by Rose Lerner
“Lady Bai, your brother and I are discussing important matters,” Hui chided, keeping his gaze on Huang. “Keep quiet.”
“Elder Brother, you can’t—”
“Quiet,” Hui repeated, raising his voice enough that the entire room fell silent. “On to that wager.”
Huang’s jaw hardened. “I no longer gamble.”
“You have no choice,” Hui replied with a shrug. “Gambling is what we do here. Bring the dice.”
The den boss didn’t want Huang’s money. He wanted Huang beneath his thumb.
One of the men came back with the dice bowl, setting it down at the center of the table.
I couldn’t stay silent. “Huang, they’re afraid of you. They know you can cause trouble for them. You and Wu Kaifeng.”
Hui’s head whipped around and his eyes narrowed on me.
“I know you never meant to bring me here,” I reasoned, barely able to make out my own voice over the rush of blood in my ears. “Fan Jing killed one man who could not be overlooked. He only dragged me here to try to make amends, but it was one mistake on top of another. He was trying to trade for his life, but now you can’t make me disappear or my brother disappear. So just let us go on our own.”
A muscle ticked along the den boss’s jaw. Hui frowned at me, but he didn’t look angry. He looked as if he were weighing my every word. That was all we were to him, a calculation of risk and reward.
“We are but a humble business, trying to make a little money,” he replied calmly. Then to Huang, “Call your bet.”
Huang looked to the corners of the room, taking in the men that surrounded us. I could see the moment he came to his decision. I could also see he didn’t like it.
Reluctantly, Huang lifted the bowl to look over the dice. There were three lying on the plate.
“High or low?” Hui prompted.
Huang lifted the bowl with the plate clamped over it. The dice rattled inside.
“High.” He swallowed as he made the call. His brow furrowed in concentration, as if he could actually make the dice land by sheer will alone.
With two more hard shakes, Huang set the bowl onto the table with a final clatter. He started to uncover the dice when a shadow moved through the room, so quickly and quietly I didn’t realize where he’d come from or who it was until a hand closed over the top of the bowl, forcing it back down.
“This wager is mine.” Gao stared at Hui, daring him to challenge the assertion.
The den boss was unimpressed. “You’re protecting Lord Bai now?”
“No.” Gao’s gaze flickered to me for only a fraction of a second, but it was long enough.
“Ah,” Hui acknowledged with a smirk.
My brother broke the standoff. “Gao, you don’t need to—”
“You’re the worst gambler in the city,” Gao spat. “Stand back.”
Huang backed away a step while Gao’s hand remained over the bowl.
“Now, why would I care to take your wager?” the den boss taunted. “Lord Bai is a newly appointed official with some influence. Your services are for hire to anyone with coin.”
“New terms then.” Gao met his gaze coldly. “Your life for mine.”
Hui snorted. “Life or death? This was just a friendly game a moment ago.”
“I have nothing smaller to wager with.”
Gao looked to me once more while my heart pounded inside my chest. What was he to us, to be risking himself like this?
The den boss’s smirk vanished. Whatever Gao’s position was in this area, these men took him seriously. He knew these streets, knew these people. I prayed he knew what he was doing.
“You’d belong to me.” Hui’s statement was both warning and threat.
Gao’s face remained a mask. “High, was it?”
He lifted the bowl and set it aside. There were two sixes and a four on the faces of the dice. That was high enough, wasn’t it?
If Hui was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “A trade then,” he remarked. “She’s yours.”
“She’s not mine.”
The den boss snorted before collecting his minions with a wave of his hand. Gao, myself and my brother stood in place, watching them leave. I didn’t dare breathe until the last man was gone.
* * *
Gao had caught up with us a few lanes back. I noticed his presence immediately.
“You can leave us now. We no longer have need of your assistance.” Huang threw the words over his shoulder as we walked toward friendlier streets.
“Right. Because the two of you are very capable of taking care of yourselves.”
After everything that had happened, I felt safer with Gao close to us, but it wasn’t my place to contradict my brother. Certainly not in public.
“We’re safe now,” Huang assured, sensing my nervousness. Then, with a sigh. “How did you ever get yourself in this situation?”
“I saw you speaking with Fan outside the tea house. I thought you knew him.”
And Huang hadn’t been forthcoming with anything else lately either.
“It’s all behind us now,” he said.
“But what about Fan Jing? You suspected him.”
“I discovered he was once an examiner and that he’d been removed for corruption.”
The next question was hard for me to ask, but I had to do it. “Did you cheat in the imperial examinations?”
He stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“Scholar Chen either bought answers or bribed officials. Were you involved as well?”
Huang frowned at me. “After everything that just happened, you’re still concerned that I may have cheated on the examinations?”
“Did you?” I insisted.
He met my gaze squarely. “I did not. I had a very good tutor.”
Letting out the breath I’d been holding, I gave his arm a grateful squeeze. I was so, so happy and relieved.
Gao was still behind us, watching our exchange with intense scrutiny. It was as I’d told him—so much of me was wrapped in my brothers and their success. The only part of me that was my own was these last few days.
“Is he still there?” Huang asked dryly.
“Maybe we should let him stay.” I didn’t know Gao’s exact relationship to the gambling den, but he knew his way around this area, and everyone knew to stay clear of him. Everyone but me, it appeared.
I glanced back and our eyes met. The corner of his mouth lifted in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile.
“It’s best if you do not associate with him,” Huang said beneath his breath.
“I thought Gao was your friend.”
“Wei-wei,” he began with a forbearing sigh. “In the course of my day-to-day activities, I come into contact with many people. Everyone is a friend.”
I’d never heard him speak like this. Huang made such an effort to be well liked.
“What about Wu Kaifeng?” I asked.
Huang shrugged. “I don’t think he particularly likes me.”
“I think he likes me.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, a skill I’d always envied.
“He said I have a good mind,” I recounted with some pride.
“I know you’re clever,” Huang said, his lighthearted manner growing serious. “More clever than I am.”
“Too clever to know when she’s in danger,” Gao interrupted.
I hadn’t forgotten for a moment that Gao was trailing us, but he’d come closer. “Fan Jing is still about,” he said. “He’s desperate enough to do you both harm.”
The disgraced official had also abducted me, but this wasn’t personal. This was a matter of justice.
“We need to find him,” I told Huang. “He killed Scholar Chen.”
“You need to go home,” Gao said through his teeth.
Both Huang and I ignored him. In many ways, my brother and I were very alike.
“I know where to find him,” Huang said.
He went to summon the local constable, and I was sur
prised how quickly they came to his aid. Huang took the lead, directing the lawmen through the streets. I made sure to stay by his side. I was connected to this case, more so than anyone there, and I wouldn’t be swept aside.
The group slowed as we neared a tiny hovel at the end of an alleyway. A pang of sadness hit me. Fan was an educated man. He had once been respected, one of the scholar elite.
No one questioned my presence when I entered the hut alongside my brother. For a moment, I could hear nothing but the pounding of my own heartbeat as I stared into the murky darkness.
It took me too long to figure out what I was looking at. There was a robe, hung loosely from the rafters. But why in the center of the room?
Then I recognized hands hanging limply, feet dangling in the air. That ashen face with eyes half-lidded and no longer weeping.
My brother moved to block my view. “Take her,” he said firmly.
Hands took hold of my shoulders. I was led outside, blinking into the falling sunlight of the afternoon. The dust of the room still filled my throat.
“It’s done,” Gao said.
He was the one who had taken hold of me. The horror of what I’d just seen came to me in a flood. Over the last week, I’d seen two deaths and they were awful, pitiable ones.
I pressed my face against Gao’s shoulder, wanting the image in my head to go away. Immediately, I felt him stiffen.
When I glanced up, Gao didn’t move away, but his features were tight as he regarded me. It wasn’t night time, I was dressed as a woman, we weren’t alone.
“Lady Bai,” he addressed me formally.
In the light of day, I was an imposition. He couldn’t act or speak as he wanted to. It was rude of me to force myself upon him like this, when he could do nothing. I took a small step back.
“You should go home,” he said, gently this time. “There is no need for you to be here for any of this.”
“Back at the gambling den, what would the den boss have done if you had lost?”
He shrugged.
“They would have forced you to do something for them,” I said.
Gao made his livelihood as some sort of a hand for hire. My brother had paid for his assistance, but he was well known among the gambling dens as well. I didn’t know any of it, but the not knowing filled me with dread.
From the confrontation today, I knew Gao was a dangerous man with a dangerous job.
“What if they had asked you to steal? Or kill—” I lowered my voice to a whisper.
“It would never have happened.”
“How can you be so certain?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Hui was careless. He allowed two hands near the dice.”
My brother had set down the bowl and started to lift it. Gao had swept in at that moment—everything had happened so quickly. I was right there in front, but I’d seen nothing.
“Which one of you switched the dice?”
Gao shrugged again. The smile that touched his lips was almost smug. There was certainly more to his and my brother’s association than either one admitted.
“You also handled yourself well in there,” he said.
I shook my head, feeling weariness set in now that the ordeal was over.
“A cornered dog will always bite, but when you were cornered—” Gao paused, considering something. “When you were cornered, you kept your wits about you.”
“I was very frightened.” I was scared now. Nothing I’d done had been the least bit courageous.
“I knew you were frightened.”
Something in his tone made me meet his eyes once more.
“You were right, Lady Bai. No one wanted such trouble. Men like Hui can be reasoned with, but most wouldn’t dare to try.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, or to the way he was looking at me. When I wasn’t averting my gaze as propriety demanded, I noticed a lot more. The deep, unflinching way he assessed me sent a flutter to my stomach.
Huang came up behind Gao, but only addressed me. “Wei-wei, time to go.”
Gao never broke eye contact with me.
“Is this the last I’ll see of you?” I asked, my heart growing heavy even as I said it.
“If fate allows it.”
“I don’t think you believe in waiting for fate.”
He smiled at that, and there was so much I wanted to say to him. I wanted to thank him for protecting us, even though he claimed to not have any reason to. I wanted to tell him how much the last few days had meant to me. And I wanted to promise him that I wouldn’t wait for fate.
But none of that was possible. Huang brushed past him to take my arm.
“Farewell, Gao,” my brother said with more force than necessary.
I felt a touch on my sleeve as Huang turned us away. The hold was brief, a slight resistance before letting go. The contact was even briefer than the kiss we’d almost shared. Before it had even begun, the moment slipped away and I was being ushered down the lane by my brother.
I turned to look back over my shoulder. I had to.
Gao remained in the alleyway, watching us leave. The secret exchange felt more bold and reckless to me than the double cross at the gambling den. It was all a game of liar’s dice. What was revealed on the surface was rarely the truth.
This wouldn’t be the last moment between us. I held his gaze long enough to tell him that. The orange light of the fading afternoon washed down on us until I could no longer see Gao in it. But I knew he was still there.
Chapter 9
* * *
In the days that followed, Huang took me into his confidence. He’d found the anomaly in the examinations while filing them for the archives. His job was so miserably boring that, on a whim, he searched further, pulling more examinations. He ended up discovering many more copied exams.
“Everyone knows cheating is rampant in the examination system, so it wasn’t a surprise,” Huang told me as we shared our tea one morning.
I nodded. This was a part of examination culture. I’d grown up with stories of candidates hiding passages in their clothes, writing tiny copies that could be rolled up and hidden inside a hollow calligraphy brush or stuffed inside a dumpling.
“Most of the candidates hadn’t passed. However, Chen had. And not only that, but with high marks.”
I now understood why my brother had to be so careful in his investigation. Chen’s family was very prestigious. On top of that, Chen Xi Hao had received the highest degree, conveyed by the Emperor himself. This cheating scandal could put the entire examination system in question.
“Chen may have not needed to cheat,” I remarked.
“We’ll never know.” A look of sorrow passed over Huang’s face. Chen Xi Hao was a colleague of his, after all. “But apparently Fan Jing realized that one of his cheaters had actually succeeded. He began extorting more money out of Chen.”
“And Chen thought to end the threat by getting rid of the former examiner who had supplied him the answers.” This was the part I had more insight into than my brother. I had pieced it together based on my observations and Wu Kaifeng’s investigation. “He brought a knife to his next meeting with Fan Jing, an ordinary knife from his household kitchen. But during the confrontation, Fan Jing managed to wrestle the knife away and turn it on its owner.”
Huang took up from there. “Which made matters worse for the former examiner. He was already in debt and living in disgrace, but now he’d brought more attention to the gambling dens from the magistrate’s office and Wu Kaifeng, who apparently still has quite a reputation. The den bosses were less than pleased.”
Fan Jing had then tried one last desperate scheme by handing me over. By that time, the den bosses were wary of my brother’s investigation as well as Wu Kaifeng’s involvement. The corrupt scholar Fan had thought to hand them a valuable bargaining tool.
“But when you became involved, there was no more playing around,” Huang said grimly. “I wasn’t going to let them harm my family.”
; A warm glow lit in my chest. Here was my dear brother, showing everyone what he was truly capable of. “You uncovered this scandal,” I said proudly.
“Well—”
“Surely you’ll be promoted now.” My brother hated his current position, but it was just a stepping stone.
“We’ll see,” Huang said humbly.
There was only one remaining point I was unclear on. “How did you know where to find me? Fan had just thrown me to the wolves. They were still unsure of what to do with me.”
Huang hesitated before answering. “Gao told me.”
Gao. Whatever their association was, it was a complicated one. My brother didn’t want to speak any more of it and I didn’t press him any further.
I’d trusted Gao because I thought my brother trusted him. From my brief time masquerading as a man, it seemed that honor, trust and friendship among men could be very complicated.
I thought of Gao all the time. I didn’t know how I’d ever see him again, but there was an unspoken promise in our last meeting, I was certain of it.
As the days went by, I became less certain.
Once, I spent an entire morose hour throwing pebbles into our pond, wondering whether he’d forgotten about me. See how starved for adventure I was? I was not meant to be a lovesick maiden. The story of Zhu was not my story.
Then one morning, I found a basket outside our gate. It was filled with fried cakes sprinkled with sesame seeds and drizzled with honey. When I looked up and down the street, there was no one.
The basket was warm in my hands. Someone had been there only moments earlier and his presence lingered, surrounding me. Curiously, a piece of paper had been placed on top of the cakes. A simple message, one without words that held all the promise in the world.
It had been folded into the shape of a butterfly.
From Jeannie
* * *
Thank you for reading The Liar’s Dice! I hope you enjoyed Wei-wei’s story and her meeting with the mysterious Gao.
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