Daylight on Iron Mountain by David Wingrove Read Free Book Online Page B

will have them brought to you.’
    Inside it was opulent, with an elegant, almost luxurious decor. The high-ceilinged rooms – all of them in a traditional Han style – had a spotless look to them.
    ‘Through here,’ Shao said, steering Jiang through a doorway framed with black lacquer, and into a small suite of rooms that were slightly more informal than those he had just passed through. ‘Take a seat,’ the First Steward said. ‘We will attend you shortly.’
    As Jiang sat, he frowned, noticing how the furniture in these rooms had a much less elegant, more worn look to it than elsewhere. The massive rugs seemed frayed, the wall hangings older, dowdier,
cheaper
than outside.
    His heart was beating fast now, his palms damp. He sat, then stood again, needing to pace, rehearsing in his head what he would say. Only he knew that the mere sight of her would make him wordless. It always had. And he the poet of his age.
    As the door at the far end of the room creaked open, he started forward, then took a step back as six dark-cloaked Han – scribes or clerics of some kind – entered the room and, without acknowledging his presence in any way, took their seats on either side of the room.
    Jiang looked down. So this was how it was to be. Everything tightly scrutinized and written down. Every word and gesture copied into a report.
    Fifty thousand
yuan
, and he was not even to be allowed a private audience. Jiang swallowed bitterly. So
this
was the new China!
    It was First Steward Shao who appeared first, backing into the room andspeaking as he did, his voice a rapid murmur which had the slightest edge of annoyance to it.
    Shao turned, looking to Jiang, and smiled. ‘General… your wife, Chun Hua…’
    The look of shock on Chun Hua’s face could not have been faked. She stared at Jiang in disbelief, then put her hand to her mouth, stifling a cry.
    As for Jiang, he stood rooted there, unable to take his eyes from her, his mouth dry, a pain in his chest at the sight of her.
    Oh, how she had aged. Like twenty years had passed, not four. But she was still his beloved Chun Hua. Still the woman he loved beyond all words.
    Yet even as he put his hands out to her, even as he took a step towards her, so he was aware of his daughters in the shadows just behind her, a stern-faced female murmuring to them before pushing them forward.
    Jiang caught his breath. They had seemed so young the last time he had seen them. Now the eldest, Ch’iao-chieh, was a young woman of thirteen, and her sister San-chieh was nine, almost ten. Seeing their father they began to run to him, meaning to rush into his arms, but even as they made to, Steward Shao called them back.
    ‘Girls! You will approach your father sedately now…’
    The girls stopped and, lowering their heads, did as they were told.
    Jiang watched them come to him, the moment strangely dreamlike and unreal. As the two stopped just before him and made to bow, so Jiang’s restraint broke. Stepping towards them, he bent down and embraced his daughters to him, hugging them tightly, ignoring the frown on Shao Shu’s face.
    ‘My darling girls… my pretty ones…’
    Tears were in his eyes now, and as he looked up past them at their mother, he saw that she too was crying, sobbing like a child even as her eyes drank in the sight of him; eyes that were filled with an undiminished longing.
    Chun Hua
, he mouthed.
My darling girl. My love.
    To either side the clerks wrote furiously. Steward Shao, watching from the corner of the room, gave a scowl and turned away, shaking his head,.
    Steward Shao had insisted that they sat facing one another formally, like at a proper audience, on hardwood benches placed a good ten
ch’i
or moreapart. Chun Hua sat centrally, her daughters to either side. A forlorn sight it was, for now that he saw them clearly he saw how their dresses were also frayed and worn. It made Jiang wonder what had happened to all the presents he had sent them over the years.