The Hidden Blade Read Online Free Page B

Leighton—it was as if she were only completely alive when she boarded the train to see her lover.
    She smiled at Leighton with a gladness that was polluted with guilt and nudged Marland forward. “It’s your big brother, darling.”
    Marland’s hair was blond, almost Nordic, whereas Father’s hair and Leighton’s own were dark as pitch, and mother’s a coffee brown without any hint of gold.
    Marland, only a half brother.
    But then Leighton lifted Marland, Marland wrapped his arms around Leighton’s neck, and none of the grown-ups’ complicated choices mattered. He pressed a kiss to Marland’s forehead. “Welcome home, brother.”
    Outside the railway station two carriages awaited them: one for Mother, Marland, and Leighton, the other for Mother’s maid and the luggage. They drove through the long twilight, Marland falling asleep with his head on Leighton’s lap.
    Leighton touched Marland’s plump cheek—it was warm and just slightly sticky. On the opposite seat, Mother gazed at the two of them. She did not say anything.
    It had been like this for a while, this silence filled with things they did not say to each other. Not that they didn’t speak to each other frequently—Mother took great interest in his well-being and his studies—but the most important subjects were never addressed.
    Sometimes Leighton had a feeling that he lived in a dollhouse—there was such an ostensible outward perfection to their lives: the handsome family in the beautiful country manor; kind, caring parents; good, obedient children. An enviable existence all around.
    And yet. And yet.
    That silence would only grow greater, now that he at last understood why she did not take him with her—why she believed it futile to even explain: No matter what, Leighton would never be a son to the man she visited every month.
    She had carved out another family for herself, and that family did not include him.
    “Are you well, Leighton?” she asked softly, almost hesitantly.
    She was still his mother and he wanted to confide in her.
No, I am not well. And neither is Father. Perhaps we will never be well again.
    “I am very well, thank you,” he said. “And you, ma’am?”
    She bit her lower lip. “Very well, too. Thank you.”

Chapter 3
    Amah
    A rattling of hand clappers, followed by a melodious half wail. Cold sour plum juice, no doubt about it. Ying-ying’s mouth watered like that of a puppy with a pork bun thrown before it.
    Her home, a spacious residence of three interconnecting courtyards, was located in a quiet corner of the Chinese City, the half of Peking that was south of, and separated from by a wall twenty feet high, the Tartar City, where only Manchus were allowed to live.
    But the quietness was relative: They might be far from the major thoroughfares and the markets, but roaming street vendors, selling everything from toys to a shave and an ear cleaning, did not neglect the tucked-away alleys of her neighborhood. Most of the time Ying-ying was oblivious to the muted clamor. Yet her ears perked up whenever some delicacies came by, be those candied haws on a skewer or bowls of wonton in a steaming broth, kept hot by an ingenious little stove.
    Standing in her way, of course, were Amah’s strictures. Amah didn’t trust the hygienic practice of itinerant food sellers, and she was especially suspicious of those peddling beverages. “How do you know they boiled their water properly? Your hair could all fall out from drinking that filth,” was her usual objection.
    But today, luckily for Ying-ying, was the sixteenth. On the sixth, the sixteenth, and the twenty-sixth of every month, Da-ren visited. And for some reason, Amah was more vulnerable to prolonged whining in the hours before his arrival.
    One last batch of cough potion for Mother simmered on the stove in Amah’s storeroom. Amah herself was seated on the
kang
, stitching a pair of black trousers.
    “The sour plum juice vendor is outside,” Ying-ying began. “It’s so