Ch. 053| The Solid Thread

To see Shen Ningshuang, Lin Que waited two days before he found a pretext.

What she was looking into now was a trifling talisman-theft case west of the city. Each day at the hour of the Rabbit, she went to inspect the west-city talisman storehouse once—a small matter of a few missing talismans, hardly needing an enforcement disciple to watch day after day; the errand was plainly the powers above shunting her aside. Lin Que begged an errand delivering medicine to the west of the city, and, medicine-satchel on his back, waited in the secluded lane outside the talisman storehouse.

Half past the hour of the Rabbit, Shen Ningshuang came out of the storehouse. In a fitted blue combat-dress, waist cinched trim, a plain-sheathed long sword hung at her side. The moment she came out, her gaze swept the lane-mouth—one glance, and she saw that menial with the medicine-satchel who had no business west of the city.

Not the slightest surprise crossed her face, nor did her step halt; passing before Lin Que, she pressed her voice down very low, all but wrung out through her teeth: "Follow. Keep three zhang back. Don't let anyone see you're following me."

Lin Que lowered his head, waited until she'd gone three zhang out, then trailed her, unhurried.

Rounding two lanes, they came to the foot of a wall by an abandoned charity morgue west of the city. This was where the ownerless dead were laid; even by day no one came. Shen Ningshuang stopped and turned. Those eyes, used to examining corpses and reading marks, fixed on Lin Que's face and did not move for a good while.

"What did I tell you last time, at the herb-lodge?" she began, voice pressed low. "Supervisor Pei still has you in mind; he told you to rein yourself in. And you—you turn it around and chase me west of the city, blocking my path while I'm on a case."

The words were reproach, but in those corpse-examining eyes there was no hostility. This half-year, the threads this herb-lodge menial had passed her—the stock-cart in the back lane, that ledger of Steward He's—she'd followed them down one by one, and every time they'd checked out. Precisely because they checked out, she was all the more baffled: a pill-boy come out of the market town, now doing menial work in the Xuanzhao Sect, how did he know these things that even she, an enforcement disciple, couldn't get near?

"Speak," she said, and beneath that reproach lay a shade of concern perhaps not even she was aware of. "You braved this risk to come down the mountain and find me—it can't be just to deliver medicine."

Lin Que knew well that this half-year she'd used the threads he passed because she took him for one of her own, a man with good ears. But once the words he was about to say were out, in her eyes he'd no longer be merely a menial with good ears—he would be staking this life of his on this "perhaps" that was Shen Ningshuang. Yet this one thread on the official side—apart from her, he could find no second.

"Those few outer-gate men Senior Sister's looking into, the ones dead of qi deviation," Lin Que went straight to it, no circling, "some of them aren't dead."

Shen Ningshuang's hand, at this, settled onto her sword's sheath. But those eyes, all at once, froze.

"They were carried into the forbidden court, into that stone house at the northernmost reach of the outer gate, each bound to a wooden bed." Lin Que's voice was very level, level to the point of cold. "Go turn the register, Senior Sister—among the outer-gate disciples recorded as 'deceased of qi deviation' last year, there's a youth surnamed Su. He isn't dead. Right now, he's still alive, bound in that stone house."

At the foot of the morgue wall, it went still for an instant.

Not a trace of feeling showed on Shen Ningshuang's face. But Lin Que could see that the hand gripping her sword-sheath—its knuckles were going white, a shade at a time.

"How do you know?" she finally spoke, her voice cold as iron in an examining room. "The forbidden court—even true-lineage disciples can't get in. A herb-lodge menial, how would he know there are living men bound in that stone house? How would he know which 'dead man' is still alive?"

She took a step forward, those eyes like two blades that dissect the dead, scraping over Lin Que's face inch by inch.

"There are only two kinds of people in this world who could know these things," she said, a word and a pause at a time. "One kind has gone in and seen it with their own eyes. The other is a person inside that stone house. Lin Que—which are you? Do you, or do you not, have some tie to that stone house?"

Lin Que met that blade-like gaze of hers and did not flinch.

This was the very hurdle Han Bosheng had warned him of. How his eyes had gotten into the forbidden court, how they'd seen the flaws—not one word could leak. Leak it, and in Shen Ningshuang's eyes he'd turn on the instant from a man passing word into a demon-man in league with the forbidden court.

"How I know, Senior Sister must not ask," he said, his voice held very steady. "Ask, and Senior Sister may not believe it; believe it, and it may not do Senior Sister any good—look at Senior Brother Xu, who knew only a little too much, and the man was gone."

"What I give Senior Sister isn't for her to believe this mouth of mine," he said, word by word. "It's a thread that Senior Sister, once she looks into it herself, will see plain."

"That youth surnamed Su—the register records in black and white 'deceased of qi deviation.' Go check, Senior Sister: his corpse, who examined it at the time, where is it buried?" Lin Que looked at her. "You can't find it, can you? An outer-gate disciple dead of qi deviation, and not even a corpse to be found—because he never died at all."

"And that stone house—every three days, at the hour of the Ox, it opens its door to take in stock," he said. "Find a pretext, Senior Sister, and go yourself outside the forbidden court, and watch the stock-cart that comes through the door that night—watch which road it comes by, watch what's unloaded. None of this needs you to believe this mouth of mine. Senior Sister's own eyes, examine it for yourself."

Shen Ningshuang fell silent.

Every one of the few things Lin Que had named was something this enforcement skill of hers could follow and examine clear.

Yet the cold on her face, far from melting, sank all the harder.

"You think I haven't looked into the forbidden court?" she suddenly gave a very faint cold laugh, and in that laugh was all the fire she'd held down so long. "Those few qi-deviation deaths in the outer gate—I followed the threads to the forbidden court's head long ago. But an enforcement disciple like me, following to the foot of the Xuanzhao Sect's mountain gate, is at her end—farther in is the forbidden court's ground, and without a written order from above, I can't step a single pace in."

"I'd barely looked that far," her voice pressed lower, "when an order from above pulled me off the death cases and shifted me here, to look into these few broken talismans west of the city. The deeper I dig, the tighter these hands are bound. Senior Brother Xu dug deeper than I—and now the man's fallen dead in that mountain gully, chalked up a 'misstep.' Even if I hauled all this bellyful of it up above, one 'no hard proof' from the powers above would press it down, and one more order could shift me farther yet."

"An enforcement disciple hung out to dry like me," she said, word by word, "with what am I to move a forbidden court that even true-lineage disciples can't get into?"

"And there's one more thing you likely don't know." Her voice sank further. "The powers above put out word the other day—those few qi-deviation death cases are to be 'closed and filed' within this half-month. Once filed, they're nailed shut as 'each man's own fault of root and bone'; anyone who reopens them after that is overturning a verdict. Overturning a verdict is a capital crime."

"The time in my hands," she fixed her eyes on Lin Que, "isn't much either."

This was her dead knot. She wanted to move, and her hands were bound; and it happened that even these bound hands were about to be struck off her.

"Senior Sister moving alone, of course, can't move it," Lin Que said. "For the powers above to choke off this one thread of Senior Sister's is far too easy—shift the errand, press down a 'no hard proof,' and Senior Sister's blocked dead."

"But Senior Sister isn't down to only one thread."

Shen Ningshuang raised her eyes.

"Madam Chang the Seventh of the Guangyuan Company holds the accounts of that jade-token lot's stock-buying, half a year of them—money in, goods out, entry by entry, undeniable." Lin Que looked at her. "And in the market town there's one more, from a fallen talisman-house, whose family art was cut short by that same one hand. For this blood-debt, she's chased the one who did it three whole years, and the hard proof she's amassed runs thicker than yours or mine. Add to that this one official thread in Senior Sister's hand."

"These few threads, these years, each looked into its own, none able to reach that stone house of the forbidden court," Lin Que's voice sank. "But gather them into one place, hand them up together, set them off together—and for the powers above to choke them, they'll have to choke handful by handful, snapping several at once. Choke them less than clean, and this business can't be pressed down."

Shen Ningshuang said nothing. Those eyes, used to picking flaws out of the dead, now ran swiftly back and forth over this rope-braiding scheme of his—which strand would snap first, which would scatter at a single choke.

A good while later, she slowly spoke. She did not ask "why should I believe you"—what he was, she'd long known: a pill-boy of market-town origin, clean background; and this half-year, the threads he'd passed had all checked out, entry by entry. What she truly couldn't fathom was how this menial youth from the herb-lodge always turned up beside heaps of the dead, and how, every time, he could put out half a sentence, and every sentence true. But this one doubt she did not now speak aloud—by that line of his, "know too much, and the man's gone," to dig deep might do him no good.

What she asked was another thing: "These few threads of yours gathered into one place—truly can't be choked off?"

"To choke one is easy," Lin Que said. "To snap several at once, they'd have to disturb a greater hand—and once that hand's disturbed, the business can't be hidden anymore. This one official thread in Senior Sister's hand is, among these several strands, the only length that can force the powers above to 'have no choice but to take it up.'"

Shen Ningshuang stared at him, stared a long time, long enough that the wind at the foot of the morgue wall turned a degree colder.

"Three days from now, at the hour of the Ox, I'll go myself to examine that stock-cart, that youth surnamed Su." She finally spoke, her voice back to that enforcement cold, but beneath it, pressed down, a different thing, scalding. "This half-year the threads you've given, not one has come up empty; this one, I believe it's true too. But this business is too great—I've got to examine it true with my own eyes. What goes up above must be hard proof, not your mouth or mine."

She halted, and the fire in those eyes could no longer be held down.

"Once examined true," she said, a word and a pause at a time, "those few who died on this case, that Senior Brother Xu fallen dead in the gully—this reckoning, I'll settle it alongside you."

"But there's a word I'll set down first, Lin Que." She looked at him. "I'm not a blade in your hand. When I move, it's for those who died, and for these bound hands of mine—not for you alone. Our road, for now, has run into one; the day it runs to its end, we each go our own way."

These few sentences, once Lin Que had heard them out, the stone that had hung in his heart, instead, settled to the ground.

An enforcement disciple willing to seek justice for the dead, for a fellow disciple fallen dead, was far more to be relied on than one who merely believed him.

"What Senior Sister is looking into, and what I want, were one and the same to begin with," he said. "The day it runs to its end, how Senior Sister goes, Senior Sister decides."

Shen Ningshuang looked at him deeply, said no more, turned, and vanished into the shadow at the foot of the morgue wall. As she went, she left only one line:

"These few threads—how they're to be gathered into one place hereafter, and used together—you think it through clearly for me first, then come find me."

Her figure vanished at the lane-mouth.

Lin Que stood where he was, and let out a long breath.

This one thread on the official side, he'd got half of it in hand. The other half rested on that stock-cart driving into the forbidden court three days hence, at the hour of the Ox—whether Shen Ningshuang's own corpse-examining eyes could examine it out or not, that he had no say in.

The wind at the foot of the morgue wall cooled. Lin Que shouldered his emptied medicine-satchel and walked toward the west-city lane-mouth. The medicine errand was done; he had to be back up the mountain before the roll-call at the hour of the Rabbit.

That stock-cart three days hence—up on the mountain, he'd wait for Shen Ningshuang's word.

【Ch. 053 End · Qingqi Market · the charity morgue west of the city】