by Elsa Hart
As he touched the handle, he hesitated, and withdrew his fingers from the cold brass loop. He wiped his sweating hand on his shirt and reached out again. It was only a minor transgression, he told himself. The worst that could happen was that he would be sent away, and that was going to happen anyway if he didn’t find some way to be useful.
With a decisive motion, he pushed the door open. No shout of censure came from within, or from without. He slipped quickly inside, closed the door behind him, and sagged with relief. Shut away from the bright day, he was suddenly blind. Impressions of sunlight swam through the gloom in front of him, translucent circles expanding and contracting across his vision.
He blinked rapidly, willing his eyes to adjust. The shapes around him gained form and solidity. He saw a desk, and a chair, and a cabinet bed in the corner. He watched it materialize, its edges and details emerging from the fractured shadows. Then he saw, unmistakably, the shape of a boot, and the draped and crumpled folds of a robe. Fear assailed him, clutching his shoulders with sharp talons. There was someone on the bed.
Wei remained where he was, pinned by miserable uncertainty. He could feel the pulse and flutter of his heartbeat in his neck. One footstep, one creak of the floor, could wake the sleeper, and then what would happen? He turned his head toward the door that led to the storage room.
He heard his own cry break the silence of the room. There was someone else there, lying on the floor. He saw, but could not understand the whole of what was before him. Robes of golden orange, a bare arm thrown across a face, as if to shield the eyes, long hair spread across the floor, and streaks of something dark, on the skin, on the silk, and pools, pools on the floor like oil.
Wei clutched his hands to his head. He stepped backward until he felt the door, then turned and fumbled to find the handle. He pulled and, half tripping over the threshold, stumbled outside. His knees buckled and he fell in the dirt.
He heard a shout, but the syllables sounded out of order. The open door seemed to him a hungry animal trying to suck him back into its jaws. Energy skittered through his spine, telling him to run, run. He stood up. Hu and the stranger were almost upon him.
“What were you doing in there?” Hu repeated angrily. The foreigner looked with curiosity over Wei’s shoulder to the open door.
Wei sank to the ground again in a desperate bow. “I—I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. I just went to find tools. They were there, both of them, just as they are.”
“Who is there? What do you mean?”
Wei tasted salt on his lips, and realized that terror had made him weep. “I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to work.” His voice broke. He stood up and watched, clasping his hands at his chest, as Hu climbed the stairs.
The workers were beginning to dart uneasy glances in the direction of the office. Wei knew they were looking at him. It made him feel alone, conspicuous, and envious of their distance from the horror to which he was now bound. Hu was inside the room now. Some moments passed, and Wei could not hear what was said. The man in black robes, who had followed Hu inside, came out first, his pale face now ashen. With the fingers of his right hand, he touched his forehead, his chest, and each shoulder, then looked down from his height at Wei.
“You will have to summon someone. A—” He hesitated. “I do not know the correct term,” he said. “A soldier. An officer.” He cast about with the frustration of someone who knew precisely what he wanted to say, but not the word to put thought into expression. “A person,” he said finally, “of authority.”
Chapter 3
Li Du scanned the books stacked in front of him on the desk until his gaze came to rest on a thick volume. It was near the top of a pile, high enough that he was obliged to stand in order to retrieve it. This accomplished, he lowered himself back into his chair, opened the book to the page he had in mind, and ran a fingertip lightly down the lines of text. It will do, he thought, and set his paperweight, a long, narrow block of scuffed jade, across the pages to hold them flat. He withdrew a clean sheet of paper from a drawer.
It was still early in the morning. Outside Li Du’s closed office door, the clerks of the North Borough Office were gossiping over their breakfast, which they had purchased from the bean cake peddler who rattled daily into the courtyard, dampening the crisp morning air with fragrant steam. Li Du did not try to make out what the clerks were saying. He rarely did. Each morning brought the same rumors of promotions and demotions within the ministries, the same complaints about the onerous demands of the day ahead, and, at this time of year, the same speculations about the upcoming civil examinations. Two of the clerks were registered to take the tests, earning them simultaneous sympathy and goading from their coworkers.
The North Borough Office was tasked with maintaining order in a small, designated area of Beijing’s Outer City. The daily activities of the office’s staff of eight clerks, supervised by a chief inspector, consisted mainly of routine responsibilities such as arranging assistance for the poor; resolving minor disputes between neighbors; investigating local crimes, usually not more serious than petty theft; and delivering speeches on moral behavior to North Borough residents. The job of writing these speeches belonged to Li Du ever since he had been hired as an assistant to the chief inspector almost two years earlier.
As he prepared to write, Li Du allowed the noise from the courtyard to sink like sediment through his thoughts and join the other distractions he kept out of the way, in the depths of his mind. The set topic for this month’s speech was “The Necessity of Respecting Academies and Honoring Scholars.” Li Du reflected that it was a deliberate reminder to those inclined to complain about the examination candidates inundating the capital that among the anxious, volatile crowds were the men who would become advisors to the emperor and presidents of ministries, men who would influence the future.
He poured a few drops of water onto his ink stone, a shallow dish carved in the shape of an eggplant. It was not a design he would have chosen, but it had come with the desk, which had come with the room, along with shelves and cabinets that looked too big for the cramped space. Behind the desk was a window that opened into the narrow area between the outside of the building and the outer wall of the complex. Light entered through this window, delivered by the day like an afterthought. It fell sluggishly over Li Du’s shoulder, enabling him to work while maintaining the privacy of a closed door between himself and the central courtyard.
As he lifted the lid of a small wooden box, Li Du had a thought that caused him to replace it with a frown. He stood up and went to one of the shelves. With practiced fingers, he teased a scroll from its place without disturbing the teetering mountain of scrolls around it. A quick perusal confirmed his worry, and he put the scroll back with a little tut of frustration. The passage he had selected for the speech was the same one he had quoted in the speech he had written two months ago. A choice was before him. He could search for a fresh analogy, or he could acknowledge that none of the dutiful citizens who attended the lecture would be paying close enough attention to notice the repetition. As he hesitated, a sense of futility pressing on him, he was only vaguely aware of the clang of the courtyard door and the proud step of a horse on the flagstone.
With a sigh, he returned to his chair, removed the paperweight from the book, and began to turn the pages in search of new inspiration. He had just settled on a passage elucidating the lofty and enduring qualities of bamboo when he heard footsteps on the veranda. A moment later, his door was flung open. The sudden draft sent a chorus of whispers through the papers neatly arranged on the desk and shelves. Because he couldn’t see above the piles of books and papers on his desk, he didn’t know who stood on the threshold, poised to enter. Before he could speak, the door was pulled closed again. The footsteps retreated.
A mistake, Li Du thought, dismissing it. The clerks rarely visited his office. When they did, it was usually to find a book or consult a record. In the early days of his employment, he had inspired inte
nse speculation among them. They knew he held a high degree that would almost certainly have secured him a more prestigious position, had his career not been interrupted by a sentence of exile. Li Du was uncertain of how much they knew about the reason for the punishment, but appreciated their tactful avoidance of the subject. They had questioned him as to the reason for his pardon, but he had volunteered nothing beyond his gratitude for the Emperor’s mercy. They knew he had obtained the job through a family connection to the chief inspector, and that he eschewed opportunities to mingle with the chief inspector’s coterie of friends, preferring to absorb himself in endless bureaucratic tasks. As the months passed, their interest waned. Eventually, they concluded that he was merely an eccentric in need of funds, and left him alone.
Once again, Li Du lifted the lid of the wooden box. He drew from it an ink cake that was worn down to a small stub. Of the patterns that had decorated it, only a talon and a tip of a bird’s wing remained, the fine details of the feathers rubbed almost smooth. Dust motes, disturbed by the door being opened, swirled in the light from the window as he ground the ink against the stone. When enough had pooled in the shallow well, he cleaned his hands, selected a brush, and began to write. His spectacles slid down his nose, and he used his knuckles to push them back into place. They were new to him, and an encumbrance.
Spectacles excepted, Li Du was approaching the end of middle age without significant alteration in his appearance since the beginning of it. Life in the capital city could bloat a man, but in the two years since his return from exile, it had not done so to Li Du. He remained trim and compact, his hair only lightly silvered. Though his brow was often creased, the lines were not yet permanent. He wore a blue robe in a color not quite deep enough to conceal the ink stains that mottled the cuffs.
“Maybe he’s gone to the ministry archives again. You haven’t seen him today?” The words came from the veranda. Li Du recognized the voice of Mi, the eldest of the clerks. A moment later, his door opened again. This time, before it could shut, Li Du coughed.
“Oh,” said Mi. “Are you here?”
“I am,” Li Du answered.
Mi crossed the office in a few strides and peered down at Li Du over the wall of stacked books on the desk. He was a young man whose face was just settled enough to enable an interested observer to predict what he would look like as an old one. He had passed the examinations three years earlier, but like many men who had their degrees, he was still waiting for the slowly ticking bureaucracy to give him an official assignment. Certain of his right to an impressive posting, but uncertain of when it would come, he attacked each day with an impatience fueled by a growing sense of insecurity. “You’re invisible behind all these books and papers,” he said. “The chief inspector needs you at once.”
Li Du glanced at the wall that divided his office from that of his superior. Mi, following the direction of his look, appeared exasperated. “Not in his office. He isn’t there. They fetched him directly from his breakfast table.”
“Who fetched him?”
“The soldiers who were summoned to the scene of the crime.”
“A crime? What crime?”
Mi retrieved Li Du’s hat and satchel from where they rested on a chair and gestured with them for Li Du to hurry. “You have to go to the Black Tile Factory right away. The messenger says it’s murder.”
Chapter 4
Li Du hurried south with his satchel slung over his shoulder. He kept to the edge of the street, away from the horses and sedan chairs that crowded its center. In the past, before his exile, he had occasionally walked by the Black Tile Factory on his way to picnics and literary gatherings in Taoranting, the park built to beautify the pits left by clay excavations. The ragged ditches had been turned into lakes, which were pleasant, if not as blue as those nearer to the palace. Elevated pavilions offered a view above the smoke of the kilns.
It was a view filled with rooftops, sloping surfaces that seemed to cover the whole city in one massive, scaled hide, scored with roads and alleys. Under early autumn’s blue sky, the rooftops dried to a dusty gray. In the rain, they darkened beneath a glaze of water that fell in curtains to the ground. The uniformity of this vast expanse came from millions of identical tiles, the manufacture of which was the responsibility of the Black Tile Factory. In a city constantly under construction and repair, the kilns were always hot.
This morning, four guards stood outside the door to the factory complex. They were soldiers of the Green Standard, one of several constabulary forces in the capital. Two were armed with bows, their arrows prickling from quivers at their backs like spines. The other two had swords. They were talking among themselves, which drew Li Du’s attention to distinguishing features that were usually, and intentionally, subjugated by strict training and matching uniforms. One soldier was gesticulating. Another was prefacing his remarks with a squint. When they saw that Li Du intended to speak to them, they reverted to a more familiar, threatening rigidity.
“You can’t go in,” said one.
“I was sent for by the chief inspector,” Li Du said. “I’m his assistant.”
“In that case, you’d better hurry. He’s already here. The doctor, too.”
Li Du entered a wide courtyard. The air was thick with smoke and grit and noise. Whatever had occurred, the factory had not ceased its work. Fires glowed at the mouths of kilns. Stooped laborers carried coal and clay on circuitous paths through rows of tiles arranged on the ground to dry. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but as he watched, Li Du saw that the workers kept turning their heads toward the same place, a building in the far corner of the courtyard from where he stood. He started walking toward it when he saw its door open. A figure emerged, paused, then strode purposefully toward the courtyard entrance. He recognized the smoke-blurred form of Chief Inspector Sun.
Li Du prepared to speak, but Sun walked past him.
“Guard!” Sun shouted at the door. One of the soldiers stepped inside and waited at attention.
“I need two of you to go to the home of the factory owner. It’s just down the alley to the east. The name is Hong Wenbin. Bring him here. Tell him only that there has been an incident at the factory.”
The soldiers started to turn. “And send someone to look for my assistant,” Sun added.
Li Du spoke. “Chief Inspector.”
Sun spun around. “Li Du. Didn’t notice you there. I’m going to need you to write everything down. Every detail. It’s a bad scene.”
A mid-level civil servant whose career had stagnated after an undistinguished term as magistrate in a southeastern province, Chief Inspector Sun ran the North Borough Office with an air of relief that he hadn’t fallen any further down the ladder. In middle age, he retained the history of a stiff, handsome frame, now padded by moderate indulgence. His full cheeks had fallen into jowls, carrying with them a short beard that now barely clung to the lowest outskirts of his face.
“A bad scene,” Sun repeated. “Not what you expect in the capital.”
Li Du glanced toward the corner building, which had assumed an ominous, waiting silence. “What happened?”
“There are two dead people in there, and it wasn’t an accident. He’s a ministry official, and she’s the wife of the factory owner. We’ll have to be careful with this one. Doctor Wan has already begun a preliminary examination.”
Li Du followed Sun through the open door into the building. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he halted, frozen by the strange violence of the scene.
His eyes went first to the body of the woman. Her robes of golden-orange silk caught the light from the open door and window, their bright color drawing the eye like a flame in the dark. She was lying on her back. One of her arms was at her side, the hand concealed by fabric. The other was outstretched, the opening of the sleeve puddled at her elbow, exposing a pale forearm and fingers streaked with blood. From the tips of her fingers, Li Du’s gaze moved across the floor, noting vaguely the papers scattered
across it like stepping-stones, and to the bed, on which rested the body of a man. He was also supine, his head resting on a dark cushion. The cause of his death announced itself in a grinning wound across his throat.
Doctor Wan, a gray, wispy man, moved across the room toward Li Du and Sun like a cobweb caught by a draft. He nodded to Li Du, and knelt beside the woman. “This was the mortal blow,” he said, speaking to Sun. Gently, he lifted her bloodied collar to expose a deep wound.
Sun drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, as if he wanted to prolong the time before he had to speak. “What about the weapon?” he asked finally.
“I’ll need to examine all the wounds thoroughly,” said Doctor Wan. “But I would speculate that it was a knife with a short blade. I haven’t found any weapon here that could have done it.”
With a short exclamation, Sun shifted suddenly from where he was standing at the foot of the bed. A gray rat scurried between his boots and disappeared out the door.
Doctor Wan scanned the room with a frown. “I found one dead in the corner. It seems the place has been poorly kept.”
Following the doctor’s look, Li Du assessed the room. Even with the door and window thrown open, the corners were dim, and the air was heavy with the odor of death. In addition to the bed, the room contained a large desk, and numerous open shelves were arranged against the walls. They bore a disorderly assortment of papers of inconsistent size and color. On the desk, an unwashed brush rested on a stand, its bristles stiff with dried ink. The ink stone was also dirty. The documents that littered the floor had apparently fallen from teetering piles on the desk. They were mixed with shards of porcelain—all that remained of a small vase or bottle that had been knocked down.
