She woke up to the sensation of jostling. Jostling and pain. Jostling and pain and cold.

She was shivering as the world around her moved up and down in erratic bounces, all the while her shoulders, wrists, ankles and knees screamed at her. Her first instinct was to curl up, which was when she realized she was bound: her feet and wrists tied together behind her, her shoulders wrenched into an awkward angle and her arms straight back. On her side, she was completely helpless to warm herself or protect herself from the motions that were tossing her back and forth.

She moaned as the first fragments of what had happened in the middle of the night came back to her alongside her current pains. “Zhao? You awake?” A voice asked through the fog of discomfort. As Lian opened her eyes, she connected the voice to its owner.

“Jiang.”

“Yeah.”

“Where…?” Lian asked before the cold took her voice away. She rolled her head up to look around and saw she was on the floor of a covered wagon, alongside wrapped bundles and closed barrels. A sliver of early morning light through the front of the wagon illuminated Jiang, sitting on one of the barrels, his head in his hands. It also revealed Lian’s situation in its entirety.

“Jiang,” she started, focusing on keeping her teeth from chattering.

“Yeah?”

“Why am I in here?”

Jiang peered through his fingers, making eye contact with Lian and slowly taking in her question. His eyes were loaded with regret, but not, Lian saw, for anyone but himself. When he replied, he did so quietly, almost at a whisper. “The Wamaians wanted you,” he said, burying his face into his palms again, “I told them you were a Shuli Go. They had a bunch of questions.”

“Uh-huh, ok,” she began quietly before turning up the volume. “And why exactly am I naked?” She shouted.

Jiang winced and recoiled, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. Lian knew instantly that the regret plastered on his face was the average, everyday regret of a bad hangover. "Please, don’t yell. I am not doing well this morning.”

“You’re not doing well?” She yelled even louder. “I’m naked and tied up in the back of a cart going Gods know where. Now tell me what this is about!”

“Ok, ok,” Jiang smoothed his temples, his voice still barely above a whisper, “just keep it down, ok? You really don’t want me to get sick in here, on top of everything else.”

“Jiang.”

“Yeah?”

“Naked. Why?”

“Well after I told them you were a Shuli Go they had all sorts of questions. And I answered them. And then we had a couple more drinks, and they had more questions. And I started telling them some of the things I’d learned over my years of dealing with you and the others like you. And one of the things I mentioned was that Shuli Go can generate heat all on their own… that is true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, for about five minutes. And we have to be awake to do it.”

“Oh. Yeah, there was a bit of a language breakdown by the end – I couldn’t understand their Imperial after enough drinks. And I was probably slurring a little bit by the end. You know how I get after a few. So some details may have been missed.”

“Cut me out of this position right now!” Lian shouted again, getting only the slightest satisfaction from the suffering it caused Jiang.

“I can’t!” He protested feebly. “First of all, I think if I got up from here my head would explode and then you’d have brain and skull all over you.” He took a deep breath as if that would stop his head from collapsing. “Second the Wamaians told me not to touch you. They don’t have sanctioned magic users there. They’re convinced if I touch you you’ll be able to take over my body and kill all of them.”

“Ok. First of all, they only think that because you told them that. And second of all, if you don’t at least cover me up with something in the next five seconds, the pain you’re feeling in your head is just a much duller version of the pain I’m going to be applying to your testicles once I get out of here.”

Jiang dropped his hands and stared at Lian.

“Don’t stare!”

He shook his head, the motion once again causing him a great deal of discomfort, before he responded, “I’m not staring! It’s just hard to think when my head feels like this.”

“Cover me up right now!”

“I don’t have anything to cover you with. All I have is my cloak,” he tugged at the thick wool cover he wore. “If I cover you with that, then I’ll be cold.”

Lian closed her eyes and let the cold and frustration tremble her body in equal measures. “Jiang!” She shouted.

“Ok, ok,” he finally relented, standing up and slowly removing his cloak before he fanned it over her and then deposited it on her form. It wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but it provided a thick insulation under which she could work her Shuli Go magic.

“Huono neitu” she intoned in ancient Imperial, focusing her attention inwards, towards her heart, which began to beat faster and faster, until a faint glow of heat began to radiate out from it. Her blood carried the heat across her body, and within moments she was no longer frozen, merely cold. She held the spell for a minute, before the rapid beat of her heart began to affect her breathing. She was just short of comfortable when she allowed the magic to dissipate, and she returned her attention to Jiang, who was rubbing his arms to stay warm and staring straight ahead at nothing.

Lian took a deep breath before she decided to press Jiang for more information. “What the hell is going on here Jiang?”

The merchant, unaccustomed to any unpleasantness beyond the aforementioned hangover, seemed genuinely scared by the situation. “I swear I don’t know. One of the Wamaians I’d met before. He’d traded me five gold a horse from a paddock where they weren’t worth ten silver each. He’d sent word saying he had more need for my ability to find valuable…things. Something about their King had sent them. I stopped paying attention once I remembered the profit on those horses.”

“Of course you did. So you have no idea what they want? What did you talk to them about last night?”

“Figures. They said they’d provide a hundred of their gold pieces before they even took delivery. An initial payment. Can you imagine that Zhao?” At the introduction of figures into the conversation, Jiang’s headache disappeared. “Do you know how big their gold pieces are? Almost twice the size of Imperial coin. Two hundred gold for nothing!”

“Do you at least know where we are?”

“Heading into Wamai I think.”

“You think?”

“I was still pretty drunk when they threw me in here,” Jiang went back to rubbing his temples. “I don’t even know how long we’ve been on the road.”

“No, you missed my point. You? Think? Ha!” She shouted as loud as she could.

Jiang shook his head before burping involuntarily and holding his hand to his mouth, visibly trying to keep his insides inside. Lian figured he’d had enough for that particular moment.

“Alright, we’re going to Wamai, which explains why it’s so cold,” she tried to analyze the situation, “and they haven’t killed us. So they must need us, or at least one of us, for something. How good is your Wamaian? Do you think you can bargain with them if it comes down to it?”

“It’s basic. I come to Three Roads once a year, and I’ve only ever come into Wamai twice. Never this far. They’re not fond of Imperial citizens.”

“I know…” Lian muttered, the warmth from her spell already leaking out the wool cloak just as the burn in her wrists, shoulders, and ankles reasserted itself. “I need to meditate. Give me ten minutes or so.”

“Take as long as you need.” Jiang’s eyes were closed, his hand still poised near his mouth. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Lian shut her eyes and focused on her breathing: the rhythm of it, then the sensation of each breath entering and leaving her lungs, the way the oxygen moved from her chest to each of the extremities, this flow repeated over and over within the rhythm until it set her mind into an active serenity, like an insect floating atop a peaceful, moving stream, cleaning itself in the water it strode upon. Into this breathing and motion, she relaxed her body, giving her joints and muscles respite and allowing her mind to focus on just how she could get out of this situation.

She never had the chance to get out, because the situation changed suddenly. In her meditation her senses remained finely tuned, and when the cart suddenly came to a stop, she snapped her eyes open. There was the din of a quiet conversation a few dozen feet from her location, to which she listened intently. Unfortunately, she could make nothing of the words as they were all spoken in Wamaian. However, she could tell that there was one voice, deep and thunderous, that was in charge.

“You recognize that voice?” She asked Jiang. He shook his head.

The voice approached the wagon along with dozens of feet, and Jiang’s eyes filled with fear. “Sorry, Zhao, really, about all this,” he said sheepishly as he stood over her and removed his cloak, “but I really don’t want to make them any angrier than they already are.”

Lian was going to quip back at Jiang, but was too focused on trying to see what was coming her way. The footsteps approached the back of the wagon and stopped for a moment before the cloth curtains were pulled open.

Cold, mountain sunlight poured in, temporarily blinding Lian before her eyes adapted and she saw the owner of the voice – a ceremoniously armored man with a thick moustache and greying eyebrows visible underneath his helmet – staring at her, his eyes wide with rage. It took a moment, but Lian realized the rage was not directed at her.

The man slammed the curtains shut, and at once his voice took on a louder, more violent tone. “Do you understand anything he’s saying?” Lian asked.

“A few pieces. He’s angry at them for something. The ones who brought us here.”

“Are they saying---“ but again Lian was cut off as the voices suddenly stopped and the curtain was again pulled open. One of the men who had captured Lian the night before approached and cut the ropes binding her. Her arms emerged into unexpected slack and the pain of having held the position flooded back through her shoulders and knees. She released an involuntary grunt, and moved her limbs back in front of her slowly, letting the pain come to her in waves.

The man who cut her free backed away, his head bowed, and a few seconds later another one approached with her garments and sword neatly folded in his arms. He too approached with his head lowered, before placing the articles beside her on the wagon floor. Lian watched the men coolly, but didn’t move to touch the clothing. Instead she locked onto the face of the leader, who was the only one looking at her. “I guess thank you is in order?” She asked rhetorically, not expecting him to understand her.

“No, an apology,” the mustached leader replied through a thick Wamaian accent. “My men behaved very poorly. Please, accept my apology on behalf of our King.”

Lian quickly looked up at Jiang, whose face indicated a level of surprise almost equal to Lian’s own. Wamaians were one of the more isolationist kingdoms that surrounded the Central Empire, and meeting one that spoke enough Imperial to carry on a conversation was rare.

“I think I’ll hold off accepting that apology until you explain what the hell is going on,” Lian said as she sat up and moved her arms in short circles, loosening the muscles in her shoulders and arms. She did not move to take her clothes.

“Yes, of course. I will explain everything. With food. But please, you must dress, it is improper for me and my men to see you.”

The man approached and closed the curtain again, dropping Lian into darkness. Lian picked up the clothes and began dressing as Jiang spoke, relief endowed in his voice. “Well they probably don’t mean to kill us if they gave you that sword back.”

Lian said nothing, but dressed quickly, and placed her sword – a cheap replacement for a traditional Shuli Go blade, mostly dull and flimsy – into its traditional position on her back. She moved to open the curtain again, but at that moment the wagon started off, resuming the bouncing that had awoken Lian. She parted the curtain just enough to see the mustached leader standing over one of his subordinates.

The subordinate knelt and held his right arm out in front of himself. He stared forward, vacant, and it wasn’t until the mustached man unsheathed his sword that Lian knew what was happening.

The subordinate’s hand was on the ground in a split second, the leader’s blade barely bloodied and the incision a clean, even cut, just below the wrist joint. Even with all her training, Lian could not have done better.

She heard Jiang swallowing in terror just behind her, his eyes on the sight of the hand and subordinate as they diminished into the distance. “Somehow I don’t feel safe quite yet,” Lian remarked.