The Corpse Reader (60 page)

“I’m about to prove that is also not the case,” said Cí, fixing Feng with a threatening look before turning back to Ningzong. “Dear Sovereign, did Gray Fox talk to you about the detail of the noose’s vibration marks? Did he explain that Kan, drugged as he must have been, didn’t struggle? That the mark left in the dust on the beam was neat rather than showing any sign of agitation?”

“Yes, yes, but what on earth has this got to do with—”

“Please, one last question: Is the noose still attached to that beam?”

The emperor glanced over at Gray Fox, who nodded in the affirmative.

“In that case, Gray Fox’s lies can be checked once and for all. That mark isn’t there anymore. I accidentally wiped it out when I was up there checking how the rope had moved. Which means by the time Gray Fox came to examine the room, the mark wasn’t there. He only knew because I told Feng, and Feng told him.”

Now Ningzong looked inquiringly at the prosecution. Gray Fox hung his head, but Feng, smiling, was ready with a retort.

“Nice try, but a bit predictable. Any idiot could tell that just by untying the corpse the dust up there would be rubbed out. Gods, Majesty! How long do we have to go on being insulted by this charlatan’s stupidities?”

Ningzong merely stroked his whiskers and turned his attention to the confession paper. The process was stalling. He ordered the transcriptionist to be ready and stood to announce the sentence, but Cí stepped forward.

“Please, one last chance!” he said. “And if you’re still not convinced, I swear to you I will stab myself in the heart.”

Ningzong frowned and glanced at Bo, who nodded.

“One last chance,” Ningzong said, seating himself once more.

Cí wiped the blood from around his mouth. He signaled to Bo, who came over and handed him the leather bag.

“Majesty,” said Cí, holding the bag up so Ningzong could see it. “Inside this bag there is a piece of evidence that will both prove my innocence and unmask a terrible plot. A scheme hatched through heartless ambition and based on an awful invention: the most dangerous weapon ever dreamed by the minds of men. A cannon so lightweight that it can be shot without the normal support
a cannon requires, so small that it can be concealed in a person’s robes, so lethal that it can be used to kill, time and again, at a distance and with great accuracy.”

“More nonsense!” roared Feng. “Is he going to try and bring witchcraft in here?”

Cí’s only answer was to reach his hand deep into the bag and pull out a small cannon made of bronze. Ningzong looked astonished. The blood drained from Feng’s face.

“I found the remains of an unusual ceramic mold at the bronze maker’s workshop after it burned down. I managed to piece the mold together, but then it was stolen from my room at Judge Feng’s. Luckily, though,” Cí said, and at this, he couldn’t help but turn a smile in the direction of Feng and Gray Fox, “I’d already made a plaster cast, which I hid at the Ming Academy. Before I knew of Feng’s deception, I asked if he would retrieve it and look after it. But I found out about his trickery just in time and changed the note of authorization, telling Ming’s servant, who was guarding the evidence, only to give Feng the plaster cast…but not this replica!” Cí paused, looking around the room. “Feng destroyed the mold to try and save himself, but little did he know I’d already ordered Ming’s servant to have another made from the plaster cast. A true replica of the original weapon.” He held it aloft again. “This very one.”

The emperor seemed fascinated by the hand cannon.

“But,” he said, “you still haven’t explained what this strange contraption has to do with any of the murders.”

“This contraption, Your Majesty, was the cause of all those deaths.” Cí brought it forward, bowing and handing it to the presiding official, who then handed it to the emperor. “Feng,” continued Cí, “whose only motivation in life is money, designed this perverse instrument and had it made. Furthermore, he was planning to sell the secret to the Jin. And how did he finance all this? By embezzling
state funds from the salt trade. The eunuch, Soft Dolphin, as many people here today know, was an honest and scrupulous auditor, and at the time of his death his job was to keep accounts of the salt trade. Feng began siphoning off so much money for himself that it began to show in the books. And when Soft Dolphin confronted Feng, Feng had him eliminated.”

“Slander!” cried Feng. “This is all pure—”

“Silence!” said the official before nodding to Cí to carry on.

“Like my father before him, Soft Dolphin also noticed that some of the embezzled funds were being used to buy up a very specific kind of salt—it’s known as saltpeter. An expensive product, difficult to manufacture, and used primarily to add to the mix that makes up gunpowder. Soft Dolphin’s accounts also show that he’d figured out something else: a considerable increase in the earnings of three men who apparently had nothing in common. An alchemist. An explosives expert. A bronze maker. And I think most people in the room can probably guess what ended up linking those three men together: they all ended up dead. Soft Dolphin’s final act was to cut the funds, which prevented Feng from making progress in his research. And Feng couldn’t have that.”

Now Cí took another document from Bo and handed it forward.

“However, Soft Dolphin was not actually the first victim. That unfortunate honor went to a Taoist monk by the name of Yu. As you’ll see in the report, his salt-corroded hands, the carbon under his fingernails, and the small yin-yang tattoo on his thumb showed he worked in the manufacture of gunpowder. When Feng didn’t pay what he’d promised, the old alchemist objected and ended up being shot dead by the very weapon he’d been helping Feng create.”

Cí turned a defiant look Feng’s way.

“The hand cannon shoots a scaled-down cannonball. It entered through Yu’s chest, broke a rib, and came out through his back,
ending up stuck in a nearby wooden beam of some kind. Feng, wanting to hide any incriminating signs, recovered the small cannonball and tried to conceal the nature of the chest wound, enlarging and scraping it out to make it look like the result of either an animal attack or a macabre ritual.

“Next—the very next day, in fact—the young explosives expert was killed. I was able to identify his work due to the highly unusual scarring to his face, which I subsequently saw on a living man who told me gunpowder had exploded in his face. Feng’s motives were similar, but this time it was a stab to the heart that killed the victim. Bo has since found out that such specialists work wearing visors, which matches with the fact this corpse had none of the scarring immediately around his eyes. Again, Feng worked on the wound to try and make it look like the first one and the result of another attack or ritual murder.

“Now we come to Soft Dolphin. Since his disappearance would inevitably draw suspicion, Feng first tried to pay him off. He knew of Soft Dolphin’s passion for antiques and tried to buy the eunuch’s silence with a framed poem of incalculable value. At first Soft Dolphin went along with it, but when he found out Feng’s true intentions, he tried to renege on the deal. He was stabbed to death and, like the others, his wound was tampered with.

“Last to die was the bronze maker—the man who actually built the mold and cast the hand cannon for Feng. The murder occurred the night of the Jin reception, in your very own gardens, Majesty. I found soil just like the soil around the palace walls under the bronze maker’s fingernails. Feng stabbed him, and with somebody’s help dragged the not-yet-dead body to the walls, where the bronze maker struggled before his head was chopped off.

“So you see, Feng planned and carried out every single one of the murders, beheading or disfiguring the corpses to make their
identification difficult and to suggest the involvement of some criminal sect.”

To this, the emperor said nothing, but merely stroked his beard for a time.

“So…” he said eventually, “what you’re saying is that this small piece of artillery has great destructive potential.”

“Imagine every soldier having one. The greatest power a human mind has ever conceived.”

Feng was visibly shaken as he stepped forward to try and formulate a reply. But the anger etched in his face was still fearsome—as fearsome as the weapon that Cí had just described, if not more so. He pointed at Cí and yelled.

“Majesty! I demand that this prisoner be immediately punished for these foundless accusations! They are an insult to you, dear Sovereign. This court has never heard such disrespectful lies. None of your antecedents would ever have permitted such a thing.”

“Leave the dead in peace,” said Ningzong. “First, you ought to worry about your own impertinence.”

Feng’s anger quickly turned to a blush.

“Imperial Highness…this insolent fool, the one they call Corpse Reader, is in reality nothing more than an expert in dissimulation. Where’s the proof? Where, I ask you? His words are like fireworks, as explosive as this supposed gunpowder he speaks of. Hand cannons? All I see is a bronze flute. What would it shoot anyway? Rice? Cherry stones?” He turned to face Cí.

The emperor squinted. “Calm yourself, Judge Feng. I am not yet pronouncing your guilt, but much of what young Cí says seems logical. The question is, why might he want to accuse you, if not to uncover the truth?”

“Majesty, is that so difficult? Spite! Sheer spite! As you know Cí’s father was once in my employ as an accountant. I hadn’t intended to bring this out in public today, but I found out that his
father had been falsifying accounts and stealing from me. I had to fire him. Out of affection, I hid the truth from Cí himself. To protect him. But the Songs are all the same! When he found out, he went crazy and somehow decided it was all my fault.

“With respect to these murders, I don’t see how there can be any doubt: Kan killed these unfortunate men, but Cí, unable to solve the case and burning with ambition, made it look as though Kan also committed suicide. Simple. All the rest is the result of Cí’s feverish mind. Pure invention.”

“And I invented the hand cannon, too?” howled Cí.

“Quiet!” ordered the emperor.

The emperor got to his feet and whispered something to one of the officers near him, who signaled to Bo to come nearer. Bo hurried over and kneeled, before being ordered to follow Ningzong through to an antechamber. The two emerged after a few minutes, and as he came over, Cí could clearly see the concern on Bo’s face.

“The emperor has asked me to talk with you,” Bo whispered.

Cí was surprised at how firmly Bo took him by the arm, leading him into the antechamber and shutting the door. Once they were alone, Bo hid his face in his hands.

“What?” said Cí.

“The emperor believes you.”

“No…really?” Cí whooped with delight. “Amazing! Feng’s finally going to get what he deserves, and—” But Cí could see how worried Bo looked. “What? What else? You’ve just told me I’ve won the case, so…”

Bo wouldn’t look Cí in the face.

“What’s going on?”

Bo took a deep breath.

“The emperor wants you to say you’re guilty.” He sighed.

“But…but why? What for? Why me and not Feng?”

“He’s offering a comfortable exile if you just say you’re guilty,” said Bo. “He’ll give you a lump sum and an annual stipend. You’ll never have to work again; you’ll have plenty to pass onto future generations even. You’ll receive no punishment whatsoever. It’s a generous offer.”

“And Feng?”

“The emperor has assured me he’ll take care of him personally.”

“Meaning what? And you, you agree with all this?” Cí began backing away from Bo. “You’re in on it, too, aren’t you?”

“Be calm, Cí! I’m just the messenger—”

“Be calm? You know what I’m being asked to do? I’ve lost everything—my family, my dreams, my honor. And now you want to strip me of my dignity? No, Bo! I won’t give up the one hope I have left! I couldn’t care less about anything else, but there’s no way I’m going to let that bastard Feng get away with killing my father and shaming my family. No way.”

“Gods, Cí! Don’t you get it? This isn’t a request. The emperor can’t allow this kind of scandal. It would be far too damaging to him. His critics already say he’s too weak, so if they hear of intrigues at court, if word of treason gets out, if people see he can’t even control his own officials, what will they think of his ability to deal with the country’s enemies? Especially with the Jin on our doorstep, Ningzong has to show an iron will. Councilors and judges killing each other? He can’t allow that to get out.”

“So let him show he’s firm—but fair, too!”

“Damn it, Cí! If you reject his offer, what do you think he’ll do? Condemn you anyway, of course! You’ll be executed, or sent to the mines for the rest of your days. What would your father have you do? If you agree, you’ll have somewhere to live, a stipend, a calm life—away from all this. With time, you might be able to repair your reputation and reenter court life. I don’t see what more
you can ask for or, really, what choice you have in the matter. If you try and oppose the emperor, he’ll crush you. Your evidence is circumstantial at best.”

Cí tried to find his conviction and fight reflected in Bo’s eyes, but what he saw couldn’t have been more different.

“Please,” begged Bo. “It’s your best—and only—option.”

Bo put his hands on Cí’s shoulders. Their weight was the weight of sincerity. Cí’s thoughts turned to his dreams, his studies, his desire to become a great forensic judge. This had also been his father’s dream for him…He nodded his head, resigned.

“Come on,” said Bo.