Not all of the prisoners escaped the Chongqing jail, but most did, skittering like mice as they exited, casting a dozen different trails for the city guard to track down. Lian dropped the iron rod just outside the gate, dripping with the blood of two more guards, grabbed onto Mei's arm and followed him through the labyrinth of Chongqing's crowded streets. Somewhere along the way, Mei had grabbed her Shuli Go sword and handed it to her as they ran. For the first few blocks her heart was pounding as every set of eyes fell on her, each pair casting a thick weight of guilt, as if they knew the exact weight of the betrayal she had committed against her oaths and her order.
Eventually their run turned into a walk and their infamy into obscurity – just two more poor lovers making their way through the city. It was in the quiet thrum of the city's background noise that Lian finally thought to ask, "Do you know where you're going?"
"Where we're going?" Mei replied, turning back to her and flashing another grin. In her shame that smile had lost any effect on her. She didn't respond. "Yes," he continued, "I have a place we can hide for tonight."
It was almost night, and while Lian was glad she could see at least a sliver of the sun before it disappeared, the place Mei took her to hide from the guard was little better than the cell she'd left behind.
"A gambling den?"
Mei just smiled.
The owner of the den owed Mei a favor. Or more accurately, Mei owed the man money and a man trapped in the city dungeons was not likely to pay back any debts. Mei convinced the owner to keep them in the basement – a tiny room with a small fireplace and another makeshift bed. They roasted some meat of an indecipherable animal and ate a small bowl of rice together, but Lian didn't taste any of it. Even the fire provided no warmth. She kept replaying the escape in her mind, wondering if there could have been a way to avoid injuring the jailer. If escape was even the best approach.
"I'm sorry for making you hit him."
Lian just stared at Mei for a moment. She didn't blame him, even if he had prodded her. All her life she'd been taught that decisions are the one thing a person can own, and she'd made her decision. That it hung around her neck, seeming to grow ever-tighter, wasn't his fault or problem. It was hers.
"You're being too harsh on yourself."
"You would say that," she whispered. "Whatever cult or order you learned your magic from probably doesn't care much about a code, or duty."
"Your order doesn't exist anymore."
"That doesn't change the oaths I took. To uphold the law above all else."
Mei chuckled the chuckle of someone who knew far more than the other partner in a conversation. That, finally, broke Lian out of her laconic spell and into anger.
"You couldn't possibly understand. They weren't just oaths, they were my entire way of life."
"Ok…" he began, taking a deep breath before beginning his tirade. "Two points against that. First, again, your way of life was taken away from you by the Emperor. So maybe you should have re-evaluated that four years ago when the decree was issued."
Lian was about to interrupt but Mei held up a hand with two fingers extended.
"And two. Have you ever wondered if that's part of the reason the Shuli Go were disbanded in the first place?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your unwavering dedication to the law," his voice was loaded with sarcasm. "You know how many people the Shuli Go have killed? How many good people? Good people who were driven to do bad things, and were punished too harshly by the law? You ever think that maybe that's why places like Chongqing don't welcome any former Shuli Go? You think that's why there were riots and massacres at the schools afterwards? Because people were tired of a simplistic code that didn't leave any room for the realities of the world?"
At once Lian thought back to first meeting Mei, and the bandits who had captured him. She knew they had once had fathers and mothers, probably people who still loved them to that day. Yet she had gone straight to the legal solution to their banditry: their deaths. They had killed, and she had determined that they had to die. She'd thought it merciful to kill them quickly – up through the jaw, into the brain – but perhaps she could have tried to bargain with them first. Perhaps she could have saved Mei's life without needing to kill all those men. Perhaps she should have brought them in to the city alive – it may have even saved her from being arrested herself. Maybe, she finally considered, she should no longer be an absolute arbiter of justice at all.
"Fuck off," she responded, too angry to truly consider the last point, or Mei's questions. They were questions for another night, after the initial anger had subsided and she was not running for her life from the city guard.
Mei chuckled in reply and then stood up and dropped his pants.
"What the hell are you doing?" She asked, stunned and incredulous.
"Well, we have to have sex again…"
Lian stared at him. She wondered briefly if someone had damaged his brain with an iron rod.
"I repeat my question," she repeated. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Lian, please," he responded, almost as if speaking to a child, "tomorrow, heavens willing, I'm going to be on a ship to the Eastern Kingdoms. You, still wedded to the Imperial code, are not going to be joining me. This is likely the last time we ever see each other."
"And from that you decided… we should have sex?"
"Of course. Let's face it, Lian. I'm the most interesting man you've ever been with. And you, by far, are one of the most interesting women I've ever been with. Granted, most of my conquests have been paid, but still… this is an opportunity both of us will regret if we don't take it."
"You are insane."
"Come on Lian, admit it. It was pretty great the other night. Even you said you had fun."
"I am not sleeping with you."
Mei stared at her and she stared back, avoiding his midsection at all costs. He sighed, but not a sigh of defeat or acceptance, but again, a sound as if he was exasperated that he was going to have to explain something very obvious to her.
"Let me ask you something. The infertility thing, it's true, isn't it?"
"…For Shuli Go? Yeah."
"100% effective? No way to become pregnant?"
"Well there is that old wives tale that a Shei Chaste who's taken their vows of chastity could procreate with a Shuli Go."
"…Don't the vows of chastity remove all sexual function from the poor bastards?"
"Hence an old wives tale."
"Ok, ok. So you can't get pregnant. Shuli Go are immune to all human diseases, correct?"
"Yes."
"Your senses are immeasurably better than any human, you have twice the stamina, twice the strength, and a good deal of flexibility…"
"What's your point?"
"My point is that reputation you all have is completely understandable. And that's no reason not to fuck me silly right now."
Lian had to take a deep breath to keep from shouting. Her voice came out measured but seething. "You think I'm not going to fuck you because I'm worried I'll be called a whore? I've been called a thousand worse things in the last month. The fact that I hadn't fucked anyone for months before you doesn't seem to matter to the people who say 'whore' under their breath at me. The fact that until this day I hadn't broken a law more trivial than forgetting to pray on the date of my parents' death anniversary didn't matter to the people who shouted 'meddler' and 'freak' at me as I walked through their towns, solving their problems and protecting them from bandits. You think I'm worried about words? And that's why I won't fuck you? Think again."
Mei's face contorted into sorrow, directed at Lian and projected with the luminosity of his beautiful, intent face. "I know that's not why. I know exactly why. Because right now you think you've passed some milestone in your life you'll never be able to go back from. That today you went past some gate you can't climb back over, and that you're stuck on the other side. You're worried this side is darker, more dangerous. Unfamiliar. But I'll tell you something: this is the side most of us live on our whole lives, and we get by just fine. It's not easy, and the way isn't crystal fucking clear, but we muddle through and do alright. And I've got news for you Lian. Today wasn't the day you crossed that gate. That was four years ago. You've just been wandering like the rest of us, only you didn't know it. And trust me, it's easier if you wander with someone else by your side."
Whether it was the sympathetic voice or his good looks or her own exhaustion, Lian couldn't help but see some logic and truth in what he said. However one problem had presented itself, she realized.
"That was a pretty good speech," she told him, grinning herself just a bit, "but it's really hard to take it seriously when your cock is just flopping around there."
Mei's grin returned and, despite everything, the appeal of it had returned to Lian as well. He took off his top as well so he was standing entirely naked, and asked, "Would that make it better? I can say it all over again."
"Please don't."
"Ok, how about this then: you're gonna remember this day, Zhao Lian, despite my best efforts to ensure you don't. So you can do one of two things: you can be miserable all night long and remember this forever as the night you were miserable all day, broke the law, and then were miserable all night. Or you can remember this night in thirty years time – when you'll still be beautiful and youthful and I'll probably look a lot like my Great Aunt Mu – as the time you were miserable all day, broke the law, and then had that great, very pleasurable night with that handsome stranger who gallantly saved you from a lifetime of servitude in some heaven-forsaken country in the east."
Lian's smile grew in spite of herself, and somehow the sight of him, grinning and naked and confident beyond belief, rekindled the same desire she'd felt for him four nights earlier in that other dark, cramped enclosure.
"Do you know some sort of other magic? Some sort of libido stimulant?"
"Nothing more than good sense and good looks I'm afraid."
She looked at him for one more second, sighed, then took off her own top and began wriggling out of her trousers. "All right, get over here."
And Lian did remember that night's sex for many, many years.