by Qinghan CeCe
“I heard the conclusion of the examination. Do you have anything else to add?”
Huang Zixia looked at the little fish. “She did die from poisonous tree sap, last night. But unlike those beggars, whose throats were swollen, she didn’t ingest the poison; it entered her externally. If Zhou Ziqin is allowed to do an autopsy, we can confirm this.”
“If it came from outside, how?”
“That’s one of the strange things. Though the body is swollen and full of ulcers, there’s no sign that a weapon was used. Based on the skin discoloration, the poison likely spread throughout the body from the right hand.”
“Right hand,” Li Shubai mused. “Can poisonous sap kill from skin contact?”
“No, so it’s still unclear how the victim was poisoned.”
Li Shubai suddenly looked from the fish to her face. “When your parents died, and you started disguising yourself as a man, did anyone suspect it?”
Huang Zixia didn’t know why he’d suddenly brought this up. “No. I often dressed as a man growing up to help my father with cases. I’ve managed to avoid suspicion.”
He didn’t elaborate. His tight lips turned slightly upward for a moment.
Huang Zixia touched her face hesitantly. He turned, not admonishing her for her girlish gesture. “Apart from that, are there any marks on the body? Is it Wang Ruo or a decoy?”
Huang Zixia was surprised. “What made you think of that?”
“I think everything has a reason. Using a poison to make the body unrecognizable must have been to hide something.”
“Good guess. That body isn’t Wang Ruo’s because the hand bones are much larger than hers.” She held out her right hand to look at it. “Another thing I don’t understand is the calluses—on the fingertips of the pointer, middle, and ring on the left, and between the thumb and forefinger, on the outside of the palm on the right,” she said, pointing at the spots on her own hand for Li Shubai. “There was another below her little finger. Hard to make out but certainly there.”
“There aren’t a lot of movements that would wear the skin that way.” Li Shubai held out his slender, white hand, made a fist, then released it again.
“Any ideas?”
“I thought of something, but I can’t remember now.” He frowned and put his hand back down. “The most important thing about this case right now is invisibility.”
Huang Zixia nodded. “That man’s sudden appearance and disappearance in Xianyou Temple, Wang Ruo’s disappearing despite being heavily guarded, the body appearing from nowhere, and even its invisible hand wound.”
“Really, it’s just like a magic trick. But normal people are unable of thinking in that way, so they can’t see it. There’s another possibility too,” Li Shubai said as he held the glass jar up to light. The jar’s shape was suddenly obscured by the sunlight, and the fish floated in Li Shubai’s palm like a phantom. “The other possibility is that she’s right in front of us, but because of our perspective and attitude, we can’t see her, so she doesn’t exist.”
Huang Zixia stared at the red fish, took a deep breath, and murmured, “I’ve never seen a case with fewer, more confusing clues, and no starting point.”
“Don’t stop. You’ll keep looking and find the terrible thread connecting all this.” Li Shubai put the jar back on the table, a faint smile on his lips. “This case must be related to the struggle between the Empress and the concubines, the Langya Wang family’s honor, Prince Yi’s survival, the last of Pang Xun’s rebellion, even . . .” He stopped speaking and looked at the fish. His face was calm as usual, but Huang Zixia felt some force pressing on her chest that made it harder to breathe.
She looked at him, thinking, Even what? Besides the royal family, its relatives, and rebels? That unspeakable thing?
He looked at his fingers, which seemed capable of crushing the fish, and thought of the first time they met—what he said to her about the fish.
Huang Zixia stared at the ignorant red fish. Where did this thing he always kept by his side come from? What secret does it hold?
The light coming from outside flickered on Li Shubai’s face as the carriage bounced. His clear outline wasn’t obscured by the sun like the jar’s had been. In the light, his normally elegant face seemed more vivid and striking.
She looked quietly as the carriage bumped along, and suddenly she felt at a complete loss.
The weather was good the following day.
“This should be all the clues related to this case,” Huang Zixia said. Li Shubai and Huang Zixia sat before a seven-foot-long, eight-foot-wide piece of paper filled with dense, small letters.
Li Shubai stood over it, reading each line.
Wang Ruo’s identity: an aristocrat but escorted by a Yunshao Court musician to the capital and studied folk music with academy musicians from a young age.
Feng Yi’s death: Who is her old friend? Why did she die among Youzhou migrants? Did Wang Ruo know?
The Xianyou Temple prophecy: How did the man get in and out despite tight security? Who is he? What unknown part of Wang Ruo’s past was he hinting at? Why did the arrow used to kill Pang Xun appear?
Yongchun Hall: Who came to kidnap Wang Ruo? How did she disappear in plain sight? What is the origin and meaning of the silver ingot that appeared under the teacup?
Jin Nu: Did she know Wang Ruo before? What is the meaning behind what she said?
The death of the beggars: Is it related to this case? Why were they poisoned in the same way as the woman whose body appeared in Yongchun Hall?
The false body: Who is she? How did the poison get through her hand? Why did she appear where Wang Ruo went missing? Who is behind it?
Li Shubai pointed at “Jin Nu” and said, “Jin Nu’s gone.”
“What? Missing?” Huang Zixia said.
“When you mentioned her yesterday, I asked someone to look into it and found she didn’t go back to the academy yesterday and still hasn’t been seen as of this morning.”
“Do you think it’s related to this case?”
“Don’t know. The schools aren’t as strict as they used to be, and it’s not uncommon for women to spend the whole night out. But my people couldn’t find out where she was,” he said, putting the paper in the fire. “Let’s forget about her for the moment. Who could our suspect be?”
Huang Zixia hesitated. “On the surface, it seems like it should be Princess Qi Le. She has a motive. Everyone knows she wanted to be your wife. When Wang Ruo disappeared, she was at the palace, so she had opportunity.”
“Who else?” Li Shubai said.
“Second is Li Run. He could have been the person who learned the magic trick in the West City based on the description of the mole. Though his reasons for keeping Chen Nian make sense, it seems a little far-fetched.”
“Who else?”
“Third, what’s left of Pang Xun’s followers, using this opportunity to get revenge on you.”
“Who else?”
Huang Zixia hesitated again. “Someone at court who wants to undermine your power or hurt the Wang family.”
“That’s a lot of possibilities.” His face had that hint of a smile. “No one else?”
“There are some less likely candidates, like an enemy from Langya or one from Yangzhou related to Feng Yi, and so forth.”
“But the incidents seem more directed at me, is that right?”
“Yes,” Huang Zixia said with a nod. “It’s unlikely that their enemies would come to the capital to commit these crimes, and they would be less likely to be able to act from within the palace.”
“There’s something you haven’t mentioned,” Li Shubai said, leaning back in his chair.
Huang Zixia ran through the details again in her mind. “What am I missing?”
“What people in the capital think. Ghosts.” Li Shubai rested his arm on the chair as his cold smile grew. “Right? Pang Xun’s ghost made that cursed paper appear, left the arrowhead in Xianyou Temple as a warning, stole my Princess-to-be, a
nd killed her before sending her back.”
“Right, this explanation ties together the motives and methods well,” Huang Zixia said.
“If you really can’t figure it out, have the Board of Punishments and Central Court close the case on that basis.”
Huang Zixia shook her head slowly. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. This killer got Wang Ruo, Feng Yi, and several beggars. For Chen Nian and the beggars who will be forgotten, I must bring the murderer to justice. And . . .”
Li Shubai watched her expression fall and fire grow in her eyes. Her voice was weary yet resolute.
“If I can’t crack this case, how can I return to Shu and avenge my parents?”
Li Shubai remembered his own commitment, so he didn’t respond. He stared at her as she gazed at the sky beyond the window.
“Oh yes,” she said suddenly. “What about that cursed paper?”
“Guess.” He stood and took a small box from a cabinet. There was no obvious lock, just eighty blocks with characters on them arranged randomly on the lid. It was a combination lock. If the eighty characters weren’t arranged in a certain order, there was no way into the box besides breaking it.
She turned, not wanting to see the combination. Once Li Shubai opened it, he took out an egg-shaped object and put it on the table. There were cracks on the top, and on the bottom three ringlike bulges.
“These three rings all have twenty-four small bumps that can be rotated. When they’re lined up, it opens. If you force it open, the object inside is destroyed,” Li Shubai said as he moved them. It seemed Li Shubai had guarded the cursed paper quite well. Once the three rings had been rotated into their correct positions, Li Shubai put it on the table, then pressed it slightly. It opened like a blooming flower. In the center was the cursed paper. It was thick and yellowed, two inches wide and eight long with a strange pattern. On it the words widowed, lonely, diseased were written clearly. The circle around lonely was still blood red. And the red circle around widowed had faded, as had the one around diseased.
Huang Zixia looked up at Li Shubai, stunned.
He lightly ran his hand along the open egg, and it closed again. “It’s clear that Wang Ruo’s death has nullified this marriage, and I seem to have escaped grave danger.” Li Shubai casually put the egg back in the box, scrambled the lock, and put it back in the cabinet.
“That curse,” Huang Zixia said quietly, “it’s always been guarded properly?”
“I don’t know if it’s properly, but I’ve never shown anyone,” he said, slowly turning to face her. “Since I left Xuzhou, you’re the only other person who’s seen it.”
Huang Zixia’s heart skipped a beat. She looked at his quiet, deep gaze. He seemed to be looking at her and not looking at her at the same time. Maybe he saw something faintly in the distance, or felt the things close at hand were out of reach.
Huang Zixia couldn’t help but turn and look out the window.
The sound of their breathing resonated quietly in Yubing Hall. Outside, the sound of birdsong mixed with cicadas. Summer had begun.
Huang Zixia went to the Zhous’ house near Chongren Square and knocked. The doorman opened. “Hello, sir, could you please call the young master for me? My last name’s Yang.”
The doorman hurried away, while others asked Huang Zixia to sit and poured her tea. Huang Zixia sipped and listened to them chat.
“Did you take care of it?”
“Yes, the master leaves in a month. We’ve got to pack thoroughly.”
“But the little master doesn’t seem too pleased recently.”
“Yes, I mean the Emperor appointed him to be a detective in Chengdu. Isn’t that what he always wanted? Why is he suddenly shut up in his room all day?”
Zhou Ziqin suddenly appeared. “Chonggu! You’re here!”
“Young master!” The servants stood quickly and greeted him.
“Go do your chores,” Zhou Ziqin said with a wave. He took Huang Zixia’s hand and said, “You made progress on the case, right? Right?”
Huang Zixia shook her head. “I wanted to come talk things over with you.”
“Okay, come in.” He pulled her farther inside. “I heard that since the weather’s getting hot, that body isn’t holding up well; even in an ice cellar, it’d rot, so the Empress decided that as soon as the seven days of mourning are over, it’ll be sent back to Langya.”
“I see.” Huang Zixia waited until they were seated to say, “We must get to the bottom of this before then. Once they move the body, everything will be harder.”
“So we still don’t have any leads on the beggars I killed either,” Zhou Ziqin said sadly. “But how are we going to solve such a complex case in such a short period of time? Not even my hero, Huang Zixia, could do that.”
Huang Zixia’s lips twitched. “The Prince of Kui said if we can’t solve the case, we’ll have to tell them the body isn’t Wang Ruo. As long as the body hasn’t been buried, we can fight for more time.”
“But how? Where to begin? There aren’t any good clues.” Zhou Ziqin put his head on the table. “If only Huang Zixia were here. She’d know where to start.”
Huang Zixia felt her mouth twitch again. She tapped the table. “The Prince of Kui and I already went over the facts of the case and figured out the direction we need to go in.”
“What direction?” Zhou Ziqin said, looking up.
“Jing Xu has already arrived in Xuzhou to find out more about the arrow that killed Pang Xun. If we can find out how it appeared in Xianyou Temple, it will be a big help.” She took out the silver ingot and put it on the table. “And this is the clue I’ll look into.”
“Half a silver ingot?” Zhou Ziqin turned it over. “You short on money? I can lend you some!” He laughed.
Huang Zixia pointed at the writing. “Look.”
“Deputy Liang Weidong, Dengy Yunxi . . .” He seemed puzzled. “Nothing strange, right?”
“No one by those names has ever worked in the treasury.”
“Privately cast? Or a forgery?”
“If it were privately cast, they would put the owner’s name. Why try to say it’s from the treasury? It’s not a forgery either—definitely real silver,” she said. “Most importantly, the Prince of Kui and I found this in the east hall after Wang Ruo disappeared. It was underneath a teacup.”
Zhou Ziqin perked up. “The Prince of Kui is one of us. Even with a rotten body in the room, he can just sit and drink tea.”
“At that time, the body still hadn’t appeared. Wang Ruo had just disappeared,” Huang Zixia said.
Zhou Ziqin ignored these details. “So what do you think we should do next?”
“We have to go to the Ministry of Personnel and find out whether or not there are records of these people.”
When Huang Zixia handed the officer on duty at the Ministry of Personnel the piece of paper with the two names on it, his face twisted like he’d gotten a mouthful of medicine. “Well, mister, I don’t suggest you wait around here. It’ll take ten or fifteen days, if we’re lucky.”
“Ten or fifteen days?” Zhou Ziqin said. “That long?”
The officer pointed at the two-level, seven-room area in front of them. “Right. Those are the official archives from the founding of the dynasty. Some of the information has been lost, but we have a lot. This is only one section. There are three more just like it.”
The two of them stood in quiet defeat.
“What do we do? How can we find who we’re looking for among that many records?” Zhou Ziqin asked.
Huang Zixia thought a moment, then suddenly took a step toward the officer. “Could you help me find Xuzhou officials from the last ten years?”
“Xuzhou? I don’t think there are many records on them.” The officer called an assistant and took them to the second level of the fourth room. “This is where the information on Xuzhou officials is.”
Zhou Ziqin stared at the rows and rows of shelves with barely enough space to walk between. “Still seems like a lot
,” he murmured.
“Thanks so much. I’ll take a look now,” Huang Zixia said as she walked in.
Zhou Ziqin watched her go right to the files covering the nine years of Emperor Yizong’s reign. She removed the early and middle years from the shelf and quickly turned to the pages dealing with the officers appointed by Pang Xun and disposed of by the court. The room was a bit dark. Dust floated in the sunshine coming through the window. Zhou Ziqin looked at her. Her powdered skin was made paler by the light. The dusty room made it a flawless white. Her long eyelashes like butterflies fluttered over her eyes like spring dew.
Zhou Ziqin had seen a lot of feminine eunuchs over the years, but with his experience studying human anatomy, Chonggu stood out: his rounded jaw, slender neck, gently curved shoulders. Based on Chonggu’s skeleton alone, he’d say she was a woman.
No wonder everyone said Yang Chonggu was the Prince of Kui’s favorite, riding in the same carriage and going into the same rooms. He forced himself to stop thinking about their relationship and picked up records from the middle of the pile.
“Look,” Huang Zixia said.
Zhou Ziqin looked. It said, Pang Xun’s treasury appointees: Master Zhang Junyi, Deputies Lu Yuxin, Deng Yunxi, Liang Weidong, Song Kuo, Ni Chufa, and so on. The silver ingot the Prince of Kui found was from a rebel treasury.
Huang Zixia looked at him. “Seems the silver ingot was cast when Pang Xun had declared himself ruler.”
Zhou Ziqin slapped the book, unconcerned about the dust he sent flying, and roared with surprise. “It’s been the ghosts of Pang Xun’s followers all along!”
“Why would they leave a silver ingot?”
“Could it be about ransom money?” Zhou Ziqin said, touching his chin thoughtfully. “But how could a Princess be worth twelve silvers?”
Huang Zixia ignored him, picked up pen and paper, and began writing. “Regardless, it’s a clue. We’ll report back to the Prince.”
As they walked out of the Ministry of Personnel, it was nearly noon. Zhou Ziqin grabbed his stomach. “Oh my, I’m so hungry. Let me treat you to a meal, Chonggu!”