“So?” said the professor.
The student took his time before answering, looking at each person individually. He clearly enjoyed performing. Cí raised an eyebrow but paid attention.
“This is obviously an unusual case,” began the student. “The man was young, very strong, and ended up stabbed and with his throat slit. A shockingly cruel murder, which seems to point to there having been a very vicious fight.”
The professor gestured for the student to continue.
“At first glance we might think that there were several assailants—there would have been several of them to overcome a hulk like this—and the many stab wounds attest to that. The number of injuries indicates the fight lasted some time, before someone delivered the decisive wound to the throat. After that, the victim fell forward, causing the strange rectangular mark on the forehead.” Here the student paused for effect. “And the motive? Perhaps we ought to think of severaclass="underline" from a simple tavern brawl to an unpaid debt or old feud or even a dispute over some beautiful ‘flower.’ But the most likely motive is robbery, given the fact the body’s been stripped of all valuables, including the bracelet that should have been…here,” he said, pointing to a tan mark at the wrist. “A magistrate would have done well to order the immediate vicinity searched, paying particular attention to taverns and any troublemakers either showing wounds or throwing money around.” The student closed his notebook, covered the corpse, and stared at the group, waiting for his applause.
Cí remembered what Xu had said about the possibility of tips if they groveled, and went over to congratulate the student, but the student looked at him with disdain.
“Stupid show-off,” muttered Cí, turning away.
“How dare you!” Gray Fox grabbed his arm.
Cí shrugged him off and squared up to the student, ready to argue, but before he could reply, the professor was between them.
“So, it seems the sorcerer thinks we’re loudmouths,” said the professor. Looking at Cí more closely, his face changed. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I haven’t been in the capital long,” he lied. As he said it, though, he realized the professor was Ming, the man to whom he’d tried to sell his copy of the penal code at the book market.
“Are you sure? Well, anyway…I think you owe my student an apology.”
“Or maybe he owes me one.”
At Cí’s impertinence, a murmur went around.
Xu stepped in. “Please, sir, forgive him. He’s been quite out of sorts lately.”
But Cí wasn’t backing down. He wanted to wipe the smile off the conceited student’s face.
He turned to Xu and whispered, “Put a bet on me. Everything you’ve got. It’s what you know best, right?”
18
Professor Ming resisted betting at first, but once he admitted a bit of curiosity, his students urged him on, and he agreed to the challenge. Xu skillfully upped the bets, making a show of worrying that he’d lose everything.
“If you mess this up,” warned Xu, “I swear I’ll sell your sister for less than the price of a pig.”
Cí wasn’t daunted. He asked the group to give him some space and took out instruments for his examination: a small hammer, forceps made from bamboo, a scalpel, a small sickle-like object, and a wooden spatula. Beside these he placed a washbasin, gourds containing water and vinegar, paper, and a brush.
Cí had some doubts about Gray Fox’s inspection, and Cí was ready to see if he was right.
He went first to the corpse’s nape, working his fingers from there up along the scalp to the crown of the head, and then inspecting the ears with the help of the little spatula. Then he went downward from the neck, examining the muscular shoulders, upper arms, elbows, and forearms, stopping at the right hand and paying particular attention to something at the base of the thumb.
A circular callus.
He made a note.
He checked the spine, the buttocks, and the legs for injuries before cleaning the face, neck, and torso—properly, with water and vinegar. He spent a good deal of time on the stab wounds, measuring and probing, and then concluding that at least three were fatal.
Just as I suspected.
Then the terrible throat wound: shaking his head, he measured it and made a note of the tears at the edges. Last came the face. Using the forceps inside the nose and mouth, he extracted a whitish substance. He made another note.
“We’re waiting,” warned the professor.
But Cí refused to be hurried. A hundred facts were swirling in his mind, and he still hadn’t quite come to the answer. He returned to the face, where, now that it was clean, he noticed some small scratches on the cheeks. He moved to the mark on the forehead, which he concluded couldn’t have been caused by an impact at all; the edges of the rectangular mark were too neat to be anything but an incision. The mud stuck in the flesh was a red herring, he decided.
Now he was getting somewhere.
He went back to the arms and hands, finding new scratches, then again to the head, parting the hair very carefully and inspecting the scalp. His suspicion confirmed, he turned to the professor. The game was won, and only he knew.
Gray Fox smiled. “So, sorcerer, anything to add?”
“Not really,” he said timidly, dropping his head and looking at his notes.
Laughter broke out among the students, who began clamoring for Xu to pay up. Xu looked nervously to Cí, who was still consulting his notes. Xu cursed and was about to begin paying on the bets, when Cí piped up.
“Not so fast.”
They will be the ones to pay once I am done.
“What are you saying?”
Gray Fox came up to him. “If you think you can mock us and get away with it…”
But Cí ignored him and looked to the professor for permission to present his conclusions. Ming nodded, seeming interested to hear what Cí had to say.
“Your student has carried out a superficial examination. Blinded by his ego, he ignored the value of what seemed to him banal facts. Just as a race over a thousand li can only be achieved one step at a time, examining a corpse requires patience and attention to the most minute details.”
Before his opponent could object, Cí continued. “The victim’s name was Fu Leng. Convicted of serious crimes, he was condemned to serve as a soldier at the Xiangyang outpost, on the River Han border, but he recently deserted. He came to Lin’an hoping to embark on a new life, but his violent personality was an obstacle. Yesterday afternoon, as so often, he fought with his wife and then beat her. Later, when he sat down to eat, she came up behind him and slit his throat. The unfortunate woman, should you be interested in speaking to her, will be found in her house, which is close to the walls where the body was found. Ask at the Yurchen shop near the north jetty. They’ll know where she lives—if she hasn’t killed herself already.”
Everyone was silent—even Xu, who just stared back when Cí told him to take their winnings. Gray Fox stepped forward and, out of nowhere, slapped Cí.
“I thought I’d heard it all, but this is unforgivable. You should be ashamed. Listen—”
“No, you listen. It isn’t my fault you’re inept. You even cleaned the body before checking for evidence.”
Astounded, Gray Fox looked to Professor Ming, who instructed him to keep calm and told the others that it wasn’t quite time to pay Xu.
“As I’ve said many times, having conviction is important in this line of work, but on its own it is never enough. That’s why we have tribunals rather than just taking the word of an accuser.” Ming turned to Cí. “Your words have a convincing edge, but you also show insolence, and above all, your assertions lack evidence. Without the evidence, the only conclusion can be that this is a flight of fancy. Either that, or you were actually present at the crime.”