"No, just the once," Chin said. "The second time I was captured—after you turned me over to a demon and stole my ship and left me to the navy—I actually had a chance to talk with Governor Li. Well, Magistrate Li, he still was then. And he made me see that I was taking the hard way to my goal."
"Whereas his way is the easy way."
"His way is easy enough!" Chin thrust his face at Wen until Wen could smell the garlic stuck between the man's teeth. "You think I'm stupid, just the way he does! Well, you won't be laughing so much when you're inside that gold-and-silver suit and it's melting into you, and he and that bitch of a mother of his won't be laughing when we've overthrown the Ming and then my men overthrow him!"
"Did he tell you the Ming back home were overthrown thirty years ago?"
"What?" Chin stepped back. Then he retook the lost ground. "You're lying."
"Not this time." Wen smiled. "Turns out it doesn't matter what you and Li do. The Ming have indeed lost the mandate of heaven—and what's more I'm pretty sure they know it. When word of this gets out—and it will, Chin, it will—this entire government won't be worth the price of a single bowl of ma-po dofu. You're scheming to take over a house whose foundations have rotted, my wise friend."
Chin thought; Wen could see the thoughts wrestling with one another across the broad expanse of the man's forehead. Then he smiled again. "Doesn't matter. Nobody knows yet that I'm working with the governor. You sure didn't." He laughed. "And if the Ming really are gone back home, that'll just make it easier for me to destroy Governor Li when he succeeds in destroying Prince Yizan."
Wen pretended to think for a moment. "You said I shouldn't call you stupid, so I won't. But how smart are you being, Chin? You've just told me that you plan to kill Governor Li. I'm pretty sure that I'll tell the governor this when he puts me to the torture. How will your plans hold up then?"
Chin looked stricken. "You wouldn't tell him!"
"I don't think I'd have any choice."
"I wouldn't betray a former comrade, not even under torture!"
"Ah, but Chin, I'm not nearly as strong a man as you are." And not so smart myself, he thought. I'm the one who was so eager to believe the stories about the Meiyou treasure, and I'm the one who abandoned my crew—my comrades—to come chasing after it here. After all my overconfident bragging I'm no closer to freeing Father from his curse than I ever got to healing him. That thought was more depressing than any other he'd had since Chin had captured him. You have been a complete and utter fool, he told himself. Curiously, this knowledge didn't make him feel even a little bit better. "Oh, hells," he said. "What does it matter? You on the peacock throne, Li on the peacock throne, Blind Pei or Mah the Knife or Farmer Yu on the throne—it won't make a damned bit of difference."
"So maybe I shouldn't wait until the governor puts you to the torture," Chin said, rubbing his chin with a hand the size and color of a whole barbecued duck. "Maybe I should just accidentally kill you now."
You just go ahead and do that, Wen was about to say. But then he felt a sharp pain shooting up his left arm, and suddenly it was impossible to breathe, much less speak. For reasons he did not understand a vision of his mother flashed before his eyes—but his father was not there. Then it was as if an especially dense fog had rolled in.
"Wen?" Chin said. "What's wrong? I didn't mean it, Wen." His voice began to sound fuzzy and indistinct, then faded so that the shout of "Guards! Guards!" was hardly audible.
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