The Terracotta Bride Read Online Free

anything. Siew Tsin could
not bear it. "Please—"
    "But you might as well know," said Ling'en. A
smile of pure pleasure spread across her face. "It will annoy Junsheng so
much. I am going to find a sedan chair to take me home. Walk with me to the
main street. I'll tell you."
     
    Yonghua was sitting alone in the room where Siew Tsin had
left her. She looked up when Siew Tsin came in.
    "Junsheng's gone to his study," Yonghua said.
"He seemed—"
    She hesitated. Yonghua was exquisitely correct on the
subject of their husband, as in everything else. But it was not clear what she
thought of him.
    "He did not seem happy," she said.
    "He and Ling'en can only fight when they are
together," said Siew Tsin. "Sometimes they do it through other
people."
    Yonghua put her head on one side like a bird. "You do
not seem happy."
    "Do you know why you were made?" said Siew Tsin
abruptly.
    Yonghua did not seem to think this a strange question.
    "I was made to profit my makers," she said.
    This was true, of course.
    "Do you know why Junsheng married you?" said Siew
Tsin.
    Yonghua cast down her eyes with the modesty befitting a
young girl.
    "I believe it is thought prestigious to own me,"
she said. "I am very expensive."
    "Worth more than your weight in gold," said Siew
Tsin. Ling'en had said that.
    Yonghua smiled. "Precisely."
    Ling'en seemed to have decided that Siew Tsin's years of
torpor came from an intelligent wish to stay out of trouble, rather than
intense shyness. She had said:
    "If you have as much sense as you seem to have, you
would take care to avoid that machine. If you pretend ignorance, you might have
a chance. But better than that, save up, or steal if you have to, and get away
from that house. Let Junsheng go to—ah—paradise on his own. There's
no reason why you should be dragged into trouble with him."
    "Is that why you left?" said Siew Tsin.
    Ling'en was so narrow-faced, high-cheekboned, and
sharp-chinned that everything she did had edges. Her smile cut like a knife.
    "I left because I knew we would be the end of each
other if I stayed," she said. "We were always too busy trying to save
the other from becoming what we did not like. This way perhaps I'll avoid
Junsheng's brand of salvation."
    "Yonghua, you are in danger," Siew Tsin wanted to
say now, but the door swung open and Junsheng appeared, restored to good
humour.
    "My precious, why are you sitting here in the dark? I
am sorry I was cross. That useless old woman! She has found religion and it is
softening her mind. But forgive me. Come upstairs and entertain your old
husband. My useless descendants have exerted themselves for once—we have
a new wireless. You can show me how to operate it."
    Yonghua rose, murmuring disclaimers. Siew Tsin stayed where
she was, just outside the circle of light cast by the lamp.
    The light shining in through the windows turned the room a
lurid red, smeared with shadows. Outside there was a dim cavern roof for a sky;
black volcanic floor for earth; demons and spirits for neighbours. Despite
their horse heads and bull faces, the demons of the tenth court were mundane
creatures, pot-bellied and often flushed with liquor, courteous enough to the
wife of a rich man. But the red light that filled hell made everyone look
terrifying—human, demon, or otherwise.
    It was not a world Siew Tsin would have chosen to live in.
But she did not want to be reborn, either, anymore than Junsheng did, anymore
than all the other spirits showering gold and favours on hell officials so that
they could stay where they were. Rebirth entailed a true death, the severing of
one's memory and the loss of one's self.
    That day she sat in darkness for a long time, and only
stirred when a paper maid called her to dinner.
     
    Yonghua heard the attackers before Junsheng or Siew Tsin
knew anything of it. They had been reading, Junsheng playing idly with
Yonghua's hair, Siew Tsin pretending not to be bothered.
    Junsheng seemed to have realised that it pleased