he muttered against the soft skin of her belly. “I’m sorry, I can’t wait any longer.”

“Finally.” He almost laughed at the breathless exasperation in her voice, and forgot to when she slid to her knees, her mouth seeking out his, her hands exploring. He lifted her up and over him, and she arched her back as she felt the hardness of his desire probing the dark, wet recess of her femininity. “Please, Edyk,” she sobbed, clutching at his shoulders. “Please.”

“All right,” he said through gritted teeth, and pulled her down on him, so that for the first time she felt all that heat and pride pressed up inside her. If there was pain she never felt it. She came to climax at once, exploding with the pleasure of it, crying out in sheer delight, opening her eyes afterwards to see him staring at her, his eyes burning, his body still hard within her, and then she felt the cool grass against her spine as he laid her down.

He brushed the hair back from her face, kissed her, tiny, teasing kisses, holding himself inside her as the sweet shuddering of her body slackened. Then he began to move, long, deep strokes, pushing slowly all the way up, then pulling as slowly out, loitering both within her heated flesh and without, teasing her, taunting her, urging her on to renewed desire. She gasped at the return of feeling, staring up at him with wide astonished eyes and parted lips. He smiled. Her hips began to lift to his and he threw back his head and growled one word. “Yes.” When he drew almost all the way out she dug her nails into his back in protest and her inner muscles closed around him in a moist, fiery clasp. He groaned and began thrusting faster and harder and deeper. She wrapped her legs around him and met him thrust for thrust. When he plunged inside her for the last time she convulsed and cried out, a low, disbelieving sound joined to his own growled pleasure.

They lay speechless in the light of the rising moon for a long time afterward. When he had recovered he shifted his weight. Wordlessly she clutched him to her, arms, legs, self silently protesting, and he subsided, content to remain where he most longed to be.

Presently she stirred, and he raised his head to see her eyes sparkling in her flushed face, tendrils of hair clinging to her skin, her braid damp and tangled against her neck. In a voice lazy with pleasure she observed, “Now I know what Jade and Blossom have been giggling about for the last three years.”

“What!”

She said reasonably, “Well, we had to talk about something, and they can’t ride and I don’t do needlework, and all we had in common was you.”

He stared at her for a long, long moment. She grinned, and he threw back his head and shouted with laughter. She laughed with him, and the sound of it pealed across the still water of the lake and lingered beneath the boughs of the drooping willow trees.

Thinking of it afterwards, he supposed they must have eaten and slept, but all he could remember was the laughter and the loving, on the floor, in the grass, in the lake, sometimes they even made it as far as the bed. She gave him everything her smile had promised and more. His thoughts, his hands, the strands of his hair, the pores of his skin, his nostrils were filled with the taste and texture and smell of her. He memorized the straight, arrogant bridge of her nose, the sultry curve of her mouth, the vulnerable hollow of her throat, the sweet slope of her breast, the silken texture of her skin, the seductive smell of her femininity. She responded completely, openly, whole heartedly, without reservation or shyness, her astonished pleasure at each new sensual delight a reward in itself. He taught her the difference between loving and rutting, he seduced her sweetly and showed her how to return in kind, every skill he had learned from every woman he had ever loved he exerted to show her how much he cared, how much he needed, how much he wanted this one woman in his arms, in his life.

He could not bear to think of life without her, and so he didn’t think of it. “We will build a home in Kinsai,” he murmured into her hair late into their third night at the summerhouse. “We will have many sons, and we will teach them to bargain and to trade, and take them with us when we travel. I love you, Johanna.”

“I love you, Edyk,” she whispered.

His last thought before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep with her locked securely in his arms was, She’ll never leave me now.

But when he woke the next morning, she was gone.

So was North Wind.

—–

Spurring ahead of Jaufre and Olan, Johanna felt the sun on her face and the wind at her back and the smooth, perfect integration of muscle and bone of the white stallion gripped between her knees, and she laughed aloud for sheer joy. She pulled open the fastening at the end of the hated braid and shook her head, and her hair billowed out behind her like a gleaming bronze banner.

Behind her all debts were paid, all ties dissolved, the door of the gilded cage burst open, the cage empty and the imprisoned bird free to ride the wind. Behind her the ashes of her father were scattered to the four corners of Everything Under the Heavens. Behind her was Edyk and a life-long guarantee of love and security. Behind her was alienation and isolation.

With her she carried grief at her father’s death, and sadness at her parting from Edyk.

Ahead lay adventure, new lands, new friends, battles to be fought and won, fortunes to be won and lost, and ever a horizon beckoning, calling to her, enticing her to cross over and discover for herself what was on the other side.

She laughed again, and kicked North Wind into a gallop.

She was just sixteen.