TOO DEEP FOR TEARS (Too Deep for Tears Trilogy Book 1) by Davis Kathryn Lynn

Author:Davis, Kathryn Lynn [Davis, Kathryn Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

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Ke-ming lay awake in her rosewood bed, though her lover slept peacefully beside her. In the passage, a lantern burned, making circles of shadow on the paper walls. Quietly, she moved away from the man she called Tsai Shen, after the god of wealth. She dared not speak his real name, not even in her own house.

She rose, then paused with the shredded bed curtains in her hands. She remembered Tsai Shen’s expression when he saw what the soldiers had done. He had said nothing, for they did not speak of such things, but his eyes had burned with a spark of anger quickly suppressed. He had had this silk worked in phoenixes especially for her. She ran her hands over the fine needlework and felt cold and very much alone. Beautiful things she had in plenty, but they did not give her peace.

She moved down the passage, stopping outside Li-an’s door. She gazed at her daughter and smiled with infinite tenderness. It was an expression Li-an had never seen and probably never would. Ke-ming ached at the innocence of her daughter’s face, her half smile—a reflection of some pleasant dream. She was not yet ready, this child with a woman’s need, though Ke-ming had done her best. Slowly, reluctantly, she crossed the passage toward the Hall of Ancestors.

Ke-ming went to the altar with the painting of a stranger above it, but she did not see a stranger’s face. She saw instead her father’s kind eyes, his furrowed brow, the beard he had often curled with restless fingers. She remembered the smile he had worn on the night she had last seen him, laid out in unfamiliar Buddhist robes, hands folded on his chest, eyes staring sightlessly into the night sky.

Grief welled within her as painful as on the night when she had sat beside him and held his lifeless hand. He had left her a very small legacy: his wisdom, his divination box—full of the little sticks painted with characters that foretold the future, a vial of liquid with the power of visionaries inside, a poem about the peaceful mountains, and a note in which he told her to change her name to Wan, the word for ten thousand. For then she would be part of the ten thousand stars, the ten thousand books, the ten thousand beauties of nature, and the ten thousand wise men who wandered the earth. He had told her to leave behind with his body the memory of her past, her grief, even her happiness. The note and the poem he had told her to burn, but the poem had been too precious and she had kept it with her: the only link to the man whose blood flowed through her veins.

Ke-ming lit the candles on the altar, then two sticks of sandalwood incense, whose fragrance mingled with the smell of melting wax. With great care, she removed her father’s vial from under the altar, drank three drops, and replaced it. Finally, when the

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