Free River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay Page A

suits a bedchamber. Songs even more.”
    Stubbornly she shakes her head again, looking down.
    â€œWhy?” he asks gently.
    She hasn’t expected gentleness. She meets his gaze across the room. “Because that is not why you came,” she says.
    His turn to fall silent. Mostly silence outside now, as well, after that death in the garden. Wind in the plum trees. Spring night. And now, Shan realizes, she is afraid, after all.
    It is not easy, she thinks, to make your way in the world while insisting on a new path. She has never been touched by a man. She is to be married early next year.
    And this man is past her father’s age, has a son older than her, a first wife dead, a second living with his brother’s family, for Lu Chen will not bring her to the island with him—whatever he might say about not going south to die. He has had concubines, written poems for them and for pleasure-district courtesans. It is said that if he named a red-lantern girl in a poem, she could triple her rates. She doesn’t know if he is taking a woman south with him.
    She doesn’t think he is. His son will be coming, to be a companion. And perhaps to bury his father one day, or bring the body north for burial, if that is allowed.
    Lu Chen says, “I am not so vain, or unmannerly, to have imagined anything beyond talking here tonight.”
    She draws a breath, and with it (with his words) her fear seems to have gone, as quickly as it had flowered within. She can even smile, carefully, looking down.
    â€œNot even imagined?” she asks.
    Hears him laugh, her reward. “I deserve that,” the poet says. “But, Miss Lin …” His tone has changed, she looks up. “We may imagine much, but not always allow these visions to enter the world. We all live this way.”
    â€œMust we?” she asks.
    â€œI think so. The world falls apart, otherwise. There are men I have imagined killing, for example.”
    She can guess who one or two of those might be. She draws a breath, finding courage. “I think … I think you meant to honour me, coming here. Sharing these thoughts. I know how wide the space is between us, because of my sex, my age, my inexperience. I want only to tell you that I am not … that you need not …”
    She is short of breath. Shakes her head impatiently. Pushes forwards. Says, “You need not assume I would be offended if you came into the room now, Master Chen.”
    There. Said. And the world has not broken asunder. No other animal has screamed outside. Burning suns are not falling, shot down by arrows of legend.
    And she will not, she
will
not live defined or controlled by what others think or say. Because this is the life, the path, hard and lonely, her father has put her on—never realizing it would be so, never intending this when he began to teach her and they discovered, together, that she was quicker and brighter and perhaps even deeper than almost any man they knew.
    But not more so than this one. He is looking at her with a different expression now. But has not stepped forward, and whatever she is, however bold she might force herself to be, she cannot cross to him. It is beyond her.
    He says, unexpectedly, “You might make me weep, Miss Lin. Thinking of your life.”
    She blinks at that. “Not what I want to do.”
    â€œI know that.” A faint smile. “The world is not going to allow you to be what you might be. You understand?”
    She lifts her head. “It hasn’t allowed you to be. Why should it let—”
    â€œNot the same. You know it.”
    She does. Lowers her head.
    â€œNor need you challenge it with every breath, every encounter. You will break yourself, as if on rocks.”
    â€œYou did. You challenged. You’ve never held back from saying when you thought ministers or even the emperor were—”
    â€œAgain, not the same. I have been allowed to find my view of the world, and