Chapter 983 — Eleven Wagons

CHAPTER 983

Eleven Wagons

Hao Dafu came into the hall the way he came into a waystation, shouting.

“Where is he? Where’s the one who says he saw a swordsman by lamplight?” Hao Dafu bellowed from the door, and stamped the snow off his boots onto the court’s clean floor. “Let me look at him! Let me look at this lamp-seeing man!”

All the drivers followed. Lao Qi led in a salt-stained sheepskin coat. Two dozen weathered men who’d never entered a court followed without quieting down. The young guard came last, clutching a blue cloth bundle.

The gallery came up off its benches.

“Who are they?”

“Salt drivers! Those are salt drivers off the north road!”

“The Grey Goose train. The eleven wagons. They’re real!”

Situ Mingzhao struck the table three times before the hall settled. Even then Hao Dafu didn’t sit. He stood in front of the commission with his fists on his hips and glared at Cao Shuncai until the waystation hand looked at the floor.

Shi Feng sat rigid on the accused’s bench, alarmed to see Hao Dafu here. He was glad the drivers were alive, but he’d tried to keep them out of this danger.

He had kept Hao Dafu out of this on purpose. A salt master had a licence and a family, and a censor could take away the first and ruin the second with one memorial. He’d paid the man for the fright and sent him east at the ridge so that nobody would have a reason to remember his name.

“How did they get here?” Shi Feng asked quietly.

“Under contract, Master Shi,” Yan Lianbi murmured, without moving his lips much. “Their train has a three-year salt contract with Her Highness’s pavilions. A Long household contract. While it runs, no censor in the Empire can touch their licence without touching hers.” He glanced down at the gate clerk’s slip. “They left Hanli eighteen days ago.”

Eighteen days. The commission had posted its notice of a witness in Shuoyang on the evening Shi Feng arrived, and that was only a week ago.

Shi Feng looked across the hall at the surety’s chair.

Long Caili sat still, watching the commission. She’d sent eleven wagons of witnesses north before anyone asked, without telling him. She didn’t look at the drivers or the accused’s bench.

Shi Feng faced the commission again, deeply grateful. Long Caili had protected the drivers and brought them here before the false testimony was filed. He couldn’t thank her in the hall. He’d have to do it afterwards.

“The commission will hear the witnesses one at a time,” Situ Mingzhao said, very patiently. “Master Hao first.”

Hao Dafu told it at the top of his voice. Six lamps going out along the eaves without a sound. A man in black with a white mask and no mouth on it, and a blade nobody could hear. Rifts in the air. The drivers lying flat under the wagons, and the young man walking across holes in the dark with a sword that rang on every beat.

“He never went into any room!” Hao Dafu roared. “There’s no east room! There’s a stable and a hall and a cliff! The man in the mask came out of the air at him, in the yard, in front of my wagons!”

“It’s true, Commissioner,” Lao Qi said, nodding hard beside him. “I was under the third wagon. I saw the boots.”

“You saw the boots?” Situ Mingzhao asked.

“They were very good boots, Commissioner,” Lao Qi said earnestly. “Not a bandit’s boots.”

Somebody in the gallery laughed and turned it into a cough.

Then the young guard stepped forward. He looked at the commissioner, at the prince in the Long seat and at the veiled princess, and his ears went red. He unwrapped the blue cloth with shaking hands and laid what was inside it on the commission’s table.

It was half a porcelain mask. It had split cleanly from brow to chin. One narrow eye slit was still in it, and it was black with soot from end to end.

“He threw both halves in the cook fire,” the young guard said, pointing at Shi Feng. “That night. In the morning the fire was out, and porcelain doesn’t burn, so I dug one out of the ashes. I kept it in my bag with the Tianji issue.” He swallowed. “I thought someone might want it one day.”

Pang Yue rose halfway out of his chair. He looked at the half mask for a long moment, at the plain porcelain with no maker’s mark, and slowly sat down again.

“Ha!” Long Zhenlei said loudly from the Long seat. “That’s evidence! That’s real evidence!”

“The Long seat will please let the commission say so, Your Highness,” Situ Mingzhao said gently.

“Then say so,” Long Zhenlei said, and folded his arms.

Situ Mingzhao didn’t say so. He had the clerk enter the mask in the record, its size and its weight, and he thanked every driver by name. Then he called a recess for the noon meal.

The drivers didn’t go to the noon meal. They crowded round the accused’s bench instead.

“Master Hao,” Shi Feng said as Hao Dafu pushed forward. “I’m glad you’re safe. But you shouldn’t have had to risk your family and licence for me. That’s why I sent you east.”

“Sent me east!” Hao Dafu said, and his face went red to the ears. “You paid me for a fright! Then a censor goes and says you murdered a man in a room that doesn’t exist, and you think Hao Dafu sits in Hanli counting silver?”

“A long road tests a horse, and time shows a man’s heart,” Lao Qi said solemnly behind him.

“You said you weren’t coming back this way,” Hao Dafu said, and jabbed a thick finger at Shi Feng’s chest. “So we came your way. Don’t argue! This isn’t a debt.” He grinned all over his red face. “It’s the invitation.”