Jade Dragon Mountain (15 page)

Their progress through the crowd was slowed further by the two mules, who walked shoulder to shoulder beside them, ears twisting anxiously in response to the cacophony. Hamza, with the exception of a few competitive glares leveled at the other performers, was untroubled by the chaos. “If I saw years in the market,” he said, “I would not buy them. Wine is another matter.”

Hamza had paused and was looking through the row of temporary stalls into a busy store whose walls were lined with shelf upon shelf of gleaming bottles. Li Du, who had last received money six months ago from a wealthy relative in Guizhou, was aware that his purse was beginning to feel light.
But
, he said to himself,
in the days that are to follow, a cup of wine in the evenings may almost be a medical necessity
. So he pulled out a piece of silver and offered to watch the mules while Hamza purchased two bottles.

Minutes later Hamza returned, a bottle in each hand. “This one is for me,” he said, holding up a sealed jar, glazed a deep green and incised with wild geese. “It reminds me,” he said, “of the young princess who wove capes of stinging nettles to save her brothers from a sorceress who had cursed them to appear as birds. And this one is for you.” He thrust his hand forward proudly to display the bottle, white and blue porcelain in the Ming style.

Li Du accepted the bottle and examined it. The pattern was a simple, painted, blue design, pleasingly bright and transparent, the white porcelain shining through it. On it were two lines of a poem, the words slipping down the neck of the bottle in simple calligraphy:
The path of stars slants low toward you
.

“Did the merchant tell you that the wine was good?”

Hamza made a dismissive gesture. “I had not the time to get the truth from him. I chose these because I liked the bottles.”

They put the wine away carefully, and continued on. “So,” said Li Du, “you would not buy years? You would not extend your life if you could?”

Hamza shook his head. “Bargains like that usually conceal traps. And endings are not always sorrowful. You Chinese just think they are, because all of your stories end with lovers committing suicide—beware the peppers.”

Li Du's foot caught on the edge of a woven basket, sending a few of the peppers heaped in it sliding down to the ground, where they glowed like setting suns. Li Du hastened to put them back in the basket before they were trampled, glad that the vendor's attention was elsewhere. Beside the baskets of peppers were buckets full of honeycombs, studded with liquid jewels, half sunk in deep wells of honey.

He straightened up while his mule waited patiently, and they continued on. Ahead of them, an elderly woman was bent almost double under the weight of the basket on her back, in which were fitted two large pig heads with cloudy half-closed eyes. Bobbing away, they stared back at him until they were lost from sight amid bolts of cloth. It was silk, spooled out from rollers for buyers to examine, bright ribbons of color blocking the path and casting tinted shadows on the people who ducked underneath.

Hoping to find a less densely packed street, they turned right into an alley that was familiar to Li Du from his first day in Dayan. He recognized the hanging, tangled bridles adorned with gleaming bells, and the stacks of coarse saddle blankets. The fishmongers would be somewhere ahead, beyond the incense. He caught the scent of smoky rose and night jasmine, and came to an abrupt halt.

Hamza, mimicking Li Du, sniffed the air, then raised a questioning eyebrow. “You want to buy perfume?” he asked.

Li Du was peering through the crowd at the cluttered market stalls that lined both sides of the alley. He saw the telltale haze of smoke blurring an area just ahead of them on the right, and guided his mule toward it, Hamza close behind.

The incense came from a leaning, ramshackle set of tables covered in cloth drapes streaked with gray ash. Lit coils, cones, and sticks all sent sinewy lines of smoke up into the air, where they mingled and spread. It was a sensual, heavy combination of flowers: rose, jasmine, osmanthus.

But it was not the incense seller that held Li Du's attention. It was the low table tucked beside it. The table was so humble and small, so crowded amid the jumble of vendors, that it would have been easy to miss. Sitting on a stool behind it, a peasant woman, her head swathed in a pink wool scarf, was bent over a piece of embroidery. She was drawing a length of thick blue thread up through the cloth. On her back a swaddled baby slept, its head on her shoulder, peeping from under an embroidered blanket. Another child stood beside her, bundled in warm clothes, with ruddy pink cheeks and a solemn stare. The smoke from the incense clouded the area in the almost suffocating fragrance.

“What is it?” asked Hamza, trying to see through the bustle.

Li Du pointed. On the table in front of the woman, arranged in two neat rows, were ten leather purses inset with embroidered pictures of foxes and junipers.

When Li Du bent to pick up one of the purses, the child next to the woman pushed at her shoulder, and she looked up quickly.

“Do you want to buy something?” She had a strong accent and a loud voice.

“I wanted to ask you about these purses,” Li Du said.

“Are you an official?”

Li Du began to say that he wasn't, but Hamza interrupted. “He is the magistrate's cousin.”

She looked surprised. “The magistrate's own cousin? I didn't think anything was going to be done. I told one of the guards, but he said that in a crowd like this there will always be pickpockets, and that I should pay more attention. He said there wasn't a chance of finding the thief, so I had better not bother him about it again.”

“You mean,” said Li Du, finally understanding, “that one of these purses was stolen from you?”

“Isn't that what I just said?” The baby woke up and began to play with the woman's hair.

Li Du looked again at the purses. “When did this happen?”

“Three days ago. In the afternoon.”

“And what occurred exactly?”

“It was crowded, like it is now. Mountains and oceans of people. I was busy—I sew while I wait for customers. I didn't see the thief's hand reach out and take one. Noticed it missing later when I counted. That's why my daughter is here now—to watch while I sew.”

“And what pattern was embroidered on the stolen purse?”

“They are all the same—like these ones.”

“And you make them all in the Khampa style?”

Her face softened a little bit. “My mother taught me,” she said. “She was from Kham. She sold purses like this.”

“And do you know if anyone else in Dayan sells them?”

“No one does. See how fine the embroidery is? And the thread is dyed with my mother's own recipes. The colors are very bright. I don't usually make them to sell, but I came for the festival. The other people in my village told me that there will be good business.”

“And the incense burning next to your table—it is always the same?”

She nodded. “Yes. I put my table here because I like the scent. Does that matter?”

“It is essential,” said Hamza. “He is a very clever investigator.”

The woman gave Hamza a suspicious look, unsure whether he was in earnest.

“I am sorry that it was stolen from you,” said Li Du, “and I will do what I can to address the theft. Allow me to buy one for myself.”

The woman smiled for the first time. “Well—that is good of you. They cost a quarter tael—you see how fine the quality is.”

Li Du did not dispute the high price, and paid the woman under Hamza's silent scrutiny.

When they were finally out of the market crowds, on the quieter street leading to the mansion, Hamza said, “How did you know that the woman would be there?”

Li Du roused himself from his thoughts. “When I found the purse in Brother Pieter's room, I noticed that it did not smell as I would expect an object carried by caravan to smell. It was perfumed. I did not think it was important, but when I caught the scent of the incense in the market I recognized it. The threads absorbed the fragrance.”

“Then the thief who stole the purse from the market is the murderer.”

“I think it is likely. It was taken on the afternoon of the day Brother Pieter died.”

Li Du hesitated. They were almost at the inn, and Hoh was already standing outside, no doubt having been informed of their approach. The innkeeper waved and gestured for them to hurry, pointing toward his kitchen, his cheeks red and smiling, his hands dusted in flour.

“Not too loudly,” said Hamza under his breath. “The innkeeper can't be trusted with secrets.”

Li Du nodded. “There is still a long while before sunset. If you would be willing to take the animals, and to ask the innkeeper whether I might have a room at the inn, I will go and speak to the magistrate.”

“What will you tell him? He is not going to be happy to hear what you have found out.”

Li Du looked back at the mountain, once more a distant, silent shape, as if it might provide the answer to a question. Then he sighed, and said with a small smile, “Somehow I must convince him that the truth is important, but I worry that the evidence of the purse will not be enough.”

“Because,” said Hamza in a low voice, “your cousin will choose safety and convenience over truth. Your Chinese bureaucrats do not like to take responsibility. And your cousin is a real bureaucrat—he is a cog.”

Li Du agreed with the frank assessment. In the bureaucracy, the punishments for failures were often heavier than the rewards for successes. Tulishen would do everything he could to avoid looking again at the murder.

Li Du adjusted his hat, raised his chin a little higher, and said, “He is a man of the law. I have to trust that he will not turn away from justice.”

“And I will hope so also,” said Hamza, grandly. “And while you are gone, I will convince our good innkeeper to give you a room. You and I shall dine together this evening.” And, taking the bridles, he went to meet Hoh. Li Du crossed the cobbled square to the gates of the mansion.

*   *   *

Tulishen met him in a covered pavilion built in the middle of a deep pond. It was accessible only by a high, arching stone bridge, the railings of which were studded with white marble lions. The pavilion itself was round, with slim columns holding up its high roof. Cold radiated from the stone and icy water, chilling the shaded interior. Across the water, through the plum and willow trees on the bank, Li Du could see the book-sunning room at the back of the library.

The magistrate wore a robe of dark blue silk and a black fur-lined jacket. His draped figure distorted the banded shadows of the columns. He looked irritated and impatient.

“I was composing a response to the governor of Dali,” said Tulishen, “who will arrive in the city this evening. His courier is waiting in my office. I almost did not believe the guard when he told me that my cousin had returned and wished to speak to me on an urgent matter. Why have you come back to Dayan? Now you want to plead for the Emperor's forgiveness after all? His words are gold and jade. You cannot undo them.”

“That is not why I have come back. I am here because I want to discover who killed Brother Pieter.”

Li Du waited, but Tulishen was facing away from him, his hand on the railing of the pavilion, his gaze directed down at the water that lapped against the marble. A slow, white fish swam in a ponderous circle, looking for food in the plants that gripped the stone beneath the half-frozen surface.

Tulishen began to speak, still without looking at Li Du. “When you were a boy, the family thought that you would be the one who would advance us. You were so clever. Our mothers imagined you as a magistrate, even a governor, in one of the port cities. Up to a point, you met every expectation. You attained the highest academic degree. You won honors. And then what did you do? You had yourself appointed librarian, and you expressed no ambition ever to be anything else. And in that—that humble career—you became friends with scholars who in your ignorance you did not recognize as traitors. Your exile humiliated us more than your obscurity ever could. And I myself did not escape punishment for your actions.”

“You are a magistrate.”

Tulishen laughed—it was a thin, bitter sound. “Yes. I am a magistrate. Posted to a miasmic village a year's journey from the capital. Surrounded by diseased insects and ignorant peasants. I, who have dined with governors, princes, even at the Emperor's own table.”

Li Du's reply was quiet. “I never wished these troubles on you,” he said.

Tulishen absorbed this, then turned to face Li Du. “And yet,” he said, “you are here now to bring more trouble to me—to my city, my guests, my prospects.”

“It is the murderer of Brother Pieter who threatens you.”

Tulishen made a gesture as if to sweep Li Du's words away like hovering flies. “I have heard this already,” he snapped. “Your opinion did not interest me two days ago, and it does not interest me now. Nothing has changed. The situation has been resolved. You cannot dispute that you yourself found, in the dead man's room, a purse of Kham make, filled with poison. The man had traveled with the Khampa. This is the explanation, and if you have come back to try to convince me otherwise, then you have wasted your time.”

Li Du produced the small embroidered purse from his pocket. He held it out to the magistrate. “Do you recognize this?”

Tulishen snatched the purse from Li Du. He turned it over in his hands, and Li Du saw him swallow. Tulishen looked up at Li Du. “How did you get this? It was locked in my own office. I know that it was there. How did you take it?”

Li Du was calm. “That purse you are holding is not the one that was found in Pieter's room.”

“But this is some trick. What have you done? It is the same purse.”

“It was made by the same artisan. She is a woman of Kham, but is, at this moment, selling these purses in your own market here in Dayan. She is here for the festival. And on the day Brother Pieter died, she was in the market, selling these purses. I spoke to her not an hour ago, and she told me that on that day, one of them was stolen.”