The White Mirror Read Online Free Page B

sleeves. “Then you saw—” He stopped, uncertain. “—on the bridge?”
    Li Du nodded. Interpreting the youth’s apparent distress as grief, Li Du spoke gently. “I am sorry,” he said. “Was he from this house?”
    The young man seemed to close in upon himself. He shook his head, then looked behind him. His hat was a black spot in the center of the white courtyard. He said, “I must go up to the temple. I have to bring the Chhöshe to the bridge.”
    A woman’s voice called from upstairs. “Is that Pema who has come back?”
    They looked to see the lady of the house descending the staircase into the courtyard. She did not come all the way down, but paused and bent slightly to address them. Li Du observed a round, smooth face and fastidious attire. Her dress was so neatly arranged that she resembled the painted latticework that decorated the manor. Her forearms were wrapped in cloth to protect her sleeves from becoming soiled in the kitchen.
    â€œPema,” she said, addressing the young man, who winced slightly in response. “The children are frightened,” she said. Then her voice became hushed. “Is it Dhamo who died?”
    Pema nodded.
    â€œWhat happened to him? Why was he at the bridge?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    The woman made a sound of impatience. “Where are you going?”
    Pema pointed upward toward the mountain. “To bring the Chhöshe.”
    The woman nodded and waved her hand, ushering Pema away. “Hurry then.”
    Pema looked as if he might say more, then dipped his head and ran out into the courtyard. He scooped up his discarded hat and left the manor.
    The woman’s glance took in Li Du standing with the saddlebags on his back. “I will show you your room.”
    *   *   *
    The building housed the family’s animals in the barns on its lower level, and the family itself, as well as their guests, in the rooms above. It comprised two wings of equal length joined at a right angle to enclose the courtyard on two sides. The guest rooms were connected by a hallway that ran the length of the building adjacent to the courtyard.
    Li Du’s room was a large, spare chamber located at the far northern end of the wing. Dim light entered through gaps in the shuttered windows. The bed was heaped with wool and yak fur blankets. A candle stood on the table beside it. A copper brazier hung from a ceiling made from slats separated enough to allow smoke to be drawn up and out from under the raised roof.
    Shelves attached to the wall were stacked with wooden bowls and ornaments. As he explored the space, out of the corner of his eye Li Du glimpsed his own reflection, warped and spectral, moving through the polished lid of a copper pot. He set his saddlebags down in a corner beside a small shrine, a silver statue and an unlit butter lamp arranged in front of a painting mounted on black silk. He put his mule’s bridle on the table by the bed. Its bells clicked into silence one at a time as they hit the wooden surface.
    A voice startled him. “I had charmed the whole household, and then you bring them a dead man.”
    Li Du turned to see a familiar figure in the doorway, a man with a black pointed beard and a graceful set to his shoulders. He wore a blue hat brightly embroidered with birds and leaves.
    â€œHamza,” Li Du said. “I am very relieved to see you.”
    â€œAnd I you, librarian,” said Hamza.
    Hamza was a fellow traveler on Kalden Dorjee’s caravan. He was a storyteller by profession, a master of languages, and a self-proclaimed collector of local tales and names of gods. A man of apparent youth, he might have been twenty or forty, and affected one age or another as it suited him.
    Since Li Du had met him, seven months earlier, Hamza had never told the same story of his past twice. Once he claimed to be the sixth son of a family of gardeners from