Judge Yanluo Wang leaned forward, and forward, until his neck had extended like that of the mythical qilin beast, and he was face-to-face with Wen on the opposite side of the dais. "This is most unfortunate," the judge said, "and given the nature of my relationship with the General of the Mirror of Retribution, not something I would wish to have bruited about. Do you take my meaning?" The expression on the judge's face almost, but not entirely, failed in any way to resemble a smile.
"Certainly," said Wen, standing his ground. "I understand fully how unfortunate it would be for your position should the General of the Mirror of Retribution have any cause to hear of this." He smiled back at the judge.
"Do not toy with me, wretch," the judge began, but after a moment the anger faded. "I knew this would happen eventually," he said. "It is just so difficult to get good help down here, you know. Everyone is very good at following directions, and they know the rules backward and forward, inside and out. But ever present them with a situation to which a specific rule can't be found to apply, and it all goes to—well, it goes in a nasty circle."
"I know of many people in Fusang who face the same difficulty," Wen said. "Not, I suppose, that this is much comfort to your Excellency."
"Look," said the judge, "I appear to be at least temporarily unable to resolve this issue. Could we come to some sort of compromise?"
An idea for a compromise occurred to Wen. "I would be happy," he said, "to continue to investigate this incident on your behalf. After all," he added as the judge's features darkened, "the problem was not caused by you, and its continued existence appears only to be happening because your standards of record-keeping are so superior as to allow themselves to be exploited by the unscrupulous." Myself, for instance.
"I am interested," the judge said. "Perhaps."
"If you could see your way to aiding my investigation in any sense," Wen said. "Some form of documentation, for example, that might ease my passage."
"Ah," the judge said. "I begin to understand. You realize, of course, that this documentation could in no way identify you as working directly for me."
"But of course," Wen said. "You have to be able to ensure that your deniability remains plausible."
"That I didn't understand. But it sounds good to me." The judge retracted his head and tapped one talon on the dais. The resulting boom caused all in the courtroom to cringe, and when the judge spoke next Wen heard only a muffled buzzing.
He pointed to his ears and said, "I'm sorry, Excellency, but I can't hear you."
The judge waved a hand and, almost in unison, the spectators removed their hands from their ears. "You don't have to shout," the judge said. "I was merely summoning my new clerk." That unfortunate creature appeared moments later. From the expression on his face, this clerk was only too aware of the reason for his promotion. "You," the judge said, "will prepare a pass for this person. This pass will admit him to all of the precincts of hell—save, of course, for those administered by the General of the Mirror of Retribution—and will allow him free passage to wherever he needs to go in order to investigate the misfiling of one Wen Gang. You will special care," the judge added, "to ensure that this document reads as a general specification for interdepartmental communication, and in no way indicates that this was its originating office. I will affix a judgmental seal rather than my own personal mark. This should not cause you any difficulty," he added to Wen. "It is merely to preserve that plausible thing you mentioned earlier."
"You Excellency is most astute and a fast learner," Wen said with a bow. By the time he had lifted his head again the document was hovering, in the air, before him. The judge's mark hissed and smoked as the ink dried.
"You have only to affix your own name," the judge said. He suppressed the smile, but too late to prevent Wen from seeing it.
"If your Excellency pleases, I would rather the document refer, as you so concisely put it, to 'this person'. That way, the pass may be used by myself or by my assistant"—he gestured to Yin Fengzi, who glared in response—"without our having to refer any questions back to you or your department." He looked at the document; as he'd hoped, the clerk had used large characters and filled the page.
"Ah." The judge hesitated a moment; Wen guessed he was trying to find a bureaucratic way out of the bureaucratic predicament into which Wen had put him. Eventually the desire to have Wen and his party out of the courtroom appeared to win out over the desire to control every contingency, and the judge said, "If all is in order then, you may go."
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