Read River of Stars for Free Online Page A

from a retired archer he found, another quiet reaction against the customs of the day, where all well-bred men (let alone their daughters!) loftily disdain all military traditions.
    It is not proper for a girl to do any of this, of course. In music they are to pluck a
pipa
fetchingly, and sing the words men write. The women doing such singing tend to be entertainers and courtesans. It has always been so.
    Lin Kuo has betrothed his daughter this past winter, taking care and thought, to a man he believes will accept what she is, and be happy in that. It is more than any daughter can expect.
    Shan loves her father without reserve or condition, though also without illusions as to his limitations.
    She loves the world, too, this morning, equally without illus-ions—or so she proudly believes. She is very young.
    She is wearing a crimson peony in her hair, carrying a yellow one, as they walk towards the home of the man her father has come to visit. They do have an invitation: Lin Kuo would not be going there without one.
    Two and a half years have passed, on this bright morning, since the boy, Ren Daiyan, also young but without a similar belief that he understood the world (yet), walked into a forest east of his village, carrying a bow and bloodied arrows, and two swords from a man he’d killed.
    THERE WAS NO FIGURE more respected in Kitai than Xi Wengao of Yenling. Craggy-faced and white-haired now (what was left of his hair), he knew his stature, was not above taking pride in it. You lived your life as honourably as you could, were rewarded, in some instances, with recognition in your lifetime.
    He was a civil servant and a scholar, the official historian of the dynasty, a poet. He had even written songs when younger, had made the
ci
form almost acceptable among serious writers. (Others of his circle had followed, pushing the form even further.) He was renowned for his calligraphy, for advancing the careers of disciples at court. He was a celebrated lover of beauty (including the beauty of women) and had held just about every important office there was through the years, including prime minister to the last emperor and then, briefly, to the son who reigned now.
    That “briefly” told its tale, of course.
    In his garden, awaiting guests, he sipped Szechen tea from a green celadon cup—that gorgeous green, in honour of the season. One of those visiting this morning was a source of great sorrow, another promised to be a diversion. In late-morning light he thought about emperors and court factions and the arc of a man’s life. You could live too long, he thought, as well as not long enough.
    Some lives didn’t actually have an arc, not in the eyes of the world. Yes, everyone could pass from tottering child to vigorous man and then become someone for whom a change in the weather or a walk as far as the gazebo in his garden brought an ache in knees and back, but that wasn’t a career arc. A farmer didn’t arc, he passed through good or bad years, depending on the weather, on locusts, on whether a son was drafted into the army and marched away to war at sowing time.
    But a civil servant in Kitai could rise and fall—and rise and fall again, depending on the mood at court, on whether a battle had been lost in the west or a comet seen in the sky, frightening an emperor. He could even be exiled—a greater fall, like a celestial object hurtling to the earth.
    That kind of fall could kill you if you were sent all the way south to the lands of sickness and decay.
    He had friends down there now. If they were still alive. Letters came infrequently from towards the pearl divers’ sea. It was a grief. These were men he had loved. The world was a hard place. One needed to learn that.
    He was exiled himself, of course, but only this far, only to Yenling, his family home. A distance from court, from influence, but not a hardship.
    He was too well known, too widely admired for even Hang Dejin and his