I found what he expected behind the third tapestry: a small lacquered door that opened to reveal a staircase winding up inside the circular walls. I took the steps two at a time, trusting that the Celestial Master would still be roaring loud enough to drown out the sound of sandals clattering over stone, but when we reached the level of the warden’s office we found not one secret room, but two, and to reach the second we had to pass through the first. I sensed disaster the moment Master Li slipped down from my back and opened a gold-embossed door. He pointed ahead at a second gold-embossed door across from us and whispered, “If my orientation is right, they should be in there.” I thought I could hear a faint voice that might belong to the Celestial Master, but I was more interested in the territory we would have to cross to reach it.
We had stepped upon an ermine carpet about four inches thick. The walls of the room were covered with velvet, and the centerpiece was an immense bed draped in satin, and all over the place were flattering portraits of the same creature. They were portraits of the Snake, and I was not in a mood to compliment the warden on his cleverness at placing both conference room and catamite within easy reach of his office. I gulped noisily and tried to pretend I was invisible as I tiptoed over that carpet behind Master Li, but it didn’t do me any good.
I stepped past a dragon screen and was instantly hit by a flying tree trunk, or something that felt like it. I think I may have still been sailing through the air when the Snake picked up Master Li and neatly stuffed him down inside an immense malachite urn. The velvet on the wall cushioned the crash as I hit it, and I picked myself up from ermine and dove toward a reptile who was making happy hissing sounds. Since I was being kind enough to lead with my head he kicked my chin from his left sandal to his right sandal and back to the left again, rather like playing with a child’s bouncing ball, and as I hit the carpet I saw a strange rictus tug at his face. The Snake was smiling at good little Number Ten Ox who had come to entertain him by dying very slowly. The chop of the side of his hand was almost friendly, not hard enough to snap my neck in half. I managed to roll over and kick feebly, and it was clearer than ever that the Snake was playing with me when he let me regain my feet.
Behind him a wrinkled old hand had lifted from the mouth of the urn, holding a throwing knife. Master Li could move his arm only a few inches, so a throw was out of the question, but he could try to give it to me. The problem was getting past the Snake to reach it. All I could do was charge and pray, and I almost managed to lift him and spin him around. Unfortunately I was making him angry, and he hissed at me and stopped playing. The Snake’s arms whipped up inside mine and broke my grip effortlessly, and then it was his turn. He wrapped me in a constrictor’s embrace, squeezing with power that would turn my bones to jelly, and while I still had breath I gasped, “Throw! Throw!”
I’d hoped for a distraction, and I got it. Master Li flipped the knife as well as he could, and it made one slow revolution in the air before it reached the Snake’s back. It must have felt like the bite of an ant. He glanced behind him and saw the extended hand, and he was not pleased. Hissing rather loudly, he tried to get his balance to aim a full-force kick and see which would break into more pieces, the urn or the old man, and in the process he lessened pressure on me. I jerked back with everything I had and broke free, and then I grabbed his waist and almost snapped my spine as I lifted. His feet were clear of the carpet. I only had enough strength for one desperate move, and all I could do was try to bring his spine down on the sharp edge of a large marble table. I gave it all I had, but it wasn’t enough. I knew I’d missed the moment I started the downward toss, and his back missed the edge and landed on the smooth flat surface. His cold reptilian eyes were staring straight at me, and there was no force left in my arm as I tried to chop his neck. The eyes didn’t even bother to blink. My legs were numb, and I helplessly held to him as I began sliding backward, and the eyes moved with me, cold, hard, without any emotion whatsoever, and then I fell to the floor and the Snake fell beside me.
He was lying on his side with his motionless reptile eyes still fixed on mine, and I finally realized I was staring at a minor miracle. Master Li’s knife had stuck to him by no more than a fold of cloth and a tiny pinch of flesh, flopping harmlessly back and forth, but somehow it had flopped into exactly the right position as he descended to the tabletop. It had been driven into his back right up to the top of the handle, directly into his heart, and the Snake was stone-cold dead.
11
Master Li’s eyes were incredulous as I peered down into the urn. “You’re alive?”
“Sir,” I said, “does any deity owe us a favor? If not, we’ll have to go into bankruptcy buying incense for the pantheon.”
I got him out without smashing the urn and he was able to hobble around quite well after I massaged his legs. He looked at the body of the Snake and shook his head wonderingly when I told what had happened, and then he pointed out a nasty aspect I hadn’t got around to considering.
“There’s no way this wound in the back can be made to look like an accident,” he said. “We’re faced with unpleasant complications no matter what, but the first step is a necessity. We have to make the corpse disappear.”
I opened my mouth one or two times to make suggestions and then closed it again. The grand warden was going to pull apart the castle stone by stone, if need be, dig up every inch of dirt, drain the moat, and send divers down the wells, and when Master Li said we had to make the Snake disappear he meant disappear.
“Step one is to get him out of this revolting love nest, and that, at least, is easy,” the old man said decisively.
I made two trips back down the stairs and then down the outer wall to the garden, one carrying Master Li and the other carrying the Snake. The corpse fit into a large wheelbarrow (an invention I have explained to barbarians in a previous memoir) and some burlap from manure sacks covered it. Then Master Li sprawled comfortably on top and I wheeled him out and past the guards while he hiccuped and waved his wine flask and sang bawdy songs, and the captain of the guards did no more than bow. After a battle like the one the old shaman had put on to save the grand warden’s wife he was supposed to get stinking drunk, and nobody dreamed of interfering. I wheeled him to the puppeteer’s wagon and left the wheelbarrow outside with the covered corpse still in it, certain that nobody was going to get close to the old man’s conveyance. Nothing is more dangerous than a drunken shaman. Yen Shih greeted us inside, which had very little space despite the size of the wagon because every inch was filled with puppeteering gear.
“We have a problem,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih raised an eyebrow.
“There’s a corpse in that wheelbarrow,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih raised the other eyebrow.
“The corpse is that of the snakelike creature who damn near killed Ox, and we have to assume the grand warden will search every drop of water and mote of dust until he finds the son of a serpent,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih nodded.
“I have precisely two ideas at the moment,” Master Li said. “The first is to disguise the corpse as one of your larger mannequins.”
Yen Shih pointed out at the moon and made revolving motions, indicating time passing, and then held his nose, indicating a bad smell.
“The second is to find some way to explain how a tiger managed to get past the moat and walls and eat the bastard,” said Master Li.
Yen Shih shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands apart—how?
“We shall think,” Master Li said, and his wrinkles contracted while Yen Shih gazed up at the canvas roof and hummed. Then he stopped humming.
“Tomorrow,” the puppeteer said slowly, “the Grand Warden of Goose Gate has scheduled a great feast in honor of his wife’s recovery.”
“At which a tiger will eat the Snake?” said Master Li.
“At which the Grand Warden of Goose Gate will eat the Snake,” said Yen Shih.
I thought that was weak humor, but Master Li didn’t. In fact, he was regarding the puppeteer with vast admiration.
“My friend, you’re a genius!” he cried.
“But he isn’t being serious,” I said. Then I looked at Yen Shih, and back to Master Li, and back to Yen Shih.
