The Corpse Reader

29

You never know, she might even decide to cast a spell on you!

These words played on Cí’s mind as he tried to concentrate on the job at hand. But he kept picturing Blue Iris’s delicate features, hearing her sonorous voice, and, above all, feeling those gray eyes on him.

Maybe his fascination had something to do with how capable Blue Iris was in spite of her disability, or how well she hid what were essentially scars, or how cool she’d been with Kan…He had to focus on the murder cases. And the fact Gray Fox would be back any day now. The potential implications of his return immediately concentrated Cí’s mind.

He decided to split the investigation into parts. He needed to address the remaining questions about the earlier murders, and he had to advance his investigation of the bronze maker’s murder by visiting his workshop and the location where the corpse had been found.

First he would try for some answers about the earlier murders. He had the portrait of the younger corpse to use, but he could hardly take that around Lin’an. Where could those tiny, poppy-seed scars on his face have come from? They didn’t look to him anything like the marks from an illness, so the only other thing he could think of was that they were scars from an accident. But what kind of accident? Surely, whatever the cause, the scars were a testament to pain. And if the man had been in pain, there was a good chance he would have gone to a pharmacy or a hospital.

That was it! A step forward! At least there were a finite number of pharmacies and hospitals. He just needed to ask if they remembered a man with such unusual marks on his face.

He called Bo and told him the plan.

Cí took the disfigured corpse’s hand from the conservation chamber and was pleased to see how well the ice had worked. The corrosion, like hundreds of tiny perforations covering the fingers, the palm, and the back of the hand, struck him as being similar to the holes of a tea strainer. He’d made a list of the jobs someone might have to handle the kind of acid that could make those marks—a silk cleaner, a chef, a housepainter, a chemist—but he hoped a pharmacist would be able to help him whittle it down.

They went to the Great Pharmacy first. There was a crowd at the entrance, and Bo sent his men ahead to clear a path. When Cí finally reached the main counter and took out the severed hand, he was mobbed again. Bo’s men dragged the spectators away, and Cí placed the hand in front of the pharmacists, who were trembling as if they feared their own hands might be chopped off.

“I only need you to have a look and tell me if you’ve prescribed anything for anyone with a condition like this.”

After examining the hand, the pharmacists didn’t think there was anything remarkable about the slight corrosion. Cí demanded to speak to the head pharmacist. A tubby, distracted-looking man in a red gown and cap appeared and, having looked at the hand, agreed with his staff.

“No one would come asking for treatment for such a petty thing.”

Cí clenched his fists. These men didn’t seem to be trying very hard.

“How can you be so sure?”

The manager held out his own hands.

“Because I have the same corrosion. It’s from working with salt. Sailors, miners, fish or meat salters, anyone who works with salt day after day will end up with these same marks on their hands. I handle salt every day to conserve compresses. It’s nothing serious. I’m not sure this poor person actually needed his hand cut off,” he joked.

But Cí wasn’t laughing. He thanked the man for his help, put the hand back in the conservation chamber, and quickly left the Great Pharmacy.

One door opened and another shut. Discarding the idea of the marks being the result of acid eliminated several jobs, but there were as many, if not more, that had to do with handling salt. A quarter of Lin’an’s population must have been in some way involved in fishing, and although only a fraction of those would go out to sea to fish, there were all the workers in the salting warehouses. Cí thought that could be at least 50,000 people…His hopes now rested on one last detail: the small flame tattoo by the thumb. Bo said he’d do what he could to try and identify it. He gave the conservation chamber to Bo’s men with instructions to change the ice once they’d got it back to the palace.

Cí hoped his visit to the bronze maker’s workshop would turn up some useful evidence. He and Bo made their way to the docklands on the south side of the city. But when they reached the address, Cí was shocked to find that, where yesterday had stood the most important bronze workshop in the whole city, there were now only its burned remains. Embers were still glowing among the scorched beams, burned wood, melted metal, and piles of rubble. Fire had reduced the workshop to nothing but a smoking, desolated strip, just as it had done with his family’s home.

He made his way directly to the crowd nosing through the wreckage. Maybe someone could tell him something. A number of them spoke of a voracious fire in the early hours, others of the loud noises when the workshop fell. Everyone lamented how slow the firefighters had been to arrive; several adjacent workshops had also been damaged.

Then a beggar boy came over and said he had some firsthand information, but it would cost 10,000 qián. The boy was nothing but skin and bones, so Cí added a bowl of boiled rice from a nearby seller to the sum. Between mouthfuls, the boy said there had been some noises before the fires had started, but in fact that was all he knew. Disappointed, Cí got up to leave, but the boy grabbed his arm.

“But I do know someone who saw everything.”

One of his fellow beggars, he said, always slept under one of the workshop awnings.

“He’s a cripple, which means he never goes very far from where he always begs. When I got here this morning I found him over there, like a rat hiding in its nest. He looked like he’d seen the God of Death himself. He was saying he had to get away. If they found him, he said, they’d kill him.”

Cí’s eyes grew wide.

“Who?”

“No idea. But he was terrified, I know that much. As soon as the sun came up and people started arriving, he disappeared into the crowd. He even left his things,” said the boy, pointing to a begging bowl and a ceramic jar. “But I bet I can find him.”

Cí searched the boy’s face—in vain—for the slightest trace of truthfulness.

“Fine, take me to him.”

“But sir, I’m very sick. And if I’m helping you, I won’t be able to beg…”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand, no, five thousand qián!”

Cí didn’t feel he had much of a choice, but when he asked Bo for the additional money, Bo insisted it was a bad idea.

“He’ll just vanish,” hissed Bo. “He’ll take the money and you’ll never see him again.”

“Just give it to me!” He knew Kan had given instructions for any costs to be covered. Bo shook his head in disapproval but eventually handed over the money.

The boy’s eyes lit up as Cí began counting out the money. He stopped at 500 qián.

“You get the rest when your friend shows up. He’ll get a reward, too.”

The boy got up to go.

“One last thing: If you decide to disappear, I swear I’ll find you, and it won’t be pretty. There are plenty of other beggars I could give his money to, and I’m sure they’d be only too happy to help locate you—and beat you to death.”

Taking with him a note of Cí’s name and how to find him, the boy headed off into the streets.

Cí had a look around the wreckage. He was surprised to come across not a single bronze object, nor any solder remains, but it had likely all been taken by looters already. Before leaving, Cí asked Bo to find out details about anyone who had been employed at the workshop in recent months, and to have any remains other than bricks and beams gathered and brought to the palace.

“I don’t care how damaged they are. And make sure each piece is labeled with exactly where on the premises it was found.”

“I’m not sure how much Kan will appreciate your turning the palace into a trash can.”

“Just see that it’s done,” said Cí.

When he got back to the palace, Cí was pleased to find that the same sentry who had found the bronze maker’s corpse was guarding the spot. The guard, who resembled a granite mountain, confirmed that, yes, this was where he had found the corpse, at the foot of the wall, and it had been headless and naked. Cí examined the dried blood on the stones and then sketched the scene, and the trail of blood, with charcoal. He asked the sentry if he always stayed in the same place during a shift.

“When the gong sounds, we all count out three hundred paces to the west of our positions, come back, do another three hundred paces east, and then return to our position until the next gong.”

He asked the guard if, the reception and all the guests aside, there had been anything, anything at all, during last night’s watch that had struck him as out of the ordinary.

Just as Cí expected, the man said no.

It didn’t matter. Cí had made a discovery that definitely constituted an advance.

Back in his quarters, Cí compared soil samples from the palace gardens with the soil he’d removed from under the bronze maker’s fingernails. The soil from beside the pond was moist, compact, and blackish; the soil from the edge of the forest was looser, brown, and had bits of pine needles in it; the third sample, from underneath the balconies, was gravelly; the last, which was from directly alongside the wall, was yellowish and sticky, probably due to the clay used as mortar between the bricks.

The soil from under the bronze maker’s nails matched this last sample.

He labeled the samples and spent the rest of the afternoon going over his notes. At sundown, he threw his notes to the floor in frustration. He had yet to hear any results from the portrait’s being passed around the hospitals and pharmacies, or from the interviews with the bronze workshop employees, but he didn’t hold great hope for either. His idea with the lance in regard to the chest wounds hadn’t worked out. His hypotheses suddenly seemed as foolish as the idea that a blind person would be capable of multiple murders.

Though he had his doubts, he hadn’t put aside the possibility of Blue Iris’s involvement. The link between the post of nüshi and Essence of Jade, though circumstantial, potentially placed her at the scene of every single one of the murders. And as Kan had been so eager to point out, she had ample reasons to hate the emperor. It was a deep-rooted hate, one her father would have fueled with stories of the bad treatment of their ancestor Fei Yue.

Cí’s thoughts turned to the nüshi. Really, he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since the moment they’d met. He didn’t want to admit it, but there was something about her that had hold of him—something beyond the murders, something he couldn’t fully comprehend, much less explain.

Gray Fox was also on Cí’s mind. In spite of the danger represented by Gray Fox’s return, the risks associated with failing to solve these crimes, and all the many reasons that seemed to be telling him to flee, he wouldn’t consider leaving. He’d come too far to stop now. A place in the judiciary was almost within reach. The emperor had promised it, and however great the obstacles seemed, it was his dream, the dream Judge Feng had inculcated in him.

He owed Feng everything. He had only to shut his eyes and there Feng was. And if he kept his eyes shut a few moments longer, his father also appeared. Cí pictured himself receiving the title of judge.

He asked himself what could have become of Feng. He often thought of making another attempt to find him. But much as Cí didn’t want to think about it, he was still technically a fugitive. He had no right to drag Feng into dishonor.

A knock at his door interrupted his thoughts. It was Bo. The transfer of remnants from the bronze workshop was under way, he said, and Blue Iris had sent word that she wished to meet Cí the next day at the Water Lily Pavilion.

She wants to meet me?

It was improper for a married woman to meet a stranger without a chaperone. Although Bo told him Blue Iris’s husband would be there, too, Cí shivered. The norms calling for women to be seen and not heard, serving tea and doing not much more, obviously didn’t apply to a nüshi.

He barely slept that night, so insistent was Blue Iris in his mind.

Cí woke exhausted. It wasn’t the first time his nerves had gotten the better of him, but he was annoyed; he’d wanted to be at his best when he saw Blue Iris again. He decided to wear the same robes as he had at the reception and was dismayed to find they were wrinkled, though Blue Iris wouldn’t see them. He rubbed a few drops of sandalwood essence at his wrists and neck. He had a quick look over the notes he’d made on Jin history before setting out.

The Water Lily Pavilion was situated inside the Forest of Freshness, its walls running parallel to the Imperial civil servants’ palatial buildings. Bo had described how to get there, and Cí had no trouble finding it.

He arrived early at the gleaming pavilion, a two-story structure surrounded by a lemon grove. The building’s eaves curved proudly upward like the flight of a crane. Cí made sure his cap was straight and glanced down at his robes, annoyed to see the wrinkles were still there. Then he stepped forward and reached his hand up to knock, but the door opened before he made contact. A servant bowed and beckoned him to follow. They came to a light-filled room with tiles that appeared to have been freshly glazed, and continued until they came in sight of a woman, with her back to them, wearing a loose-fitting turquoise hanfu and with her hair up in a wide silk band. The servant announced Cí, and when the woman turned to face him, he blushed. Blue Iris was even more captivating in the light of day. He tried to get a hold of himself and glanced around for her husband, who was nowhere to be seen.

“We meet again,” he said, immediately aware of how ridiculous he sounded.

Blue Iris smiled. Just to see her teeth felt to Cí like some kind of erotic invitation. Her hanfu was very slightly parted at the front, and Cí could see a glimpse of her cleavage beneath. In spite of her blindness, he still had a sense she’d catch him looking, and he averted his gaze. She invited him to sit and began serving tea. He was touched by the ease with which her hands seemed to caress the pot and the cups.

“Thank you for inviting me,” he managed to say.

She nodded courteously and asked how he had found the reception. He answered amiably, avoiding any mention of the bronze maker’s murder. Then there was an uncomfortable silence—Cí felt uncomfortable, at least. He was absorbed watching Blue Iris; he felt gripped by every blink, every breath. He wrenched his gaze away and took a sip of the tea. For some reason, perhaps to try and reassert an air of normality, he let out a gasp as if the tea was too hot.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing. I burned my lips.”

“Apologies,” she said, immediately dipping a cloth in some cool water and dabbing at Cí’s lips, which, despite her blindness, she found effortlessly. He trembled, embarrassed.

“It’s nothing,” he said, disengaging from her touch. “And your husband?”

“He’ll be here soon,” she answered, unperturbed. “So. You stay in the palace. Unusual for a simple adviser…”

“And it’s unusual for a woman of your rank not to have her feet bound,” he said before he could stop himself. Blue Iris hid her feet beneath the hanfu.

“Maybe you find it an abomination,” she said, “but it’s a custom my father rejected, luckily.”

Cí couldn’t believe he’d been so tactless.

“I haven’t been here long,” he said. “Kan invited me to stay for a few days, but I’d rather not stay too long. This isn’t my place.”

“Oh? And where is?”

He weighed his response.

“Academia.”

“Really? And what is your specialty? The classics? Literature? Or poetry, perhaps?”

“Surgery.”

A look of deep disgust wiped the beauty from Blue Iris’s face.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, “but I really don’t see the attraction of opening up bodies. Or, for that matter, what that kind of work could have to do with Kan.”

Cí kicked himself for being indiscreet. Far from gaining anything from the conversation himself, it could get out of hand if he gave too much away. He had to be more cautious with his answers.

“The Jin,” he said, clearing his throat, “have quite different dietary habits from our own. The presence or absence of certain illnesses can be put down to this, and this is the focus of my current research, and the reason I’m here with Kan. Tell me, though, to what do I owe the honor of your invitation? The other night you didn’t seem much interested in talking about the Jin.”

“People change,” she said with a sarcastic tone. She served more tea, then smiled. “I found your behavior the other night, when you defended that courtesan against that man, interesting. Very unusual for the kind of men you usually find in the palace.”

“That’s why you asked me here?”

“Or I suppose you could say I just…felt like seeing you.”

Cí sipped his tea, feeling another blush spread across his face. He’d never had a women speak so informally to him before. She leaned forward, and he couldn’t help but notice her hanfu fall open a little more. It was impossible to tell how aware she was, but Cí averted his gaze nonetheless.

“You have collected beautiful antiques,” he said eventually.

“I don’t collect them for myself, but to please the people around me. In many ways, a mirror for my life.”

Cí wasn’t sure how to respond to the unveiled bitterness in her words. He was racking his brains for a way to ask her about her blindness when they heard a noise outside.

“That will be my husband,” she said.

She got to her feet and turned calmly toward the entrance. Cí followed suit and noticed as she tightened her hanfu.

At the end of the passageway Cí could make out the figure of an aged man, accompanied by Kan. The two were chatting. The older man had a bunch of flowers. The man greeted his wife and seemed pleased that their guest was already here, but when he came a little closer and looked properly at Cí, the flowers fell from his hands.

The old man was speechless. He simply stood and looked incredulous—as did Cí—while the servant hurried to pick up the flowers. Blue Iris stepped forward.

“Beloved husband, please allow me to introduce our guest, young Cí. Cí, may I introduce my husband, the honorable Judge Feng.”