The Marriage of the Living Dark

Unless, of course, he’d met her through his work

Li Yuan leaned forward, speaking softly to the driver, getting him to set him down three blocks from where he needed to go, conscious of Cho Yi sitting there beside him, eyes closed yet listening.He sat back, closing his hand over the napkin in his pocket even as the driver began to take the glide down. What was she like? Was she pretty? Was she young’? Li Yuan closed his eyes, trying to imagine how his brother had reacted to the news. He ought to have asked at dinner, but there had been so little time. He gave a tiny, shivering sigh. What a mess! What a goddam awful mess! The glide descended, moving into denser air traffic, while Cho Yi, beside him, began to snore again.

The Madam, it seemed, was her mother. A thin-boned, hard-faced woman who, he

imagined, must have been quite pretty in her time. “Are you sure you would not

have another of the girls?” she asked, her fan fluttering agitatedly before her

heavily made-up face. She seemed quite reluctant to let Li Yuan have his

specific

request

“I am quite sure, Madam Yin,” he answered, standing his ground. “And if it is a question of the fee, I will happily double it Now show me to her. I am growing impatient” Madam Yin hesitated a moment longer then folded up her fan. “Wait there,” she said and ducked back inside.

A minute later she returned. “All right But nothing kinky, you understand?”

‘1 understand.” And Li Yuan bowed, even as the Madam’s fan started up agitatedly once more.

“Then follow me.”

He followed her, through a corridor that stank of perfume and sweat and out through a small ante room into a hallway that had three doors leading off it She stopped at the second of them and knocked.

“Fei Yen! You have a visitor!”

Flying Swallow. It was such a pretty name. He commented on it now to the mother. She gave a grudging nod, a faint colour appearing at her neck where the line of make-up ended. “I am pleased you like it, for she was named after myself.”

NIGHTFALL IN THE PARADIGM WORLD

“Then it is doubly pretty,” Li Yuan said, and only afterward, as he turned back to face the door, did he think how crass a comment it had been. And yet she had seemed pleased by it, as if she received few compliments. Yin Fei Yen. Both the name and the face seemed familiar. And yet he had never met her in his life before this moment.

As the door opened, the girl, who was sat upon the bed in a desultory fashion, looked up. A moment’s hope died as she saw how old he was. He saw how she looked to her mother, a pleading look, then looked down, in an instant accepting her fate.

And Li Yuan, watching the tiny play in her eyes, felt sickened by it all. Was this what his brother wanted? This?

The mother hovered behind him. He turned and pressed the credits into her hand - four times what had been agreed - then stepped through and pulled the door shut behind him.

“Well,” he said, staring at her again. “So you are Fei Yen.” She looked up, a brief defiance in her eyes. But she knew the score. Her mother had sold her to him. For the next hour she was his, to do with as he wished. Did Han Ch’in think of that? Did he picture her with other men every time he made love to this woman?

Oh, she was pretty. A real head-turner, and no mistaking it. But... there was a cold, sour knowledge in her eyes right now that no games of pretence could ever wash away. She had seen awful things; maybe had awful things done to her, for all the mother spoke of doing “nothing kinky”.

And then there was the child.

“Stand up,” he said, no tone in his voice.

She stood.

“Now turn around.”

She slowly turned full circle, then looked to him, wondering what he wanted from her next. The child - if child there was in her belly, and as yet he had no proof - barely showed. She looked, if anything, underweight. The only clue to her predicament was a tightness about her mouth, a redness about her eyes - as if she had been crying earlier.

So what now?A customer - a real customer - would fuck her. But this was his brother’s future bride.

Talk, then. He’d talk to her.

He went across and sat on the edge of the bed, then patted the space beside him.

She sat, uncertainly, he saw. As yet she hadn’t fathomed him.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

He stared into the darkness of her eyes a moment, understanding in that instant how his brother might have fallen for this woman; but his purpose was to check her out To test her.

“What do you want?”

There was a frown, then: “Sexually, you mean?”

He shook his head, his mouth suddenly dry. “From life.” Her laugh was bleak. It told him much more than he wanted to know. She didn’t think his brother was going to marry her. She thought he was only using her, and that now she was carrying his child he would discard her. As well he might. For she was a liability to such a man as Han Ch’in. His brother might as well spit in his General’s face as marry this one. “Well?” he insisted. “What do you want from life, Fei Yen?” He saw how she hesitated, then backed away from the truth that had been on her lips. She wasn’t going to tell him, that was for sure. “My own place ... and the means to live.”