the way out a side door and down a flight of steps. He and Master Li seemed to be getting on splendidly as they quite freely discussed the difficulty of making fake Tribute Tea taste better than donkey piss.
“Your profit margin couldn’t stand the expense of enough real hyson to make a significant difference?” Master Li asked.
“It was ruinous. You must remember, Li Kao, that we need to make enormous profits and then get out of the business fast. The chances of winding up as tsang shen yu are simply too high,” the eunuch said matter-of- factly.
That means “bodies buried in fish bellies,” and Master Li nodded sympathetically. “What I had in mind was something nowhere near as costly as pure choo-cha. Specifically, a blend of light but acidic Yunnan such as Drunken Concubine Wang with semi-fermented oolong like Iron Goddess of Mercy.”
“Expensive!” Li the Cat protested.
“Not if used in minute quantities, and I think I see the way to manage it. But you’re right, I’ve chosen the very finest of the types I have in mind, and experiments involving slightly lesser grades would certainly be called for.”
They continued to discuss fake tea like partners, considering the virtues of adding Trouser Seat as opposed to Old Man’s Eyebrows, or Purple Fur and Hairy Crab combined to equal the same quantity of White-Haired Monkey, and I was actually charmed by the dimpled smile as Li the Cat stopped and turned and said with an apologetic gesture, “Number Ten Ox, would you mind? I’m quite incapable of moving the thing.”
He meant a heavy iron door. I had to grunt as I hauled it open, and then we started down a steep flight of stone steps.
“I apologize for the environment, but the builders provided no other quarters for sudden guests,” the eunuch said wryly.
He meant the dungeons, and I briefly thought I was getting all too familiar with dank dripping stone walls covered with rotting lichen, clanging metal doors, guards stamping heavy nail-studded boots, weeping sounds from cells, and all the rest of the atmosphere that so frequently embraces those who accompany Master Li. Li the Cat delicately held his nose. I wanted to ask about Yu Lan, but what could I say? Whether or not she was in one piece she would be down here, and we reached the end of the corridor, where two guards flanked an iron door, and at the eunuch’s gesture they tugged and panted and finally got the door open. We entered into darkness.
A light flickered, a wick flared up, and we saw the bright points of a circle of spears aimed at us.
“What is the meaning of this?” Master Li asked.
“Li Kao, how is it that a man who has seen so many moons speaks with a mouth still redolent of mother’s milk?” the eunuch said contemptuously. “Did you seriously think I would bargain with an antique? Frankly I am disappointed to find a senile petitioner where I hoped to enjoy a formidable opponent, but I will at least honor the man you once were.”
Yes, first-moon clams, I thought as I watched the eunuch’s eyes in the lamplight. No more emotion than a sea creature reaching into the food chain. But then I decided I was wrong.
“You have annoyed and inconvenienced me,” Li the Cat said softly. “Not many people can do that, and therefore I shall honor you with the most remarkable last minutes known to man.”
That wasn’t clam-cold. A tic momentarily disturbed the perfect dimples, and then the eunuch turned and marched out. The soldiers closed around us and in seconds we were chained to two thick wooden posts in the center of a circular cell, and then the soldiers marched out and slammed the iron door shut, taking the lamp with them. Pitch-blackness closed around us. I listened to my heart pound, and then to the slow drip of water from the rank lichen-covered stone walls.
“I’ll be damned,” Master Li finally said. His voice was slightly incredulous. “I didn’t dare dream we’d be so lucky. Is this some sort of trick?”
What could I say? I was trying to get my tongue unwrapped from my larynx, and that might take days.
“I thought he’d at least string us from the ceiling by our heels, although there are very good reasons why he wouldn’t ruin the final effect by wrapping the wires around our balls,” Master Li said. “You know, Ox, I’ve underestimated that creature. I thought it would take an artist to understand that the best torture would be none, since pain creates its own universe in which further considerations are impossible. A greater agony depends upon thought, upon imagination, upon expectation growing wilder and wilder with each drip-drop from dank walls, and then the hideous reality finally appears and it’s far worse than imagination can conceive—ah, that is the stroke of artistry! Yes, I’ve badly underestimated Li the Cat, and I hope I don’t do it again.”
Again? What did he mean by again? If he meant some tenuous Buddhist concept of a later existence as a mosquito I wasn’t interested, but I was interested in a fate far worse than hanging from the ceiling by my balls. What on earth did the eunuch have planned for us? I had to admit that Master Li had a point about subtlety when I noticed that moving my left thumb three inches to touch the chains binding my wrists took six and a half minutes, according to the count of my pulse, and I seemed to be measuring the drip-drop of water in terms of months.
I won’t speculate how long it took. All I know is that I wasn’t 306 years old at the time—although I would have taken bets on it—when the silence of our cell was shattered by an incredible scream, and then another, and then a ghastly sequence of shrieks, howls, squishy squealing noises, loathsome sucking popping sounds, a final sequence of screams so horrible I thought my bones would shatter like vibrating porcelain, and then silence. A silence that grew to be as horrible as the screams, and was finally broken by slow, sucking, squishing, slithering noises moving toward our cell door.
The door creaked open. A low, squat, hulking black outline was briefly visible against the dim light from the corridor, and then the door squealed shut. The blackness was as heavy as a shroud of velvet soaked in blood. Slithering sounds were slowly moving toward the stakes we were chained to, and I began to hear something panting moistly. I glimpsed a faint yellow streak that gradually resolved itself into a pair of tiny luminous eyes. A slobbering noise was followed by heavy hard panting, and a hiss of insane excitement, and a spray of spittle: “— and tell you of the dried oysters of Kwantung! The frogs of Kuei-yang! The summer garlic of south Shensi and the limes of the Yangtze Valley! The clams of the Shantung coast and the sugar crabs of southern Canton and the dried ginger and thorn honey of Chekiang!” shrieked Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu.
22
My mouth burned as bile and stomach acid surged up around my teeth. A red haze replaced the blackness, and a high buzzing noise filled my ears. Then the happy thought that this must be one of the recurring nightmares in which I was a helpless victim of the hosteler flooded my mind, washing terror away, and I almost laughed with relief as the red haze faded and the buzzing sound died down. I was rewarded with pale luminous yellow eyes moving even closer, and soft fingers like worms crawling over my left cheek, and excited spittle flying like ocean spray.
“The sago cakes of central Honan, and desert thorn honey with almonds from—”
“Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu—”
“But you must know! A record must be left! Finest of all caviars is roe of the Yangtze sturgeon simmered in a decoction of the seeds of the honey locust!”
“Hosteler Tu!” Master Li shouted. “You know very well that you hyperventilate and collapse in gustatory orgasms after you’ve murdered and mutilated in your inimitable manner, and I’ve told you a hundred times that it will be the death of you! Now get hold of yourself before you suffer a stroke, and you might begin by unlocking these damned chains.”
I had lost my mind, that was it. Terror had driven me completely insane. So much so that I imagined I was hearing keys click in locks, and the rattle of Master Li’s chains falling to the stone floor. Splayed froglike fingers slid over my ankles to the lowest locks, and I stopped breathing.
“Sorry, Ox,” Master Li was saying apologetically. “I thought you’d be better off not knowing about this little precaution. You see, before leaving the Celestial Master’s house when we learned the poor little maid had been murdered, I asked about the dog.”
“S-s-s-sir?”
“The dog, Ox. Remember that the maid had been carrying a sick dog the first time we saw her? Well the
