The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

  The avenues between plants were lined with display cases containing everything from a costly jeweled hair comb to a child’s doll carved from cheap teak, and I may have learned something when I noticed that moonlight made materials irrelevant, and if craftsmanship was the criterion the doll was the more valuable. The avenues converged at the center of the dome where a single case stood on a circular patch of floor. Here steam was taking the place of heat waves; outlines blurred, and everything seen from the corners of my eyes seemed to be floating up and down as on billows of the sea. The moon was directly above the dome. As I walked forward I watched it change color and shape seen through differing patches of glass: now round and golden as a fabled peach from Samarkand, now elongated and yellow as a squash—a crab must see the moon like that, I thought, peering up through water as it scuttled over sand and seaweed.

  The glass alone must have cost a crown prince’s ransom. Never had I seen so much in one place, and never of such quality.

  We reached the center display and gazed down at the case and there it was, an ancient cage like the ones we had seen before. Master Li frowned. “Damn. No brush,” he said, and indeed there wasn’t a brush like the one shown in the rubbing. It was like the one we’d picked up outside Ma Tuan Lin’s pavilion, but this time I noticed the hole at the top through which a brush handle could protrude. I reached forward, but Master Li stopped me.

  “Careful.”

  He examined everything about the floor, the stand, the display cage, the ceiling, and only when he was sure there was no visible trap or alarm mechanism did he reach out and carefully lift the glass cover. Steam billowed around us, hissing, blocking my vision, and when it cleared I saw Master Li nod. I reached out and picked up the cage and pulled it back, and Master Li gently replaced the lid.

  “Let’s take a look at it,” he said.

  In a far corner was a workbench where a bright lantern glowed, giving clearer illumination than moonlight, and we started toward it. My throat tickled badly and I coughed, and then the old man coughed. The sound seemed to linger inside the dome, moving slowly through the moist air. At the lantern Master Li examined the top of the cage and took note of the symbols of the elements on the bars, symbols the Skilled Gentleman had touched with the brush in the rubbings, and then he turned the cage over and looked at the bottom. He became very still.

  “Ox,” he said quietly after a long pause, “do you see this tiny little cross scratched on the rim?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I put it there.”

  “Sir?”

  “I put it there, Ox, from force of habit, as an identifying mark on a piece of physical evidence. This is the same cage that we found on the island, and that the ape man stole from the shack,” Master Li said.

  I stared blankly at him. Nothing made sense to me, and I was about to ask stupid questions when a flute began to play. The sound was quite shocking in the thick dripping stillness of the greenhouse, and I jumped a foot. In an instant Master Li’s throwing knife was in his hand, and I turned toward the sound and began stalking it, bent low behind great pungent flowers. The music was strange and discordant, almost mindlessly rhythmic, like the monotonous sounds of shamanistic drummers putting an audience in a trance, and it was difficult to pin down: now to the left of me, now to the right. I seemed to be moving with unreal slowness, and as I wormed my way through pulpy orchids beneath the changing moon I began to get the profound impression that I was underwater, like that crab I’d imagined, pushing a path between algae and the limp dangling limbs of drowned men.

  I stopped and stared, with my heart trying to get out past my tongue. I’d reached a gap in huge leaves and I was looking at a bright patch of moonlight shining on a stool upon which a small figure sat cross-legged. It was a child. A beautiful child playing a flute, but something was wrong with it, and I heard in my head the faint voice of the Celestial Master.

  “The first demon-deity is Fang-liang,” the saint had said. “It resembles a three-year-old child with red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair, and it kills by forcing its victims to strangle themselves.”

  I realized that the tickling sensation inside my throat had been growing stronger, and I tried to cough but all I did was choke, and I whirled and looked back. Master Li had dropped his knife and was staggering in a little circle with his hands clasped around his throat, strangling himself.

  I tried to go back to him, and then thought better of it and tried to charge the child with the flute, but all I did was trip and fall. I couldn’t breathe. The itching inside my throat was unbearable and I tried to reach it, clasping my neck tightly with my hands. My vision was dimming and I could barely see that Master Li had gone mad and was trying to climb what looked like a tiny tree rising above orchids, shinnying up like a young boy, and then I couldn’t see that far. I rolled over on my back, clawing helplessly at my throat.

  The flute music had stopped. The moon was blocked out. The child was bending over me, looking down. A happy smile was on the innocent face, and the eyes were indeed red, and the earlobes nearly reached the shoulders. Beautiful hair glistened in moonlight, and a pretty little tongue slid out and licked pretty little lips. Then, suddenly, a dark form hit the child like a hurricane and sent it flying away, and hands grabbed my head and pried my mouth open, and burning acid began to scorch a hole through the obstruction in my throat. Air suddenly entered my lungs. I breathed and gasped and choked and sat up, and in a few more seconds I realized it wasn’t acid in my mouth but lime juice, and the dark shape was Master Li.

  “Get him, Ox!”

  The weird child had been entangled in plants, but now it was free and it had grabbed the cage and was scrambling toward the door. I couldn’t possibly catch it—my legs tried to move and gave up—but a small, heavy, earth-packed flowerpot lay close to my hand. I grabbed it and threw as hard as I could, and then regretted it.

  “I wanted to hit the legs,” I panted.

  “You did well to hit anything at all,” the old man said comfortingly.

  He wasn’t going to need to perform an autopsy to determine what happened when that pot landed squarely in the back of the child’s small head. We could hear the bones crush from where we were, and before the body hit the floor we knew that Master Li wasn’t going to be able to question the creature. I got shakily to my feet and we walked up and looked down. The wig of beautiful hair had been knocked five feet, and one of the fake earlobes had come loose. Red eyes gazed blindly up at us.

  “Some kind of ointment to give an effect like pinkeye,” Master Li said matter-of-factly. “I recognize him. One of the dwarfs who entertain eunuchs in the Forbidden City, and I rather think I’ve seen him in the company of Li the Cat.”

  He picked up the fallen cage and bounced it up and down in his hand.

  “Somebody’s gone to a hell of a lot of trouble,” he said. “When we lifted the cage from the case a concealed spring released a cloud of stuff that looked like the steam in the room. It wasn’t. It was a powder derived from yuan ha. Barbarians call it Lilac Daphne, and it’s related to laurel and the mezereon herbs. It contains an immensely powerful irritant that can inflame the larynx to the point where airflow is cut off, and since a victim instinctively tries to get at the constriction he appears to be strangling himself. One antidote is citric acid, and it was a lucky thing that a lime tree was growing among the orchids.”

  The sage glared at the tiny corpse.

  “But why such a ridiculously complicated murder plot?” he asked rhetorically. “There were a thousand surer ways to kill us, and all this did was tell us that Li the Cat has a spy in the Celestial Master’s household. Somebody managed to read that note and set a trap before we arrived, and we’d better make sure they haven’t harmed the Celestial Master himself.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and I automatically bent over and he hopped up on my back, and I set out at a gallop.

  We paused only long enough for Master Li to remove the clay from his face and make hi
mself presentable. Then I turned the donkey cart into the entrance of the Celestial Master’s house, and my heart sank when I saw the outer courtyard crammed with soldiers from the Black Watch, which is the militia guarding the important eunuchs of the Forbidden City. Clearly something was wrong and Master Li didn’t waste time. He simply climbed out and marched toward the door yelling orders right and left as though he’d arrived to take charge, and we strode inside like conquering generals.

  As we reached the inner court a body was being carried out on a litter. One foot protruded from beneath a cloak. It was enough to tell me that the body was not that of the Celestial Master, but of a woman, and then I realized who she was. On the foot was a silly little embroidered slipper with a pattern of chipmunks hopping through flowers, and I recalled the young maid who had been carrying a sick dog on a silken pillow. Master Li held up a hand and stopped the procession.

  “The Celestial Master?”

  “Not here, sir. He’s been away and doesn’t know about this yet.”

  An oily eunuch had come out and seen Master Li, and he trotted forward as the old man lifted the cloak and looked at the body. Master Li’s back blocked my view, and I saw him stiffen, and then he gently replaced the cloak. His eyes lifted to the eunuch, who seemed to be the official in charge.

  “The blood isn’t fresh. When did this happen?” Master Li asked in a calm, unemotional voice.

  The eunuch licked his lips nervously. An old woman shoved her way through the soldiers, and I remembered her as the one who had turned us away the last time. Her eyes were red and her voice was hoarse.

  “She was murdered yesterday,” she said. “We thought she had gone to her family, and we only found her body a few hours ago, but the men who killed her came yesterday. I know. I admitted them myself. They had a note from the Celestial Master allowing them to enter.”

  “Adoptive daughter, can you read?” Master Li asked gently.

  “No, Venerable Sir, but the Celestial Master always draws a little bird on messages sent to the house, and I saw the bird,” the old lady said. “They called poor Little Numskull out to the garden, but then I was busy and forgot them. Just now we found Numskull’s body in the boat shed down by the lake.”

  “Could you identify the men if you saw them again?” Master Li asked.

  “Yes!” the old lady said vehemently. “How can I ever forget? The leader looked just like a hog, and the two men with him were like a hyena and a jackal.”

  I felt sick to my stomach as I remembered those creatures back at the cave, first murdering the clerk and then laughing at dirty stories while dog grease ran down their jowls. Master Li had pointed out there had to be a spy in the Celestial Master’s household, and had the little maid called Numskull discovered the spy, and was this her reward? Master Li was looking thoughtfully at the eunuch.

  “The Celestial Master’s house and office are under imperial jurisdiction. Do you have proper authority to investigate the murder?”

  The eunuch was suddenly self-assured and oozing honey. “This worthless one has indeed been so honored,” he said, bowing to the ground, and he presented a scroll with imperial seals all over it.

  Master Li glanced at the document and handed it back. Foxes would investigate the death of a hen, but what could he do about it? “Very well. Carry on,” he said crisply, and he swiveled on his heels and I followed him back outside to the donkey cart.

  “Sir, was it very bad?” I asked as I drove away.

  “The killing? She was sliced to pieces,” the sage said gruffly.

  “Bastards!”

  “If you mean Hog and Hyena and Jackal I agree, but they didn’t kill the girl,” Master Li said.

  “What?” I yelped.

  “They may have taken her, and they may have held her, but they didn’t kill her. Those animals would have hacked and chopped like amateur butchers, and the man who killed Numskull was a master of the art.”

  “Do you mean we have to deal with an insane surgeon on top of everything else?” I said weakly.

  “Not at all,” the sage said. “We have to deal with a very competent fellow whose craftsmanship in slaughter is as unmistakable as fine calligraphy, but first we’re going to pay a call on a puppeteer. Ox, don’t forget that the spy in the Celestial Master’s household might have learned that Yen Shih and his daughter have been helping us, and helping us could be an unhealthy occupation.”

  Yen Shih did well in his trade and his house was large and comfortable, although on the wrong side of the Goldfish Ponds southeast of Heaven’s Bridge. Nobody was in the courtyard, and my heart began to hurt when nobody answered the door, but then I heard the sound of a hammer in back, and cheerful whistling. We found Yen Shih at his wagon beside the stable, whacking away at a mechanism for a new puppet by the light of a lantern.

  “Yu Lan’s off again on shamanka business and I couldn’t sleep,” he said after greeting us. “She’ll be gone all night. Anything interesting come up?”

  Master Li tersely explained what had transpired, and Yen Shih appeared to hang on every word. I’ve mentioned that his horribly disfigured face couldn’t register normal emotions, but his eyes and body could be eloquent. He was furious when Master Li told about the peculiar murder plot, and his rage was barely contained when he heard of the fate of little Numskull.

  “You say those three animals didn’t kill her,” the puppeteer said quietly enough, but his hands were shaking with the urge to strangle somebody. “Who did?”

  “We’re going to talk to him about it now, if you’d care to come along,” Master Li said. “There’s something else I want to do while I’m there, so it will take a little time.”

  “I have all night,” Yen Shih said grimly, and he hopped up on the cart seat beside me.

  Half an hour later Master Li and Yen Shih and I were admitted to a gloomy room in a gloomier tower that squatted at the end of the Wailing Wall behind the chopping block at the Vegetable Market. Devil’s Hand was red-faced and sweating and drunk, and he spilled wine over the big wooden table he sat at as he shoved a jar toward Master Li.

  “Hell of a time we live in, Kao,” he growled. “The whole world has gone mad. Monsters pop up to ruin my swing, and the swords won’t forgive me for missing, and people hand me horrible orders to carry out, and I have to— Listen! Listen to them! They’ve been like this ever since that vampire ghoul wrecked the record!”

  He meant listen to the swords, and my blood was running cold as I heard the hard mocking jangling sound of clashing steel. The Chief Executioner of Peking is entrusted with the four greatest swords the world has ever known: First Lord through Fourth Lord, children of the incestuous union between the male sword Gan-jiang and his sister sword Mo-ye, who had been forged from the liver and kidneys of the marvelous metal-eating hare of K’un-lun Mountain. When not in use the swords hang by velvet cords attached to their handles in a small tower room with a window overlooking the chopping block, and on windy nights people who pass the Wailing Wall can hear the four bright blades sing of sanguinary triumphs. They were singing now, mockingly, and the executioner buried his head in his hands.

  “Make them stop, Kao, can’t you? Tell them it wasn’t my fault I missed. I didn’t mean to disgrace them,” Devil’s Hand sniffled.

  “Certainly,” Master Li said. “You’ve forgotten that royalty must be addressed in writing; only those of equal rank can speak directly to princes. Ox, remember your manners and ask permission to read this appeal, and I’m sure the swords will forgive our friend.”

  He scribbled a note and handed it to me and I trotted up the stairs to the tiny tower room where the great swords hung on their pegs. I unfolded the note.

  “Close the goddamn window.”

  The glittering blades made small screeching sounds as they rubbed the stone wall behind me. I shuddered as I looked out and down to the chopping block, and then I shut the window—which was slightly ajar—and fastened the catch and the swords stopped complaining.

  “W
ell, is Devil’s Hand forgiven?” Master Li asked as I trotted back down.

  “Yes, sir. They say the circumstances of his error were extreme, and they will protest no more,” I said.

  “Thank Buddha,” the executioner whispered. He swallowed a pint of alcohol and opened another jar. “That’s only one demon off my back, Kao. There are others,” he said gloomily.

  “Yes. Like that silly little serving girl. That was a Slow-Slash sentence?” Master Li asked.

  “What a world, Kao, what a world,” Devil’s Hand muttered. “Slow-Slash is no joke, and on top of that I had to put up with those three animals as witnesses. The bastards snickered and joked as though they were at a fair, but I rammed it to them anyway. After the first few seconds that poor girl didn’t feel a thing, and they never knew the difference.”

  Yen Shih had been silent and motionless. Now he looked up quickly. “You used the bladder?” he asked.

  “Damn right,” the executioner said.

  “Good man,” said Master Li. “Explain it to Ox, who has question marks in his eyes.”

  “I’ll do better than that.” Devil’s Hand lurched to his feet and fumbled in a drawer and pulled out something like a pig bladder with peculiar knots tied in it. He slipped it beneath his left arm. His right hand flickered, and as if by magic a long slim blade had appeared in it. Then with another flick the blade was gone. “An executioner distracts the witnesses for half a second and the victim’s sufferings are all over,” he said in a solemn lecture voice slurred by alcohol. “The witnesses don’t know the difference, because the executioner has the Squealbaby under his arm, and he makes another long slow slash….”

  Even Master Li and the puppeteer jumped, and they knew what was coming. I almost hit the ceiling as a hideous horrible scream smashed against my eardrums, and then another one.