[continuing chapter 1]
Chin Gwai wasn't the most talkative of men,
when he wasn't bellowing defiance at some insult or other. Wen had been bouncing on the hind-quarters of
the stolen horse for a good four li
before the rebel leader said, "And why were you before the magistrate,
friend?"
"Send me to hell if I know," Wen said. "They said it was for attempting to
steal a lantern."
"Attempting?"
Chin snorted. "I never
'attempt' anything. I just do it."
"No doubt. But
you make a good point," Wen said.
"How do you prove an attempt to do something? It's not as if I had the lantern in my
possession, after all. I was simply
admiring it. From a juridical and
procedural perspective, the magistrate's men did everything wrong. They even planted evidence on me, and then
refused to use it in court. The whole
thing was just so ... so arbitrary.
"Of course," he added, "I was in the process of burgling the
magistrate's house at the time."
And that was why Magistrate Li had so carefully refused to formally
charge Wen with anything more than lantern-fondling. It wouldn't look good if the magistrate had
had to admit that his own house could so easily be broken into and plundered.
Chin laughed so hard the horse stumbled. Stopping, it turned its long neck and glared
at the two men for a long time before Chin was able to persuade it to begin
walking again.
"You," the rebel leader said, "are a clever
man. I think you'll be a welcome
addition to my band."
"Thank you very much," Wen said, not meaning a
word of it. "I'm not really sure
I'm the sort you want, though.
Really. I'm terrible at following
orders, and green doesn't suit me at all.
I look as if I've been dead in the water three days when I wear
green. You could ask my mother. Well, if you can commune with the spirits you
could ask my mother. I suppose. Hmm. I
appear to be babbling."
"I had noticed.
Don't worry, little man. If I say
you'll fit in, you'll fit. And you'll
find that my orders are the sort you'll want to follow. Everyone says so."
I'll just bet they do, Wen said to himself. Whenever you're around, that is. I wonder if I'd hurt myself too badly if I
just fell off the horse and played dead.
Then an idea occurred to him. "They said back there that you were a
pirate as well as a rebel. Does that
mean you have a ship?"
"Of course it does!" Wen was sure he saw leaves falling from the
trees. "What pirate doesn't have a
ship? And wait until you see mine! She's the finest ship a future emperor ever
sailed!"
A future what? Wen
shook his head. Don't think about it, he
said. Everyone imagines himself as
emperor at some point. Most of us just
grow out of it at age seven or eight, that's all. "Will you be sailing north, by any
chance?"
"Naturally!
That's where the gold is! And the
Green Turban Movement needs gold!"
Wen found that by tearing small strips off his already worn tunic, and stuffing them in his ears, he could reduce Chin's volume to something approaching normal. "Well," he said, "if you're going north then it really is true that we're going the same way." Thank you for the ride, he added silently. Don't object too strongly if I leave you at the first convenient opportunity.
Next Prologue Chapter 1
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