The Sword Dancer (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

H
an had warned her that morning to stay away from Prefect Guan. He was an appointed official and a powerful man. Han had also pointed out that with the recent murder in the streets, the guards would be patrolling vigilantly. Li Feng had nodded at him, telling him that she understood, but she prepared to leave as soon as he was gone.

Li Feng did understand the risks, but she also sensed her answers were finally within reach.
Shifu
had tried all her life to teach her patience, preaching action through non-action, but she had failed to absorb that lesson. She would go mad waiting inside that tiny shrine for Han to return.

The rain had given her a reprieve that morning and a hint of sun appeared from behind the clouds. She replaced the grey Taoist garb with a modest cotton robe from her pack and took a parasol with her. Today she was a young woman on a morning stroll. She wanted to take a look at the prefect’s residence, that was all.

As she walked the muddied streets, Li Feng took note of the placement of buildings and walls, paying attention to not just what was visible from down low, but on high as well. In her mind, she marked out the lanes and avenues. It was a habit she’d formed upon first returning to Fujian province. The sprawling cities were less intimidating to her once she’d mapped them in her mind’s eye.

At the river, she located a dock and waited for the ferry to take her along the water. Her first glimpse of the prefect’s residence was from the river. All there was to see was the surrounding wall, which enclosed a spacious mansion. An array of winged rooftops rose just above the brick barrier.

Later Li Feng approached the house on foot, with her head ducked beneath her parasol to peek at it like a shy admirer. She had been holding on to so little for so long: a piece of jade and her fragmented memories. Now the Guan mansion loomed before her, so large and real that she wanted to believe she was close. She wanted to put her hand against the grey brick to mark the moment, but there were guards in front. Another squad patrolled the perimeter.

She considered calling at the front gate and presenting the jade. Mother must have given her the pendant for a reason. Was Prefect Guan somehow related to them? Had Mother been running from this place or running to it?

In the end, Li Feng passed by the gate without stopping. The place had a discordant feel to her, a bad energy. It was barricaded like a fortress and the guards were less than welcoming. Instead she shifted her attention from the front gate to the wall. It rose five or six
chi
over her head and the brickwork provided grooves and a roughened texture that would make it easy to find footing.

Li Feng could easily evade the patrols. She could scale the wall with a running leap and be over in one breath.

But what would she do once she was inside? Maybe she would find old memories there, long discarded and waiting to be recovered. Or maybe there was nothing to see beyond the empty shell of a house.

Whatever she was going to do, it had to wait until dark. She left the mansion before the guards recognised that she had been skulking about.

On a whim, she made a few enquiries and followed the directions to a neighbourhood where the streets were narrow and the houses worn and shabby in appearance. A school was located at one corner. There was no door on the front gate and Li Feng was able to peek into the courtyard to see a group of ten young girls practising dance drills. The youngest of them appeared not much older than four. They lifted their right arms overhead in unison, keeping a graceful rounded curve, fingers shaped in lotus position. Next they raised the left arm to create a mirror image, then both arms gradually down, hands fluttering like falling leaves.

Li Feng watched them, transfixed by the unity of movement, until the rap of a bamboo switch against the gate snapped her back to attention. A middle-aged woman stood before her. She wore her hair in a severely coiled bun and wore an even more severe expression on her face.

‘Why are you here?’ the headmistress demanded.

‘I was trying to look for a dance troupe,’ Li Feng began.

‘This is a school. We only train children.’

There were many such schools for orphaned and abandoned children throughout the province. Li Feng might have gone to such a place if
shifu
hadn’t taken her in. The girls glanced over at the disturbance, but immediately returned their attention to their drills.

‘I apologise for the intrusion, madam.’ She started to ask whether the school worked with a performance group that toured the province, but the woman cut her off.

‘You go on to the courtesan district,’ she suggested sharply. ‘There’s no use for you here.’

The whole endeavour was a waste of time. Li Feng left the school, her initial feeling of anticipation draining out of her. She had thought she might find a familiar face, but fifteen years was too long. The troupe her family had travelled with would be scattered to the four corners of the Earth by now.

As she returned to the main avenue, she sensed movement off to the side. She whipped around to stare at an empty
alleyway, but there had been someone there just a moment ago, she was certain of it. She darted between the two buildings, eyes searching the shadows, her sleeve sword close in case she needed it.

‘Zheng Hao Han, are you following me?’ she demanded, directing her question to the surrounding walls.

It was just like the thief-catcher to sneak after her, but there was no answer. If it wasn’t Han, then someone else was stalking her. A stranger had been secretly watching her in the market the day before. Two occurrences were too much of a coincidence.

When she turned the corner, the hairs on her neck rose. A set of fresh footprints was visible in the mud. They led to a wall where the prints suddenly ended. Whoever had been spying on her had disappeared by going up and over, as easy as if he were walking.

* * *

The clerks in the magistrate’s office certainly kept meticulous records. Han spent hours scanning through book rolls, searching through a list of thefts and disputes for any case that resembled the circumstances Li Feng had described. Something involving a dancer or a group of vagrants coming through the city. He was also paying special attention for any case that might mention Prefect Guan or his steward. After a good ten book rolls, nothing had caught his notice.

As evening approached, Han requested a lamp which the clerk provided. Han pressed his knuckles to his eyes. The endless columns of characters were beginning to swim before him. It had been nearly ten years since he’d ended his studies, to his father’s disapproval. It was much, much easier chasing down bandits than reading casebooks.

He blinked away the cobwebs in his head and resumed his search. By the end of the next double hour, he was thinking his efforts were for nothing. All the cases started sounding like one another. Li Feng hadn’t even been able to give him a family name to search for. Han switched to a list of arrest warrants.

Halfway through the scroll, one of the descriptions sent a tremor down his spine. It was for the arrest of a woman who had fled the county after her husband was imprisoned. Han jumped as the clerk’s voice rang out.

‘The records hall will be closing soon.’

Urgently, Han checked the warrant numbering and date and returned to the case records, using a finger to keep track of the columns. He could hear the clerk’s footsteps approaching and his heart was beating as fast as it had in any hunt.

Then suddenly it was all there before him with startling clarity. A crime that had occurred at the prefect’s residence fifteen years earlier.

‘Honourable sir.’

The clerk stood over his shoulder as Han read through the case report as fast as he could.

‘Sir,’
the man repeated, sharper and more insistent. ‘The yamen gates are closing for the day. All of the functionaries are to leave the premises.’

Han nodded and quickly wrote down the case information with his ink brush. The clerk, who was at least ten years his senior, was busy rolling up the scrolls and packing them back on to the shelves.

‘Don’t you know there’s a very strict curfew in effect? In another hour, the city patrols will be hassling anyone on the main streets.’ The man snorted impatiently. ‘My home is at the far corner of the East Gate neighbourhood. Who has the money to hire a carriage?’

The clerk snatched up the final scroll just as Han finished inking the last character.

‘You best get going yourself,’ he huffed. ‘The patrols will be even less understanding with an outsider. You might find yourself back here after all, spending the night in a holding cell.’

It was good advice, despite the clerk’s brusque attitude. Han retrieved his weapon from the constable’s station and left through the main gate, which the guards promptly barred shut behind him.

The main market area to the south of the yamen had closed as well. He had enough time to get to the shrine where he and Li Feng had spent the evening, though he hoped to convince her to return to his lodging instead, as scandalous as it might seem. The room he’d found was considerably warmer and they’d moved beyond the lines of propriety long ago.

There was a man selling charcoal on the street and Han stopped to purchase some, just in case they were forced to spend another night at the shrine. As he continued towards the plain wooden gate at the corner, his stomach knotted. He didn’t know how to tell Li Feng what he’d discovered. Even though he had read through the case briefly, his gut told him he had found the right one.

He pushed open the gate and entered the courtyard. The windows of the altar room were black like the hollowed eyes of a skull. When Han peered inside, only the lifeless statues at the altar stared back at him.

Li Feng’s absence struck him like a physical blow. After holding her close through the night, he’d assumed she would be there waiting for him. He should have known it was against her nature to stay still for so long, especially when she thought the answers she was searching for were somewhere within the city.

Han lit a small fire in the brazier and waited, but as the end of the hour neared, he knew she wasn’t coming. He hoped that Li Feng would be careful, wherever it was that she had gone. The incident he’d read about hadn’t involved theft. It had detailed a crime of assault and murder.

* * *

An unbroken string of drumbeats sounded at the start of the Hour of the Dog. It was followed by three strikes of the gong and then another string of drumbeats. The pattern was repeated at several stations throughout the city. Curfew.

An edict had been declared after the violent killing just a few days ago. No weapons were allowed in the open. Administrative buildings were heavily guarded and all public officials were to have an armed escort out in public. Shortly after sundown, the city patrols swept the streets, pushing stragglers into their respective neighbourhoods. The sentries had the authority to imprison anyone suspicious who was found outside.

Li Feng avoided the first stream of armed guards she encountered by squeezing into the narrow space between two shops. Once the patrol had moved on, she slipped onto side streets and back alleys to navigate her way back to the prefect’s residence. The path of the river provided an easy landmark for maintaining her direction. If there was a wall in the way, she leapt over it.

At the Guan mansion, there was an additional set of guards stationed around the perimeter. The lanterns were still on inside the walls so she pressed back into the shadows to wait as the lights were extinguished, one after another, until only a few faint glimmers remained.

By that time, it was deep into the night and the stars were out. The three-quarter moon cast a translucent glow over the residence and Li Feng waited for clouds to drift over the face of it to begin her climb. It appeared as if the guards circled every quarter of an hour. She would have to move quickly as soon as they cleared the corner.

A flicker of movement down the street stopped her just as she was about to make her run. Someone else was also staking out the residence. Or worse, someone was watching her.

Blood rushed to her limbs as her body prepared for flight. Li Feng breathed steadily to calm herself as she stepped back into the shadows, into the maze of lanes and alleys. The curfew had left these corridors quiet, dark and empty. She could see the haze of a lantern just beyond the end of the street, hidden behind the black outline of the buildings. The night watch.

She stopped and remained still, head tilted to catch faint sounds. There were footsteps padding towards her, gaining speed, their distance closing. There was more than one person.

As the pursuers closed in, Li Feng spun around. She drew her sword and struck at eye level. A cry of pain answered her along with a pressure that travelled through the blade as steel cut through flesh. Not deep, but deep enough. The first figure fell back against a second one. It was time to run.

She ran towards the lantern light. Her stomach plummeted as the men shouted out to others. The shadows came alive ahead of her and two others emerged, blocking her way.

They had four to her one. What she needed to do was go up, up and over, but the space was too narrow to manoeuvre. She was forced to fight force with force, which was a losing proposition. Li Feng positioned her back to the wall and glanced at the men on either side of her. Raising the short sword with her right hand, she slipped a throwing knife into her left.

‘Lower your sword, girl. The Black Eagle wants to meet you,’ a voice grated in the darkness.

She absolutely would
not
lower her sword. ‘I don’t know anyone who goes by that name.’

‘You won’t be harmed,’ he promised.

She looked over the men again. Their clothes were mismatched and ragged. Their beards overgrown. One had a new gash cutting across his nose, just missing his eyes which now glared at her murderously, but no one made a move as they waited for her answer.

She didn’t trust them, but they could have overpowered her had they chosen to and there was nowhere to run. She could have called for the city guards, but they might very well cut her throat at that point and leave her in the alley.