River of Stars by Kay Guy Gavriel

Author:Kay, Guy Gavriel [Kay, Guy Gavriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780007521913
Publisher: Roc Hardcover
Published: 2013-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

She is still trying to decide what she most feels about Xinan: anxiety or heartbreak. There is something lost about the city. Ordinary life seems insignificant when people appear in sparse, scattered numbers—like islands, each one—on an avenue as wide as the imperial way. The scale of it mocks them, she thinks.

The Gate of Glory by the western wall, where she’s gone several times now to drink tea under willow trees, is a magnificent reproach. There is too much irony in the name, in the ruin of the tower that once crowned the gates.

There have been efforts made by emperors to resettle Xinan over the years, she knows, urging people to move back, offering incentives. They have borne little fruit, and bitter. Few, it appears, want to live among so many ghosts. It was never the wisest choice for a capital in the first place, so far from the Grand Canal, a challenge to feed in times of drought. Xinan became what it was because the earliest emperors came from this region. This was the heartland. Many of them are buried nearby, in the great tombs.

It would be entirely possible, Shan thinks, to begin to hate the Ninth Dynasty if you spent time here. There is something oppressive, humiliating about how glorious it once was.

Who would want to live traversing the two colossal, almostempty market spaces, each larger than many good-sized towns? The vendors and occasional entertainers and beggars seem adrift in the vastness. Scale and distance make you feel insignificant, your cherished life a pale, bitter thing, as if you were already another ghost.

Not her usual way of thinking. She is aware of feeling restless, on edge. It is hot, there have been thunderstorms all week. Her songs betray her mood. She throws most of them away. She has been thinking about leaving, going back to Yenling, or home to Hanjin, although the capital in summer is even hotter than this. She can leave a message here for Wai, he’ll follow when he comes back south. She isn’t certain why she lingers.

The inn where she’s staying is good. The innkeeper has a bad leg, uses a stick to move about. His wife is sweet-natured, attentive to Shan, soft and pretty. Her husband looks at her with affection whenever they are in the same room. Interestingly, she looks at him the same way. They don’t act or speak as if being in Xinan makes them feel diminished. Perhaps their expectations of the world haven’t led them that way. Perhaps, Shan thinks, they have each other.

She has gone several times to a temple of the Path in the southeastern quadrant, seventy-first ward once, though that means nothing now with the ward gates gone and Xinan an open city, as they all are these days. No one is locked into a ward at night in the Twelfth Dynasty. Maybe they are better than the Ninth in this way, though when she reads of what women were allowed to do and be back then the thought frays at the edges.

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