by Qinghan CeCe
“Zhou Ziqin?”
“Yes, that’s me.” He looked from side to side. “Does he need to use my place again? I heard he mentioned my name to the Emperor, said I can finally go with my father to Shu and become a policeman!”
“The Prince of Kui first has a very important job that only you can do,” she said anxiously.
“Really? More important than being an officer?”
“Yes, for now. Digging up a body.”
“The Prince knows me well.” He didn’t ask for details, just snapped his fingers and said, “Hold on! I’ll get my tools and be right back!”
Huang Zixia and Zhou Ziqin rushed through the streets toward Jinguang Gate. Just as the last drumbeat sounded, their horses passed through the gate and the officer shouted, “Close!” They rode along the canal toward the wilderness west of the city. They traveled through lush forest to the mortuary. Inside, only a single lamp was lit, and the old watchman was asleep.
Zhou Ziqin took off his fancy robe and put on a brown one. He took out a piece of copper, gently unlocked the door, quickly pushed it open, and shut it quietly.
Huang Zixia was impressed. Zhou Ziqin was skilled as a fox.
He took her hand and crept inside. Then he opened a wooden cabinet, took out a book, and turned to the most recent page.
“Fourteen refugees from the State of Yu, twelve male, two female, all buried next to the forest on the west side of Qishan Hill.” He ran his finger along the line and then pointed to the hill outside and mouthed the words, “Let’s go.”
He used the copper to slide the latch back inch by inch and waved her on. Huang Zixia understood why Li Shubai asked her to find Zhou Ziqin. He was a swift thief. After walking a long way, Huang Zixia asked, “Do you often do this kind of thing? Seems so easy for you.”
“Exactly,” he said proudly. “In fact, all my skills came from practicing on unclaimed bodies.”
“And the lock? Practicing with the most skilled thieves in Changan?”
“Been working on it about six months.”
Huang Zixia laughed. “The latch on the window didn’t seem to be locked. Why’d you go in through the door?”
“Window?” Zhou Ziqin went quiet. After a while, he cried, “I wasted six months of hard work!”
They reached the hill and brought the horse to a trot. Zhou Ziqin led it to the north side of the hill where an area of dirt had recently been turned. He took the basket off the horse’s back and removed the folding hoe and shovel. He threw the shovel to Huang Zixia.
She caught it. “You even have this? So professional.”
“The Prince of Kui got that for me from the army. When my dad saw it, he almost killed me!” He then took garlic, ginger, and vinegar from the box.
She was expecting him to take some bread out next, but instead he took out two pieces of cloth, smashed the garlic and ginger into them, and doused them in vinegar. He gave one to her and said, “Keep this over your nose. The smell of the corpses is strong.”
“They say these people died of disease.”
“All the more reason. Keep it tight,” he said proudly. “It doesn’t smell good, but it’s an ancestors’ trick.”
Huang Zixia almost fainted from the smell. “Your dad’s in the government, right? Still into that ancestors stuff?”
“Not my ancestors. I begged Changan’s most famous undertaker, Zhu Dabao, until he told me the recipe.”
She picked up the shovel and began digging with him.
“So you’re the Prince of Kui’s new love?” Zhou Ziqin asked.
Huang Zixia was glad her face was covered so he couldn’t read her emotions.
“Yang Chonggu, right?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking. “What do you mean by ‘new love’?”
“I don’t know. Just heard rumors. The Prince of Kui has a pretty eunuch with him. His brother asked to have him, but the Prince wouldn’t give him up. I saw what you looked like and figured it was you.”
Huang Zixia didn’t want to listen to such ridiculousness, so she just kept digging.
He wouldn’t stop, though. “I heard you’re good at solving cases. Broke the Four Directions Case, right?”
“Got lucky.”
The wind whistled through the pines in the misty moonlight, and the two of them spoke in the empty wilderness. Eventually, something other than dirt appeared. “Hold on,” Zhou Ziqin said. “Let me see.” He jumped out of the shallow pit, put on a pair of thin leather gloves, then picked up a piece of the skeleton. “Good. A cremated corpse. But look, this finger is thick. It definitely belongs to a male. We’ll have to look a little more for the female.”
Huang Zixia crouched next to the hole. “Yes, we’re looking for a woman, around forty years old, five feet three inches tall, medium build, guqin player.”
“All right.” He rummaged through the earth with his small shovel. It took a lot of work to get fourteen skeletons out, but the women’s bones were easy to differentiate. When Huang Zixia studied the heap of half-burned bones and flesh, she knew Li Shubai was right. The workers had done the cremation and burial hastily, not burying the bodies as deep as the law required.
She went to the box and put on gloves so she could pick up the women’s hands. It was late and dark, so she couldn’t see clearly, but it didn’t matter much. The smell was terrible, though, coming right through the vinegar and spices.
She tried to hold her breath, telling herself, You’ve seen the bodies of your own family members. This is nothing. Her nausea slowly subsided as she tried to calm herself down and focus on the body before her.
“Looking at the bones,” Zhou Ziqin said, “these two females are a little over five feet tall, but another with slightly weaker bones, a little stooped, seems to be about fifty. That must be the one you’re looking for.”
She looked carefully at the charred skull. “Is there any way to tell if she had a mole above her left eyebrow?”
“No, that’s all on the skin, which has burned away.”
“Then are there any other identifying marks here?”
“Hold on; I’ll take a look.” He went to the box and took out a leather bag. When he opened it, the moonlight showed little iron tools: a knife, hammer, and awl. He turned the bones over, then he cut open some remaining skin. “The jaw is stuck. The fingers are completely burned, and the eyes and ears are gone.”
Huang Zixia crouched and listened, looking at the moon.
He kept rummaging. “There’s no way to see any identifying marks.”
She put her chin on her knees. “They don’t examine the bodies before they dispose of them? No record in that book in the mortuary?”
“With a disease victim, no one does an exam. They just want to get it done as soon as possible,” Zhou Ziqin said, then pointed at the box. “Hand me that little bag.”
Huang Zixia threw it to him. He took out a thin, fingerlike piece of silver and a small bottle. He poured the liquid in the bottle on a piece of cloth and wiped the silver until it was shiny. Then he pinched the deceased’s jaw to make its mouth open. He pressed the silver inside, then closed the mouth and sealed it with a piece of paper. “Wait a little bit.”
Huang Zixia had been on enough cases to know this was a poison test. The silver is soaked in honey locust. After a half hour, if it comes out black, the victim was poisoned.
“Can you test the male body too?” Huang Zixia asked.
“Sure.” He began the test on the male body.
She couldn’t help but add, “Don’t forget to check the stomach. Last time we tested a mouth, but it turned out to be misleading.”
“Wow, really?” Zhou Ziqin’s eyes lit up. He climbed out and stood with her below the pines, then took off the cloth around his face. “Hold on,” he said. He went to the box and took out a bag. “Here, take half.”
She smelled something nice and looked down but felt nauseous. “We’re here to dig up bodies, burned bodies! You brought roasted chicken?”
“Come on
; I didn’t eat dinner! When I was getting the garlic and vinegar, this was the only portable food around, so I wrapped it in a lotus leaf and brought it. My house’s cook is great!”
Huang Zixia’s mouth twitched. She had no idea what to say.
“Now tell me more about this poisoning.” His teeth tore into a hunk of chicken.
Huang Zixia shook her head and continued. “A girl in Longzhu died suddenly in her home, and the undertaker did that test. But I—but since the officer who first arrived on the scene found bruises on her wrists, not like the grapes on her bracelet but another shape, like a pomegranate, it was determined another woman had been grabbing her before she died. So they examined her nose and mouth and found dried blood. After questioning her family, it turned out the girl had discovered her sister-in-law and neighbor having an affair. The sister-in-law grabbed her hand, and the neighbor forced his hand over her mouth, but they were too rough and ended up suffocating her to death. Then they gave her poison and tried to make it look self-inflicted. The poison being found in the throat but not in the stomach allowed them to break the case.”
“Really?” Zhou Ziqin asked. “Who was attentive enough to find all that through the impression of a bracelet?”
She hesitated. “Guo Ming, an officer in Chengdu.”
“No way! I’ve met Guo Ming, that big beard. Sloppy. How could he notice the bruises on the girl’s wrist?”
Huang Zixia looked up at the moon and rolled her eyes. “No idea.”
“I have a guess. Civil Governor Huang Min’s daughter, Huang Zixia?” he said. “I heard she’s great at using clues like that to break cases.”
“I don’t know.” She rested her head on her knees, gazing at the moon for a while. “I think I’ve heard of her.”
Zhou Ziqin didn’t seem to sense her coolness. “I knew you weren’t from Changan!” he said gleefully. “And you never lived in Shu either, right? She’s famous in both places! I want to be a detective because of her. Because of Huang Zixia!”
“Oh.”
“Oh, yes! Civil Governor Huang’s daughter, Huang Zixia, she’s my sweetheart. She inspires me.”
“You wouldn’t recognize her if she were standing in front of you, would you?”
“Of course I would! There are wanted posters of her at the entrance of the city. I always stop and look. So pretty! You know you’re beautiful when you look good on a wanted poster.” Zhou Ziqin sighed longingly.
“What makes you admire her so much?”
“It started five years ago! I was fifteen; she was twelve. When I was fifteen, I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do. I couldn’t stand the idea of being like my brothers, buried in the ministry, drafting documents. Everyone said they were doing great, but I didn’t think so. Life is so beautiful. To spend it all in an office would be a waste, right? In this, my darkest, most indecisive time, Huang Zixia came along!”
Huang Zixia looked at his eyes shining in the moonlight and had the urge to tear a piece off his chicken wing and eat it to calm herself down.
“Huang Zixia wasn’t twelve yet, still a little girl, but she’d already started helping solve cases and made a name for herself. And me? What was I doing at twelve? Hearing about her made me realize what I should do.”
Huang Zixia couldn’t help but stop him. “Huang Zixia killed her family and fled into exile. You’ve seen the posters.”
“Impossible.” He waved the chicken leg in his hand with determination.
She had never seen anyone so confident. Though he was a little dim-witted, she was still moved. She looked at him. “Why do you still have faith in her?”
“Because Huang Zixia broke all those cases. If she really wanted to kill someone, she’d do it in a way that was impossible to detect. Why would she kill her family in such a crude way and ruin her reputation? Why would she leave a trail of evidence? She’d be more careful.”
By the time Zhou Ziqin was done eating, nearly half an hour had passed. Then he took out a bag of melon seeds and gave half to her. This time she didn’t refuse and began nibbling on them. The moonlight was slanting west. It must have been around two in the morning.
Zhou Ziqin took the silver from the three corpses’ mouths and found that only the silver from the corpse that looked like Feng Yi had turned black. He carefully wiped it off and looked at the deep green-gray residue. “Poisoned, for sure.”
Feng Yi, Yangzhou court musician and the Princess’s teacher, was poisoned and died among Yu migrants. According to the Princess, she was supposed to be going back to Yangzhou.
Huang Zixia was still thinking this over when Zhou Ziqin said, “To be careful, let’s check the stomach.”
Even though it was already pretty much dry, opening the stomach was revolting. Steel-nerved Zhou Ziqin even had trouble tolerating it. He twisted his expression and only looked out of the corner of his eye. As he was sealing in the silver, he suddenly cried out when his fingers touched something cold and hard. “Hey, Chonggu,” he said excitedly, “look at this!” A small object in his palm shone coldly in the moonlight. Huang Zixia put on gloves, picked it up, and examined it carefully.
It was a piece of white jade. It was translucent and no bigger than a fingernail. In the moonlight, she wiped the blood and dirt off to reveal a small engraved word: Nian. The white of the jade looked both bright and dim, flowing wavelike in the moonlight. She stared and stared at that Nian.
When she showed it to Li Shubai, he looked at the engraved word without taking it. “What is it?”
“Take it and see for yourself,” Huang Zixia said.
Instead, Li Shubai took the jar off the table and watched the little red fish swim. “Take it? What if it was taken from the mouth of the dead? They need that for safe passage to the next life.”
“No,” Huang Zixia said earnestly, “it wasn’t taken from the mouth of the dead.”
Only then did he extend his hand and pinch the jade between his thumb and index finger. He read the word again. “The same Nian as Chen Nian,” he said. He put it down and thought for a moment. “Are you going to give this to Chen Nian?”
“Then we’d have to tell her Feng Yi is dead. Chen Nian would certainly make a fuss and tip off our suspect.”
“Yes, keep it to yourself for now.” He gave the jade back to her. Huang Zixia wrapped it back in its cloth and put it in her pocket.
Li Shubai frowned. “I don’t understand. Such an important indicator of identity. Why would the killer leave it with Feng Yi?”
“Because Feng Yi swallowed it before she was poisoned.”
Li Shubai’s eyes actually widened. Huang Zixia was pleased. “Feng Yi’s body was half-burned, but the internal organs were basically intact. We scooped it out of her stomach.”
Li Shubai looked at his fingers. His typically calm face faltered.
Huang Zixia looked at him. “Fortunately, Zhou Ziqin and I finished and reburied the body before dawn, so any trace of our work has disappeared.”
Li Shubai couldn’t stand it any longer. He grabbed the porcelain bowl and began washing his hands. “I’ll make you disappear, Huang Zixia!”
Though she’d been up all night working with a corpse, seeing Li Shubai flustered made it all worth it. “Yes! As you wish!” She happily left for her room to go to sleep.
The Prince of Kui, Li Shubai’s marriage ceremony was scheduled for May 16.
According to custom, the bride-to-be must go to Xianyou Temple on the outskirts of Changan to pray ten days prior to the wedding. Wang Yun came to see Li Shubai beforehand, and by the time the bride-to-be left for the temple, it had been cleared of unauthorized personnel.
Huang Zixia, Su Qi, and ten ladies accompanied Wang Yun.
Xianyou Temple was beautiful, and many ladies and concubines had had good pilgrimages there. So although there were many temples in the city, Xianyou was very popular with the court. The expansive Xianyou Temple was built on a hillside. In front was a smiling Buddha, in the back the venerable Arya. In the main hall were T
athagata, Manjusri, and Samantabhadhi. To the west were Amitabha and other Bodhisatvas. To the east were the Buddhas of medicine, sunshine, and moonlight, eighteen arhats, and five hundred rohans.
They went to the temple to burn incense and bow, then went to the main hall to pray. Su Qi and some of the ladies were already tired. When they saw the apse was still a ways up the hill, Su Qi stopped and said, “I’m exhausted. You go with the Princess, Yang Chonggu.”
Huang Zixia agreed. She and Wang Ruo climbed the steps with incense in hand.
There was some moss on the bluestone steps, so they had to keep their eyes down. The temple was deserted. There was only the occasional birdcall and a single white bird flying in the sky. It crossed the sky into the peaks and ridges ahead. Their eyes followed it to the entrance to the temple, where a man was standing.
He appeared so suddenly and silently, it was as if the bird itself had transformed into him.
Wang Ruo hesitated. Huang Zixia gently tugged on her sleeve. “Prince Wang and the palace guards are inside. Don’t worry.”
Wang Ruo nodded, and the two of them climbed the last ten or so steps until they reached the entrance of the rear hall and bowed. Lanterns illuminated the Buddha within, and incense swirled around it. Wang Ruo kneeled before the Buddha, murmuring. Huang Zixia looked back at the man who was standing outside the door. The faint mountains were behind him, along with the azure sky. He had on a blue shirt that melted vaguely into the background. He seemed to feel her looking at him. He smiled. He had plain facial features, an ordinary, handsome man, but his smile was gentle and peaceful, with a touch of softness that gave her a feeling of familiarity.
Huang Zixia bowed her head slightly as if responding to his greeting, and she noticed he was holding a birdcage. There was a white bird standing in the middle. The bird seemed very humanlike. When it noticed the attention, it chirped and jumped around the cage. Wang Ruo finished praying and looked at the bird. There was no one around but the three of them. The man lifted the birdcage.
