Once he was gone, Lian continued to feign sleep, slowly counting to one hundred in her head before she moved.
She had been sleeping in his tent since the night of the Chinese raid, though they had not been intimate that first night. He had given her the bed, and had slept next to the flaps of the tent, letting her know that no one would enter the tent without his knowledge. His protective gesture had been touching; and no less so when, a few hours later, she had prodded him with her foot and found him completely unresponsive. He had become her protector, but he did so without making her feel like property.
She had power over him, whether he realized it or not, and as she rose and dressed, she wondered what she was going to do with that power. A few weeks ago, the answer would have been clear, but she found her resolve wavering. Don’t be a silly girl, she thought angrily as she pushed back the flaps of the tent and stepped outside.
She wandered toward the heart of the caravan, taking note of the increase in activity around the cluster of ger where the caravan masters were quartered. The Khagan and his entourage might move today.
A clump of women came toward her, and Lian recognized Second Wife and her attendants, and she scuttled around the nearest tent, trying to avoid being seen. If spotted, Jachin would insist on hearing any gossip, especially anything about the Chinese raid.
She just couldn’t bear to talk about it. Not with that woman.
The women’s voices followed her, and her heart started to tremble in her chest. They couldn’t be following her, could they? She was being irrational, but that didn’t stop her from quickening her pace and changing her course several times. And when she spotted the flag raised over Master Chucai’s tent, she quickly made a decision and altered her course for his ger.
Jachin would never follow her in there.
She slapped the open flap of Chucai’s tent and waited impatiently, glancing over her shoulder. There was no response, and so she slapped it again, more firmly this time, and jumped back as one of Chucai’s servants suddenly appeared in the ger’s open mouth.
“Oh,” she started. “I... I am here to see Master Chucai,” she finished.
The servant stared at her, one eyebrow partially raised, and made no move to stand aside. His rigid posture made it clear that a shift in power had occurred. Rumors of her relationship with Gansukh were already circulating, and Chucai’s servants were taking advantage of the gossip to remind her that there was a difference between being the slave of a powerful man like Master Chucai and being the kept woman of a horse rider.
Lian sucked in a large breath, using the motion to draw herself up to her full height and to throw out her chest. “At his command,” she amended, with more than a little of regal haughtiness in her voice.
She should have come to see Chucai earlier, but there was no sense in castigating herself about that now.
The servant nodded without blinking, and stepped aside. She swept past him, flicking her hair with mock distain as she did so. Playing her old role, while part of her was certain the man would see right through it. He could see she was filled with nothing but doubt.
“Ah, Lian.”
Chucai’s traveling home was a replica of his small office at Karakorum. He was seated behind a wooden desk, working by candlelight. His travel trunks sat on one side of the ger, neatly arranged in a row; on the opposite wall, his long fur coat hung on a collapsible wooden rack.
“Sit down,” he said, waving a hand toward the stool next to the trunks. If he was surprised to see her, he gave no sign.
Lian sat, placing her hands, right over left, on her lap. She waited while he finished reading the scroll. He read, untroubled and unhurried by her presence, and she did not fidget. Fidgeting was for nervous girls, for scared women who were not in control of their lives. Squirming was what bored slaves did, and she was neither.
“It is a curious situation, is it not?” he asked as he began to roll the scroll up.
“Yes, my Master,” she replied immediately, her eyes downcast. Mainly so he would not spy any of the confusion and frantic wonderment she was experiencing.
“On one hand, I think you may have overcommitted yourself to your assigned task; on the other, I admire the security it has provided you.”
She knew he had seen the terse exchange at the entrance of his ger, and though he wouldn’t admit to having instructed his servant to act that way, Lian knew Master Chucai well enough to read the underlying message in both his words and his servant’s attitude. “Yes, my Master,” she breathed, carefully stressing the last two words without seeming to grovel.