An Inch of Ashes (CHUNG KUO SERIES)

by David Wingrove

  She looked up as he approached, her eyes pained, her lips pressed together, her mouth strangely hard. She had been crying.

  ‘I didn’t know if you would come.’

  He hesitated, then went to her.

  ‘You shouldn’t be riding out so far alone...’

  ‘No?’

  The anger in her voice took him aback. He reached into his tunic and took out a silk handkerchief. ‘Here... What’s wrong?’

  He watched her dab her cheeks, then wipe her eyes, his heart torn from him by the tiny shudder she gave. He wanted to reach out and wrap her in his arms, to hold her tight and comfort her, but he had been wrong before.

  ‘I can’t bear to see you crying...’

  She looked back at him, anger flashing in her eyes again, then looked down, as if relenting. ‘No...’ She sniffed, then crushed the silk between her hands. ‘It’s not your fault, Tsu Ma.’

  He wet his lips. ‘Where is your husband?’

  She laughed bitterly, staring down fixedly at her clenched hands. ‘Husbands! What is a husband but a tyrant!’

  Once more her anger surprised him.

  She stared up at him, her eyes wide, her voice bitter. ‘He sleeps with his maids. I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Ah...’ He looked down into the water, conscious of her image there in front of him. ‘Maybe it’s because he’s a man.’

  ‘A man!’ She laughed caustically, her eyes meeting his in the mirror of the pool, challenging him. ‘And men are different, are they? Have they different appetites, different needs?’ She looked back at the reality of him, forcing him to look back at her and meet her eyes. ‘You sound like my brothers. They think the fact of their gender makes them my superior when any fool can see...’

  She stopped, then laughed, glancing at him. ‘You see, even the language we use betrays me. I would have said, not half the man I am.’

  He nodded, for the first time understanding her. ‘Yet it is how things are ordered. Without it...’

  ‘I know,’ she said impatiently, then repeated it more softly, smiling at him. ‘I know.’

  He studied her, remembering what her cousin, Yin Wu Tsai, had said: that she had been born with a woman’s body and a man’s soul. How true that was. She looked so fragile, so easily broken, and yet there was something robust, something hard and uncompromising at the core of her. Maybe it was that – that precarious balance in her nature – that he loved. That sense he had of fire beneath the ice. Of earthiness beneath the superficial glaze.

  ‘You are not like other women.’

  He said it softly, admiringly, and saw how it brought a movement in her eyes, a softening of her features.

  ‘And you? Are you like other men?’

  Am I? he asked himself. Or am I simply what they expect me to be? As he stared back at her he found he had no answer. If to be T’ang meant he could never have his heart’s desire, then what use was it being T’ang? Better never to have lived.

  ‘I think I am,’ he answered. ‘I have the same feelings and desires and thoughts.’

  She was watching him intently, as if to solve some riddle she had set herself. Then she looked away, the faintest smile playing on her lips. ‘Yes... but it’s the balance of those things that makes a man what he is, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘And you think my balance... different?’

  She looked up at him challengingly. ‘Don’t you?’ She lifted her chin proudly, her dark eyes wide. ‘I don’t really know you, Tsu Ma, but I know this much – I know you would defy the world to get what you wanted.’

  He felt himself go still. Then she understood him, too. But still he held back, remembering the mistake he had made before. To be rebuffed a second time would be unthinkable, unbearable. He swallowed and looked down.

  ‘I don’t know. I...’

  She stood abruptly, making him look up at her, surprised.

  ‘All this talking,’ she said, looking across to where their horses were grazing. ‘It’s unhealthy. Unnatural.’ She looked back at him. ‘Don’t you think?’

  He stood slowly, fascinated by the twist and turn of her, her ever-changing moods. ‘What do you suggest?’

  She smiled, suddenly the woman he had met that first time, laughing and self-confident, all depths, all subtleties gone from her.

  ‘I know what,’ she said. ‘Let’s race. To the beacon. You know it?’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘We passed it ten li back, no?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Well? Are you game?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, laughing. ‘Why not? And no quarter, eh? No holding back.’

  ‘Of course,’ she answered, her eyes meeting his knowingly. ‘No holding back.’

  Fei Yen reined in her horse and turned to look back down the steep slope beneath the beacon. Tsu Ma was some fifty ch’i back, his mount straining, its front legs fighting for each ch’i of ground.

  Her eyes shone and her chest rose and fell quickly. She felt exhilarated. It had been a race to remember.

  Tsu Ma reined in beside her. His mount pulled its head back, over-excited by the chase. He leaned down to smooth it, stroking the broad length of its face. Then he looked up at her, his strong features formed into a smile of pleasure.

  ‘That was good. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years!’

  He laughed, a deep, rich laugh that sent a shiver down her spine. Then he reached out and drew the hair back from where it had fallen across her face, his hand resting against her cheek.

  It was the first time he had touched her.

  He withdrew his hand and turned from her, standing in his saddle and looking out across the valley. They were at the highest point for twenty li about. To their backs and distant were the foothills of the Ta Pa Shan, but before them was only the plain.

  Or what had once been the plain. In his grandfather’s time the City had stretched only as far as Ch’ung Ch’ing. Now it covered all the lowlands of Sichuan. From where he looked it glistened whitely in the afternoon sunlight, a crystalline growth come to within a dozen li of where they were. He could not see its full extent from where he stood, but knew that it filled the Ch’ang Chiang basin, eight hundred li south to the mountains, a thousand li east to west. A vast plateau of ice.

  He lowered himself in the saddle, then turned, looking back at her. She was watching him, concerned. Such a look as a wife gives her man. Thinking it, he smiled and remembered why he’d come.

  He climbed down from his mount and went across to her.

  ‘Come!’ he said, offering her his hand to help her down. But this time he did not relinquish her. This time he turned her to face him, enveloping her in his arms.

  She looked up at him expectantly, her mouth open, the bottom lip raised, almost brutal in what it implied. Her eyes seared him, so fierce was their demand. And her body, where he gripped it, seemed to force itself into him.

  It was as he’d thought.

  He kissed her, his mouth crushing hers, answering her need with his own. For a moment they struggled with each other’s clothing, tearing at the lacing, freeing themselves, and then he had lifted her on to him and was thrusting deep into her, her legs wrapped about his back, her pelvis pushing down urgently to meet his movements.

  ‘My love,’ she said, her dark eyes wide, aroused, her fine, small hands caressing his neck. ‘Oh, my love, my lord...’

  Chapter 51

  THE VEILED LIGHT

  Li Yuan stood with his father at the centre of the viewing circle, looking down at the great globe of Chung Kuo, one hundred and sixty thousand li below. Down there it was night. Lit from within, the great, continent-spanning mass of City Europe glowed a soft, almost pearled white, bordered on all sides by an intensity of blackness. To the south, beyond the darkness of Chung Hai, the ancient Mediterranean, glowed City Africa, its broad, elongated shape curving out of view, while to the east – separated from City Europe by the dark barrier of the East European Plantations – City Asia began, a vast glacier, stretching a
way into the cold heart of the immense land mass.

  The room in which they stood was dimly lit; the double doors at the top of the steps leading to the T’ang’s private rooms were closed. It was warm in the room, yet, as ever, the illusion of coldness prevailed.

  ‘What have you decided, Father?’

  The T’ang turned to his son, studying him thoughtfully, then smiled.

  ‘To wait to hear what the Marshal says. He saw the boy this morning.’

  ‘Ah...’ Li Yuan glanced at the slender folder he was carrying beneath his arm. In it were copies of the records Karr had brought back with him from Mars: Berdichev’s personal files, taken from the corpse of his private secretary three days before Karr had caught up with Berdichev himself.

  It had taken them two weeks to break the complex code, but it had been worth it. Besides giving them access to a number of secret SimFic files – files that gave them the location of several special projects Berdichev had instigated – they had also contained several items of particular interest.

  The first was a detailed breakdown of the events leading up to the assassination of the Edict Minister, Lwo Kang, ten years earlier. It was similar in many respects to the document Tolonen had brought to Li Shai Tung shortly after the event – the papers drawn up by Major DeVore. That document, and the web of inference and connection it had drawn, had been enough to condemn the Dispersionist, Edmund Wyatt, to death for treason. But now they knew it for what it was. Though Wyatt had been against the Seven, he had played no part in the murder of Minister Lwo. He had been set up by his fellow conspirators. But Wyatt’s death, almost as surely as the destruction of the starship, The New Hope, had brought about the War that followed.

  Li Yuan looked back at his father, conscious of how much he had aged in the years between. The War had emptied him; stripped him of all illusions. Five years back he would not have even contemplated the Wiring Project. But times had changed. New solutions were necessary. The second file was confirmation of that.

  ‘About the Aristotle File, Father. Do we know yet if any copies were made?’

  Li Shai Tung looked down past his feet at the blue-white circle of Chung Kuo.

  ‘Nothing as yet, Yuan. So maybe we’ve been lucky. Maybe it wasn’t disseminated.’

  ‘Perhaps...’ But both knew that the Aristotle File was too important – too potentially damaging to the Seven – for Berdichev to have kept it to himself: for it was no less than the true history of Chung Kuo; the version of events the tyrant Tsao Ch’un had buried beneath his own.

  Li Yuan shivered, remembering the day when he had found out the truth about his world; recollecting suddenly the dream he had had – his vision of a vast mountain of bones, filling the plain from horizon to horizon. The foundations of his world.

  ‘You know, Yuan, I was standing here the night you were born. It was late and I was looking down at Chung Kuo, wondering what lay ahead. I had been dreaming...’

  He looked up, meeting his son’s eyes.

  ‘Dreaming, Father?’

  The T’ang hesitated, then gave a small shake of his head. ‘No matter... Just that it struck me as strange. The boy and all...’

  He knew what his father meant.

  The third file concerned a boy Berdichev had taken a personal interest in; a Clayborn child from the Recruitment Project for whom Berdichev had paid the extraordinary sum of ten million yuan.

  Part of the file was a genotyping – a comparison of the child’s genetic material to that of a man alleged to be his father. The result of the genotyping was conclusive. The man was the child’s father. And the man’s name? Edmund Wyatt – the person wrongly executed for orchestrating the assassination of the T’ang’s minister, Lwo Kang.

  That had been strange enough, but stranger yet was a footnote to the file: a footnote that revealed that far from the Aristotle File being the work of Soren Berdichev, as was claimed on the file itself, it had, in fact, been compiled and authored by the boy.

  The fact that had struck them both, however, was the date the genotyping had given for the conception of the boy: a date that coincided with a visit Wyatt, Berdichev and Lehmann had made to a sing-song house in the Clay.

  It was the day Li Yuan had been born. The day his mother, Lin Yua, had died giving birth to him, three months premature.

  It was as if the gods were playing with them. Taking and giving, and never offering an explanation. But which was the boy – gift or curse? On the evidence of the Aristotle File he seemed – potentially, at least – a curse, yet if the reports on him were to be believed, he might yet prove the greatest asset the Seven possessed. The question that confronted them – the question they had met today to answer – was simple: should they attempt to harness his talents or should they destroy him?

  There was a banging on the great doors at the far end of the room.

  ‘Come in!’ the T’ang answered, turning to face the newcomer.

  It was Tolonen. He strode in purposefully then stopped three paces from the T’ang, clicking his heels together and bowing his head.

  ‘Chieh Hsia.’

  ‘Well, Knut? You’ve seen the boy. What do you think?’

  Tolonen lifted his head, surprised by the abruptness with which the T’ang had raised the matter. It was unlike him. He turned briefly to Li Yuan, giving a small bow, then turned back to Li Shai Tung, a smile forming.

  ‘I liked him, Chieh Hsia. I liked him very much. But that’s not what you asked me, is it? You asked me whether I thought we could trust the boy. Whether we could risk using him in such a delicate area of research.’

  ‘And?’

  Tolonen shrugged. ‘I’m still not certain, Chieh Hsia. My instinct tends to confirm what was in the file. He’s loyal. The bond he formed with his tutor, T’ai Cho, for instance, was a strong one. I think that’s inbred in his nature. But then there’s the fight with the boy Janko to consider and the whole personality reconstruction business subsequent to that. He’s not the same person he was before all that. We have to ask ourselves how that has affected him. Has it made him more docile and thus easier to control, or has it destabilized him? I can’t answer that, I’m afraid. I really can’t.’

  The T’ang considered a moment, then nodded, smiling at his Marshal. ‘Thank you, Knut. Your fears are the mirror of my own. I have already signed the death warrant. I was merely waiting to hear what you would say...’

  ‘But, Father...’ Li Yuan started forward, then stepped back, lowering his head. ‘Forgive me, I...’

  Li Shai Tung stared at his son a moment, surprised by his interruption. ‘Well, Yuan?’

  ‘A thousand apologies, Father. I was forgetting myself.’

  ‘You wished to say something?’

  Li Yuan bowed. ‘I merely wished to caution against being too hasty in this matter.’

  ‘Hasty?’ The old T’ang laughed and looked across at Tolonen. ‘I’ve been told I was many things in my life, but too hasty... What do you mean, Li Yuan?’

  ‘The boy...’ Li Yuan looked up, meeting his father’s eyes. ‘If what is written about the boy is true – if he is but a fraction as talented as is said... well, it would be a great waste to kill him.’

  Li Shai Tung studied his son carefully. ‘You forget why we fought the War, Li Yuan. To contain Change, not to sponsor it. This boy, Kim. Look at the mischief he has done already with his “talent”. Look at the file he made. What is to prevent him making further trouble?’

  Li Yuan swallowed, sensing that everything depended on what he said in the next few moments; that his father had not quite made up his mind, even now.

  ‘With respect, Father, things have changed. We all know that. Our enemies are different now; subtler, more devious than ever before. And the means they use have changed, too. While we continue to ignore the possibilities of technology, they are busy harnessing it – against us.’ Li Yuan looked down. ‘It’s as if the gods have given us a gift to use against our enemies. We have only to monitor him closely.’
<
br />   ‘It was tried before. You forget just how clever the boy is.’

  Li Yuan nodded. ‘I realize that, Father. Even so, I think it can be done.’

  The T’ang considered a moment, then turned back, facing Tolonen. ‘Well, Knut? What do you think?’

  Tolonen bowed. ‘I think it could be done, Chieh Hsia. And would it harm to delay a little before a final decision is made?’

  The T’ang laughed. ‘Then I am outnumbered.’

  Tolonen smiled back at him. ‘Your one is bigger than our two, Chieh Hsia.’

  ‘So it is. But I’m not a stupid man. Or inflexible.’ He turned, facing his son again. ‘All right, Yuan. For now I’ll leave this in your hands. You’ll arrange the matter of security with Marshal Tolonen here. But the boy will be your direct responsibility, understand me? He lives because you wish him to. You will keep my warrant with you and use it if you must.’

  Li Yuan smiled and bowed his head low. ‘As my father wishes.’

  ‘Oh, and one more thing, Yuan. It would be best if you saw the boy yourself.’ He smiled. ‘You have two places left to fill on the Wiring Project, I understand.’

  ‘I was... keeping them in case.’

  ‘I thought as much. Then go. See the boy at once. And if your view of him confirms the Marshal’s, then we’ll do as you say. But be careful, Yuan. Knowledge is a two-edged sword.’

  When his son was gone, the T’ang turned back, facing his Marshal.

  ‘Keep me closely informed, Knut. Li Yuan is not to know, but I want us to know where Kim is at all times. Maybe he is what Yuan claims. But what can be used by us can just as easily be used by our enemies, and I’m loath to see this one fall back into their hands. You understand me clearly, Knut?’

  ‘I understand, Chieh Hsia.’

  ‘Good. Then let us speak of other matters. Your daughter, Jelka. How is she?’

  Tolonen’s eyes brightened. ‘Much better, Chieh Hsia. She is back home now.’

  Li Shai Tung frowned. ‘Was that wise, Knut? I mean... to be back where the attack happened.’