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Authors: Alma Alexander
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wondered if she would be able to hold out for a husband who might be considerably older than her but whose age would be traded off for the fact that he could be more easily cajoled by a young wife to allow her to do the things that Khailin had every intention of continuing to do. Study. Read.
A diffident knock on her door interrupted her thoughts, and at her barked call of admittance a servant, hands together and bowing deeply to her young mistress, came in to announce that Khailin’s presence was required by her mother, the lady Yulinh.
“Tell her I will attend her at once,” Khailin said, and the servant backed out, bowing again.
Khailin sighed. She suspected her father had stopped off in his wife’s quarters to suggest that she take Khailin in hand today, and she knew what that meant.
She wasn’t wrong.
Lady Yulinh was a great believer in the power of purification and meditation. She visited the ritual baths frequently, an activity that Khailin profoundly despised for the same reason that she found
hacha-ashu
more interesting that
jin-ashu
—she didn’t do well when cooped up in the presence of undiluted femininity for long. She found most of the women at the baths tedious, gossipy, and unspeakably dull. They found her far too direct, almost abrasive, certainly bordering on rude, although she was careful not to directly antagonize any of the matrons whom she might find as a mother-in-law one day. But being on her best behavior and flawlessly and icily polite for three to four hours at a stretch, which was how long her mother’s purification bath rituals usually took, exhausted her and made her severely irritated. Even her mother had learned not to take her along to these occasions any more often than she could help, and to stay out of her way for a while on their return home until Khailin could work out her waspishness on some unsuspecting servant.
Visits to the Great Temple were another matter. Lady Yulinh was possessed of sufficient stature and financial backing to be regularly admitted into the Third and even the Fourth Circles of the Temple. She insisted that her daughters—for her younger daughter, Yan, had been required to attend these devotional trips since she was eight—perform the required rituals and protocols with her, but once the official part of the visit was over the girls were free to use their time at the Temple as they wished until Yulinhwas ready to leave. For Yan, that meant a return to the more colorful and more interesting First and Second Circles; she had become an early addict to
ganshu
readings and to soothsayers of every stripe. Khailin chose to linger in the inner Circles of the Temple, the Third and Fourth Circles, the ones with fewer people and more power. She preferred her knowledge empirical and her data neatly proved and documented by experimental protocols—but knowledge was knowledge, and the more empirical chemical and alchemical branches of study all had roots in the Temple and the deities it housed. The rest would come.
At least it was the Temple that Yulinh proposed that day. She did not mention the baths, at least not directly. Khailin was grateful for that mercy, at least; she didn’t think she could have handled the baths with any degree of grace that day. The Temple was at least a potentially worthy substitute for the missed reading lesson.
Yulinh and her daughters were deposited at one of the Temple gates in their sedan chair, followed by a couple of quiet servants who had followed close behind in a second chair. Yulinh sent one of the servants to purchase a particular kind of incense, the other to obtain a bottle of rice wine and the proper amount of rice and beans for the supplication ritual she had in mind. Then she swept past the teeming corridors of the First Circle, heading into the inner sanctums. Her two daughters, eyes piously downcast, trailed at her heels.
They had gone straight through to a shrine to I’Chi-sei, one of the Three Pure Ones. Yulinh
A diffident knock on her door interrupted her thoughts, and at her barked call of admittance a servant, hands together and bowing deeply to her young mistress, came in to announce that Khailin’s presence was required by her mother, the lady Yulinh.
“Tell her I will attend her at once,” Khailin said, and the servant backed out, bowing again.
Khailin sighed. She suspected her father had stopped off in his wife’s quarters to suggest that she take Khailin in hand today, and she knew what that meant.
She wasn’t wrong.
Lady Yulinh was a great believer in the power of purification and meditation. She visited the ritual baths frequently, an activity that Khailin profoundly despised for the same reason that she found
hacha-ashu
more interesting that
jin-ashu
—she didn’t do well when cooped up in the presence of undiluted femininity for long. She found most of the women at the baths tedious, gossipy, and unspeakably dull. They found her far too direct, almost abrasive, certainly bordering on rude, although she was careful not to directly antagonize any of the matrons whom she might find as a mother-in-law one day. But being on her best behavior and flawlessly and icily polite for three to four hours at a stretch, which was how long her mother’s purification bath rituals usually took, exhausted her and made her severely irritated. Even her mother had learned not to take her along to these occasions any more often than she could help, and to stay out of her way for a while on their return home until Khailin could work out her waspishness on some unsuspecting servant.
Visits to the Great Temple were another matter. Lady Yulinh was possessed of sufficient stature and financial backing to be regularly admitted into the Third and even the Fourth Circles of the Temple. She insisted that her daughters—for her younger daughter, Yan, had been required to attend these devotional trips since she was eight—perform the required rituals and protocols with her, but once the official part of the visit was over the girls were free to use their time at the Temple as they wished until Yulinhwas ready to leave. For Yan, that meant a return to the more colorful and more interesting First and Second Circles; she had become an early addict to
ganshu
readings and to soothsayers of every stripe. Khailin chose to linger in the inner Circles of the Temple, the Third and Fourth Circles, the ones with fewer people and more power. She preferred her knowledge empirical and her data neatly proved and documented by experimental protocols—but knowledge was knowledge, and the more empirical chemical and alchemical branches of study all had roots in the Temple and the deities it housed. The rest would come.
At least it was the Temple that Yulinh proposed that day. She did not mention the baths, at least not directly. Khailin was grateful for that mercy, at least; she didn’t think she could have handled the baths with any degree of grace that day. The Temple was at least a potentially worthy substitute for the missed reading lesson.
Yulinh and her daughters were deposited at one of the Temple gates in their sedan chair, followed by a couple of quiet servants who had followed close behind in a second chair. Yulinh sent one of the servants to purchase a particular kind of incense, the other to obtain a bottle of rice wine and the proper amount of rice and beans for the supplication ritual she had in mind. Then she swept past the teeming corridors of the First Circle, heading into the inner sanctums. Her two daughters, eyes piously downcast, trailed at her heels.
They had gone straight through to a shrine to I’Chi-sei, one of the Three Pure Ones. Yulinh
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