Read Online River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay - Free Book Online Page B

the wispy beginnings of a scholar’s chin beard. The attempt at dignity that implied was amusing at first, then endearing. He had small, smooth hands. His voice was low but clear. He’d be feeling shy, too, she remembers thinking.
    She had taken pains with her appearance, which she didn’t always do, but her father had worked hard and carefully to arrange this meeting, and he deserved that much of her. Besides, it was all interesting
.
She’d worn blue
liao
silk in a sober cut, gold-and-lapis-lazuli hairpins. Her lapis earrings, too. They had been her mother’s.
    She allowed Wai to see her mind working as they talked. He’d know about her eccentric education by now, but she didn’t push forward her manner of thinking the way she sometimes did, to provoke a response.
    He spoke—this man, Qi Wai, who would, apparently, be her husband—of a rare Fifth Dynasty stele he’d found north of the capital, close to the border with the Xiaolu. She wondered if he had been trying to impress her with his bravery going up there, then decided he didn’t think that way. There was a long-established peace, trade, a treaty. He’d gone to where he’d heard there were antiquities to be found. The border hadn’t entered his mind.
    He became animated talking about this funerary stele, the writing on it. The record of some long-dead civil servant’s life and deeds. She had to see it, he urged. Perhaps tomorrow?
    Even at that first meeting it had occurred to Shan that she might have to become the practical one in this marriage.
    She could manage that, she’d thought. Wai hadn’t recognized a quote from a poem she’d offered without emphasis, but it wasn’t a well-known line, and he’d seemed at ease discussing with a woman how objects from the past excited him. She’d decided there were worse passions to share with a husband.
    The idea of
sharing
wasn’t usually a part of marriage. (Nor was passion, really.)
    Her father had offered her another gift here, it seemed. If the boy was still a boy, a little eccentric and intense, he would grow (she would grow). The mother hadn’t seemed overwhelming, though the usual disapproval of Shan’s education was there. It was always there.
    She’d bowed to her father, after, and told him she would be honoured to marry Qi Wai if the Qi family approved of her, and that she hoped to bring grandchildren one day for him to teach as he’d taught her. She holds to that. She can picture it.
    This evening, however, listening to crickets in the night, she finds herself sad and restless, both. Part of this will be the adventure of where they are. Travel has not been a great part of her life. Yenling at festival time can make anyone overexcited. Not to mention the men she’s met today: the one in whose home they are sleeping, and the other one.
    She ought never to have said what she’d said about his “Red Cliff” poems. What had she been thinking? He’d have decided, right then, in the gazebo, that she was a vain, presumptuous girl, evidence of the error of educating women. He had laughed, smiled, engaged in conversation with her, but men could do that and think very different thoughts.
    She
had
told him she’d memorized the two poems. She hopes he’ll remember that, accept it for the apology it was (partly) meant to be.
    It is dark outside the silk-paper windows. No moon tonight, the crickets continuing, wind, the birds quiet now. She glances at the bed. She isn’t sleepy any more. She is gazing at the books on the desk when she hears a footfall in the corridor.
    She is not afraid. She has time to wonder at herself, that she seems to have not closed her door after all, when he steps inside.
    â€œI saw the light,” he says, quietly.
    Half a truth. His chamber is at the front, other side of the dining chamber. He had to have come this way in order to see her light. Her mind works like