He didn’t want to submit to Xu’s crazy whims; he’d seen what the consequences might be. And he didn’t much want to wait around for Kao to come and finish him off, either.
He kicked a stone and cursed.
He bemoaned not having his father for advice. Or Feng. Someone upright and virtuous to help him through these troubles. He swore to himself that his children, if he ever had any, would never have to suffer this sort of disgrace. He’d do anything to make them proud of him. Everything that had been snatched from his father, he’d win back. That would be their inheritance.
When they arrived at Xu’s houseboat, Cí still hadn’t decided what to do, but Xu’s stance made it easier for him.
“You’ve got two choices, boy,” he said, stepping one foot onto the houseboat. “Keep on working like you have been, or get out of here. Simple.”
Cí looked at Xu and gritted his teeth. He only had one option, really: to keep his sister alive.
17
The next few weeks weren’t easy.
Cí would get up every night and go to the Imperial Market so he could help one of Xu’s wives carry fish back to the houseboat and clean them. The fish cleaning had been assigned to Third, and it had to be done whether she was ill or not, so Cí tried to lighten the load. Then he would accompany Xu on a round of the markets and wharves to find out about the previous day’s deaths and violent accidents. They also would stop by the hospitals and clinics, including the Great Pharmacy, where Xu would slip an attendant a little money in exchange for details about the most seriously ill patients. With this information, Xu would plan their next move.
On their way to the Fields of Death, Cí would evaluate the patients’ backgrounds, looking for anything that could help make his pronouncements more believable. When they got to the cemetery, he’d put the tools in order and then help dig trenches, lug sacks of earth from one end of the cemetery to the other, place gravestones, help carry coffins. He and Xu would eat and then get ready for the performance; one of Xu’s wives had come up with a necromancer outfit with a mask.
“We’ll come across as more mysterious,” said Cí, but he didn’t mention that he was a fugitive and that the other advantage to the disguise was that it would hide his identity.
Xu wasn’t wild about the costume, but Cí convinced him by pointing out that if he ever decided to give up the work, it would make it easier for someone else to take his place.
Their work included corpses at the Buddhist monastery. Cremations tended to bring them less money than burials, but it all helped to spread their reputation, and intrigue grew.
They’d return to the houseboat after dark, and Cí would always wake Third to check that she was feeling well and that she’d done her chores. He’d give her little wooden figures that he’d whittled between burials. Then it would be time to give her medicine, check her writing exercises, and recite the thousand words children had to learn to master reading.
“I’m tired,” she’d say, but Cí would stroke her hair and insist they do a little more.
“You don’t want to be a fisherwoman your whole life,” he would tell her.
After everyone was asleep he’d go out into the cold night air and stare at the reflection of the stars in the water as he tried to recite Prescriptions Left by the Spirits of Liu Jun-Zi, an impassioned text on surgery that he’d bought secondhand. He’d study until overcome by sleep or until rain extinguished the lantern.
Every night he also remembered his father’s dishonor and felt overwhelmed by bitterness.
As the months went by, Cí learned to tell the differences between accidental wounds and those brought about in an attempt to kill; to recognize the incisions made by hatchets, daggers, kitchen knives, machetes, and swords; to discern between a murder and a suicide. He discovered that a murderer’s methods would be sloppy when the motive was jealousy or sudden anger, and more sophisticated when the death was premeditated and based on revenge.
Each case challenged Cí differently, and required both knowledge and imagination. He attended most to the smaller details—scars, wounds, inflammation. At times something as slight as a lock of hair or a minor discharge could provide the key to an apparently inexplicable case.
There was nothing he hated more than when he failed to find the clues he needed. The more corpses he examined, the more he realized how little he really knew. Everyone else thought he had magical powers when he was actually learning the extent of his ignorance. He’d grow desperate sometimes—if there was a symptom he couldn’t make sense of, a corpse that wouldn’t give up its secrets, a scar whose origin he couldn’t figure out. Each time he came to an impasse, he remembered Feng and the man’s attention to detail. Feng had taught Cí things he never would have learned in university—but, surprisingly, he was also learning from Xu.
Xu had some expertise when it came to the dead. He knew how to figure out how bruises might have come about and how to discern what job a person had done. He’d developed a familiarity with corpses though years working at the cemetery and helping with cremations at the Buddhist monastery; he’d even worked at one time as a gravedigger at the prisons in Sichuan, where torture and death were commonplace. He had much of the practical experience Cí lacked.
“Did I see executions there!” he bragged. “Proper killings they were—none of this kid stuff. If prisoners’ families didn’t bring them food, neither did the government.”
Of course, this reminded Cí of Lu’s awful death. It was some comfort to know it probably wouldn’t have been any better for him if he had survived and made it to Sichuan.
Cí, as hungry for knowledge as ever, tried to glean as much information from Xu as he could, but he also had to study if he was to stand a chance with the Imperial exams. As winter approached, he mentioned to Xu that he wanted to buy more books.
“Fine by me,” said Xu. “But it comes out of your wages.”
Even though the price of food and medicine was rising, Cí still had ample money to keep Third fed and medicated. He could get the books, but after working such long days he didn’t have much time to study.
Spring came to Lin’an, and Cí had become calmer and more confident in his work. He could immediately identify the purplish bruising from a blunt instrument; he could distinguish the smell of rotting flesh from the sweeter smell of gangrene; his fingers were more proficient in finding hard spots beneath skin tissue, the little ulcers of a rope burn on someone’s neck, the tenderness of old age, moxibustion burns, even the tiny scars made by acupuncture needles.
He was feeling more and more sure of himself.
And that was his big mistake.
On a rainy day in April, a large retinue of well-dressed nobles made their way up the cemetery hill carrying a coffin. Two servants came ahead of them to ask Xu about determining the cause of death. The man, who had been an official in the War Ministry, had died following a long illness, but its cause was unclear, and they wanted to know if the death could have been avoided.
Xu negotiated a price and fetched Cí from the grave he was working to repair. Cí’s clothes were filthy and he wanted time to change, but Xu told him they had to hurry and that he should get his mask and come immediately. Cí realized the gloves he’d been using to hide his scarred hands were covered in mud.