CHAPTER 1
It was a beautiful day: a sky of clear blue
with just enough cloud to show you how blue it really was, just enough wind to
move those clouds from time to time, and temperatures just mild enough to make
the clothing you wore feel exactly right.
There were only two things wrong with the day, Wen
thought. The lesser of these was that it
almost exactly like every other day in the south of Fusang. This was boring; the north may have been cool
and rainy but at least you could tell one day from another.
The greater of these was that it looked very much like being
Wen's last day. This was—well, he
wouldn't admit to being terrified, but it certainly wasn't good.
The knots binding his hands were firm and well tied. It was a shame that, at a time when many in
Fusang did only the minimum necessary to put rice on the table, the employees
of Magistrate Li still took pride in their work. "My shoulders hurt," he said. "It would be a good thing if someone loosened
these ropes. Just a little."
"Shut up," said the man behind him. "In a little while it won't matter to
you. We'll remove a weight from your
shoulders." For good measure the
man gave Wen a shove that sent him stumbling, and Wen had to scramble to avoid
smashing his face into the frame of the doorway into the courtroom. This man, Wen decided, takes entirely too
much pride in his work.
There were perhaps a dozen people in the courtroom besides
the guards and clerks—Wen had had his share of experience of courtrooms, and it
had always impressed him just how many blood-thirsty gawkers a typical town
could boast, despite the fact that of the handful of things that could happen
to you in a courtroom, nearly all of them were bad—and all those in attendance
turned to look at him as Wen stumbled through the doorway. Far too many of the people looking at him,
Wen saw, were armed. This wasn't going
to be easy to talk his way out of.
"You are late."
Wen got himself to his knees—not without effort—and looked at the man
who glared down at him from behind a desk mounted on a dais. Behind the desk was a large hanging scroll on
which an artist—most likely the Ming regent himself, if his age-encrusted mind
was still capable of calligraphy—had written the single character
"Order."
The idea behind having the regent—back in China it would
have been the emperor himself—write the word was that the magistrate should be
reminded that the might of the entire empire was watching him, and he had best
know his place and not muck things up.
The warning seemed superfluous in this case. The magistrate was a good-looking man, and
ridiculously young for the position he held.
Wen knew immediately that the man had graduated first in his class in
the preliminary exams, had likewise taken a first in the provincial exams, and
was no doubt merely biding his time in this magistracy before going to be the
first-place finisher in the state-wide exams, the better to take up the senior
government post to which he no doubt considered himself entitled. He already knew everything there was to know
about the empire and his place in it.
"Prostrate yourself before Magistrate Li," said
the man behind him. He added a helpful
kick that would have resulted in broken teeth had not Wen managed to rotate
himself as he fell. As it was, he
figured he'd be nursing the bruises on his shoulder for days. If he was lucky.
"You are an extremely disruptive man," Magistrate
Li said to him when Wen managed to right himself. "You would not be here, Wen Xia, were
you more aware of your responsibilities to your family and your betters."
"I am fully aware of them," Wen said. "I just don't see why I should accept
them."
"That attitude is going to get you into a lot of
trouble," said a voice. After a
moment Wen realized that it had been Grandfather again, and that nobody else
appeared to have heard him.
Not that this kept the magistrate from agreeing. "Scandalous," he said. Magistrate Li obviously placed a lot of value
on the Confucian virtues. But then he
would: clearly he had done very well by them.
"I will be doing everyone involved—including you—a favor by
bringing this case to a speedy and just conclusion."
Just. Wen couldn't help smiling. It was all he could do to keep from laughing
aloud. "I touched a lantern,"
he said. "I cannot see the scandal
in that, I'm afraid."
"It was my
lantern," Li said. "And you
weren't just touching it; you were cutting at the string that held it to the
display."
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