The White Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jesuit priests in the Forbidden City. They were the only Westerners currently permitted to enter China.
    â€œI did not ask. He can communicate in Chinese, but has a translator here with him for the local language. If the translator’s expression is anything to go by, I would guess that his employer is not an easy companion.”
    â€œStrange company to find in this place.” Li Du rubbed his forehead, aware of his fatigue.
    â€œThere is a woman, too,” Hamza said. “A traveler. There is something odd about her—a religious fanatic, perhaps, or an abandoned mistress chasing a man who made false promises.”
    â€œHave you met a young man, not much older than a boy, with short hair and a brown coat threadbare at the elbows?” Li Du told Hamza about his encounter outside the barn.
    â€œNo—a village boy, perhaps, performing required service for the manor.” Hamza seemed to lose interest. “Temples,” he said, “are dangerous places.”
    â€œYou have never explained to me why you think so.”
    â€œHave I not?” Hamza looked surprised. “I have never told you that I once offended a demon spirit? I did not know, at the time, that the demon in my tale was a real demon. So I spoke of him to my audience—the harem of the sultan across the sea—in a private room that no man was allowed to enter. I was an exception. The sultan’s favorite consort demanded a tale from me (I will tell you how I first met her another time), and the sultan was so enamored of her that he could not refuse her request. So I told the tale of a demon who posed as a saint. As it happened, my words were so well chosen and so accurate in their depiction of this demon (who I did not know existed) that they summoned that very spirit to the room. He challenged me to battle. I put him off—it is always wise to have prepared at least three ways to convince a demon to wait awhile before killing you—but I expect him to force the issue one day. I avoid monasteries because this particular fiend tends to frequent their paintings.”
    â€œOf course,” said Li Du. “I knew there must be some explanation.”

 
    Chapter 4
    To reach the kitchen from his room, Li Du had to traverse the full length of the building. He passed four closed doors, then turned left into the wing above the main entrance. The kitchen was at the far end.
    It was the largest room in the manor, and the warmest. The floor retained heat rising from the animals in the barns below, and the fire on the hearth was big enough to light the whole space. The hearth itself was a flat, raised platform surrounded on three sides by low, wide benches. An opening in the eaves drew smoke out into the twilight.
    Dinner preparations were in progress. Kamala worked beside her children—two boys and a little girl who cradled a swaddled infant. Savory fragrances rose from a large pot set on the hearthstones, to which Kamala was adding pieces of meat. Her hands were shiny and slick with melting fat.
    There were four people sitting around the fire. The first was a man in yellow silk robes trimmed with fur. His face, defined at the chin by a wispy white beard and at the forehead by a red hat, seemed too small for his voluminous attire. He held, cupped in his hands, a bowl with a golden rim that caught the firelight. The second was a younger man with a starved look to his cheeks and a suggestion of a reptile in his wide, thin mouth. He was looking at the fire as if he wanted to rearrange it.
    The third person was a woman. Her hair was haphazardly tied and braided away from her face in a matted, knotted tangle, a document of moments when a braid was added in one place, a strip of leather tied to another, and piece of yarn twined in on some different occasion. When Li Du and Hamza entered the room, she glanced up briefly. Her eyes were bright, the skin around them faintly creased, like a page of a book that had been