Lady Earthquake

Lady Earthquake Chapter 52

恭喜发财 

That's wishing you happiness and prosperity in this, the Year of the Gold Rat. As a holiday greeting, I am also dropping an extra chapter today. There aren't too many more :( but I want to thank you all for sticking with this 'love letter to Chinese dramas'. 

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As a compromise, and to delay their parting for a few minutes more, Sun-Sin accepted An-Xia's help with the last part of his preparations. "You can be my adjutant again," he said, handing her his kerchief.

"Just like before...." she said, tying it around his throat. Stepping back to look at the set of his shoulders, she flicked some lint off the Hawk's talons.

Sun-Sin captured her hand against his chest. "Not quite like before. When I think of all the chances I had and wasted...."

He curved his other hand around the back of her neck and drew her in for a long, hungry kiss. An-Xia's heart wanted nothing more than to stay there mingling their heartbeats but her common sense could not be silenced, throttle it as she might.

"You have to go," she murmured, hiding her face against his shoulder. "Your father will be waiting."

"The things I am thinking about my father at this moment are not lawful to be uttered...and unfilial."

"My own thoughts of the timing of this summons are not very loyal."

"What?"

She shook back her hair and looked up into his heated eyes. "I admit it. I do not want to be parted from you now."

"Well, then...." Sun-Sin reached for the kerchief she had just tied but she grasped his hand and drew it down. "I suppose you are right. For the moment."

"Are you pouting?" she asked.

"Me? No. Maybe. A little."

Stepping away, she picked up his sword from the rack. "I see you are still borrowing this."

"It is a delight to me to see it in your hand again. All the same, if I may continue to borrow it, I would be most grateful."

"Of course you may." She looked the weapon over with the eyes of a professional. "Did you replace the covering on the hilt? It looks different."

"It came loose. I made a new one. Tell me, An-Xia, all the times you carried this, all the times you used it, did you ever, well, hear anything odd?"

"Hear anything? It makes a pleasant sound when you swish it through the air. Is that what you mean?"

"So never a 'ah' or 'hah'?" He saw her attention turn inward as though in pursuit of an elusive memory.

"Not...not when I was awake."

"What about when you were asleep? Did you have dreams about this sword?"

"When my grandfather first showed it to me. When I was a child. It seemed like something out of an old tale, the tale of the Jade Emperor's female guards and the Thunder God."

"The Eighty-Eighth Maiden?"

"You heard it too?"

"Nanny Jan told it to me, I think. Nannies always have a fund of those types of tales, guaranteed to soothe a restless night."

"My grandfather did not tell me many such stories. But this one I heard many times. I think it might be why I chose to learn to fight. I wanted to be the Eighty-Eighth Maiden."