The Corpse Reader (47 page)

But Feng shushed him. Cí had suffered quite enough, said the older man. He was just pleased they’d found each other now, so that they could share the good as well as the bad. Cí fell silent. Remorse gripped his throat. Eventually Feng broke the silence by asking him about the exams.

“You wanted to take them, didn’t you?”

Cí nodded. He said he’d tried to obtain the Certificate of Aptitude but was denied because of his father’s dishonor. Tears came to his eyes.

Feng lowered his head in sorrow.

“So you found out. Such a terrible thing, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. Not even when you were asking me about the changes in your father. You already had plenty on your plate at the time, what with your brother’s arrest. But maybe I can help you now, use my connections. That certificate—”

“Sir, I’d really rather you not do anything more for me.”

“You know how highly I’ve always thought of you, Cí. Now that you’re here, I want you to think of yourself as family.”

Feng went on to speak about Blue Iris, how they’d met, the difficulties of their courtship, and their happy marriage.

As Feng spoke, Cí glanced at the
nüshi
, who was relaxing in the gardens. Her sleek black hair was arranged in a bun, leaving her smooth, firm back in sight. Cí sipped at his tea, hoping the cup would hide his blushing. Finishing, he stood and asked permission to return to his room to study. The judge said he could go but stopped him to give him a sweet rice dessert.

“Thank you, Cí. Thank you for agreeing to come. You’ve made me so happy.”

Cí went and lay down on his feather bed and contemplated the richness of his surroundings. Normally he would have been delighted to find himself in such a place, but now he felt like a stray dog taken in by a kind master whom the dog would nevertheless turn on and maul.

Disobeying Kan would mean Ming’s death; obeying him meant betraying Feng. He tried to eat a little of the sweet rice but immediately spit it out. He tasted only the bitterness in his soul. Was it really worth living like this?

He lay there, tormenting himself, blaming himself for the damage he was going to have to do—either to Ming or to Feng.

Trying to focus instead on his work, he ran through the murders: Soft Dolphin, the eunuch, an elegant homosexual, a sensitive lover of antiques; the man with the corroded hands, in some way linked to the salt industry; the youth captured in the portrait, his face peppered with tiny wounds that Cí was yet to understand; the bronze maker, whose workshop burned down the same night he was decapitated…None of it added up, least of all how Blue Iris might be involved. She might have wanted revenge on the emperor, but how would she achieve that with these four seemingly unrelated deaths? What difference would they make to the emperor? When it came down to it, in spite of the similarities in the appearances of the murders, there was nothing yet to say the same person had carried them all out or even coordinated them.

When he was called down for dinner, he said he had a stomachache and sent the servant away. His dreams were inhabited by the seemingly inescapable image of Blue Iris.

The next morning he woke early and, after asking the servants to tell his hosts he’d be back to eat with them later, went to see how Ming was getting on.

Finding his old master in a cell that was no better than the last—damp, with rotten food and excrement in the corners—he couldn’t contain his rage. Cí demanded an explanation from the sentry, but the man seemed about as merciful as a butcher going about his work. Ming was lying down and complained about his leg wounds. Cí gave him some water and, wiping the dried blood from the man’s face with a wet cloth, tried to comfort him. The wounds didn’t look good. A younger man might recover from such treatment, but Ming…Cí tried to stay calm, but he thought he was in more of a state than Ming. He swore to Ming that he’d get him out of there.

“Don’t trouble yourself. Kan has never had much of a liking for effeminate men,” he said sarcastically.

Cí cursed the councilor—and himself—for getting Ming into this mess. Then he told Ming about the bind he was in.

“What’s the point in following clues in the investigations if I have no idea about the murderer’s motive?”

“You’ve considered revenge?”

“Kan suggested that, too. But he also seems to think a blind woman could be responsible!” He outlined the situation with the
nüshi
.

“Could Kan be right?”

“Of course he could. The woman’s rich enough to employ a whole army if she wants. But why? If revenge on the emperor is what she wants, why kill these poor swine?”

“And you haven’t established any other suspects? The deceased didn’t have enemies?”

“The eunuch, no, he just lived for his work. And the bronze maker, I’m making inquiries.”

Ming tried to get up but immediately felt a stabbing pain in his legs and couldn’t move.

“I wish I could help.” He groaned, then, having recovered a little, he took a key from a chain around his neck. “But maybe there’s something you can do for me. There’s a false door in my library, after the last set of shelves. My life secrets are all behind there—books, drawings, poems, things that would have no significance to anyone else but mean everything to me. Please, should anything…happen to me, make sure that no one else gets their hands on those things.”

Cí tried to say something, but Ming silenced him with a wave of the hand.

“Promise me. If I die, bury them alongside me.”

Aloud, Cí agreed. To himself, he added one thing: if his master died, Kan would be next.

Cí went to Kan’s offices. He didn’t wait to be announced but burst in, surprising Kan, who was bent over a pile of documents at his desk. He began putting them hurriedly away, glaring at Cí. But Cí was more threatening still. He didn’t allow the councilor to speak.

“Either you let Ming out of that dungeon right now, or I’m going to tell Blue Iris everything!”

Kan sighed.

“Oh, that. I thought they’d already moved him.”

Cí didn’t believe a word.

“If you don’t have him moved, I’ll tell her. If he doesn’t recover, I’ll tell her, and if he dies—”

“If he dies it will be your fault for not doing your job properly! And if you don’t solve these murders, you’ll both be put to death. Let’s see: your findings so far might have satisfied the emperor, but not me. Boy, your chances are growing slimmer all the time, along with my patience. You’d better forget about that degenerate Ming and focus on your job. That is, if you don’t want to end up like him.”

Kan turned back to his work, but Cí wasn’t going anywhere.

“Deaf or something?” said Kan.

“When you let Ming out.”

Kan took a knife from his belt and was on Cí in a flash; the blade was at his jugular before he knew it. But Cí held firm, knowing that if Kan really wanted him dead, he’d be dead already.

“Only when you have Ming moved,” Cí repeated.

He felt Kan’s anger vibrate through the edge of the knife. Eventually, Kan released him.

“Guard!” he shouted, and the sentry appeared straightaway. “See that the prisoner Ming has his wounds attended to, and then have him brought up here. As for you,” he said, bringing his face
right up against Cí’s, “you’ve got three days. If you haven’t found out who the killer is by then, a killer will find you.”

Leaving Kan’s offices, Cí found he could breathe again. He had no idea how he’d ever found the gall to challenge the councilor like that. The three days Kan had given him, he realized, corresponded with Gray Fox’s return. Cí dug his fingernails into his palms. The only way to save Ming was to uncover the assassin, even if it meant betraying Feng.

Bo met him in the hallway, and together they stopped by the dungeon to check that Kan’s orders were being followed. They found four servants and a doctor carrying Ming out on a stretcher.

Their next stop was the room where the remains of the bronze maker’s warehouse had been deposited. Whoever had brought the remains had ignored his instructions. Nothing had been labeled, and it had all just been left in a pile. Cí kicked aside a singed beam and cleared some iron pokers out of his way. Bo apologized and began helping Cí organize all the wood and the molds. Reconstructing all the damaged equipment wasn’t going to be easy. There were so many bits and pieces, many of them tiny, that the task seemed nearly impossible. But then Cí found a piece of a mold that struck him as promising.

“Forget the iron. Have you seen this?” He held up a piece of greenish ceramic. “It’s different from all the others.”

Bo considered the piece of ceramic with the same lack of enthusiasm he’d shown for all the other remains.

“Let’s look for more!”

They managed to find eighteen pieces of the green ceramic. Cí gathered them up in a bag and put them to one side. Bo asked why, and something in his voice made Cí cautious, so he said casually
that he planned to do the same with all the molds and went back to sorting through the wreckage. Soon it was lunchtime, and when Cí left for the Water Lily Pavilion he took the bag with him.

Back in his room at the pavilion, he took the fragments from the sack and began piecing them together. It wasn’t only their greenish tone that had attracted his attention but the overall uniformity, which suggested they probably hadn’t been used much. He was still assembling the pieces when he felt someone watching him from the door.