"Third: why would the county yamen insist that you two killed Zhang Yourui, rather than a thief breaking in?"
"Dragging Zhang Yourui's corpse into the courtyard to make it look like robbers did it—quite a scheme. But you made a mistake. His body lay mid-yard, feet toward the house, head outward, the fatal wound on the back of the skull. The killer struck from behind with a blunt object."
"A cat burglar who saw the master come home would freeze or flee—not stop to kill the man, then slip away empty-handed."
Yang Zhenzhen froze. It had never once occurred to her that so many holes could be found.
Xu Qian's words crashed against her like a wave, leaving her exposed—laid bare in broad daylight, nowhere left to hide. Panic nearly swallowed her whole.
"Nothing to say now, is there? Zhang Xian had nothing to say either, so he sang about you. He claims you shamelessly seduced him, threatened him with your unborn child and forced him, and that it was you who, in the chaos, beat Zhang Yourui to death."
"Zhang Xian is the innocent victim. Seeing so many holes, he knew the net had closed beyond escape, so he confessed and offered five hundred taels to pin the blame on you—leaving you to carry the murder of your husband alone."
The more Yang Zhenzhen listened, the more terrified she grew. When she learned Zhang Xian had already sold her out, all color drained from her pretty face, leaving it paper-white.
"You know best what kind of man Zhang Xian is." Xu Qian said it deliberately.
Xu Qian had no idea what kind of man Zhang Xian was. He refused to believe a relationship with no love—nothing but lust—could hold together long. Besides, Zhang Xian was a rich man's son; why would he hang himself on one single abalone when money meant abalone by the plateful?
Yang Zhenzhen sank into despair.
"But—" Xu Qian coaxed, "His Honor the Magistrate is bright as the sun, lofty as the moon... that is, honest and just to a fault. He won't take Zhang Xian's one-sided account on faith. He sent me to question you. Confess everything and throw yourself on his mercy, and His Honor has promised to spare your life."
Yang Zhenzhen's head snapped up, tears brimming as though she'd caught a lifeline. "Truly?" Xu Qian nodded. "Truly."
Seeing her mind at last give way, Xu Qian opened the door and called in the court bailiff to take down the statement. The wall of resistance crumbled, and she told the whole story.
Yes, she had carried on with her stepson and was carrying his child—though it was not she who made the first move. The affair started in eight words: "Step-son, pray keep your distance. Step-son, pray make your move."
Zhang Xian had lusted after his stepmother's beauty for a long time. Seizing his chance while she sat alone guarding an empty bedchamber, he slipped in. Yang Zhenzhen was half-willing, half-resistant.
As the saying goes: a stolen affair brings a moment of bliss, then the whole family goes up in flames. On the night it all came to light, father and son clashed, and Zhang Xian grabbed a vase and killed the old man by mistake. To escape the blame, they cooked up a story, dressing it as a robbery gone wrong.
A pity the two were ordinary folk, no professionals—and on top of that they ran into Xu Qian, an absolute cheat of a man.
Once the statement was taken, Xu Qian and the bailiff left the sealed room.
The old bailiff, who had served the county yamen over two decades, was quite taken with Xu Qian's smooth maneuvering. "A scholar parted three days deserves a new eye. This old man has spent half a lifetime here and never met anyone who conducted an interrogation like yours."
A prisoner's dilemma—an old, tired trick... Only you ancient people would make such a fuss. Xu Qian waved a hand. "A paltry skill."
He had chosen Yang Zhenzhen as his point of attack because she was ignorant of the law—long of hair, short of sight, a phrase that fit this age's women all too well. Earlier, while the Magistrate held court, Xu Qian had watched and found her weak-willed, a woman without a mind of her own. And so the plan had come to him.
He had been deceiving Yang Zhenzhen just now. Under Great Feng law, a woman guilty of adultery and the murder of her own husband was put to death by a thousand cuts, while the adulterous man was beheaded in public. There was no remitting a death sentence.
In this case, the one guilty of murder was Zhang Xian—a patricide, which likewise warranted a thousand cuts. Xu Qian had no opinion on how a beast who slew his own father ought to die. He only felt Yang Zhenzhen was an accomplice, her crime undeserving of death—a point that ran against the legal sense he'd cultivated in his past life.
"Every age has its own rules," Xu Qian told himself. "Going with the current is how to survive."
Caught off guard, Zhang Xian could no longer argue his way out and, in despair, gave his own.
Xu Qian carried the two statements into the inner hall, where Magistrate Zhu was reading with his head bowed. He set the book and tea aside. "How did it go?"
Xu Qian placed the statements on the table. "I did not disappoint, Your Honor."
Magistrate Zhu snatched them up, gave the sheets a shake, and read with care. Then he slammed the table in fury: "Outrageous! An absolute outrage!" Old Zhu felt his scholar's view of the world under attack. The anger spent, he turned to Xu Qian, liking for this young man now at its peak.
"Ningyan, this Magistrate shall record a merit for you. A fine talent."
"Only because Your Honor taught so well, and I learned by osmosis—a few paltry tricks." Xu Qian loosed a bouquet of flattery. Magistrate Zhu's spirits soared.
...
At the moment the watch ended—four in the afternoon—Warden Wang announced he was treating everyone to a drink and led the eight fast-hands of the quick squad to the tavern. Silver was the standard, and prices stable: a single qian would book a sumptuous feast at a large restaurant, let alone a tavern.
For his miracle-working reasoning and his interrogation, Xu Qian became the star of the evening; even Warden Wang asked him to walk through the process.
"That woman's nerve is soft, that's all." Xu Qian was an old hand; he never sang his own praises. But Warden Wang and the others drank in every word, as though a new world had been flung open before them. Eagerly they toasted him, cup after cup.
After rounds of drinking, talk among grown men inevitably drifted toward the pleasure houses. Here Warden Wang took center stage, clapping Xu Qian's shoulder: "Ningyan, today I'll take you to the pleasure house for a taste—break you in." The whole company smirked knowingly; all knew Xu Qian was a virgin.
"Are you paying, Chief?"
"It costs several qian, you know." Warden Wang refused.
Not paying... Xu Qian said heavily: "I'm not that sort of man." Break my chastity and I'd never reach the Qi Refining realm in this lifetime.
When the talk turned to that most traditional of arts, Xu Qian listened with full attention and took notes in his heart: a pleasure house was a brothel serving the common folk, while a grand bordello was a finer grade, its clientele rich merchants and high officials... Good grief—cheap street salons and members-only clubs, nothing more. In the Great Feng court, no talk of pleasure-house culture could ever get around the Bureau of Music.
"The women of the Bureau of Music are truly beautiful," Warden Wang sighed. "All wives and daughters of disgraced officials, every one with skin soft enough to pinch water out of. At the start of the year I went there with the County Deputy and caught a glimpse of Lady Fuxiang—a face like a flower, a visage of moonlight..." Wonder crossed his face.
"Who is Lady Fuxiang?" asked little Li. "Chief, did you sleep with her?"
"Fuxiang is the courtesan queen of the Bureau of Music. If she hadn't already been taken for the night, I'd have bedded her myself." Warden Wang boasted at no cost.
"How much for a night?" Something stirred in Xu Qian's heart.
"Thirty taels."
Xu Qian grabbed him a handful of peanuts. "Chief, eat these—look how drunk you've gotten."
That's gold inlaid with jade... Thirty taels could buy several fine young women to amuse yourself with at home... Pah! The one constant baseness of humankind, from the ancients to this day, is jacking up the price of pleasure!
A man would have to be out of his mind to go to the Bureau of Music and bed the courtesan queen.