Nebula Awards Showcase 2015

by Greg Bear

  He closed the door behind the woman and poured a cup of tea for her.

  Men and women came to Tian as a last resort, for he helped them when they had nowhere else to turn, when they ran into trouble with the law.

  The Qianlong Emperor might be all-wise and all-seeing, but he still needed the thousands of yamen courts to actually govern. Presided over by a magistrate, a judge-administrator who held the power of life and death over the local citizens in his charge, a yamen court was a mysterious, opaque place full of terror for the average man and woman.

  Who knew the secrets of the Great Qing Code? Who understood how to plead and prove and defend and argue? When the magistrate spent his evenings at parties hosted by the local gentry, who could predict how a case brought by the poor against the rich would fare? Who could intuit the right clerk to bribe to avoid torture? Who could fathom the correct excuse to give to procure a prison visit?

  No, one did not go near the yamen courts unless one had no other choice. When you sought justice, you gambled everything.

  And you needed the help of a man like Tian Haoli.

  Calmed by the warmth of the tea, Li Xiaoyi told Tian her story in halting sentences.

  She had been struggling to feed herself and her two daughters on the produce from a tiny plot of land. To survive a bad harvest, she had mortgaged her land to Jie, a wealthy, distant cousin of her dead husband, who promised that she could redeem her land at any time, interest free. As Li could not read, she had gratefully inked her thumbprint to the contract her cousin handed her.

  “He said it was just to make it official for the tax collector,” Li said.

  Ah, a familiar story, said the Monkey King.

  Tian sighed and nodded.

  “I paid him back at the beginning of this year, but yesterday, Jie came to my door with two bailiffs from the yamen. He said that my daughters and I had to leave our house immediately because we had not been making the payments on the loan. I was shocked, but he took out the contract and said that I had promised to pay him back double the amount loaned in one year or else the land would become his forever. ‘It’s all here in black characters on white paper,’ he said, and waved the contract in my face. The bailiffs said that if I don’t leave by tomorrow, they’ll arrest me and sell me and my daughters to a blue house to satisfy the debt.” She clenched her fists. “I don’t know what to do!”

  Tian refilled her teacup and said, “We’ll have to go to court and defeat him.”

  You sure about this? said the Monkey King. You haven’t even seen the contract.

  You worry about the banquets, and I’ll worry about the law.

  “How?” Li asked. “Maybe the contract does say what he said.”

  “I’m sure it does. But don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”

  To those who came to Tian for help, he was a songshi, a litigation master. But to the yamen magistrate and the local gentry, to the men who wielded money and power, Tian was a songgun, a “litigating hooligan.”

  The scholars who sipped tea and the merchants who caressed their silver taels despised Tian for daring to help the illiterate peasants draft complaints, devise legal strategies, and prepare for testimony and interrogation. After all, according to Confucius, neighbors should not sue neighbors. A conflict was nothing more than a misunderstanding that needed to be harmonized by a learned Confucian gentleman. But men like Tian Haoli dared to make the crafty peasants think that they could haul their superiors into court, and could violate the proper hierarchies of respect! The Great Qing Code made it clear that champerty, maintenance, barratry, pettifoggery—whatever name you used to describe what Tian did—were crimes.

  But Tian understood the yamen courts were parts of a complex machine. Like the watermills that dotted the Yangtze River, complicated machines had patterns, gears, and levers. They could be nudged and pushed to do things, provided you were clever. As much as the scholars and merchants hated Tian, sometimes they also sought his help, and paid him handsomely for it, too.

  “I can’t pay you much.”

  Tian chuckled. “The rich pay my fee when they use my services but hate me for it. In your case, it’s payment enough to see this moneyed cousin of yours foiled.”

  Tian accompanied Li to the yamen court. Along the way, they passed the town square, where a few soldiers were putting up posters of wanted men.

  Li glanced at the posters and slowed down. “Wait, I think I may know—”

  “Shush!” Tian pulled her along. “Are you crazy? Those aren’t the magistrate’s bailiffs, but real Imperial soldiers. How can you possibly recognize a man wanted by the Emperor?”

  “But—”

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken. If one of them hears you, even the greatest litigation master in China won’t be able to help you. You have trouble enough. When it comes to politics, it’s best to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

  That’s a philosophy a lot of my monkeys used to share, said the Monkey King. But I disagree with it.

  You would, you perpetual rebel, thought Tian Haoli. But you can grow a new head when it’s cut off, a luxury most of us don’t share.

  Outside the yamen court, Tian picked up the drumstick and began to beat the Drum of Justice, petitioning the court to hear his complaint.

  Half an hour later, an angry Magistrate Yi stared at the two people kneeling on the paved-stone floor below the dais: the widow trembling in fear, and that troublemaker, Tian, his back straight with a false look of respect on his face. Magistrate Yi had hoped to take the day off to enjoy the company of a pretty girl at one of the blue houses, but here he was, forced to work. He had a good mind to order both of them flogged right away, but he had to at least keep up the appearance of being a caring magistrate lest one of his disloyal underlings make a report to the judicial inspector.

  “What is your complaint, guileful peasant?” asked the magistrate, gritting his teeth.

  Tian shuffled forward on his knees and kowtowed. “Oh, Most Honored Magistrate,” he began—Magistrate Yi wondered how Tian managed to make the phrase sound almost like an insult—“Widow Li cries out for justice, justice, justice!”

  “And why are you here?”

  “I’m Li Xiaoyi’s cousin, here to help her speak, for she is distraught over how she’s been treated.”

  Magistrate Yi fumed. This Tian Haoli always claimed to be related to the litigant to justify his presence in court and avoid the charge of being a litigating hooligan. He slammed his hardwood ruler, the symbol of his authority, against the table. “You lie! How many cousins can you possibly have?”

  “I lie not.”

  “I warn you, if you can’t prove this relation in the records of the Li clan shrine, I’ll have you given forty strokes of the cane.” Magistrate Yi was pleased with himself, thinking that he had finally come up with a way to best the crafty litigation master. He gave a meaningful look to the bailiffs standing to the sides of the court, and they pounded their staffs against the ground rhythmically, emphasizing the threat.

  But Tian seemed not worried at all. “Most Sagacious Magistrate, it was Confucius who said that ‘Within the Four Seas, all men are brothers.’ If all men were brothers at the time of Confucius, then it stands to reason that being descended from them, Li Xiaoyi and I are related. With all due respect, surely, Your Honor isn’t suggesting that the genealogical records of the Li family are more authoritative than the words of the Great Sage?”

  Magistrate Yi’s face turned red, but he could not think of an answer. Oh, how he wished he could find some excuse to punish this sharp-tongued songgun, who always seemed to turn black into white and right into wrong. The Emperor needed better laws to deal with men like him.

  “Let’s move on.” The magistrate took a deep breath to calm himself. “What is this injustice she claims? Her cousin Jie read me the contract. It’s perfectly clear what happened.”

  “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” Tian said. “I ask that the contract be brought so it c
an be examined again.”

  Magistrate Yi sent one of the bailiffs to bring back the wealthy cousin with the contract. Everyone in court, including Widow Li, looked at Tian in puzzlement, unsure what he planned. But Tian simply stroked his beard, appearing to be without a care in the world.

  You do have a plan, yes? said the Monkey King.

  Not really. I’m just playing for time.

  Well, said Monkey, I always like to turn my enemies’ weapons against them. Did I tell you about the time I burned Nezha with his own fire-wheels?

  Tian dipped his hand inside his robe, where he kept his writing kit.

  The bailiff brought back a confused, sweating Jie, who had been interrupted during a luxurious meal of swallow-nest soup. His face was still greasy as he hadn’t even gotten a chance to wipe himself. Jie knelt before the magistrate next to Tian and Li and lifted the contract above his head for the bailiff.

  “Show it to Tian,” the magistrate ordered.

  Tian accepted the contract and began to read it. He nodded his head from time to time, as though the contract was the most fascinating poetry.

  Though the legalese was long and intricate, the key phrase was only eight characters long:

  The mortgage was structured as a sale with a right of redemption, and this part provided that the widow sold her cousin “the crops above, and the field below.”

  “Interesting, most interesting,” said Tian as he held the contract and continued to move his head about rhythmically.

  Magistrate Yi knew he was being baited, yet he couldn’t help but ask, “What is so interesting?”

  “Oh Great, Glorious Magistrate, you who reflect the truth like a perfect mirror, you must read the contract yourself.”

  Confused, Magistrate Yi had the bailiff bring him the contract. After a few moments, his eyes bulged out. Right there, in clear black characters, was the key phrase describing the sale:

  “The crops above, but not the field,” muttered the magistrate.

  Well, the case was clear. The contract did not say what Jie claimed. All that Jie had a right to were the crops, but not the field itself. Magistrate Yi had no idea how this could have happened, but his embarrassed fury needed an outlet. The sweaty, greasy-faced Jie was the first thing he laid his eyes on.

  “How dare you lie to me?” Yi shouted, slamming his ruler down on the table. “Are you trying to make me look like a fool?”

  It was now Jie’s turn to shake like a leaf in the wind, unable to speak.

  “Oh, now you have nothing to say? You’re convicted of obstruction of justice, lying to an Imperial official, and attempting to defraud another of her property. I sentence you to a hundred and twenty strokes of the cane and confiscation of half of your property.”

  “Mercy, mercy! I don’t know what happened—” The piteous cries of Jie faded as the bailiffs dragged him out of the yamen to jail.

  Litigation Master Tian’s face was impassive, but inside he smiled and thanked Monkey. Discreetly, he rubbed the tip of his finger against his robe to eliminate the evidence of his trick.

  A week later, Tian Haoli was awakened from another banquet-dream with the Monkey King by persistent knocking. He opened the door to find Li Xiaoyi standing there, her pale face drained of blood.

  “What’s the matter? Is your cousin again—”

  “Master Tian, I need your help.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “It’s my brother.”

  “Is it a gambling debt? A fight with a rich man? Did he make a bad deal? Was he—”

  “Please! You have to come with me!”

  Tian Haoli was going to say no because a clever songshi never got involved in cases he didn’t understand—a quick way to end a career. But the look on Li’s face softened his resolve. “All right. Lead the way.”

  Tian made sure that there was no one watching before he slipped inside Li Xiaoyi’s hut. Though he didn’t have much of a reputation to worry about, Xiaoyi didn’t need the village gossips wagging their tongues.

  Inside, a long, crimson streak could be seen across the packed-earth floor, leading from the doorway to the bed against the far wall. A man lay asleep on the bed, bloody bandages around his legs and left shoulder. Xiaoyi’s two children, both girls, huddled in a shadowy corner of the hut, their mistrustful eyes peeking out at Tian.

  One glance at the man’s face told Tian all he needed to know: it was the same face on those posters the soldiers were putting up.

  Tian Haoli sighed. “Xiaoyi, what kind of trouble have you brought me now?”

  Gently, Xiaoyi shook her brother, Xiaojing, awake. He became alert almost immediately, a man used to light sleep and danger on the road.

  “Xiaoyi tells me that you can help me,” the man said, gazing at Tian intently.

  Tian rubbed his chin as he appraised Xiaojing. “I don’t know.”

  “I can pay.” Xiaojing struggled to turn on the bed and lifted a corner of a cloth bundle. Tian could see the glint of silver underneath.

  “I make no promises. Not every disease has a cure, and not every fugitive can find a loophole. It depends on who’s after you and why.” Tian walked closer and bent down to examine the promised payment, but the tattoos on Xiaojing’s scarred face, signs that he was a convicted criminal, caught his attention. “You were sentenced to exile.”

  “Yes, ten years ago, right after Xiaoyi’s marriage.”

  “If you have enough money, there are doctors that can do something about those tattoos, though you won’t look very handsome afterwards.”

  “I’m not very worried about looks right now.”

  “What was it for?”

  Xiaojing laughed and nodded at the table next to the window, upon which a thin book lay open. The wind fluttered its pages. “If you’re as good as my sister says, you can probably figure it out.”

  Tian glanced at the book and then turned back to Xiaojing.

  “You were exiled to the border near Vietnam,” Tian said to himself as he deciphered the tattoos. “Eleven years ago . . . the breeze fluttering the pages . . . ah, you must have been a servant of Xu Jun, the Hanlin Academy scholar.”

  Eleven years ago, during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor, someone had whispered in the Emperor’s ear that the great scholar Xu Jun was plotting rebellion against the Manchu rulers. But when the Imperial guards seized Xu’s house and ransacked it, they could find nothing incriminating.

  However, the Emperor could never be wrong, and so his legal advisors had to devise a way to convict Xu. Their solution was to point at one of Xu’s seemingly innocuous lyric poems:

  Breeze, you know not how to read,

  So why do you mess with my book?

  The first character in the word for “breeze,” qing, was the same as the name of the dynasty. The clever legalists serving the Emperor—and Tian did have a begrudging professional admiration for their skill—construed it as a treasonous composition mocking the Manchu rulers as uncultured and illiterate. Xu and his family were sentenced to death, his servants exiled.

  “Xu’s crime was great, but it has been more than ten years.” Tian paced beside the bed. “If you simply broke the terms of your exile, it might not be too difficult to bribe the right officials and commanders to look the other way.”

  “The men after me cannot be bribed.”

  “Oh?” Tian looked at the bandaged wounds covering the man’s body. “You mean . . . the Blood Drops.”

  Xiaojing nodded.

  The Blood Drops were the Emperor’s eyes and talons. They moved through the dark alleys of cities like ghosts and melted into the streaming caravans on roads and canals, hunting for signs of treason. They were the reason that teahouses posted signs for patrons to avoid talk of politics and neighbors looked around and whispered when they complained about taxes. They listened, watched, and sometimes came to people’s doors in the middle of the night, and those they visited were never seen again.

  Tian waved his arms impatiently. “You and Xiaoyi are wasting my time. If th
e Blood Drops are after you, I can do nothing. Not if I want to keep my head attached to my neck.” Tian headed for the door of the hut.

  “I’m not asking you to save me,” said Xiaojing.

  Tian paused.

  “Eleven years ago, when they came to arrest Master Xu, he gave me a book and told me it was more important than his life, than his family. I kept the book hidden and took it into exile with me.

  “A month ago, two men came to my house, asking me to turn over everything I had from my dead master. Their accents told me they were from Beijing, and I saw in their eyes the cold stare of the Emperor’s falcons. I let them in and told them to look around, but while they were distracted with my chests and drawers, I escaped with the book.

  “I’ve been on the run ever since, and a few times they almost caught me, leaving me with these wounds. The book they’re after is over there on the table. That’s what I want you to save.”

  Tian hesitated by the door. He was used to bribing yamen clerks and prison guards and debating Magistrate Yi. He liked playing games with words and drinking cheap wine and bitter tea. What business did a lowly songgun have with the Emperor and the intrigue of the Court?

  I was once happy in Fruit-and-Flower Mountain, spending all day in play with my fellow monkeys, said the Monkey King. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been so curious about what lay in the wider world.

  But Tian was curious, and he walked over to the table and picked up the book. An Account of Ten Days at Yangzhou, it said, by Wang Xiuchu.

  A hundred years earlier, in 1645, after claiming the Ming Chinese capital of Beijing, the Manchu Army was intent on completing its conquest of China.

  Prince Dodo and his forces came to Yangzhou, a wealthy city of salt merchants and painted pavilions, at the meeting point of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal. The Chinese commander, Grand Secretary Shi Kefa, vowed to resist to the utmost. He rallied the city’s residents to reinforce the walls and tried to unite the remaining Ming warlords and militias.

  His efforts came to naught on May 20, 1645, when the Manchu forces broke through the city walls after a seven-day siege. Shi Kefa was executed after refusing to surrender. To punish the residents of Yangzhou and to teach the rest of China a lesson about the price of resisting the Manchu Army, Prince Dodo gave the order to slaughter the entire population of the city.