“Be careful,” said Bo. “Try to make it look like you’ve got yourself together. Remember that accusing a court official amounts to the same thing as accusing Ningzong himself.”
When the two soldiers made Cí kneel before the throne, the emperor himself let out a gasp. Cí’s face was a mess of bruises and cuts. His two nailless fingers were bleeding. Feng smiled nervously. Bo stood a few paces from Cí, a leather bag slung over his shoulder. The gong sounded to announce that the court was in session again.
Feng took the floor first. He was wearing his old judge’s robes and the mortarboard that indicated he was on the side of the prosecution.
“Some of you here, I’m sure, have felt the blows of disappointment from time to time—when unscrupulous colleagues have threatened to ruin you, or when a woman has betrayed you for a wealthier suitor, or when unfair claims are brought against you.” Feng turned to the audience. “But I can assure you that none of those situations compare with the suffering and bitterness I now feel in my heart.
“Here before us, kneeling in front of our beloved emperor, you see the worst of imposters, the most ungrateful and insidious man alive. The accused has been living under my roof, and until yesterday I treated him like a son. I nurtured him, saw that he had an education, urged him to mature. I am childless, and I placed all my hopes in Cí Song. But to my deep, deep regret, I have learned that beneath that lamb’s clothing there is the worst kind of vermin imaginable: perverse, traitorous, and, yes, even murderous.”
“Once the proof was brought before me, I felt I had no choice but to support Gray Fox. It pained me to have to spill Cí’s blood, I can tell you, but I knew we had to see this confession.” He held the document up for all to see. “These are the hardest words a father could ever have to read. Unfortunately, though, it was the will of the gods, so that we might be saved the spectacle of more lies. Justice must now be served in regard to this despicable lowlife.”
The emperor carefully read the confession note before handing it to the official to register its content. Ningzong stood and looked at Cí with a dark hatred.
“With this document in mind, I hereby—”
“Not my signature…” groaned Cí, spitting blood on the floor.
The astonishment in the room was palpable. Feng came forward, trembling.
“It’s not my signature on that document!” cried Cí, the effort almost causing him to topple forward.
Feng flinched as if listening to a ghost.
“Your Majesty,” he said quietly. “He confessed—”
“Silence!” roared Ningzong, peering around the room as he considered what to do next. “Maybe he did ratify this document,” he said, pausing, “and maybe not. But in any case, every prisoner has the right to make his case.”
He sat on his throne once more. His face couldn’t have been more severe, or more regal, as he nodded at Cí to proceed.
Cí touched his forehead to the floor.
“Dear Sovereign,” he said, but just these two words brought on a bloody coughing fit. Bo stepped forward to help him, but a guard stood in his way. Cí took as deep a breath as he could before continuing. “In front of all the people present here today, I should confess my guilt. A guilt that’s eating me from inside.” Another murmur ran around the room. “I’m guilty of ambition. Ambition blinded me, and I became unable to distinguish right from wrong. And in my blindness, I trusted a man who is hypocrisy incarnate, the very body and soul of evil. Just as he says he looked on me as a son, I once regarded him as a father, but I now know him to be the worst of criminals, a snake of the most poisonous kind.”
“Hold your tongue!” warned the official who had been directing the proceedings. “You know that anything said against one of the emperor’s men is a slur on the emperor himself.”
Cí nodded to acknowledge that he knew the seriousness of his accusations, then fell into another coughing fit.
“Majesty!” shouted Feng before Cí could recover. “Are you really going to listen to this? Slander and lies! He knows it’s his only chance to save his skin.”
The emperor pursed his lips.
“Feng is in the right. Either show us some evidence, Cí Song, or I’ll have you executed immediately.”
“I can assure you, Majesty, there’s nothing in the world I would like more than to prove my innocence.” Cí shook his head, and when he looked up the determination had returned to his face. “And that’s why I’ll now demonstrate that I was the one, not Gray Fox, who worked out that Kan didn’t commit suicide. I was the one who told Feng of the evidence. And it was Feng who, rather than bringing the news directly to Your Majesty, broke his promise to me and gave the information to Gray Fox.”
“I’m waiting,” said the emperor, clearly losing his patience.
“In that case, I need permission to ask you a question, Majesty.” Ningzong nodded. “I suppose Gray Fox would have talked you through the details that led him to his conclusion.”
“Yes,” confirmed the emperor. “He did.”
“Details so strange, so specific, and so obscure that no other judge could possibly have observed them beforehand.”
“Exactly.”
“Things that have not been spoken here.”
“Get to the point!”
“In that case, Majesty, tell me, how could I possibly know those same details? Like the fact that Kan was made to write a false confession, that he was drugged and stripped naked by two people who then strung him up.”
“What kind of nonsense is this?” said Feng. “He knows because he was the one who carried out the act!”
“I’m about to prove that is also not the case,” said Cí, fixing Feng with a threatening look before turning back to Ningzong. “Dear Sovereign, did Gray Fox talk to you about the detail of the noose’s vibration marks? Did he explain that Kan, drugged as he must have been, didn’t struggle? That the mark left in the dust on the beam was neat rather than showing any sign of agitation?”
“Yes, yes, but what on earth has this got to do with—”
“Please, one last question: Is the noose still attached to that beam?”
The emperor glanced over at Gray Fox, who nodded in the affirmative.
“In that case, Gray Fox’s lies can be checked once and for all. That mark isn’t there anymore. I accidentally wiped it out when I was up there checking how the rope had moved. Which means by the time Gray Fox came to examine the room, the mark wasn’t there. He only knew because I told Feng, and Feng told him.”
Now Ningzong looked inquiringly at the prosecution. Gray Fox hung his head, but Feng, smiling, was ready with a retort.
“Nice try, but a bit predictable. Any idiot could tell that just by untying the corpse the dust up there would be rubbed out. Gods, Majesty! How long do we have to go on being insulted by this charlatan’s stupidities?”
Ningzong merely stroked his whiskers and turned his attention to the confession paper. The process was stalling. He ordered the transcriptionist to be ready and stood to announce the sentence, but Cí stepped forward.
“Please, one last chance!” he said. “And if you’re still not convinced, I swear to you I will stab myself in the heart.”
Ningzong frowned and glanced at Bo, who nodded.
“One last chance,” Ningzong said, seating himself once more.
Cí wiped the blood from around his mouth. He signaled to Bo, who came over and handed him the leather bag.
“Majesty,” said Cí, holding the bag up so Ningzong could see it. “Inside this bag there is a piece of evidence that will both prove my innocence and unmask a terrible plot. A scheme hatched through heartless ambition and based on an awful invention: the most dangerous weapon ever dreamed by the minds of men. A cannon so lightweight that it can be shot without the normal support a cannon requires, so small that it can be concealed in a person’s robes, so lethal that it can be used to kill, time and again, at a distance and with great accuracy.”