Barry Hughart - Eight Skilled Gentlemen

“Why, I suppose it just—”

I halted with the sentence half formed. North Lake was between the pavilion and Coal Hill, and could a ch’ih-mei swim? The idea of such a monster rowing sedately across in a boat with a ripped-off head neatly stored between its feet was ludicrous, and I seemed to hear Auntie Hua on the subject of monsters: “Ox, if you can’t get to sunlight, run toward water! The living dead fear it, and will brave it only as a last resort.”

Master Li shared the last of the wine with the puppeteer, and then pitched the goatskin flask to the water below.

“I would assume you have a pick and shovel stored somewhere,” he said to the puppeteer. “Our meeting has been so fortunate that I’d like to prolong it, and if you have nothing more pressing to attend to you might like to help track the path of a vampire ghoul.”

Yen Shih’s eyes could also be expressive, and they were sparkling. “Delighted! If nothing else I can dine on the tale for a month,” he said.

Master Li got on my back and the three of us made good time to the pavilion, pausing only to collect Yen Shih’s pick and shovel from a ditch where he’d concealed them, and soon we were standing close to the spot where flies still swarmed around grass stained with a mandarin’s blood. I thought Master Li was going to have us fan out and search for claw prints, but he had something more specific in mind and he pointed toward the huge pile of dirt the creature had apparently crawled from.

“That’s supposedly dirt dug for a construction project that was canceled,” he said. “Construction on Hortensia Island is rare, and I hadn’t heard of anything scheduled. See if you can find the hole this stuff came from.”

We worked around the great pile, hacking through weeds. Then we circled out farther and farther until we reached the limit at which dirt could reasonably be pitched where it was, but still we found no hole. There remained the possibility that the workmen had been terrible amateurs who tossed dirt so that half of it slid back on top of them, and we dug a series of holes down through the pile itself, but always the shovel scraped against solid earth and dead matted grass.

“Venerable Sir, the dirt didn’t come from here,” I finally said. “It had to be hauled in from some other location.”

“That,” Master Li said complacently, “is precisely what I expected, and it’s a hundred to one that the other location is across the lake near Coal Hill. Vampire ghouls never stray far from their coffins. This one happened to fall into, or was taking a nap in, a pile of dirt near the cemetery, and it was accidentally carried here, and its homing instinct allowed it to find the path the dirt had taken. If a ch’ih-mei can find a path, so can we.”

It didn’t take long now that we knew what we were looking for. Yen Shih swung his pick at thick reeds against the bank of a low cliff nearby and almost spiked himself in the left leg as the pick met no resistance and whipped around. We pushed reeds down and found a large dark hole, and any doubts vanished when we found dribbles of loose dirt and marks of large sleds that had been carrying heavy loads. I raced back to the Yu and returned with torches, and then we started down the tunnel that was headed east, toward the Imperial City and Coal Hill.

The path dipped down and down, and finally leveled off, and I nervously lifted my torch and studied the stone ceiling. This tunnel hadn’t been dug recently. It was old, perhaps as old as the Yu, and I saw black spots on the ceiling that seemed to move like giant spiders, and a slow menacing plop-plop-plop sound announced the dripping of water. We were making our way beneath the surface of the lake now, and I didn’t want to think about things like rockfalls. There was no sound except that which we made.

“Hold up,” Master Li said.

He had turned aside and was waving his torch around an alcove that opened on the north side. It was about thirty feet long and ten feet deep, and the floor was littered with fragments of rock. I saw a huge scar in the stone wall, recently made, and Master Li found traces of ancient chisel marks on some of the smashed fragments.

“It almost looks as though somebody discovered an old frieze and then smashed it to pieces before anybody else could see it,” he said. “Ox, do you remember that rubbing we found in Ma’s pavilion? I wonder if it came from here. After all, dirt was carried through this tunnel and dumped right in his backyard, and I doubt that he knew nothing about it.”

There was nothing else to be seen, so we continued on. I was very nervous. For all I knew the ch’ih-mei had his whole family down here, and our torchlight was announcing the approach of dinner. I clutched the pick like a battle-ax, but nothing happened. The path began to rise, and far ahead we saw a flicker of light. We finally came to a flight of steps that led up to a stone landing, and a wooden framework and a pair of large doors confronted us, and the hazy yellow light was coming through the crack between the doors, which stood slightly ajar. Master Li signaled for us to extinguish our torches.

“I think we’ve come up to ground level,” he whispered. “I also think we’re inside the artificial mound of Coal Hill, and that explains why dirt was removed and carted to the island, where it wouldn’t cause comment. This is a cave that was dug recently and secretly, right beneath the palaces of the wealthiest mandarins.”

We slipped silently through the doors into a large room that was piled with packing cases, stacked one on top of another almost to the ceiling. Across from us was another pair of doors and the light in the room was coming in through cracks at the edges, but this wasn’t artificial. It was sunlight, and when we put our eyes to the largest crack we were looking down at water.

“Ha!” Master Li whispered. “That’s it. This is a smuggling operation, and it must involve mandarins of very high rank. That’s the canal at the base of Coal Hill. Their barges pass through customs at Ta Kao Tien, preferably at nightfall, and begin inching up toward Export Clearance at Shou Huang Tien. Halfway through they pass here, where well-trained crews are ready: doors are opened, cargoes are switched, and with scarcely a pause the barges proceed to Export Clearance, and stamps will be applied automatically since the cargoes have just been inspected and couldn’t possibly have been altered in the middle of a canal.”

He paused, and then added, “The point has to be twofold: they pay negligible import duty on cargoes that are practically worthless, and then switch cargoes for goods that are both costly and restricted, meaning forbidden for export. If the goods are coveted by wealthy barbarians they must be making an incredible profit.”

He turned from the doors and we tiptoed toward the back of the room where there was another door, a large single one. As we drew closer we could hear voices, and Master Li gently shoved the door partially open. We were looking at an alchemy laboratory where vast numbers of vials and jars were stacked on worktables, along with burners and mortars and a great number of arcane instruments. Five people were visible.

One dominated the room, even though he was the softest-spoken. He was dressed in costly silks and gold-trimmed satin, and his rings and other jewelry could probably have ransomed a king or two. He was immensely fat, and moved with the peculiar dancer’s grace that some bulky people possess—probably half in the viewer’s imagination, because one expects ungainliness. The next three men obviously deferred to the fat man. Seldom have I seen more unpleasant people than those three, who seemed closer to the world of animals than to that of men. The leader was a man who looked exactly like a wild hog, and Hog I was to call him ever after. The second and third might have been brothers, sneaky, skulking, backstabbing brothers, and I dubbed them Hyena and Jackal.