“My husband is dead,” the widow said.
Not “Your father.” Not the more formal “The head of the House of Wu.” Just the exclusive, proprietary “My husband.” She was selfish even in her grief.
There was also a hard glitter of triumph in her narrow brown eyes, for those with the wit to see it.
The girl standing opposite her — why should she ask the little bastard to sit? — saw the triumph but did not flinch from it. “I know,” she said. The words were calm, devoid of grief or sorrow; devoid, indeed, of any expression at all.
The widow experienced a sharp flash of jealousy. “How?” She had forbidden any communication between the little bastard’s servants and her own, on pain of severe punishment.
The girl shrugged without answering.
The older woman felt the familiar rage well up in her breast. Her hands trembled with it, curling into claws, the resemblance enhanced by the long, enameled fingernails. She saw the little bastard looking at them, still with no expression on her alien face, and inhaled slowly, straightening her fingers from claws into hands once more. She caused her rage to abate by sheer willpower, of which any one of her enemies, not least the one standing before her now, would admit she had a great deal.
No matter, she told herself. The fanatical tenacity, the steadfast resolution, the endless patience that had seen her through the last four years came to her aid once again, and she was able to look on her husband’s daughter and only child with at least the appearance of indifference. Soon the little bastard would be out of the house and out of her life. The little bastard’s stepmother looked across the room with a deep, visceral loathing that permitted her to ignore the fear she also felt, the fear to which she would never admit.
The little bastard was neither a bastard, being the child of her husband’s first wife, nor little, being indecently tall, towering over everyone in the house and over most of the citizens of Chandu for that matter, but the older woman never thought of her any other way. The little bastard was nothing but a shame on the honored ancestors of the house of Wu, and what was worse, the little bastard cost more than any two other members of the household to feed and clothe. Since she had cajoled her husband into letting her take over his accounts, she knew just how much extra silk it took to keep the length of the little bastard’s legs and arms decently covered, and how many bowls of noodles it took to fill her apparently bottomless belly.
If the little bastard’s size had not damned her beyond redemption, her features surely would have. Her eyes, tilted towards her temples and with only the suggestion of the fold of normal eyes, were not a decent, modest brown but instead a blue so light the irises were almost gray. Her mother’s eyes. Those eyes stared insolently and — this the widow found most unforgivable — fearlessly out on the world. The little bastard lacked even the common courtesy to drop her gaze out of respect in the presence of her elders and betters.
And as tightly confined as fashion and tradition decreed in a single braid that reached her waist, the little bastard’s hair was as unruly and unmanageable as the little bastard herself, escaping a wisp at a time to curl round the pale face with its odd cheekbones, enormous nose and grossly oversized mouth. The hair had not even the saving grace of color, that thick rich black fall of hair one might expect of Wu Li’s daughter, but was a streaked brown acquired during the improperly hatless and shockingly astride daily rides with her father and that foreign stableboy the elder Wu had so carelessly chosen first as his daughter’s playmate and later as her personal guard. But perhaps the honored Wu had felt that the essential outlandishness in each would call to the other. Certainly they were inseparable.
The little bastard’s stepmother averted her eyes before her inventory could take in the abomination of close-cut fingernails and unbound feet, but she was shocked to her very soul at such an unfeminine disregard for the proprieties. Foreign, she thought with an inward shudder, the most insulting epithet in her language. The Great Wall had been built nine hundred years before to keep the race of the Sons of Heaven free from the taint of such outsiders as Wu Li had begotten upon the body of his mongrel wife.
Yes, in birth, appearance and demeanor, altogether an unsatisfactory little bastard to dispose of, but disposed of she must be if the widow wished to gather the reins of the little bastard’s father’s importing business into her own supremely competent hands, and that she did wish to do, to the exclusion of any and everything else. Why else had she married him, a descendant of one of the twelve Keshikhans of the court of the Great Khan who had disgraced his family by becoming a common merchant and taking a foreigner into his bed?
The widow’s ambition had been strong enough even to defy her parents and to demean her ancestors with her marriage. Now all that remained was the safe disposition of Wu Li’s sole heir. Fortunately a solution to the problem the little bastard presented was ready to hand. The widow smiled to herself, and said, “Ceremonies for your father will take place three days from now.” She paused, and added with a bow that was as patronizing as it was slight, “You may attend.”
The girl did not thank her for her magnanimity, her blue-gray eyes remaining fixed and expressionless. The widow smoothed the heavy blue silk of her trousers. “There is another matter we must discuss. Sit down.” She beckoned a servant forward with one graceful sweep of a hand heavy with rings. “Will you have tea?”
The girl folded her long frame down onto a pillow, crossing her legs and resting a hand on each knee, instead of kneeling with bent head and hands clasped. She refused tea. Impolite and graceless as well as ugly, the widow noted, not without pleasure. She sipped delicately at the fragrant liquid in the paper-thin porcelain cup. After a moment of silent contemplation of the design traced on its rim, she said, her tone casual, “I have received an offer of marriage for you.”
“Have you?” The strange light eyes met hers without curiosity.
The widow allowed herself a small, playful smile. “Yes.”
“From whom?”
The widow smiled again. “It is from the son of Maffeo the Portuguese.”
The blue eyes widened so slightly that if the widow had not been watching closely for any change of expression she would have missed it. “Is it?” was all the little bastard said.
“It is, and a very generous offer, too,” her father’s widow said. “He offers much, silk, spices, an interest in future trading.”
“Generous indeed,” the girl observed.
“And of course you have known each other since you were children.”
“Of course.”
Her stepmother looked up suspiciously but could perceive no sarcasm in that clear gaze. She folded her tiny hands in her lap and regarded their long polished nails, longer than the fingers themselves, with thoughtful attention. “Altogether a most suitable match.”
“Isn’t it, though,” the little bastard said, her tone almost amiable.
Her father’s widow smiled again, broadly this time. “Then, if you have no objection, I will put the matter in hand at once.”
“As you wish, my father’s second wife,” the girl said.
Again her stepmother looked sharply for guile in those strange eyes. She found none. It was not that she had expected outright opposition, but she had been spiteful enough to hope that some aspect of the little bastard’s planned future would be displeasing to her. Instead, the girl seemed acquiescent, even amenable.
It was with a faint feeling of disappointment that she terminated the interview, and turned with relief to the affairs of her husband’s trading empire, hers now, at long last.
—–