for myself.”
“Nobody can afford your dear wife,” Master Li snarled.
He had a point, although Lotus Cloud was not promiscuous in her greed. At an early age the dear girl had become a specialist. Diamonds did not interest her. Emeralds bored her to tears. I once gave her a casket filled with gold, and she promptly handed it to a friend.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Because she wanted it, Boopsie,” said Lotus Cloud, and it was clear that she thought I was an idiot to ask such a stupid question.
Ah, but fill that same casket with pearls and jade! Never before or since have I known anything to match Lotus Cloud's reaction to a gift of pearls and jade. Her eyes grew wide with wonder, and her hands reached out reverently. A soul-shaking desire wracked her whole body, and her face was transfigured by indescribable longing. The sheer force of her greed would practically knock you off your feet, and she would fling herself into your arms and vow to adore you throughout eternity.
A man will do practically anything to get a reaction like that, and that was the trouble. Within ten minutes Lotus Cloud would forget all about your wonderful gift, and if you wanted to produce another reaction, you had to produce another casket of pearls and jade.
“Like all classic swindles it is simplicity itself,” Master Li said with grudging respect.
“I greatly admire her technique, even as it drives me toward bankruptcy,” I said.
“That,” sighed the Key Rabbit, “is what all her protectors say.”
Li Kao was making splendid progress with the Key Rabbit. It was only a matter of time before he would be able to persuade the duke's assessor to sneak us into the labyrinth and get us out again, but in the meantime I had to keep Lotus Cloud supplied with pearls and jade. Our chests of gold were melting like snow in August, and one terrible morning I stared in disbelief at the tiny handful of coins that was all that remained of the largest private fortune in China.
“Ox, don't look so guilty,” Master Li said comfortingly. “The dear girl's pigeon-plucking technique is quite remarkable. Let's go pluck a few pigeons ourselves.”
Not long afterward a splendid fellow named Liverlips Loo, who was attired as the majordomo of a great house, banged a gold-tipped staff against the door of the stingiest miser in town. Behind Liverlips Loo was a palatial palanquin, upon which rode two elegant aristocrats, a cart loaded with garbage, and a goat.
“Throw open the doors!” roared Liverlips Loo. “Ten thousand blessings have descended upon you, for Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu have condescended to rest in your miserable hovel!”
I have decided that the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.
The door crashed open and we stared at a gentleman who owned six different houses in six different cities, and who was blessed with a pair of glittering little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose like a parrot's beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two drooping elephant ears from which sprouted thick tufts of coarse gray hair.
“What have you done with my five hundred pieces of gold?” screamed Miser Shen.
Liverlips Loo escaped quite easily, but when Li Kao and I jumped from the palanquin we landed on top of the Key Rabbit and his platoon of soldiers. Somehow we became entangled in a chain that was around the Key Rabbit's neck, and he tugged frantically at his end. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed, and I assume that he thought that we were trying to steal the key to the duke's front door. The single key on the end of the chain was shaped like a flower, with sixteen tiny points that had to make contact with precisely the right amount of force before the lock would open, and a pressure lock costs several fortunes. The soldiers descended upon us. We were hauled off to court, but since Liverlips Loo had taken the cart and the goat with him, there was no evidence. Miser Shen could do little more than bellow accusations, but Miser Shen wasn't the problem. The problem was that we were no longer in a position to pay the mandatory fine for disturbing the peace, and the penalty for not paying a fine in the duke's city was death.
“Woe!” wailed the Key Rabbit. “Woe! Woe! Woe! To think that I should be partly responsible for the decapitation of my dearest friend and the most generous protector that my dear wife has ever had!”
Eventually he calmed down enough to find a bright side.
“Do not worry about Lotus Cloud,” he told me comfortingly. “I have discovered that Miser Shen is the wealthiest man in town. I will invite him to tea, and unless my dear wife has suddenly lost her touch, she will be rolling in pearls and jade.”
“Splendid,” I said.
There was no room in my heart for any more misery. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw the children of Ku-fu lying as still as death, and the abbot praying, and the parents telling each other not to worry because Master Li and Number Ten Ox were sure to return with the wonderful root that could cure ku poisoning.
15. The Labyrinth
I was to see Lotus Cloud one more time before we faced the headman's axe. We were chained to a long line of condemned convicts and marched through the streets, and the mobs that had sung the praises of Lord Li of Kao and Lord Lu of Yu gathered around us once more, to jeer and throw garbage. Lotus Cloud somehow made her way through the crowd. She slipped past the soldiers and ran up to me and tossed something that settled around my neck. I couldn't see what it was, and the jeers were so loud that I could only hear part of her message.
“Once when he was drunk, my miserable husband told me… Boopsie, I stole this because if the duke is playful…” Soldiers were dragging her away. “Follow the dragon!” Lotus Cloud yelled. “You must follow the dragon!”
Then she was gone, and I had no idea what she was talking about. The soldiers lashed the mob out of the way, and we were marched up the hill to the Castle of the Labyrinth.
I was so terrified that I have no memory at all of approaching the castle. Gradually I became aware of the fact that we were crossing the great drawbridge and passing through immense steel gates, and we entered a courtyard that was vast enough to hold several thousand soldiers. The murderous iron bolts of countless crossbows pointed at us through slits in the massive walls, and above us smoke and flames were lifting from vats of boiling oil. The clash of weapons and the roar of harsh voices and the tramp of marching feet was deafening, and when we entered a maze of long stone tunnels an infinity of echoes battered my ears. Ten times we reached checkpoints where guards demanded secret signs and passwords, and then iron gates crashed open and whips lashed us as we marched through. A dull gleam of light was ahead of us, and soldiers lined the walls, and I realized that we were approaching a door of solid gold.
It swung silently open. The soldiers prodded us across an acre of polished lapis lazuli toward a huge golden throne, and I trembled with fear as I approached the Duke of Ch'in. The hideous mask of a snarling tiger loomed larger and larger, and the duke was so big that the breadth of his shoulders matched the bulk of his mask. He wore gloves of gold mesh and a long cloak of feathers, and I saw with a shudder that the feathers at the bottom of the cloak were darkly stained. The chopping block and the basin that caught the heads and blood were almost directly at his feet, and apparently he enjoyed the view.
Soldiers lined all four walls, and two rows of dignitaries flanked the throne. The executioner was a huge Mongol who was stripped to the waist, and his glittering axe was almost as big as he was. A bonze administered the last rites, and it seemed to me that the ceremony was proceeding with unseemly haste. The chain that linked the convicts together was unlocked, although our hands remained manacled behind us, and the first condemned man was shoved forward. The sergeant at arms bellowed the charge against him and the death sentence, and soldiers neatly kicked the poor fellow's feet out from under him so that he fell with his neck stretched across the chopping block. The bonze muttered the shortest prayer that I had ever heard, and the sergeant at arms asked if the victim had any last words. The condemned man began a desperate plea for mercy, which the bonze cut short by nodding to the executioners.
The great axe lifted, and the vast room was hushed. There was a metallic blur and a dull thud, and blood spurted and a head landed in the stone basin with a sickly wet splash. The dignitaries applauded politely, and the Duke of Ch'in uttered a little whinny of pleasure.
