There was a strange bitterness in that final word that made Hung Mien-lo look up.
“Give me the brush, Hung. I’ll sign it now.” Hung did as he was told, then set the warrant aside. As he turned back, he realized that Wang Sau-leyan was still watching him. Beyond him the screen still flickered with the images of death. The death of the dark continent. Before the Han had come.
“We keep the Oven Man busy, you and I, neh, Hung? We carry on our forefathers’ work.”
Hung swallowed and looked down, the temptation to say something almost overwhelming.
‘Tour silence is eloquent, Hung. Oh, I know you hate me too. I’m not a lovable man, neh? But I’m not a hypocrite. I’m not like those bastards my cousins, pretending foul is fair. I know what I am. And if honest self-knowledge is a virtue, I am virtuous in that regard if in no other.” He laughed, then rolled back, returning his gaze to the screen. “It disconcerts you, doesn’t it, Hung? All this honesty. You’d rather I were more like them, that I pretended more. Well, I can pretend like the best of them, but only for good reason. I never fool myself that I am the thing I pretend to be like they do, poor fools.” Hung waited, but there was no more. Wang lay there, his eyes closed, as if he were asleep. Hung cleared his throat. “And the tournament tomorrow, Chieh Hsia. Will you go?”
“Maybe,” Wang answered, not opening his eyes. “I’ll see how I feel. My champion is there already, I take it?”
“He arrived there yesterday, Chieh Hsia.”
“Do you think he’ll win?”
Hung hesitated. “I’d . . . say it was unlikely, Chieh Hsia.” The T’ang chuckled. “Maybe you should have told him he was a dead man unless he did. It certainly brought the best out of him last time, neh?” “It did, Chieh Hsia.”
“And now I need my rest. You are dismissed, Hung. Oh, and send the woman. Tell her I’ve one of my headaches coming on. Tell her . . .” He waved a hand vaguely. “Well, just send her.”
“Chieh Hsia.” Hung bowed his head, then backed away, his face a wall, hiding his innermost thoughts.
the woman stood in the doorway, naked, watching him. She was tall, unnaturally so, and statuesque. Her thick blond hair hung in four long plaits against the stark whiteness of her flesh, each plait braided intricately with golden thread, while her eyes were so cold and blue that the gray northern sea seemed almost warm by comparison. As Wang Sau-leyan stared at her a smile slowly formed on her strong, narrow lips. She was beautiful, no doubting it. Coldly, powerfully beautiful. His weakness, his one true indulgence. She came across and climbed onto the bed, her full and heavy breasts swinging gently above him as he lay there. He watched, mesmerized, as she undid the braids, letting her hair fall like a curtain of fine, golden silk. Then, as her lips brushed against his chest, he closed his eyes again, relaxing.
Afterward she lay there on the bed beside him, sleeping, strands of her hair fanned out across her pure white shoulders, her firm lips slightly parted, the blueness of her eyes masked by a thin veil of flesh. light from a lamp across the room picked out her naked form, making her a thing of curves and shadows.
He raised himself on one elbow and studied her, surprised that even now, after eighteen months, he continually saw new aspects of her. She was not like the other Hung Mao women he had known—those cheaply perfumed whores masquerading as sophisticates. Nor would she meet their fate. This one was different. She had breeding. Each movement, the smallest nuance of word or gesture, spoke of extreme cultivation. In a strange, almost paradoxical sense, she was tsu kuo . . . the motherland he’d always sought. He shivered, then stood, hauling himself up out of the silken folds of the bed, conscious of the restlessness that affected him whenever he thought of this.
Smiling, he turned and looked at her again, seeing at once how she had turned in her sleep and now lay there, open to him, vulnerable, her left hand curled about her inner thigh, the right hand clenched beside her face. In sleep the child returned. In his mind he could see her, younger and much smaller, all signs of adulthood removed, lying just so upon the sheets, and felt a pang of longing for the reality of the vision. Pulling on his gown he turned, looking about him. On a table to one side were the three tiny statues he had bought for her. He went across and lifted one from its stand, examining it. It was a white jade swan, its wings stretched back, its long neck craning forward as it launched itself in flight. He shivered, the sight of its perfect, delicate form stirring his memory.
The memory was sharp and clear. He had been thirteen and undersized for his age. It was the day of his eldest brother Chang Ye’s wedding and he had come upon his brothers with their friends— princes all, related to his clan by marriage—in the pavilion by the crescent lake at Tao Yuan. He had made to turn away, when one of them called out to him mockingly.
“Sau-leyan? Is it true you have a taste for hsueh pail”
He had glared at the youngest of the group, his second brother, Lieh Tsu, and stormed away angrily, humiliated that the thing he had told him in strictest confidence had been so cheaply traded. And as he ran across the grass, the image of his brothers’ laughing faces had burned into his mind. He said the word softly—“Hsueh pai”—then spoke the anglicized form, “Snow whites,” the pet name the boys had for the Hung Mao women they met in the Above. Even then he had found them fascinating—had wanted them above the women of his own race.
He pulled his silks tighter about him, suddenly cold, and let his breath hiss between closed lips. The sound of the sea breaking on a northern shore. And now, he thought, their mouths are cold and silent. No, not one of them who had laughed at him that day now lived. Not a single one. He had made sure of that.
Wang turned. She was watching him from the bed, her blue eyes tracing the shape of him, as if to make sense of him from how he stood. And when her eyes met his, lips and eyes formed a smile that was rich and warm and loving.