An Inch of Ashes by David Wingrove Page B

hesitated, then went to her.
    ‘You shouldn’t be riding out so far alone...’
    ‘No?’
    The anger in her voice took him aback. He reached into his tunic and took out a silk handkerchief. ‘Here... What’s wrong?’
    He watched her dab her cheeks, then wipe her eyes, his heart torn from him by the tiny shudder she gave. He wanted to reach out and wrap her in his arms, to hold her tight and comfort her, but he had been wrong before.
    ‘I can’t bear to see you crying...’
    She looked back at him, anger flashing in her eyes again, then looked down, as if relenting. ‘No...’ She sniffed, then crushed the silk between her hands. ‘It’s not your fault, Tsu Ma.’
    He wet his lips. ‘Where is your husband?’
    She laughed bitterly, staring down fixedly at her clenched hands. ‘Husbands! What is a husband but a tyrant!’
    Once more her anger surprised him.
    She stared up at him, her eyes wide, her voice bitter. ‘He sleeps with his maids. I’ve
seen
him.’
    ‘Ah...’ He looked down into the water, conscious of her image there in front of him. ‘Maybe it’s because he’s a man.’
    ‘A man!’ She laughed caustically, her eyes meeting his in the mirror of the pool, challenging him. ‘And men are different, are they? Have they different appetites, different needs?’ She looked back at the reality of him, forcing him to look back at her and meet her eyes. ‘You sound like my brothers. They think the fact of their gender makes them my superior when any fool can see...’
    She stopped, then laughed, glancing at him. ‘You see, even the language we use betrays me. I would have said, not half the man I am.’
    He nodded, for the first time understanding her. ‘Yet it is how things are ordered. Without it...’
    ‘I know,’ she said impatiently, then repeated it more softly, smiling at him. ‘I know.’
    He studied her, remembering what her cousin, Yin Wu Tsai, had said: that she had been born with a woman’s body and a man’s soul. How true that was. She looked so fragile, so easily broken, and yet there was something robust, something hard and uncompromising at the core of her. Maybe it was that – that precarious balance in her nature – that he loved. That sense he had of fire beneath the ice. Of earthiness beneath the superficial glaze.
    ‘You are not like other women.’
    He said it softly, admiringly, and saw how it brought a movement in her eyes, a softening of her features.
    ‘And you? Are you like other men?’
    Am I?
he asked himself.
Or am I simply what they expect me to be?
As he stared back at her he found he had no answer. If to be T’ang meant he could never have his heart’s desire, then what use was it being T’ang? Better never to have lived.
    ‘I think I am,’ he answered. ‘I have the same feelings and desires and thoughts.’
    She was watching him intently, as if to solve some riddle she had set herself. Then she looked away, the faintest smile playing on her lips. ‘Yes... but it’s the balance of those things that makes a man what he is, wouldn’t you say?’
    ‘And you think my balance... different?’
    She looked up at him challengingly. ‘Don’t you?’ She lifted her chin proudly, her dark eyes wide. ‘I don’t really know you, Tsu Ma, but I know this much – I know you would defy the world to get what you wanted.’
    He felt himself go still. Then she understood him, too. But still he held back, remembering the mistake he had made before. To be rebuffed a second time would be unthinkable, unbearable. He swallowed and looked down.
    ‘I don’t know. I...’
    She stood abruptly, making him look up at her, surprised.
    ‘All this talking,’ she said, looking across to where their horses were grazing. ‘It’s unhealthy. Unnatural.’ She looked back at him. ‘Don’t you think?’
    He stood slowly, fascinated by the twist and turn of her, her ever-changing moods. ‘What do you suggest?’
    She smiled, suddenly the woman he had met that first time,