My Beautiful Enemy (5 page)

“West, too.” Then he surprised himself by telling something close to the truth. “Kashmir is my eventual destination.”

“Lucky you.”

“Have you been to Kashmir?” And was that where he might have met her?

She shook her head. “No, but I’ve heard it’s a nice place.”

There was an odd wistfulness to her voice, the way an invalid stuck at home might speak of the world outside. She lifted the wine and drank as she did before, her fragile-looking wrist remarkably steady as she suspended the heavy jug above her mouth.

He swallowed. There was nothing retiring, modest, or pliant about her. Yet for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he found her blatantly, ragingly feminine, like a pearl at the tip of a knife.

She set down the jug. Their gazes met—and held. She had been wary and hostile, but now she was tense in a way that seemed not entirely related to her earlier distrust of him.

Pushing away what was left of her soup, she asked, “Where are
you
from?”

She knew, the thought came to him. She knew that he had seen through her disguise.

“Persia.” He gave his standard answer—Parsi was one of his strongest languages.

“You are far from home.”

There was an accent to her Turkic, and not a Kazakh one—the only thing Kazakh about her, as far as he could see, was her clothes. Perhaps Turkic wasn’t her mother tongue. But so
many different variations of the language were spoken over such a large territory by so many different people, it was quite possible that she hailed from an area or a tribe unfamiliar to him.

“Some of us are not meant to grow old where we are born,” he said. “You, my friend, are you also far from home?”

A shadow passed over her face, something almost like pain, as if home was so distant as to be beyond reach. Then she shrugged. “Home is wherever I am.”

Oddly enough, he felt an answering pang of longing. Not so much for the mortar and bricks of home, but for the idea of it, that safe, happy place he had once known. “Where will you be making your home next?”

She thought for a moment. “Kashgar.”

He would reach Yarkand much more conveniently by turning south a hundred miles or so before Kashgar and following the course of the Yarkand River upstream. But he found himself reluctant to contemplate that faster path. He did not want them to part so soon, still strangers.

“Perhaps we can share the road for a few days, if you are traveling alone.”

After having traversed the territory all the way to the Altai Mountains and back, another hundred miles or two hardly mattered.

If, that was, she agreed to it.

Surely she must understand the average criminal would gravitate toward an easier quarry. And she was a poor target if one were out for gold: Her blue tunic was frayed at the cuffs and the hem, the embroidery along the lapels long ago soiled into squiggles of greasy black.

She popped the last piece of bread into her mouth. A desire to kiss her, bread crumbs and all, shot through him like a bullet.

“Well, the road does get lonely,” she said.

She did not move—or at least he could swear she did not
move. Yet all at once she twirled a palm-size grape leaf by its stem. It was early yet in the year; the vine that spread on the trellis overhead was not weighed down by ripe clusters of fruit. He would have to stand with an arm stretched to pluck a leaf. Yet she had done it while remaining perfectly still in her seat.

As a warning, it was far more sobering than a rattling of the dagger. She was stating, quite plainly, that she could cut his throat before he even knew what happened.

He smiled, thoroughly impressed. “So you will permit me to accompany you?”

She, too, smiled, now that she had established she needed barely lift a finger to take his life—a smile as sharp as her blade. “Yes, do come along.”

Y
ing-ying would like to think that she spoke as a smug cat, looking forward to toying with a foolish mouse. But the truth was, short of actually incapacitating the Persian, she had run out of deterrents to lob at him.

Other than Master Gordon, in her life she had dealt with only three men who mattered: Da-ren, who kept a reproachful distance from her; Shao-ye, Da-ren’s son, who lusted after her; and Lin, who would kill her the moment he located her.

The Persian was a completely new experience, a man who found her deadliness interesting, rather than dismaying.

She had taken note of him as soon as she had walked into the vine-shaded courtyard: He occupied the seat she’d have chosen—in a corner, nothing but walls behind him, good view of the other diners and of the road beyond. And instead of a
dopa
, the embroidered, domelike cap that was more popular among the Muslims of Chinese Turkestan, he had on a turban, a rather dramatic one at that, black with accents of gold, in contrast against his flowing white robe.

But she’d have remarked his green, steady eyes even if he
had been dressed in rags. Though his gaze seemed to stray no further than his jug of wine, she knew instinctively that he was fully aware of everything that went on about him. And as she sensed the danger in him, the stillness that belied his strength, he grew more watchful of her, observing her minutely without seeming to do so.

She must have grown accustomed to all manners of non-Chinese in her years beyond the westernmost pass of the Great Wall. She found nothing to fault in his deep-set green eyes, his high cheekbones, or even the full beard that obscured most of the lower half of his face—and she had always thought excessive facial hair barbaric.

He had beautiful balance as he walked, tall and lithe. And when he sat down opposite her, all wide shoulders and cool assurance, she felt as if she had awakened from a very long hibernation, perhaps for the first time in her life.

The rustle of the grapevine on the trellis, the cool, green-flecked light that filtered through the canopy of new leaves, the scent of lamb skewers sizzling over hot coals—she had stopped at many, many such dusty roadside eateries in her travels, but now the place pulsed with color and sensation.

Too much color, too much sensation, like an all-too-vivid dream that wouldn’t let her wake up.

As she wiped her soup bowl with the last morsel of her bread, he commented mildly, “My friend has a manly appetite.”

She sneered at him. “Your friend has manly everything.”

He laughed, and not in mockery, but with a mirth that was full of genuine delight.

She rose to her feet, perplexed and ever more suspicious, and resolved to be rid of him within the half hour. “Come. The road beckons.”

He left enough coins on the table to pay for both their meals and stood up unhurriedly. “Ah yes, the heroic gallop of friendship. I can scarcely wait.”

S
he rode a handsome, fleet bay stallion. Leighton followed three lengths behind, watched her beautiful posture and fluid motion, and speculated how someone who didn’t seem to have two pennies to rub together managed to acquire such exquisite horseflesh.

How quickly things changed. This morning he had been a man with, essentially, no concerns—he was young, he was free, and he did not doubt his ability to reach India quickly and safely. And now he had taken up with the deadliest girl north of the Himalayas.

Midafternoon she led them through a defile that opened into a green valley with a shallow but wide stream running through the center—they were in the foothills of Tian Shan, the Heavenly Mountains, and it was the season of snow melt.

Another few miles along the stream and she reined in her horse. “We had better stop while there is still daylight. You want to hunt us something, friend?”

An ironic inflection on that last word. He dismounted. “Any preferences?”

“That you do it without using a firearm. We don’t want bandits in the mountains to hear you.”

He didn’t ask how she knew he had firearms—he carried a revolver on his person and a rifle that had been taken apart in his saddlebag. “You have a spear you can lend me?”

“No.”

Fortunately he still had a slingshot. Close to sunset he returned with a brace of wild hares. She already had a fire going and was drinking tea out of a metal cup. The beverage was clear in color and light in fragrance, nothing like the salted milk tea the locals consumed.

“What kind of tea is that?”

“An infusion of snow chrysanthemum from the Kunlun Mountains. They grow at a height of ten thousand feet.”

The Kunlun Mountains were four hundred miles to the south, on the other side of the Takla Makan Desert. “My friend has refined tastes.”

“Some of us are born for luxury.” She tilted her chin toward the hares. “You will prepare and serve those?”

“Of course.”

He skinned and gutted the hares, and rubbed them down with the salt and ground black pepper that he carried in his saddlebag. Then he constructed a makeshift turning spit and put the hares to roast.

“Would you like some?” He offered her a bag of dried apricots as they sat around the fire.

“Thank you,” she said. “But, no.”

On reflection he supposed it was possible for him to hide some sort of narcotics in the apricots, which would probably be the only way a man could bypass her lethal skills.

He ate several of the apricots, which were wonderfully sweet. She watched him, her thoughts hidden.

The sun had nearly disappeared below the horizon. Temperatures were dropping fast. He leaned forward and turned the spit. The hares glistened; a few drops of fat fell into the fire and sizzled. When he sat back she was still watching him.

Hope leaped, in spite of his tendency to suppress such things as hope.

“What is a Persian doing in these parts,” she asked, “far from home?”

“I had goods to sell.” Again his standard answer.

She took another sip of her tea. “Where are those goods—and where is your caravan?”

Made of nothing but peril and skepticism, this girl. “My goods I have sold—and not all goods need a caravan to transport.”

She smiled slightly. “You know, if I were a merchant at the end of a successful trip, I would not invite a stranger as a travel companion. I would fear for my coins.”

In the flickering, warm-copper light, her features were pure, flawless. With a start he realized that she was almost unbearably lovely, now that it was too dark to be distracted by the grime on her face. “But you are not a stranger to me—I cannot remember where I have seen you, that’s all.”

With a metallic hiss, she pulled a sword out of the bedroll to her side. “And you would risk your gold to satisfy such a silly curiosity?”

The sword was not a curved scimitar, but straight and slender. Flames danced upon the steel, beautiful and deadly at once.

Another warning. But he only smiled. “With a friend like you by my side, who would dare touch my gold?”

“Exactly. Leaving me to rob you blind.”

“For a master thief, you don’t seem to have prospered.” He lifted his waterskin and took a long swig.

“If thieves knew how to handle money, they wouldn’t be thieves,” she said quite reasonably. “I, for one, am much too fond of the brothels of Kashgar.”

He nearly choked on the water he was drinking. Spitting it out, he looked her up and down, this time openly. No, he was not mistaken. If she were a man, then he was a chimpanzee in London’s zoological garden.

“Aren’t you too young for such places?” She was what? Eighteen? Nineteen?

She smiled toothily, all knowing, predatory gorgeousness. “No one ever asks for your age. Only your money. The girls there would fuck my horse if he trotted in with enough gold.”

He gaped at her, speechless.

“Perhaps you can treat me, friend.” She leaned back slightly and arched her eyebrow. “I’d like to take two girls to bed at once.”

He recovered his voice. “Would you now?”

“Every night, it’s all I can think about before going to sleep,” she answered smoothly. “So what say you? I escort
you and your gold safely to Kashgar and you buy me the night of my dreams.”

His life hadn’t been so interesting in long, long years. “I will,” he said, “as long as I get to watch.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash as she sheathed her sword. “Agreed. I’ll bet you can learn a thing or two. The girls, they go wild for me.”

When the hares were done, they ate with knives and fingers. And throughout their meal, he was conscious of her gaze. She looked at him often, and did not bother to look away when he caught her at it, as if their positions were reversed and
he
was the most unlikely person
she
had ever encountered in her life.

He could not recall the last time he’d felt so completely alive.

Y
ing-ying could not recall the last time she was so unsettled, she who led a hunted life, no less.

Sometimes it surprised her to remember that she had not spent most of her days riding from one end of Chinese Turkestan to the other. That until a few years ago, she had not only never stepped out of the great imperial city of Peking, but almost never stepped out of her own front door.