Chen was waiting for Haavikko when he came out of the Officers’ Mess. He hung back, careful not to let the young Hung Mao see him even though he could see that he was the worse for drink. He smiled bitterly. Yes, that was in the file, too, along with all the brawling, the whoring, the gambling and all the other derelictions of duty. But that was as nothing beside the fact of his treason. Chen felt a shiver of anger ripple through him and let his hand rest momentarily on the handle of his knife. Well, he would cut a confession from him if he had to, piece by tiny piece. Because if Haavikko was behind the butchery at Helmstadt...
He stopped, moving in to the side. Up ahead of him Haavikko had paused, leaning against the wall unsteadily, as if about to be sick. But when a fellow officer approached him, he turned quickly, his movements exaggerated by drunkenness, letting out a string of obscenities. The officer put his hands out before him in apology, backing away, then turned and walked off, shaking his head.
Chen felt the bile rise again. Haavikko was a disgrace. To think what he might have become. He shook his head, then began to move again, keeping the man in sight.
Twenty levels down he watched as Haavikko fumbled with the combination to his door, then slumped against the wall, making three attempts at it before he matched his eye to the indented pad. Then Chen was moving quickly, running the last few ch’i as the door began to iris closed.
Haavikko swung round, his bleary eyes half-lidded, his jacket already discarded, as Chen came through into the room.
‘What the f*ck... ?’
Chen had drawn his knife. A big knife with a wickedly curved blade that glinted razor-sharp in the overhead lights. ‘Haavikko? Axel Haavikko?’
He saw the flicker of fear in the young man’s eyes as he staggered back and almost fell against the bed.
‘Wha... what d’you want?’ The words were slurred, almost incoherent.
‘I think you know...’ Chen began, moving closer. But suddenly Haavikko was no longer awkward, his movements no longer slow and clumsy. Chen found himself thrown backward by the man’s charge, the knife knocked from his hand by a stinging blow. But before Haavikko could follow up, Chen had rolled aside and jumped to his feet again, his body crouched in a defensive posture.
Haavikko was facing him, crouched, his eyes wide, watching Chen’s every movement, all pretence at drunkenness peeled from him. He swayed gently, as if about to attack, but it was clear to Chen that that was not Haavikko’s intention. He was waiting for Chen to go for his knife, which lay just behind him by the door. It was what he himself would have done. Chen gave the slightest nod, suddenly respectful of the man’s abilities. No one, not even Karr, had ever been fast enough to knock his knife from his hand.
‘Well?’ Haavikko said, clearly this time, the word formed like a drop of acid. ‘What do you want?’
Chen lifted his chin in challenge. ‘I’ll tell you what I want. I want answers.’
Haavikko laughed bitterly. ‘Answers? What do you mean?’ But there was a slight hesitation in his eyes, the slightest trace of fear.
‘I think you know more than you’re letting on. I think you’ve done one or two things you’re ashamed of. Things that aren’t even on your file.’
Chen saw how he blanched at that, how the skin about his eyes tightened.
‘Who sent you? Was it Liu Chang?’
‘Liu Chang? Who’s that?’
Haavikko snorted in disgust. ‘You know damned well who I mean. Liu Chang, the brothel keeper. From the Western Isle. Did he send you? Or was it someone else?’
Chen shook his head. ‘You’ve got me wrong, Lieutenant. I’m a soldier, not a pimp’s runner. You forget where we are. This is Bremen. How would a pimp’s runner get in here?’
Haavikko shook his head. ‘I’d credit him with anything. He’s devious enough, don’t you think?’
Who? he wondered, but said, ‘It’s Chen... Captain Kao Chen.’
Haavikko laughed sourly, then shook his head. ‘Since when did they make a Han captain?’
Slowly Chen’s hand went to his jacket.
‘Try anything and I’ll break your neck.’
Chen looked back at him, meeting his eyes coldly, his fingers continuing to search his pocket, emerging a moment later with his pass. He threw it across to Haavikko, who caught it deftly, his eyes never leaving Chen’s face.
‘Back off... Two paces.’
Chen moved back, glancing about him at the room. It was bare, undecorated. A bed, a wardrobe, a single chair. A picture of a girl in a frame on the tiny bedside table. Haavikko’s uniform tunic hung loosely on the door of the wardrobe where he had thrown it.
Haavikko looked at the pass, turned it in his hand, then threw it back at Chen, a new look – puzzlement, maybe curiosity – in his eyes.
Chen pocketed the pass. ‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you, Haavikko? Out of your depth.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, I think you do. Your friends have dumped you in it this time. Left you to carry the can.’
Haavikko laughed scathingly. ‘Friends? I’ve no friends, Captain Kao. If you’ve read my file, you’ll know that much about me.’
‘Maybe. And maybe that’s just another pose – like the pretence of drunkenness you put on for me earlier.’
Haavikko breathed deeply, unevenly. ‘I saw you earlier, when I went into the mess. When you were still there when I came out, I knew you were following me.’
‘Who were you meeting?
‘I wasn’t meeting anyone. I went in there to find something out.’
Chen narrowed his eyes. ‘You weren’t meeting Fest, then? I note he entered the mess just before you. You used to serve with him, didn’t you?’
Haavikko was silent a moment, then he shook his head. ‘I wasn’t meeting Fest. But, yes, I served with him. Under General Tolonen.’
‘And under Major DeVore, too.’
‘I was ensign to DeVore for a month, yes.’
‘At the time of Minister Lwo’s assassination.’
‘That’s so.’
Chen shook his head. ‘Am I to believe this crap?’
Haavikko’s lips formed a sneer. ‘Believe what you like, but I wasn’t meeting Fest. If you must know, I went in there to try to overhear what he was saying.’
‘Are you blackmailing him?’
Haavikko bristled. ‘Look, what do you want? Who are you working for, Captain Kao?’
Chen met the challenge in his eyes momentarily, then looked about the room again. Something had been nagging at him. Something he didn’t realize until he noticed the lieutenant’s patch on the tunic hanging from the cupboard door. Of course! Haavikko had been the same rank these last eight years. But why? After all, if he was working for Ebert...
Chen looked back at Haavikko, shaking his head, then laughed quietly.
Haavikko had tensed, his eyes narrowed, suspicious. ‘What is it?’
But Chen was laughing strongly now, his whole manner suddenly different. He sat down on the bed, looking up at Haavikko. ‘It’s just that I got you wrong. Completely wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought you were working for Ebert.’
‘Ebert! That bastard!’ Then realisation dawned on Haavikko. ‘Then...’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Gods! And I thought...’
The two men stared at each other a moment, their relief – their sudden understanding – clouded by the shadow of Ebert.
‘What did he do?’ Chen asked, getting up, his face serious, his eyes filled with sympathy. ‘What did he do to you, Axel Haavikko, to make you destroy yourself so thoroughly?’
Haavikko looked down, then met Chen’s eyes again. ‘It’s not in the file, then?’
Chen shook his head.
‘No. I guess it wouldn’t be. He’d see to that, wouldn’t he?’ He was quiet a moment, staring at Chen sympathetically. ‘And you, Kao Chen? What did he do to make you hate him so?’
Chen smiled tightly. ‘Oh, it was a small thing. A matter of face.’ But he was thinking of his friend, Pavel, and of his death in the attack on the Overseer’s House. That too he set down against Hans Ebert.
‘Well... What now, Kao Chen? Do we go our own ways, or is our hatred of him strong enough to bind us?’
Chen hesitated, then smiled and nodded. ‘Let it be so.’
The rest of the Ping Tiao leaders had gone straight to the cruiser, clearly unnerved at being out in the open, but the woman, Ascher, held back, stopping at the rail to look out across the open mountainside. DeVore studied her a moment, then joined her at the rail.
‘The mountains. They’re so different...’
He turned his head, looking at her. She had such finely chiselled features, all excess pared from them. He smiled, liking what he saw. There was nothing gross, nothing soft about her: the austere, almost sculpted beauty of her was accentuated by the neat cut of her fine, jet-black hair, the trimness of her small, well-muscled body. Such a strong, lithe creature she was, and so sharp of mind. It was a pity. She was wasted on Gesell.
‘In what way different?’
She continued staring outward, as if unaware of his gaze. ‘I don’t know. Harder, I suppose. Cruder. Much more powerful and untamed than they seem on the screen. They’re like living things...’
‘They’re real, that’s why.’
‘Yes...’ She turned her head slightly, her breath curling up in the cold air.
He inclined his head towards the cruiser. ‘And you... you’re different, too. You’re real. Not like them. This, for instance. Something in you responds to it. You’re like me in that. It touches you.’
Her eyes hardened marginally, then she looked away again. ‘You’re wrong. We’ve nothing in common, Shih Turner. Not even this. We see it through different eyes. We want different things. Even from this.’ She shivered, then looked back at him. ‘You’re a different kind of creature from me. You served them, remember? I could never do that. Could never compromise myself like that, whatever the end.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know.’
He smiled. ‘Have it your way. But remember this when you go away from here, Emily Ascher. I know you. I can see through you, like ice.’
She held his gaze a moment longer, proudly, defiantly, then looked back at the mountains, a faint smile on her lips. ‘You see only mirrors. Reflections of yourself in everything. But that’s how your kind think. You can’t help it. You think the world’s shaped as you see it. But there’s a whole dimension you’re blind to.’
‘Love, you mean? Human understanding? Goodness?’ He laughed, then shook his head. ‘Those things don’t exist. Not really. They’re illusions. Masks over the reality. And the reality is like these peaks – it’s beautiful, but it’s also hard, uncompromising and cold, like the airless spaces between the stars.’
She was silent a moment, as if thinking about what he had said. Then she turned back to him. ‘I must go. But thank you for letting me see this.’
DeVore smiled. ‘Come again. Any time you want. I’ll send my cruiser for you.’
She studied him a moment, then turned away, the smallest sign of amusement in her face. He watched her climb the steps and go inside. Moments later he heard the big engines of the cruiser start up.
He turned and looked across towards the snow-buried blister of the dome. Lehmann was standing by the entrance, bare-headed, a tall, gaunt figure even in his bulky furs. DeVore made his way across, while behind him the big craft lifted from the hangar and turned slowly, facing the north.
‘What is it?’
‘Success,’ Lehmann answered tonelessly. ‘We’ve found the combination.’ He let his hand rest on Lehmann’s arm momentarily, turning to watch the cruiser rise slowly into the blue, then turned back, smiling, nodding to himself. ‘Good. Then let’s go and see what we’ve got.’
Minutes later he stood before the open safe, staring down at the contents spread out on the floor at his feet. There had been three compartments to the safe. The top one had held more than two hundred bearer credits – small ‘chips’ of ice worth between fifty and two hundred thousand yuan apiece. A second, smaller compartment in the centre had contained several items of jewellery. The last – making up the bulk of the safe’s volume – had held a small collection of art treasures: scrolls and seals and ancient pottery.
DeVore bent down and picked up one of the pieces, studying it a moment. Then he turned and handed it to Lehmann. It was a tiny, exquisitely sculpted figure of a horse. A white horse with a cobalt-blue saddle and trappings, and a light brown mane and tail.
‘Why this?’ Lehmann asked, looking back at him.
DeVore took the piece back, examining it again, then looked up at Lehmann. ‘How old would you say this is?’
Lehmann stared back at him. ‘I know what it is. It’s T’ang dynasty – fifteen hundred years old. But that isn’t what I meant. Why was it there, in the safe? What were they doing with it? I thought only the Families had things like this these days.’
DeVore smiled. ‘Security has to deal with all sorts. What’s currency in the Above isn’t always so below. Certain Triad bosses prefer something more... substantial, shall we say, than money.’
Lehmann shook his head. ‘Again, that’s not what I meant. The bearer credits – they were payroll, right? Unofficial expenses for the eight garrisons surrounding the Wilds.’
DeVore’s smile slowly faded. Then he gave a short laugh. ‘How did you know?’
‘It makes sense. Security has to undertake any number of things which they’d rather weren’t public knowledge. Such things are costly precisely because they’re so secretive. What better way of financing them than by allocating funds for non-existent weaponry, then switching those funds into bearer credits?’
DeVore nodded. That was exactly how it worked.
‘The jewellery likewise. It was probably taken during the Confiscations. I should imagine it was set aside by the order of someone fairly high up – Nocenzi, say – so it wouldn’t appear on the official listings. Officially it never existed, so no one has to account for it. Even so, it’s real and can be sold. Again, that would finance a great deal of secret activity. But the horse...’
DeVore smiled, for once surprised by the young man’s sharpness. The bearer credits and jewellery: those were worth, at best, two billion yuan on the black market. That was sufficient to keep things going for a year at present levels. In the long term, however, it was woefully inadequate. He needed four, maybe five times as much simply to complete the network of fortresses. In this respect the horse and the two other figures – the tiny moon-faced buddha and the white jade carving of Kuan Yin – were like gifts from the gods. Each one was worth as much as – and potentially a great deal more than – the rest of the contents of the safe combined.
But Lehmann was right. What were they doing there? What had made Li Shai Tung give up three such priceless treasures? What deals was he planning to make that required so lavish a payment?
He met the albino’s eyes and smiled. ‘I don’t know, Stefan. Not yet.’
He set the horse down and picked up the delicate jade-skinned goddess, turning it in his hands. It was perfect. The gentle flow of her robes, the serene expression of her face, the gentle way she held the child to her breast: each tiny element was masterful in itself.
‘What will you do with them?’
‘I’ll sell them. Two of them, anyway.’
Yes, he thought, Old Man Lever will find me a buyer. Someone who cares more for this than for the wealth it represents.
‘And the other?’
DeVore looked down at the tiny, sculpted goddess. ‘This one I’ll keep. For now, anyway. Until I find a better use for her.’
He set it down again, beside the horse, then smiled. Both figures were so realistic, so perfect in every detail, that it seemed momentarily as if it needed only a word of his to bring them both to life. He breathed deeply, then nodded to himself. It was no accident that he had come upon these things; neither was it instinct alone that made him hold on to the goddess now. No, there was a force behind it all, giving shape to events, pushing like a dark wind at the back of everything. As in his dreams...
He looked up at Lehmann and saw how he was watching him.
And what would you make of that, my ultra-rational friend? Or you, Emily Ascher, with your one-dimensional view of me? Would you think I’d grown soft? Would you think it a weakness in me? If so, you would be wrong. For that’s my strength: that sense of being driven by the darkness.
At its purest – in those few, rare moments when the veil was lifted and he saw things clearly – he felt all human things fall from him; all feeling, all sense of self erased momentarily by that dark and silent pressure at the back of him. At such moments he was like a stone – a pure white stone – set down upon the board, a mere counter, played by some being greater than himself in a game the scale of which his tiny, human mind could scarcely comprehend.
A game of dark and light. Of suns and moons. Of space and time itself. A game so vast, so complicated...
He looked down, moved deeply by the thought: by the cold, crystalline-pure abstraction of such a vast and universal game.
‘Are you all right?’
Lehmann’s voice lacked all sympathy; it was the voice of mechanical response.
DeVore smiled, conscious of how far his thoughts had drifted from this room, this one specific place and time. ‘Forgive me, Stefan. I was thinking...’
‘Yes?’
He looked up. ‘I want you to track the woman for me. To find out what you can about her. Find out if it’s true what they say about her and Gesell.’
‘And?’
He looked down at the jade-skinned goddess once again. ‘And nothing. Just do it for me.’
She kept her silence until they were back in Gesell’s apartment. There, alone with him at last, she turned on him angrily, all of her pent-up frustration spilling out.
‘What in the gods’ names are we doing working with that bastard?’
He laughed uncomfortably, taken aback by her outburst. ‘It makes good sense,’ he began, trying to be reasonable, but she cut him off angrily.
‘Sense? It’s insane, that’s what it is! The surest way possible of cutting our own throats! All that shit he was feeding us about his inflexibility and our potential for growth. That’s nonsense! He’s using us! Can’t you see that?’
He glared back at her, stiff-faced. ‘You think I don’t know what he is? Sure, he’s trying to use us, but we can benefit from that. And what he said is far from nonsense. It’s the truth, Em. You saw his set-up. He needs us.’
She shook her head slowly, as if disappointed in him. ‘For a time, maybe. But as soon as he’s wrung every advantage he can get from us, he’ll discard us. He’ll crunch us up in one hand and throw us aside. As for his “weakness” – his “inflexibility” – we saw only what he wanted us to see. I’d stake my life that there’s more to that base than meets the eye. Much more. All that “openness” he fed us was just so much crap. A mask, like everything else about our friend.’
Gesell took a long breath. ‘I’m not so sure. But even if it is, we can still benefit from an alliance with him. All the better, perhaps, for knowing what he is. We’ll be on our guard.’
She laughed sourly. ‘You’re naive, Bent Gesell, that’s what you are. You think you can ride the tiger.’
He bridled and made to snap back at her, then checked himself, shaking his head. ‘No, Em. I’m a realist. Realist enough to know that we can’t keep on the way we’ve been going these last few years. You talk of cutting our own throats... well, there’s no more certain way of doing that than by ignoring the opportunity to work with someone like Turner. Take the raid on Helmstadt, for instance. Dammit, Emily, but he was right! When would we ever have got the opportunity to attack a place like Helmstadt?’
‘We’d have done it. Given time.’
He laughed dismissively. ‘Given time...’
‘No, Bent, you’re wrong. Worse than that, you’re impatient, and your impatience clouds your judgment. There’s more at issue here than whether we grow as a movement or not. There’s the question of what kind of movement we are. You can lie to yourself all you want, but working with someone like Turner makes us no better than him. No better than the Seven.’
He snorted. ‘That’s nonsense and you know it! What compromises have we had to make? None! Nor will we. You forget – if there’s something we don’t want to do, we simply won’t do it.’
‘Like killing Jelka Tolonen, for instance?’
He shook his head irritably. ‘That makes good sense and you know it.’
‘Why? I thought it was our stated policy only to target those who are guilty of corruption or gross injustice?’
‘And so it is. What is Tolonen if not the very symbol of the system we’re fighting against.’
‘But his daughter...?’
He waved her objection aside. ‘It’s a war, Emily. Us or them. And if working with Turner gives us a bit more muscle, then I’m all for it. That’s not to say we have to go along with everything he wants. Far from it. But as long as it serves our cause, what harm is there in that?’
‘What harm...?’
‘Besides, if you felt so strongly about this, why didn’t you raise the matter in council when you had the chance. Why have it out with me? The decision was unanimous, after all.’
She laughed sourly. ‘Was it? As I recall, we didn’t even have a vote. That aside, I could see what the rest of you were thinking – even Mach. I could see the way all of your eyes lit up at the thought of attacking Helmstadt. At the thought of getting your hands on all those armaments.’
‘And now we have them. Surely that speaks for itself ? And Turner was right about the publicity, too. Recruitment will be no problem after this. They’ll flock to us in droves.’
‘You miss my point...’
She would have said more, would have pursued the matter, but at that moment there was an urgent knocking on the door. A moment later Mach came into the room. He stopped, looking from one to the other, sensing the tension in the air, then turned to face Gesell, his voice low and urgent.
‘I have to speak to you, Bent. Something’s come up. Something strange. It’s...’ He glanced at Emily. ‘Well, come. I’ll show you.’
She saw the way they excluded her and felt her stomach tighten with anger. The Ping Tiao was supposedly a brotherhood – a brotherhood! she laughed inwardly at the word – of equals, yet for all their fine words about sexual equality, when it came to the crunch their breeding took over; and they had been bred into this f*ck-awful system where men were like gods and women nothing.
She watched them go, then turned away, her anger turned to bitterness. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe Turner had done his work already as far as Bent Gesell was concerned; the germ of his thought already in Gesell’s bloodstream, corrupting his thinking, silting up the once-strong current of his idealism, the disease spreading through the fabric of his moral being, transforming him, until he became little more than a pale shadow of Turner. She hoped not. She hoped against hope that it would turn out otherwise, but in her heart of hearts she knew it had begun. And nothing – nothing she or any of them could do – could prevent it. Nothing but to say no right now, to refuse to take one more step down this suicidal path. But even then it was probably too late. The damage was already done. To say no to Turner now would merely set the man against them.
She went through into the washroom and filled the bowl. While she washed she ran things through her mind, trying to see how she had arrived at this point.
For her it had begun with her father. Mikhail Ascher had been a System man: a Junior Credit Agent, Second Grade, in the T’ang’s Finance Ministry, the Hu Pu. Born in the Lowers, he had worked hard, passing the Exams, slowly making his way up the levels, until, in his mid-thirties, he had settled in the Upper Mids, taking a Mid-Level bride. It was there that Emily had been born, into a world of order and stability. Whenever she thought of her father, she could see him as he had been before it all happened, dressed in his powder-blue silks, the big, square badge of office prominent on his chest, his face clean-shaven, his dark hair braided in the Han fashion. A distant, cautious, conservative man, he had seemed to her the paradigm of what their world was about; the very archetype of order. A strict New Confucian, he had instilled into her values that she still, to this day, held to be true. Values that – had he but known it – the world he believed in had abandoned long before he came into it.
She leaned back from the sink, remembering. She had been nine years old.
Back then, before the War, trade had been regular and credit rates relatively stable, but there were always minor fluctuations – tenths, even hundredths of a percentage point. It was one of those tiny fluctuations – a fluctuation of less than 0.05 of a per cent – that her father was supposed to have ‘overlooked’. It had seemed such a small thing to her when he had tried to explain it to her. Only much later, when she had found out the capital sum involved and worked out just how much it had cost the Hu Pu, did she understand the fuss that had been made. The Senior Credit Agent responsible for her father’s section had neglected to pass on the rate change and, to save his own position, had pointed the finger at her father, producing a spurious handwritten note to back up his claim. Her father had demanded a tribunal hearing, but the Senior Agent – a Han with important family connections – had pulled strings and the hearing had found in his favour. Her father had come home in a state of shock. He had been dismissed from the Hu Pu.
She could remember that day well; could recall how distraught her mother was, how bemused her father. That day his world fell apart about him. Friends abandoned him, refusing to take his calls. At the bank their credit was cancelled. The next day the lease to their apartment was called in for ‘Potential Default’.
They fell.
Her father never recovered from the blow. Six months later he was dead, a mere shell of his former self. And between times they had found themselves demoted down the levels. Down and down, their fall seemingly unstoppable, until one day she woke and found herself in a shared apartment in Fifty-Eight, a child bawling on the other side of the thin curtain, the stench of the previous night’s overcooked soypork making her want to retch.
Not their fault. Yes, but that wasn’t what she had thought back then. She could still recall the sense of repugnance with which she had faced her new surroundings, her marked distaste for the people she found herself among. So coarse they were. So dirty in their habits.
No, she had never really recovered from that. It had shaped her in every single way. And even when her aversion had turned to pity and her pity into a fiery indignation, still she felt, burning within her chest, the dark brand of that fall.
Her mother had been a genteel woman, in many ways a weak woman, wholly unsuited to the bustle of the Lows, but she had done her best, and in the years that followed had tried in every way to keep the standards that her husband had once set. Unused to earning a living, she had broken with a lifetime’s habits and gone looking for work. Eventually she had found it, running a trader’s stall in the busy Main where they lived. The job had bruised her tender Mid-Level sensibilities sorely, but she had coped.
Emily shuddered, remembering. Why do you do it? she had asked her mother whenever she returned, tearful and exhausted, from a day working the stall, and the answer was always the same: For you. To get you out of this living hell. It was her hard work that had put Emily through college, her determination, in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, that had given Emily her chance. But for what? To climb the levels again? To take part in the same charade that had destroyed her father? No. She was set against that path. Secretly – for she knew that even to mention it would hurt her mother badly – she had harboured other dreams.
She had joined the Ping Tiao eight years back, in its infancy, before the War. Back then there had been a lot of talk about ultimate goals and of keeping the vision pure. But eight years was a long time to keep the flame of idealism burning brightly, especially when they had had to face more than their fill of disappointments. And all that time she had been Bent’s woman; his alone, fired by his enthusiasm, his vision of how things might be. But things had changed. It was hard to say now whether those ideals still fired them or whether, in some small way, they had become the very thing they once professed to hate.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror, trying, as she so often tried, to get beyond the surface of each eye and see herself whole and clear. So hard to do, it was. She looked down again, shaking her head. There was no doubting it. Her fall had opened her eyes to the evil of the world, a world in which good men and women could be left to fester in the shit-heap of the lower levels while the corrupt and the unscrupulous wallowed in undeserved luxury high above. A world unfit for decent beings. No, and she would never feel at ease in the world while such moral discrepancies existed.
She sighed and turned from the bowl, drying her face and upper arms. So maybe Bent was right. Maybe she was just being silly about the Tolonen girl. Maybe it would help bring this rotten pile come crashing down. And yet it didn’t feel right. Because it wasn’t Jelka Tolonen’s fault that she had been born into this world of levels. And so long as she had no proof that the girl was anything other than a pawn of circumstance, she would not feel happy undertaking such a task.
Not for herself, let alone for a bastard like Turner.
Besides, what was his motive? Why did he want the General’s daughter dead? Was it as he said, to weaken the General and thus undermine the T’ang’s Security forces? Or was it something personal? Some slight he’d suffered at the General’s hands?
She shivered again, remembering the moment on the mountainside beside Turner. To think that he thought they had something – anything – in common! She laughed and felt the laugh turn sour, recalling his words.
‘Love, you mean? Human understanding? Goodness? Those things don’t exist. Not really. They’re illusions. Masks over the reality. And the reality is like these peaks – it’s beautiful, but it’s also hard, uncompromising and cold, like the airless spaces between the stars.’
Well, maybe that was how he saw it, but the truth was otherwise. It was as she had said: he was lacking a dimension; lacking, essentially, any trace of basic human feeling. The Han had a saying for the behaviour of such men, Hou lian, hei hsin, ‘Thick face, black heart’, and it was never more true than of Turner. Only in his case thick face, black heart had reached its ultimate, where the face is so thick it is formless, the heart so black it is colourless. His nihilism was pure, untempered by any trace of pity. And that was why they should not be working with him, for while their paths might coincide for a time, their aims were diametrically opposed.
In time they would have to fight the man. That was, if he had not, between times, robbed them of the will to fight.
The mui tsai bowed deeply, then backed away two paces.
‘Major Ebert. Please, come in. My mistress offers her apologies. She is afraid she will be late.’
The girl kept her head lowered, as if from politeness, but a faint flush at her neck and cheeks betrayed her embarrassment at being left alone with the young major.
‘Oh? Not ill news, I hope.’
‘I believe not, Excellency, but she was summoned urgently. She knew you would understand.’
Ebert moved past her slowly, turning to keep his eyes on her. Yes, she was a pretty young thing. Sixteen, seventeen at most. He could see the shape of her breasts beneath the thin silk of the dress she wore, the fullness of her hips. She was a peach. An absolute peach, ripe for the picking.
He moved closer. ‘How long will your mistress be?’
She turned to face him, her eyes averted. ‘She said she would not be long, Excellency. Fifteen minutes, perhaps. Twenty at the most. Her husband...’
She fell silent, looking up at him, surprised. Ebert had moved closer, taking her left hand in his own, while with his other hand he held her breast.
‘Good,’ he said, smiling. ‘Then come. There’s time for other things, neh?’
The linen cupboard was in the next room; a tiny chamber in itself, wide drawers and rows of silk chi pao, the full-length elegant formal dresses arrayed in a rainbow of stunning colours to either side. He had noticed it on his previous visit, had seen the cushioned floor and thought how nice it might be...
He pushed the girl down, on to the cushions, laughing softly, enjoying the way she looked back at him, a strange wantonness in her dark eyes.
Afterwards they lay there, the soft hiss of their breathing the only sound in the silence. The scent of their lovemaking was mixed deliciously with the faded perfumes of the dresses ranged on either side above them: a sweet, musky smell that, with the warm presence of her naked body beneath him, made him stir again.
She laughed softly, then turned her head to look at him. ‘That was nice...’
‘Yes...’ He let out a small, shuddering breath. Maybe he’d offer to buy her from Chuang Lian...
He felt her stiffen, then draw back from him, and opened his eyes. Then he heard the sound. It came from the other room. The sound of rustling silks.
‘Gods...’ the girl whispered anxiously, searching for her dress. But Ebert was smiling. Had they been at it that long, then? Or had the Minister’s wife come back earlier than expected? He pulled his trousers up over his knees, then climbed to his feet, beginning to button himself up.
The girl had pulled the dress over her head and was fumbling at the fastenings. Ebert turned to her and put his finger against his lips, then, reaching past her for his belt, pushed her back into the linen cupboard and closed the door.
Fastening the last button, his belt in his hand, he went out into the other room.
‘Lian, my love...’
She turned, clearly not expecting him, momentarily embarrassed by her state of half undress. Then, with a laugh, she let the garment fall from her and, her breasts exposed, put out her arms to welcome him.
‘Quickly,’ she said, drawing him down on to the bed, her hands fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. ‘Gods, I’ve missed you...’ She looked up at him, her eyes filled with an unnatural agitation.
‘Slowly...’ he said, pushing her down, amused by the strange urgency of her actions. ‘What’s up, my darling? Why so tense?’
She paused, then looked away, shuddering with disgust. ‘Of all the times...’ She looked back up at him, uncertain whether to say, then she looked down again, sniffing, her hands reaching out to take his. ‘It was my husband. He doesn’t ask for me often, but when he does...’
Ebert laughed. ‘So the old man still f*cks you, eh?’
He saw the brief flare of anger in her eyes. Then she relented and laughed. ‘He tries. But it’s like trying to f*ck a goldfish...’
‘Hmm...’ He thought of the girl, crouched still in the linen cupboard, and felt a little shudder of desire wash through him. ‘And you wanted a pike... ?’
Her eyes met his, all pretence gone from them suddenly. But all he could see was how lined she was, how old; how her breasts sagged, her flesh folded upon itself at neck and stomach. He shivered, thinking of the mui tsai, of the taut silken surfaces of her young flesh, then leaned closer, kissing the woman’s cheek and neck, closing his eyes, trying to imagine that it was Sweet Flute he was kissing. But the scent of her was different – was old and faded like her flesh, her powder sickly sweet, like the scent of a corpse.
He moved back, shuddering, all desire suddenly dead in him. She had just come from her husband, was unwashed from the old man’s feeble groping. The thought of it made his stomach churn. He could see her under him, the old man’s wrinkled, emaciated buttocks tightening as he came.
And was he to take his place now? To be the man her husband clearly couldn’t be?
‘What is it?’ she said, her eyes narrowed, her whole body suddenly tensed.
‘I...’ He shook his head. ‘I’m tired, that’s all. I...’ He fished for an excuse, then remembered the Han he’d beaten earlier. ‘I’ve been on duty thirty hours. Something urgent came up and I had to see to it. A number of senior Company men were murdered...’
She swallowed and looked down. ‘I heard...’
He looked at her, suddenly disgusted, not only by her but by his involvement with her. And when she reached out to touch and hold him, he drew back sharply from her.
He saw her draw her hand back, then, her face wrinkling, lift it to her nose. Her mouth fell open, then she jerked her head up, glaring at him, her eyes black with anger. ‘What’s this? Is this what you mean by duty?’ She nodded her head exaggeratedly. ‘Oh, I understand it now. You’ve been screwing my mui tsai, haven’t you? You’ve been having fun here while I’ve been on my knees before my husband...’
He laughed, delighted by the image that came to mind. ‘On your knees, Madam Chuang?’
There was a dark flash of fury behind her eyes, then she swung her hand at him, trying to slap his face, but he caught her hand easily and threw her back down on to the bed. Oh, he could f*ck her now. Could do it to her in anger. To humiliate her. But from desire?
‘What if I have?’ he taunted her. ‘What if I tell you that your mui tsai f*cks like a dream? That she’s ten times the woman you are, neh?’
She had bared her teeth. ‘You’re a liar. She’s only a girl...’
He sneered at her. ‘You think you were hot, eh? Is that it? You think you could make me come just thinking about what you did to me, eh? Well, let me tell you, Madam Chuang... you weren’t so good. I’ve had much better below the Net. Clapped out old singsong girls who’d do it for a single yuan!’ He saw how she made to answer him and put his hand brutally over her mouth. ‘No... it was simply the thought of f*cking a Minister’s wife. Of shitting in his nest. It amused me. But now I’m bored. I’ve had enough of you, old woman. Your haggard old frame bores me.’
He stood, fastening himself, pulling his belt about him, watching her all the while, contempt burning in his eyes. He could see now how weak she was, how frail under that brittle carapace of hers. She thought herself so hard, so sophisticated, but she was just a spoilt little girl grown old. Tediously old.
‘I’ll bury you...’ she said quietly, almost hissing the words through her teeth. ‘You can smile now, but I’ll destroy you, Hans Ebert. Your name will be shit by the time I’m finished with you.’
He laughed dismissively. ‘And yours? What will your name be worth, Madam Chuang, if the truth came out? How would you hold your head up in company if it were known what appetites you harboured inside that ancient, wizened skull of yours?’
‘You bastard...’ She shivered and drew the blanket up about her breasts. ‘I’ll have you, Ebert. See if I don’t.’
He went to the door, then turned, looking back in at her, crouched there on the bed. ‘You’ll have me?’ He looked down, laughing, then looked back at her, his face suddenly hard, uncompromising. ‘You’ll have me?’ He shook his head, then laughed: a cruel, dismissive laugh. ‘Go suck on your husband’s prick!’
Two hours later, Klaus Stefan Ebert, Head of GenSyn, stood on the front steps of his family’s mansion, his broad hand extended to his old friend Tolonen. The Marshal had become a grey-haired, stiff-mannered old man in the fifty-odd years Ebert had known him, the uniform a second skin, but he remembered a simpler, less daunting fellow – the gay companion of his adolescence.
The two men embraced, the warmth of their greeting overriding the formality of the occasion. This was more than politics. They grinned at one another and slapped each other’s backs.
‘I’m glad,’ said Tolonen, tears brimming in his eyes.
‘And I,’ responded Ebert, holding him at arm’s length and smiling fiercely into his face. ‘This is a day to remember, Knut. Truly a day to remember!’
Jelka stood there at the bottom of the steps, a tall, willowy girl of fourteen with long, straight, ash-blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. She was no longer the child Ebert remembered so vividly. Now she was not far from womanhood.
Ebert smiled and nodded. She would make his son a perfect bride.
His son, Hans, stood behind him at the top of the steps, a tall twenty-eight-year-old, broad-shouldered yet lithe of build. He was considered extremely handsome by those who dictated taste in the Above, and, as heir to the mighty GenSyn Empire, he was rated the most attractive unattached male in City Europe.
Hans barely looked at his bride-to-be. There was time enough for that. He stood there, at ease, his dress uniform immaculate, his short blond hair styled fashionably with a double pigtail. He watched the two men embrace and recognized the significance of all this, his role in it. The Marshal was like a second father to him, his commanding officer.
It was a perfect match. Strategically, logically, it was the obvious thing to do, and when his father had suggested it, ten years back, he had agreed at once.
As he stood there he imagined the power he would one day wield, not merely as his father’s son but as commander of the forces of the T’ang. He had dreams. Dreams he could not share. And they began here.
He looked at his intended – the child. She was studying him, looking at him with a critical eye, as if to sum up and dismiss him. He glared at her, then relented, remembering, letting his face form into a smile, as if the first were only mischief.
He looked her up and down. She possessed the unformed figure of a girl. Pretty enough, but not a woman. Not a patch on the women he knew, anyway.
He smiled and looked away. Still, he would arrange things. Make life pleasant for himself. A wife was not a gaoler, after all.
They went inside, Jelka bowing her head, her cheeks flushed, as the contracts were presented and endorsed by all parties.
He signed, then straightened, looking across the table at her. In three years he would be her husband. Three years. But who knew how things would be in three years’ time? And the girl? In three years she would be seventeen. Again he smiled, remembering the mui tsai. And you, my little one? he wondered, looking across at the Marshal’s daughter. What will you be like on our wedding night? Are you the frigid, nervous type, or is there fire in your loins? His smile broadened, seeing how she looked away, the colour deepening at her neck. Yes, well, we’ll see. And even if you prove a disappointment, there will be others – plenty of others – to sweeten my nights.
And in the meantime maybe he would buy the mui tsai. After all, it wasn’t every woman who could make love like that. Gifted, she’d been. He turned, taking the Marshal’s offered hand, smiling back fiercely at the two old men. Yes, he would buy the mui tsai. And later, when her temper had cooled, he would go and see Madam Chuang again, and make it up with her.
Jelka sat at her father’s side, sipping at her bowl of ch’a, conscious of the stifling opulence of the room. She looked about her, feeling an unease that had nothing to do with her personal situation.
She shuddered and looked down. The Eberts flaunted their wealth, displaying it with an ostentation she found quite tasteless. Ornate Ming vases rested on hideous plinths: heavy, brutal things in garish colours. In recesses of the curiously shaped room, huge canvases hung in heavy gilt frames, the pictures dark, suggestive of blood.
Across from her, Hans’s two sisters were staring at her with an unconcealed hostility, the younger a year or so older than Jelka, the elder in her early twenties. She tried not to look at them, knowing they saw her only as a rival. More disconcerting was the creature serving them: a goat-like being, grown in GenSyn’s vats. She shivered when its pink-eyed stare met her own and, in a deep but toneless voice, it asked if she would like more ch’a. She looked at its pinched, three-toed hand and shook her head, noting the fine silk of its cuffs, the stylish cut of its trousers.
She had the oddest feeling of being in a dream, unreality piled upon unreality. Yet this was real. Was the reality of power. She looked at her future husband and saw him with a clarity that almost overwhelmed her. He was a tall young man, taller than her father, and handsome. Yet there was a cruelty, an arrogance in his handsomeness that made her shudder. She could see his pride, his intense sense of self-importance; saw it in how he held his head, in the cold indifference of his eyes.
Even so, it didn’t reach her yet; didn’t touch or move her. Three years was a long time. She could not imagine how she would feel three years from now. This much – this ritual of contracts, of pledges and vague promises – seemed a small thing to do to satisfy her father.
She smiled, looking at her father, sensing his pride in her. It pleased her, as always, and she reached out to hold and touch his arm. She saw how Old Man Ebert smiled at that: a tender, understanding smile. He was cut from a different cloth to the rest of his family. Beside him his wife, Berta, looked away, distanced from everything about her, her face a mask of total indifference to the whole proceeding. A tall, elegant woman, hers was a cold, austere beauty: the beauty of pine forests under snow. A rarefied, inhuman beauty.
With that same clarity with which she had seen the son, Jelka saw how Berta Ebert had shaped her children in their father’s absence. Saw how their cold self-interest was a reflection of their mother’s.
She held her father’s arm, feeling its warmth, its strength and solidity, and drew comfort from that. He loved her. Surely he would allow nothing that would harm her?
On the way over he had talked to her of the reasons behind this marriage. Of the need to build strong links between the Seven and the most powerful of the new, commercial Families. It was the way forward, and her union with Hans would cement the peace they had struggled hard to win. GenSyn had remained staunchly loyal to the Seven in the recent War and Li Shai Tung had rewarded them for that loyalty. Klaus Ebert had taken over mining contracts on Mars and the Uranus moons as well as large holdings in three of the smaller communications companies. Her marriage would make this abstract, commercial treaty a personal thing. Would make it a thing of flesh and blood.
She understood this. Even so, it seemed a long way off. Before then she had to finish her schooling, the rest of her childhood. She looked at Hans Ebert dispassionately, as if studying a stranger.
She turned in her seat, her cup empty, to summon the servant. It came to her without a word, as if it had anticipated her wish, bowing to her as it filled her cup. Yet before it moved back into the shadows of the room it looked up at her, meeting her eyes a second time, holding them a moment with its dark, intimate knowledge of things she did not know.
Jelka turned her head away, looking past her father, meeting the eyes of her future husband. Blue eyes, not pink. Startlingly blue. Colder, harder eyes. Different...
She shuddered and looked down. And yet the same. Somehow, curiously, the same.
Wang Sau-leyan raised the silk handkerchief to his face and wiped his eyes. For a moment he stood there, his well-fleshed body shaking gently, the laughter still spilling from his lips, then he straightened up and sniffed loudly, looking about him.
Behind him the tomb was being sealed again, the rosewood litter carried away. Servants busied themselves, sweeping the dirt path with brushes of twigs, while, to one side, the six New Confucian officials stood in a tight circle, talking quietly amongst themselves.
‘That was rich, Hung, don’t you think?’ Wang said, turning to face his Chancellor, ignoring the looks of displeasure of his fellow T’ang. ‘I had visions of my brother getting up out of the casket to chastise the poor buggers!’
‘My lord...’ Hung’s face was a picture of dismay. He glanced about him at the gathered T’ang, then lowered his head. ‘It was unfortunate...’
‘Unfortunate!’ Wang’s laughter rang out again. ‘Why, it could only have happened to Ta-hung! Who else but my brother would find himself thrown into his own tomb!’ With the last few words Wang Sau-leyan made a mime of the casket sliding into the tomb.
It had been an accident. At the top of the steps, one of the bearers had tripped and, the balance of the casket momentarily lost, the remaining bearers had lost their grip. The whole thing had tumbled down the steps, almost throwing out its occupant. Wang Sau-leyan, following close behind, had stood there at the tomb’s mouth, doubled up with laughter. He had not stopped laughing since. Throughout the ceremony, he had giggled, oblivious of the astonished looks of the officials.
Now, however, his fellow T’ang were looking amongst themselves, appalled by his behaviour. After a moment the oldest of them, Wei Feng, stepped forward.
‘What is this, Wang Sau-leyan? Have you no feelings for your dead brother? We came to honour him today – to pay our respects to his souls as they journey on. This laughter is not fitting. Have you forgotten the rites, Wang Sau-leyan? It is your duty...’
‘Hell’s teeth, Wei Feng, I know my duty. But it was funny. Genuinely funny. If he had not been dead already, that last fall would have killed him!’ Wang Sau-leyan stared back at his fellow T’ang momentarily, then looked away. ‘However... forgive me, cousins. It seems that I alone saw the humour in the moment.’
Wei Feng looked down, his anger barely contained. Never in all his years had he seen anything like it.
‘There are times for humour...’
Wang’s huff of disgust was clearly disrespectful. He moved past Wei Feng as if the older man wasn’t there, confronting the other T’ang.
‘If my brother had been a man to respect I would have shown him some respect, but my brother was a fool and a weakling. He would never have been T’ang but for the death of my elder brothers.’ Wang looked about him, nodding his head. ‘Yes, and I know that goes for me, too, but understand me, cousins. I’ll not play hollow tongue to any man. I’ll speak as I feel. As I am, not as you’d have me seem. So you’ll understand me if I say that I disliked my brother. I’m not glad he’s dead. No, I’d not go that far, for even a fool deserves breath. But I’ll not be a hypocrite. I’ll shed no false tears for him. I’ll save them for men who deserve them. For men I truly love. Likewise I’ll keep my respect for those who deserve respect.’
Tsu Ma had been staring past Wang while he spoke. Now he looked back at him, his face inexpressive, his eyes looking up and down the length of Wang Sau-leyan, as if to measure him.
‘And yet your brother was T’ang, Wang Sau leyan. Surely a T’ang deserves respect?’
‘Had the man filled the clothes...’
‘And he did not?’
Wang Sau-leyan paused, realizing suddenly what dangerous seas he had embarked upon. Then he laughed, relaxing, and looked back at Tsu Ma.
‘Don’t mistake me, Tsu Ma. I speak only of my brother. I knew him well. In all the long history of the Seven there was never one like him. He was not worthy to wear the imperial yellow. Look in your hearts, all of you, and tell me that I’m wrong. In all honesty, was there one of you who, knowing my father was dead, rejoiced that Ta-hung was T’ang?’
He looked about them, seeing the grudging confirmation in every face.
‘Well, let us keep our respect for those that deserve it, neh? For myself I’d gladly bow to any of my cousins here. You are men who have proved your worth. You, indeed, are T’ang.’
He saw how that mollified them and laughed inwardly. They were all so vain, so title-proud. And hypocrites, too, for if the truth were known they cared as little for Ta-hung as he. No, they had taken offence not at his denigration of his brother but at the implied mockery of his brother’s title, for by inference it mocked them also.
He moved through, between their ranks, bowing to each of them as he passed, then led them on along the pathway and up the broad marble steps into the ancient palace.
As for himself he cared not a jot for the trappings of his title. He had seen enough of men and their ways to know how hollow a mere title could be. No, what he valued was not the title ‘T’ang’ but the reality of the power it gave him, the ability to say and do what he had always dreamed of saying and doing. The power to offend, if offence was what he wished. To be a T’ang and not have that was to be nothing – was to be an actor in a tiresome play, mouthing another’s words, constrained by bonds of ritual and tradition.
And he would not be that.
As the servants made their way amongst his guests, offering wine and sweetmeats, he looked about him again, a faint smile coming to his lips as he remembered that moment at the entrance to the tomb.
Yes, he thought, it was not your fate to be T’ang, Ta-hung. You were designed for other things than kingship. And yet T’ang you became.
Wang smiled and took a cup of wine from the servant, then turned away, looking out through the window at the walled garden and the great marbled tablet of the tomb at its centre.
It was unfortunate. He had not disliked his brother. Despised him, maybe – though even that was too strong a word for the mild feeling of irritation he had felt – but not hated him as he had his father and his two eldest brothers. However, Ta-hung had had the misfortune of being born before him. As a younger brother he would have been no threat, but as T’ang he had been an obstacle – a thing to be removed.
He sipped at his wine and turned his head, looking across at his Chancellor. Hung Mien-lo was talking to Tsu Ma, his head lowered in deference. Smoothing things over, no doubt. Wang looked down, smiling, pleased by his morning’s work.
It was true, he had found the accident genuinely amusing, but he had grasped at once that it was the perfect pretext for annoying his fellow T’ang – the perfect irritant – and he had exaggerated his response. He had seen how they bridled at his irreverence. And afterwards it had given him the opportunity to play the bluff, honest man. To put his heart upon his sleeve and flaunt it before them. He took a deep breath, then looked up again, noting how their eyes went to him constantly. Yes, he thought. They hate me now, but they also admire me in a grudging way. They think me crass but honest. Well, let them be mistaken on both counts. Let them take the surface show for the substance, for it will make things easier in the days to come.
He turned again, looking back at the tomb. They were dead – every one of them who had been in the room that day he had been exiled. Father and mother, brothers and uncles all. Dead. And he had had them killed, every last one.
And now I’m T’ang and sleep in my father’s bed with my father’s wives and my father’s maids.
He drained his glass, a small ripple of pleasure passing through him. Yes. He had stopped their mouths and closed their eyes. And no one would ever again tell him what he could or couldn’t do.
No one.
Two hours later, Wang Sau-leyan sat in his father’s room, in the big, tall-backed chair, side-on to the mirror, his back to the door.
He heard the door open, soft footsteps pad across the tiles.
‘Is that you, Sweet Rain?’
He heard the footsteps pause and imagined the girl bending low as she bowed. A pretty young thing, perhaps the prettiest of his father’s maids.
‘Chieh Hsia?’
He half turned, languid from the wine he’d drunk, and put his hand out. ‘Have you brought the lavender bowl?’
There was the slightest hesitation, then, ‘I have, Chieh Hsia.’
‘Good. Well, come then. I want you to see to me as you used to see to my father.’
Again there was the slightest hesitation before she acted. Then she came round, bowing low, and knelt before him, the bowl held delicately in the long, slender fingers of her left hand.
He had seen the film of his father’s final evening, had seen how Sweet Rain had ministered to him, milking the old man into the lavender bowl. Well, now she would do the same for him. But no one would be watching this time. He had turned off the cameras. No one but he would know what he did within the privacy of his bedroom walls.
He drew the gown back from his lap, exposing his nakedness. His penis was still quite flaccid.
‘Well, girl? What are you waiting for?’
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, waiting. There was the faint rustle of silks as she moved closer, then he felt her fingers brush against his flesh. He shivered, then nodded to himself, feeling his penis stir between her fingers. Such a delicate touch she had – like silk itself – her fingers caressing the length of him slowly, tantalizingly, making his breath catch in his throat.
He opened his eyes, looking down at her. Her head was lowered, intent on what she was doing, the darkness of her hair held up with a single white jade pin.
‘Is this how you touched my father?’
She glanced up. ‘No, Chieh Hsia. But I thought...’
And still her fingers worked on him, gathering the whole of him up into that tiny nexus of pleasure, there between his legs.
‘Thought what?’ he asked after a moment, the words barely audible.
She hesitated, then looked up at him again; candidly this time. ‘Every man is different, Chieh Hsia. Likewise their needs...’
He nodded slowly. Gods, but it was delightful. He would never have dreamed that a woman’s hands could be so potent an instrument of pleasure.
Her eyes met his again. ‘If the T’ang would prefer, I could... kiss him there.’
He shuddered. The word ‘kiss’ promised delights beyond imagining. He gave a tiny nod. ‘Yes. I’d like that.’
He heard her set the bowl down and let his head fall back, his eyes close, then felt her lift him to her lips. Again he shivered, drawn up out of himself by the sheer delight of what she was doing. For a while, then, he seemed to lapse out of himself, becoming but a single thread of perfect pleasure, linked to the warm wetness of her mouth; a pleasure that grew and grew...
He didn’t hear the door open. Neither did he hear the second set of footsteps pad almost silently across the tiles towards him, but a movement in the girl in front of him – the slightest tensing of her left hand where it rested on his knee – made him open his eyes suddenly and look up, his gaze going to the mirror.
Tender Willow was almost upon him, the knife already raised in her right hand. At once he kicked out with his right leg, pushing Sweet Rain away from him, and lurched forward, out of the seat.
It was not a moment too soon. Tender Willow’s knife missed his shoulder by a fraction, tearing into the silken cushioning of the chair, gashing the wooden beading. Wang turned quickly, facing her, twice her weight and a full ch’i taller – but still the girl came on, her face filled with hatred and disgust.
As she thrust the knife at him a second time, he moved forward, knocking her arm away, then, grabbing her neck brutally, he smashed her head down into the arm of the chair, once, then a second time. She fell and lay still.
He stood there a moment, his breath hissing sharply from him, then turned and kicked out at Sweet Rain again, catching her in the stomach, so that she wheezed, her breath taken from her. His face was dark now, twisted with rage.
‘You foxes...’ he said quietly, his voice trembling. ‘You foul little bitches...’ He kicked again, catching the fallen maid fully on the side of the head, then turned back and spat on the other girl.
‘You’re dead. Both of you.’
He looked about him, noting the broken bowl and, beside it, a single white jade pin, then bent down and recovered the knife from the floor. He straightened up, then, with a slight shudder, walked to the door and threw it open, calling the guards.