The invitation arrived on the third morning, delivered by a boy in an oversized army cap.
Wang Qiming the liquor merchant was haggling with a rice vendor when the boy tapped his elbow. The cap slid down over the boy's ears, and he pushed it up with a grimy hand before thrusting out a folded square of red paper.
"For you, Uncle," the boy said. "From the garrison."
Fang took the paper. His hands, still wrapped in strips of cloth to hide the scabs from his grave-digging, were steady. He had trained them to be steady. He tipped the boy a copper coin and unfolded the invitation.
Commander Li Zhanbiao requests the honor of your presence at a banquet celebrating his promotion to Colonel of the 81st Division. The Jade Courtyard, Zhucheng. Seventh hour, evening. Wine and entertainment provided.
Below the formal script, in a different hand, a note had been added: Your baijiu is better than the swill the quartermaster buys. Bring eight jars. You will be paid well.
Fang read the note twice. Then he folded the invitation and tucked it into his sleeve, next to the small notebook where Li Zhanbiao's death warrant was already written.
"Tell Commander Li I am honored," he told the boy. "I will bring my best stock."
The boy ran off, the cap bouncing on his head. Fang watched him go, and the pleasant smile of Wang Qiming the merchant remained on his face. But behind the smile, his mind was working cold and fast, a police inspector's mind that had not been dulled by grief but sharpened by it.
Eight jars of baijiu. Enough for fifty men. He would need to prepare the jars tonight.
He finished his bargaining with the rice vendor, paid too much for poor grain, and returned to his stall in the market. He spent the afternoon selling wine to farmers and laborers, laughing at their jokes, pretending to be the harmless drunkard he had spent two weeks convincing Zhucheng he was. But every few minutes, his eyes drifted to the garrison gate at the end of the market street, and his fingers traced the outline of the notebook in his sleeve.
A patrol of soldiers passed his stall. They were young men, no older than twenty, their uniforms stiff with newness and their rifles polished to a gleam. One of them paused to buy a cup of baijiu, and Fang poured it for him with a generous hand.
"Celebrating tonight?" Fang asked, his voice light. "I heard about the promotion."
The soldier grinned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Biggest banquet since the pacification. Colonel Li knows how to throw a feast. There was a whole pig slaughtered this morning."
"Pacification," Fang repeated, tasting the word like a rotten fruit. "That was the business up on Huangshi Mountain?"
The soldier's grin faltered. Something flickered in his eyes, a shadow that was there and gone so fast Fang almost missed it. "Yeah," the soldier said, his voice dropping. "That was it." He put down his cup and walked away without asking for a refill.
Fang watched him go. The boy had been on the mountain. He had pulled a trigger, or held a bayonet, or watched while others did. And now he was drinking baijiu in the market, pretending it had all been a bad dream.
He is not my target, Fang reminded himself. Li Zhanbiao gave the orders. Li Zhanbiao walked among the dead and counted them like cattle. The soldiers were just the gun. Li was the hand that aimed it.
He repeated this to himself, over and over, as he closed his stall and made his way back to the flophouse. He repeated it as he climbed the narrow stairs to his attic room. He repeated it as he unlocked the door and stepped inside and found the young policeman waiting for him.
The policeman was sitting on Fang's only chair, his cap resting on one knee and his hands folded in his lap. He was very young, with a round face and earnest eyes, and his uniform was freshly pressed and too large for him. He looked up when Fang entered, and his expression was apologetic.
"Wang Qiming?" he asked.
Fang did not move. His hand, hidden by his sleeve, drifted toward the big saber he had hung on a nail behind the door. "Who is asking?"
The young policeman stood up, fumbling with a badge he had pinned to his chest. "Xiao Liu, sir. Liu Zhenyuan. I'm with the martial police. Just routine. Just checking registration papers."
Fang forced himself to relax. He stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind him. The saber was still within reach. "I showed my papers at the market office. Everything is in order."
Xiao Liu nodded quickly, too quickly. "Yes, yes, I know. I saw the records. It's just that..." He hesitated, his round face creasing with something that looked like embarrassment. "It's just that there have been some disturbances lately. Bandit remnants. The garrison commander asked us to double-check all new arrivals."
"There are no bandits on Huangshi Mountain anymore," Fang said. "Your commander saw to that."
The words came out harder than he intended. Xiao Liu blinked, and for a moment, something sharp and intelligent flickered behind his earnest eyes. "You've heard about that," he said quietly.
"Everyone has heard about that."
Xiao Liu nodded. He looked down at his hands, still folded in his lap, and when he spoke again, his voice was very soft. "I wasn't there. I was stationed in the town, maintaining order. But I saw them come back. The soldiers. They didn't look like men who had won a victory. They looked like men who had seen something they couldn't forget."
Fang said nothing. The silence stretched between them, heavy and strange.
After a long moment, Xiao Liu shook himself, like a dog coming out of water. "I'm sorry," he said, forcing a smile. "I shouldn't talk like that. It's not proper. I just wanted to check your papers, Mr. Wang. May I see them?"
Fang crossed to his bag and produced the forged documents he had bought from a counterfeiter in Jinan. Wang Qiming, merchant, Dezhou prefecture. The papers were excellent work; the counterfeiter had been a government clerk before the warlords sacked his office and left him destitute. Xiao Liu studied them carefully, his lips moving slightly as he read. Then he handed them back.
"Everything looks fine," he said. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you."
He moved toward the door, then paused. His eyes had caught something on the floor, near Fang's sleeping mat. It was a small, dark stain on the wooden boards. Old blood, from the cuts on Fang's feet.
"You're injured?" Xiao Liu asked.
"I walked a long way," Fang said. "New shoes. They rubbed."
Xiao Liu nodded, but his eyes lingered on the stain a moment too long. Then he smiled again, that same forced, embarrassed smile, and let himself out.
Fang stood in the center of the room, listening to the young policeman's footsteps descend the stairs. He did not move until he heard the street door open and close. Then he crossed to the window and watched Xiao Liu walk away down the market street, his too-large uniform flapping in the wind.
He saw something, Fang thought. He doesn't know what he saw, but he saw it.
The young policeman was observant. That was dangerous. But he was also young and uncertain, and he had spoken of the soldiers with something that sounded like doubt. That was useful.
Fang filed the information away, in the same mental cabinet where he had once stored the habits and weaknesses of criminals. Then he turned his attention to the eight jars of baijiu stacked against the wall.
Tonight, Li Zhanbiao would drink. Tonight, Li Zhanbiao would die.
—
The Jade Courtyard was an old merchant's mansion that had been converted into a banquet hall. Its central courtyard was open to the sky, paved with flagstones and lit by red lanterns that swayed in the evening breeze. Tables had been arranged in a horseshoe, laden with roasted meats and steamed buns and bowls of pickled vegetables. At the head of the horseshoe, on a raised platform, sat Colonel Li Zhanbiao.
Fang had seen Li Zhanbiao once before, from a distance, on the day the 81st Division marched out of Zhucheng. The colonel had been mounted on a gray horse, his uniform immaculate, his back straight as a flagpole. He had looked like a hero from a propaganda poster, the kind of officer the Nationalist government loved to photograph.
Up close, he was smaller. His shoulders were narrow, and his face was pockmarked from childhood illness, and his eyes were too close together. He laughed too loudly at his own jokes, and his hands moved constantly, touching his collar, his belt, his sidearm. He was a man who did not trust the world to stay still.
Fang carried the jars of baijiu into the courtyard one by one, his head bowed, his shoulders stooped, the picture of a humble merchant. He placed the jars on a side table, where servants would pour them into smaller decanters for the guests. Seven jars of good, clean rice wine. One jar, the one he placed at the very front, laced with a carefully measured dose of monkshood extract.
Aconite. The poison of the northern mountains, used by hunters to tip their arrows. It paralyzed the heart in minutes, and it tasted faintly sweet, easily masked by the sharp burn of baijiu. Fang had purchased it from an apothecary three towns away, claiming he needed it for a sick horse. The apothecary had weighed it out without comment. Men poisoned horses all the time.
The banquet began. Officers toasted Li Zhanbiao's promotion, raising their cups and shouting praise that grew louder with each round. Li drank heavily, his face flushing red, his laughter becoming wilder and more unguarded. A troupe of musicians played clashing cymbals and shrieking fiddles. The noise was deafening, and Fang was grateful for it. Noise covered mistakes.
He stood against the wall, a servant now, a nobody, watching Li Zhanbiao drain cup after cup. The monkshood jar was half-empty. By Fang's calculation, Li had consumed enough to stop a man's heart twice over.
And yet the colonel kept laughing. Kept drinking. Kept breathing.
Fang felt the first cold tendril of fear curl in his stomach. The dose had been wrong. The potency had degraded. Something had gone wrong, and now Li Zhanbiao was standing up, swaying slightly, calling for more wine.
"My friends!" Li shouted, his words slurring. "My brothers in arms! Let me tell you about the bandits on Huangshi Mountain!"
The officers cheered. Fang's hands tightened into fists.
"They thought they could defy us!" Li roared. "They thought their little swords and their little spells could stop the 81st Division! We showed them! We showed them what real steel can do!"
He grabbed a decanter from a servant and raised it high. "To the Republic! To Chairman Han! And to the annihilation of all traitors!"
The officers drank. Fang watched Li's throat work as he swallowed, and he waited for the poison to strike. The monkshood should have reached his heart by now. He should be clutching his chest, gasping, his face turning blue.
Instead, Li set down the decanter and stumbled off the platform, heading toward the latrines at the back of the courtyard. His steps were unsteady but not the stagger of a dying man. He was drunk. Nothing more.
Fang moved without thinking, slipping through the shadows along the wall, following Li into the narrow passage that led to the latrines. The music swelled behind him, covering the sound of his footsteps. His heart was pounding, but his mind was clear, ice-clear, the clarity that had always come to him in moments of danger.
He caught up with Li in the dark passage, just outside the latrine door. The colonel was fumbling with the latch, muttering to himself, and he did not hear Fang approach.
"Colonel Li."
Li turned, blinking in the darkness. "Who's that? More wine?"
Fang stepped forward, and the light of a distant lantern fell across his face. For the first time, he let the mask of Wang Qiming slip away. He let Li Zhanbiao see the man beneath.
"I have a message," Fang said, "from Huangshi Mountain."
Li's eyes widened. His mouth opened, but before he could shout, Fang's hands closed around his throat.
It was not a clean kill. Fang had never killed a man with his bare hands before, and the reality was nothing like the detective novels he had read in his youth. Li Zhanbiao thrashed and clawed, his fingers scrabbling at Fang's face, his legs kicking against the stone wall. Fang pressed him back against the latrine door and held on, his thumbs digging into the colonel's windpipe, his teeth gritted against the pain. He felt something tear in Li's throat, a wet, gristly sound that he would remember for the rest of his life.
Li's struggles grew weaker. His face turned purple, then gray. His hands fell to his sides.
Fang held on for thirty seconds more. Then he let go, and Li Zhanbiao slid to the ground, his head cracking against the flagstones.
He was dead.
Fang stood over the body, breathing hard, his hands trembling for the first time all night. The music from the courtyard had stopped. He could hear voices now, confused, calling out for the colonel.
He knelt beside the body and reached into his sleeve. He withdrew a single object: a brass coin, old and worn, stamped with the square-hole design of a Dadao Hui membership token. He had taken it from Zhang Hengyuan's body on the mountain, and he had carried it ever since, a weight in his pocket as heavy as a stone.
He placed the coin on Li Zhanbiao's chest, over his heart.
Then he stood up and walked, not toward the courtyard, but toward the back wall of the passage. There was a gap there, a place where the bricks had crumbled, leading to a narrow alley beyond. He slipped through the gap and into the darkness, and the last thing he heard before the alley swallowed him was the first panicked shout of discovery.
The ghost is real now, Fang thought as he ran. He has teeth.
—
Xiao Liu arrived at the Jade Courtyard ten minutes after the body was found.
The courtyard was chaos. Officers were shouting, servants were weeping, and someone had knocked over a brazier, sending burning coals skittering across the flagstones. Xiao Liu pushed through the crowd, his badge held high, his young face pale but determined.
"Martial police!" he shouted. "Make way! Everyone stay where you are!"
No one listened to him. He was too young, too small, too obviously a junior officer playing at authority. But he pushed through anyway, and he reached the passage where the colonel's body lay.
Li Zhanbiao was sprawled on his back, his face mottled and swollen, his throat a mass of bruises. Xiao Liu had seen dead men before, but never one who had been killed so personally, so intimately. A gunshot was distant. A bayonet thrust was mechanical. This was something else, something that spoke of hatred so deep it had refused to be satisfied with a bullet.
He knelt beside the body, his knees pressing into the cold flagstones. The Dadao Hui coin gleamed on Li's chest, catching the lantern light.
"Sir," one of the servants stammered, "the liquor merchant—the one who brought the wine—he's gone. No one saw him leave."
Xiao Liu looked at the coin. Then he looked at the bruises on Li Zhanbiao's throat. Then he closed his eyes and thought about the man in the attic, the man who called himself Wang Qiming, with his bandaged hands and his too-steady gaze and the bloodstain on the floor that had looked nothing like a blistered foot.
He had known, in that moment in the attic, that something was wrong. He had felt it in his bones, the prickle of instinct that his training sergeant had told him to trust above all else. But he had ignored it, because the man had been polite, and his papers had been in order, and because Xiao Liu was young and afraid of making a fool of himself.
He had not trusted his instinct, and now a colonel was dead.
Xiao Liu opened his eyes. He reached down and picked up the coin, turning it over in his fingers. The metal was old and worn, and the square hole in the center was rough-edged, as if it had been rubbed by many hands over many years.
"What's your name?" he asked the servant quietly.
"Chen, sir. I'm just a kitchen boy."
"Chen, did the liquor merchant say anything to you? Anything at all?"
The boy thought, his face screwed up with the effort. "He asked about the pacification," he said finally. "On Huangshi Mountain. He wanted to know what happened up there."
Xiao Liu nodded slowly. He wrapped the coin in a handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. Then he stood up, his knees aching from the cold stone, and looked out over the chaotic courtyard.
The liquor merchant was gone. But he had left a trail, a trail of blood and coins and questions that led straight back to Huangshi Mountain.
Xiao Liu did not know who the man really was. He did not know what drove him, or where he would strike next. But he knew one thing, with a certainty that settled into his bones like winter cold.
The killings were not over.
And the next time he met Wang Qiming, he would be ready.
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