She got up slowly, her dark eyes filled with awe of him. She had seen how powerful he was; how his servants laid their necks down for him to tread upon. Had seen and was afraid. This was not the boy she had known. No, he was no longer a child, but a man: the cub a lion now, dressed in flame.
"You look well," he said, aware of the inadequacy of the words.
"I wondered when you'd come. I knew you would."
He nodded, surprised by how subdued she sounded. So different from before. "And the child?"
"He's fine." She looked away, biting her lip. "He's sleeping now. Do you want to see him?" She glanced at him, aware of his hesitation. "You don't have to. I know how you feel about all this."
Do you? he thought; but he kept silent and simply nodded.
"Han," she said. "1 called him Han. As you wished."
She was watching him; trying to see what he made of it. His cheek muscle twitched once more and then lay still, his face a mask.
"Come," she said after a moment, then led him down a high-ceilinged corridor «| to the nursery.
A girl sat beside the cot, her hands in her lap. At the entrance of her mistress she got up and bowed. Then she saw Li Yuan and abased herself, as Yin Tsu had done. Fei Yen dismissed her hurriedly, then turned to face Li Yuan again.
"Don't wake him, Yuan. He needs his sleep."
He nodded and went close, looking down at the baby from the side of the cot.
The child lay on its side, one hand up to its mouth, the other resting lightly against the bars at the side of the cot. A fine, dark down of hair covered its scalp, while about its neck lay a monitoring strip, the milky white band pulsing quickly, in time with the baby's heartbeat.
"But he's so—so tiny I" Li Yuan laughed, surprised. The baby's hands, his tiny, perfectly formed feet were like fine sculpture. Like miniatures in tarnished ivory.
"He's not a month yet," she said, as if that explained the beauty of the child. Li Yuan wanted to reach out and hold one of those tiny hands; to feel its fingers stretch and close about his thumb.
He turned, looking at her, and suddenly all of the old bitterness and love were there, impurely mixed in what he was feeling. He hated her for this. Hated her for making him feel so much. Frustration made him grit his teeth and push past her, the feeling overwhelming him, making him want to cry out for the pain he felt.
As it had always been, he realized. It had always hurt him to be with her. She took too much. Left him so little of himself. And that was wrong. He could not be a T'ang and feel like this. No, it was better to feel nothing than to feel so much. He stood with his back to her, breathing deeply, trying to calm himself, to still the turmoil in his gut and put it all back behind the ice.
Where it belonged. Where it had to belong.
She was silent, waiting for him. When he turned back, all trace of feeling had gone from his face. He looked across at the cot and the sleeping child, then back at her, his voice quiet, controlled.
"I want to give you something. For you and the child. It will be his when he comes of age, but until that time it is yours to administer."
She lowered her head obediently.
"I want him to have the palace at Hei Shui."
She looked up, wide-eyed with surprise. "Li Yuan—" But he had raised his hand to silence her.
"The documents are drawn up. I want no arguments, Fei Yen. It's little enough compared to what he might have had."
She turned her head away, unable to disguise the moment's bitterness, then nodded her acquiescence.
"Good." He turned, looking at the cot once more. "There will be an allowance too. For both of you. You will not want for anything, Fei Yen. Neither you nor he."
"My father—" she began, pride creeping back into her voice, but she cut it off, holding her tongue. She knew he need do nothing. The terms of the divorce were clear enough. Hers was the shame. In her actions lay the blame for how things were.
"Let it be so, then," he said finally. "Your father shall have the documents. And Han. . ." he said the name; said it and breathed deeply afterward, a muscle jumping in his cheek. "Han shall have Hei Shui."
TOLONEN LOOKED UP, his long face ashen, his gray eyes filled with a deep hurt. For a time he stared sightlessly at the wall, then slowly shook his head.
"I can't believe it," he said quietly, pushing the file away from him. "I just can't believe it. Hans. . ." His mouth creased into a grimace of pain. "What will I say?. . . What will his father say?" Then he thought of Jelka and the betrothal and groaned. "Gods, what a mess. What a stinking, horrible mess this is."
The file on Hans Ebert was a slender dossier, not enough to convict a man in law, but enough to prove its case by any other measure. To an advocate it would have been merely a mass of circumstantial evidence, but that evidence pointed in one direction only.
Tolonen sighed, then rubbed at his eyes. Hans had been clever. Too clever, in fact; for the sum total of his cleverness was a sense of absence, of shadow where there should have been substance. Discrepancies in GenSyn funds. Payments to fellow officers. Unexplained absences in Ebert's service record—missing hours and days that, in three cases, linked up with dates given them by DeVore's man Reid. Misplaced files on five of the eighteen Young Sons arrested on Li Yuan's instructions only a day or so ago, all of which had, at some point, passed through Ebert's hands. Then there was the statement given by the girl in the Ebert household, Golden Heart, and, finally, the holograms.
The holograms seemed, on the surface of it, to be the most conclusive evidence, though in law, he knew, they held no real significance. It had been successfully claimed long ago that photographic and holographic evidence was unreliable, since GenSyn could make a perfect duplicate of anyone. This and the whole question of image-verification had relegated such "information" to a secondary status in law. But this was not something that would ever see a courtroom. Wider issues were at stake here. And older codes of conduct.
In one of the holograms Hans could be seen standing on the verandah of a skiing lodge, looking down at a figure on the snow below him. That figure was DeVore. They were grainy shots, taken from a narrow triangulation—perhaps as little as twenty degrees—and consequently the far side of the three-dimensional image blurred into perfect whiteness; but that incompleteness itself suggested that it was genuine, taken with two hand-helds from a distance, who knew for what purpose— maybe blackmail. The holograms had been found in storage in DeVore's stronghold, almost as though they had been left to be found. In itself this might have led Security to discount them as a subtle attempt to undermine Ebert's position, but added to the other matters they we're significant.
No, there was no real proof, but the circumstantial evidence was considerable.
Ebert had been working with the rebels; providing them with funds; meeting with them; passing on information, and covering their tracks where necessary.
Tolonen closed the file, then sat back, his hands trembling. He had always trusted Ebert. When he had asked Haavikko to investigate he had been thinking of three other officers. For him the question of Hans Ebert's loyalty had never arisen. Not until this evening.
He shook his head. There were tears in his eyes now; tears running down his furrowed cheeks. He gritted his teeth, tightening the muscles in his face, but still the tears came. There was only one thing to do. He would have to go and see Klaus. After all, this was Family. A matter of honor.
He let out a shuddering sigh, then shook his head, remembering. Jelka ... He had promised Jelka that he would dine with her at home tonight. He glanced at the timer on the wall, then pulled himself up out of the chair, throwing the file down on the bed. He was late already, but she would understand. He would call Helga and explain. And maybe send Jelka a note by messenger.