The Rich Man's Gate Part 1

Year eighty-five of Kunlun, autumn, the eighth month.

Yang Yan slipped into the town and, under cover of dark, knocked on the door of the smithy. The blacksmith came with a candle and a curse on his lips. "Who in damnation won't let a man sleep!" Then his eyes found the figure on the step, and in the mingled light of candle and moon he saw a face seamed with raw wounds and two eyes red as blood. He started so badly the candle nearly fell from his hand.

Yang Yan walked straight past him into the shop, looking for a weapon. The smith knew something had gone wrong. "Master Yang—what's happened?" Yang Yan did not answer. He took down a sword, weighed it, found it unwieldy, and chose another, a little slimmer in the blade. When the smith came forward to ask again, Yang Yan dug a few taels of silver out of his shirt—everything he had been able to scrape together at home—set down a single broken piece, and left.

The smith stood blinking after him. From the back his wife called, "Who was it?"

"Nobody," he answered, and shut the door. But the unease would not leave him.

Sword in hand, Yang Yan remembered the northern accent of the man in the black robe, and turned his steps north.

The hands at the manor had spent two days wondering why Yang Zhengde and Qin Jiuxian both failed to come to work; then word ran through the town that the whole Yang household had been slaughtered. The blacksmith had gone out to the Yang place that morning, and on his return he spread the news and carried it as well to the chapter steward of the Beggars' Sect in Chongren.

Yang Zhengde had always been a kindly man, and the news set tempers blazing. People remembered that Qin Jiuxian had vanished at the same hour, and suspicion settled on him at once. A crowd went to his lodgings—only to find them empty. The neighbors could say nothing except that he had gone out the night before and never come back; that he had once been a man of Linchuan; and beyond that, nothing, which made everyone more certain still. The local beggar-headman, Pilai, sent word up the line that a household had been wiped out, named Qin Jiuxian as the prime suspect, and declared the hunt was on. About Yang Yan's whereabouts he asked not a single question.

Yang Yan left the town and asked his way as he went. But he carried a naked blade, his shape was a thing of dread, his cheeks were one mass of wounds—and the moment he opened his mouth, the cuts in his face and tongue pulled tight and turned his voice into something uncanny. People scattered from his path. At last he met one kindly old woman who pitied him; she listened to him, asked after him, and he answered only his questions about the road and nothing else. So she told him: follow the high road north and he would come to Linchuan. As for the man in black he spoke of, she had seen no one of the kind.

Chongren lay only a few dozen li from Linchuan. They said of Fuzhou that it was seven parts mountain, one part water, two parts field, and though the road he walked had been graded by the Beggars' Sect, it was rough going. Yang Yan simply walked, drinking from any water he found, until noon, when a wave of dizziness took him. He had not eaten in a day and was faint with hunger. Only then did he remember that he had brought money for the road but no food. Seeing a wayside eatery not far off, he made for it.

Inside, the few travelers turned to look at him. By now his wounds had gone to pus, and anything hot set them bleeding, so he bought several cold buns to carry. The first mouthful tugged at the torn flesh of his cheeks and gums; each chew was like the scrape of a knife, the prick of a needle, and in the end he could only wash the food down whole with water.

With his provisions ready, he bought a gourd and filled it, and walked on. He had not gone half an hour when something smashed into the back of his skull. Before he could make sense of it, a knot of ruffians were on him with fists and feet, beating him to the ground, hands diving into his shirt for his purse. Yang Yan clutched the embroidery-needle ball in his breast with all his strength, driving the points through his own palm and fingers until they bled. The robbers could not pry his fingers loose, and—afraid of being seen—they snatched only his purse and the warrant token and fled. Yang Yan dragged himself upright. From their backs he knew them for the travelers at the eatery, knew too that he could never catch them, and limped on toward Linchuan.

When night came he cut tall grass with his sword for bed and blanket and slept by the roadside, spared, by luck, the attention of snake or beast. So he walked two days, and only at noon on the third did he reach the city of Linchuan.

Since the Kunlun Council, the Beggars' Sect had held sway over three provinces—Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangxi—and in Jiangxi it made Fuzhou its stronghold. The Sect had its roots in vagrancy and begging; its men were largely unlettered fighters, and generation after generation its chiefs had made the fostering of learning a chief duty. Linchuan had long been famed as a cradle of talented men, and so the Jiangxi headquarters was placed there. For the same reason, of course, Shaoxing in Zhejiang became the Sect's grand headquarters.

Forty-odd li in two days had left Yang Yan worn through, his whole body aching. His wounds had gone untended, and he had slept in filth; now maggots had bred in them and crawled across his face, and the city folk shied away at the sight of him. He looked around—and naturally saw no enemy. Passing a great courtyard house, he heard the sound of a quarrel within, but had no heart to mind it. Then his eye caught a figure in the alley, dimly familiar, a back he seemed to know. He was about to hurry toward it when the world spun round him and he went down.

"You cheat—you thug! Ai—somebody's fainted!"

That was the last thing he heard before the dark took him.

......

When he opened his eyes again, the first thing Yang Yan saw was a back.

The back of an old man.

At once his hand went to his breast, feeling for the embroidery-needle ball; it was still there, and his heart eased. Then he reached for his sword.

Where was his sword? The cry burst out of him—but what came from his mouth was only a groan.

The old man turned and came quickly to settle him. "Lie still. Rest."

Yang Yan struggled to look around the room. "What are you after?" the old man asked, then understood, drew the sword out from under the bed, and held it up. "This?"

Yang Yan seized it and clutched it tight. He was about to speak when the old man pressed a hand to his chest. "Hush—don't talk. Your tongue's hurt. The less you use your mouth and the more you rest, the better."

Yang Yan shook his head. Holding the sword, he tried to rise, but his whole body was slack and sore.

A door creaked. A girl came in carrying a bowl of medicine. She was perhaps seventeen, plump and well-fed, shorter than Yang Yan yet, by the look of her, heavier.

The old man helped Yang Yan sit up. "My name is Sun. I'm a physician. This is my granddaughter, Ah Zhu." Hearing the man was a doctor, Yang Yan realized only now that his face had already been dressed.

"Don't move," Ah Zhu said. "Let me feed you the medicine." Spoonful by spoonful she gave it to him. Watching her, Yang Yan thought of the last small smile on Yang Shanshan's face before she died, and his eyes went suddenly hot. He forced out a word: "Sister—"

His speech came out thick and unclear, and Ah Zhu heard it as "thanks." "No need to thank me," she said quickly. "It's only right."

Yang Yan mastered himself and reached to find some silver—only to remember that he had been stripped of every coin. Physician Sun read the look on his face and guessed the cause. "I don't know what's happened to you, and I won't pry. But your eyes—" He paused, then went on. "Your wounds are very bad, and they weren't treated in time; the rot has set in deep. You'll likely carry scars on your face, and your speech may never be quite right. But your life is in no danger. Whatever private matter you have left undone—if it's hard to speak of, let it wait until you've healed."

For the first time since the night his house was destroyed, Yang Yan received another person's kindness, and a warmth he could not help stirred in him. But he had no mind to convalesce. He wanted only to find his enemy and have his revenge.

"Rest well," Physician Sun said. "We'll leave you in peace."

Yang Yan slept again. His wounds had festered and inflamed; the least movement set his whole body aching. A day of nursing brought no steady gain—now he sank into a stupor, now he surfaced.

When he woke the next day, Physician Sun was decocting medicine. Seeing him stir, the old man asked, "How are you?" Yang Yan had no strength at all. As Sun took his pulse, Yang Yan noticed a livid bruise on the old man's face and pointed to it. Sun said it was nothing. Yang Yan was not convinced. Just then Ah Zhu came in carrying a bundle. "Is this yours?"

He looked—and there in the bundle lay the broken silver and the warrant token that had been robbed from him two days before. His bewilderment deepened.

"Where did you find it?" asked Physician Sun.

"It was just sitting at our gate," Ah Zhu said. "No telling who left it."

Yang Yan pointed at the silver, then at Physician Sun. The old man took his meaning, hefted a small piece, and said, "I'll take this much for the medicine. Keep the rest." Yang Yan was deeply grateful—though he still could not fathom how token and silver had come back to him.

When Physician Sun had gone, Yang Yan pointed at his own face and then at the door, asking Ah Zhu how her grandfather had come by his bruise.

At the question Ah Zhu pursed her lips, her temper flaring. "There's a cheat come to town, a real bully. He stole away a patient, and then he hurt Grandpa."

Curious, Yang Yan pointed at her and made a talking gesture, urging her to tell it.

It went like this. Physician Sun was a renowned and benevolent healer in the town, treating sickness and injury alike; from the poor he took only the cost of the medicine, and the family lived chiefly on what he earned tending the household of a local landowner, Master Zhu.

About a month before, the concubine Master Zhu had newly taken to wife fell suddenly ill—a tightness in the chest, a shortness of breath that wore at her day and night, so that she could not lie with him. Anxious, Master Zhu called in Physician Sun, who treated her a long while and never struck the root of it.

Then, perhaps half a month ago, a traveling doctor named Zhu Menshang appeared. He gave it out that his forebears had grown rich without conscience, and that his teacher had charged him to practice charity for three years; so he took no consulting fee, only the price of the medicines. Hearing of the strange affliction in Master Zhu's house, he came to call. A drowning man clutches any straw, and Master Zhu let him in. When he had examined her, he declared that the lady suffered from a surfeit of yang essence held in the body—yin and yang in conflict, fire and water out of balance—and that this had bred a disorder of the heart.

"What is this surfeit of yang essence?" Master Zhu asked.

Zhu Menshang answered with a question of his own. "When the master takes his pleasure—is yin set above and yang below?"

Master Zhu colored. "Now and then... yes."

"More than now and then, I'd wager."

Master Zhu only gave a sheepish grin, and the doctor went on. "The master is robust, his essence abundant—which is to say, your vigor runs too strong, your yang too fierce. In the natural way of it, man lies above and woman below, and the yang essence enters by the gate and is dispersed through the body's seven apertures. But with yin and yang reversed, the lady cannot bear it; the yang essence finds no outlet and gathers within her. To cure this, the essence must be drawn off."

That said, he had the lady stand, took out a needle three feet long, and worked it behind her back. Such a needle for treatment had never been seen. No one could tell which point along her spine he pierced; he pinched the needle in his left hand, and with his right struck suddenly at her breast—and the needle's tip sprang out through the front of her chest. Holding it so, the needle clasped between his two hands at breast and back, he drew his left hand back, opened his right, and the needle withdrew.

"I've pierced the channel and let off the pent breath," Zhu Menshang said. "But to be truly cured she'll need a secret remedy handed down in my family. The simples don't come cheap—three taels of silver a dose, taken morning and night, and then she'll mend."

After that feat of running a needle through her chest, Master Zhu was struck dumb with awe. The concubine was his newest and dearest; never mind six taels a day—he would have given sixty.

Zhu Menshang added a warning. "The lady's sickness rose from the marriage bed. If you lie with her before she's fully restored, the trouble may worsen. And should the flow run the other way, so that you take in yin essence—I fear—"

"Fear what?" Master Zhu pressed.

Zhu Menshang raised one finger to the sky, then crooked it downward.

Master Zhu paled. "You don't mean—I'd be unmanned?"

The doctor nodded. "I'll keep the rule," Master Zhu said hastily. "I swear it."

After that Zhu Menshang sent over the pills, and sure enough the lady began to mend with the first dose; she grew steadily better, and Master Zhu paid out his silver day by day without complaint.

When Physician Sun heard all this, he found it past all reason. He said to Ah Zhu, "The man's a cheat—a 'big-stake worker,' as the trade calls it. Whoever heard of a three-foot acupuncture needle? Or of a method to drive a needle through the chest? It's a trick. The needle's in two parts. One part you see—about three feet, thick at the back, narrow at the front, with a mechanism inside. When it goes into the back, the front draws in. Then he claps the breast and slips the second piece between his fingers, so it looks as if the needle has passed through the chest. And with that slap, how is the patient to tell whether the pain in her breast is needle or palm? As for this medicine of a 'surfeit of yang essence'—nonsense, sheer nonsense!"

But why, Ah Zhu asked, did the lady improve once she took the pills?

"That's a sideline of these wandering mountebanks," said Sun. "They call it 'topping medicine.' Mostly it's quicksilver and poppy and the like, refined into pills. Swallow them and any complaint eases for a while—but it doesn't cure; take too much and it ruins the body."

He went on. "This Zhu Menshang says he gives his skill free and charges only for the medicine. What medicine costs three taels a dose? And if he truly takes no money, why doesn't he practice in his own home district, and why doesn't he open a proper surgery? Why does he spend his days... lodging at the Qunfang House?"

Physician Sun went to the Zhu household and argued his case; they would not believe him. He went to confront Zhu Menshang, and the man only laughed at him. "Real coin walking past your nose, and you waste your hours on a 'water-mark.' No wonder you can't 'cure the post.'" More cant from the swindler's trade—the rich are "fire-marks," the poor "water-marks," and to make money is to "cure the post." That convinced Physician Sun the more that the man was a fraud—but Master Zhu would not heed him, and Zhu Menshang turned it round and accused Sun of envy. And that was the very day Yang Yan happened to faint outside Master Zhu's gate and was taken in by the old physician.

So, Yang Yan thought, the quarrel he had heard that day was Physician Sun's argument with the cheat; he must have collapsed somewhere near Master Zhu's house.

And today, Ah Zhu said, Grandpa had gone again to the Qunfang House to have it out with Zhu Menshang—and the man had shoved him into the door-panel and hurt him.

Of all things, this was what Yang Yan could least bear now: the strong trampling the weak. Fury rose in him. He had always been hot-tempered, and the ruin of his family was oil poured on that fire.

Then, beyond the door, came Physician Sun's voice, alarmed. "What do you want here?"

And another voice answered, "I've been thinking of that stray you took in the other day. Came to have a look."

A man walked straight into the room; Physician Sun could not stop him. Yang Yan studied him: a long, narrow jaw, a refined face with something rough under it, and above all a pair of heavy, striking brows. Sun caught at his sleeve. "This boy has no money. Don't make trouble!" Ah Zhu tugged Yang Yan's hem and gave him a look—so this was Zhu Menshang.

Zhu Menshang looked Yang Yan over from head to foot, then leaned close and sniffed at him. Yang Yan felt it as an affront, and loathed the man for bullying Physician Sun. He gripped his sword. "Get away!" he snarled, and swung. He meant no harm—only to frighten the man, to give him a small taste of pain. But sick and weak as he was, the stroke went wide and feeble.

Zhu Menshang caught the blade easily. "The little wretch dares draw on me!" Lean and long as he was, he had a startling strength; with both hands he hauled Yang Yan up off the bed. "He's a boy, and a sick one," Sun cried. "Don't hurt him!"

Yang Yan dangled with his feet off the floor; the things on him spilled out, the warrant token among them. Zhu Menshang stooped, picked it up, and laughed. "Well now—a fire-mark." He turned to Physician Sun. "This patient's mine."

"How can you be such a bully?" Sun said, desperate.

"And what if I am? The boy drew a blade on me—I'll take him to the Beggars' Sect and we'll see who's in the right."

"He's a child, and he hasn't a coin. What do you want with him?"

"Ha. You called me a cheat. If this boy dies under my care, I'll pay with my own life. And if he lives—you'll stop coming to the Zhu house to plague me. Threadbare as you are, how much of his medicine would you end up paying for? I'm sparing you the cost, and you don't know good from bad."

Yang Yan tried to fight free, but had no strength in him. Zhu Menshang wrenched the sword from his hand, slung him over one shoulder like a satchel, and turned to go. The handling was rough; the jolt of it knocked Yang Yan senseless on the spot.

Zhu Menshang strode off without a backward glance, and neither Physician Sun nor Ah Zhu could stop him.

......

Yang Yan felt as if he lay on a heap of cotton wool—soft, warm—and a faint sweetness reached him on the air. He opened his eyes to find himself in a curtained canopy bed. Peonies were painted on its tester; sheer crimson gauze hung in folds from the posts; and all around stood flower-vases and jade ornaments, and a finely carved censer breathing up its thread of blue smoke. Born poor, he had never seen such splendor; in his daze it seemed a place out of the immortals' realm.

Then a breeze caught the gauze and lifted it slowly. He turned his head, and through the parting curtain saw a tall, slender shape standing at a table, white dust drifting around it like mist.

It was Zhu Menshang—kneading dough.

To knead dough in this elegant room was not only out of place but offensively crude. Zhu Menshang pounded and folded and pinched and slapped and tossed, over and over without stop. 'What swindle is he up to now,' Yang Yan thought. 'If the man gave up cheating and turned cook, he'd cut a fair enough figure.'

He was about to sit up when Zhu Menshang barked, "Didn't old Sun tell you to keep still? Squirming about like a wild monkey."

Yang Yan's temper ran hot. To those he respected he was all courtesy and obedience; to the coarse and the hateful, the more you pushed him east the harder he went west. For Physician Sun's sake he despised Zhu Menshang—so the more the man told him to lie down, the more he meant to get up.

"A fine wild monkey!" Zhu Menshang carried the dough over, shoved Yang Yan back onto the bed, and when the boy opened his mouth to curse, stuffed a fist-sized lump of it in. Yang Yan tried to spit it out; Zhu Menshang clamped his cheeks shut and would not let him, and packed in lump after lump until his mouth was crammed full. He could not breathe right, could not swallow nor spit, and in his disgust his nose ran and his eyes streamed; he beat at Zhu Menshang with all his might. Finding him a nuisance, Zhu Menshang pinned the flailing hands under one foot and went on regardless, pinching and pressing, until he had filled the very last gap in the boy's mouth.

Unable to struggle, unable to draw breath, Yang Yan had to suffer it. When the boy lay still, Zhu Menshang took the remaining dough, rolled it into a long strip, and pressed it evenly along his upper and lower gums; only then did he let go.

The moment he did, Yang Yan reached up to claw the dough out. "Want to heal fast? Then leave it be and lie still," said Zhu Menshang.

Remembering that Physician Sun called the man a cheat, Yang Yan wondered what quackery this was now, and ignored him, reaching to dig the dough loose. Zhu Menshang blocked his hand, cursed him a few times more, withdrew—and Yang Yan went for it again, and Zhu Menshang blocked it again. Back and forth they went until Zhu Menshang swore, "Damn me, not a monkey after all—an ox!"

The contest had them both worked up. Zhu Menshang tore down the bed-curtains and bound the boy hand and foot, but Yang Yan twisted and writhed without cease, so the man trussed him up entirely, wrapped tight as a rice dumpling. "Stupid ox—won't behave till he's roped!" Yang Yan would not yield either; he glared at Zhu Menshang, and Zhu Menshang glared right back. Eye to eye they sat, neither willing to look away first.

Neither would give. They had held the deadlock perhaps a quarter of an hour when a girl came in. "Master Zhu—that Physician Sun is here again."

Without turning his head, Zhu Menshang growled, "Send the stubborn old fool packing."

"He's brought men from the Beggars' Sect. Says you've abducted a youth."

"Have Seventh Sister deal with them. Don't bother me."

The girl smiled. "Such a temper, Master Zhu. Shall this humble one help you cool it?"

"Go cool the dumb calf's temper instead."

"You on the bed," she said, "look at me. Aren't I pretty?"

Yang Yan heard her addressing him and paid no mind. Finding their contest amusing, she came to the bedside and tickled his nose with a strand of her hair. "Don't touch him!" Zhu Menshang snapped—and in spite of himself, his gaze went to her.

The girl jumped. "His apertures are sealed just now," Zhu Menshang said. "If he sneezes, the breath rushes back and bursts his lungs."

She had not dreamed it was so grave, and quickly begged pardon. Zhu Menshang sent her off. When he looked at Yang Yan again, he found the boy's eyes full of smug triumph—plainly delighted to have won the staring match. "That one doesn't count!" Zhu Menshang fumed. "We start over." Yang Yan turned his face away and would not look at him.

Zhu Menshang swallowed his vexation, thought a moment, turned and fetched something, and came to stand over the boy. "Know what this is?"

Yang Yan ignored him. Zhu Menshang held up a little box swarming with small writhing things. "Maggots." He took a spatula and smeared them across Yang Yan's face. Yang Yan raged, but could not move. Zhu Menshang laid a strip of gauze over the boy's face and said, "I'm off to the brothel proper. Stubborn calf—if you've got it in you, hold still and let the maggots eat you. When flies hatch out of your face, I'll bow to you and call you grandfather."

After he left, Yang Yan thought, 'What is this fiend playing at? What good does torturing me do him?' He could not make sense of it, and what with the strength he had spent thrashing about, he soon sank into a heavy sleep.

When he woke again, Zhu Menshang was drinking wine. Seeing him stir, the man jeered, "Not dead yet." Yang Yan ignored him. Wine-jar in hand, Zhu Menshang came over to look him over. "What's your mouth taste of now—sweet, sour, bitter?"

'Idiot,' Yang Yan cursed inwardly, 'you've stuffed my mouth—how am I to answer?' Then a thought struck him: the tip of his tongue did taste a thread of sweetness. It was the first flavor he had tasted in days.

Only then did Zhu Menshang recall the dough. "Forgot you've got medicine packed in there. Here—nod once for sweet, twice for sour, three times for bitter. All right?"

Hearing him call the dough medicine, Yang Yan was puzzled; but the sleep had refreshed him, and wanting to be quit of this maddening business sooner, he nodded once.

Zhu Menshang nodded back, but did not take the dough out. He brought a basin of water and a small medicine-box, lifted the gauze from the boy's face, washed the maggots from the wounds, studied them a while, nodded again, and took up the spatula. "If you've got the spine, don't make a sound." He scraped a little salve from the box and spread it across the face. Yang Yan's eyes flew wide; the pain nearly took him under—but he was stubborn, and having said he would not make a sound, he made none, though his limbs jerked and twitched without stop.

When he had finished, Zhu Menshang laid fresh gauze over the face. "You'll be up tomorrow. Behave, and I'll untie you."

Yang Yan turned his head aside and would not answer.

Zhu Menshang was about to leave when he heard a long gurgle from the boy's belly. He turned back and clapped a hand to his own head. "Damn and blast, I clean forgot to feed you! Mind, you can't manage much yet. Sit tight—I'll have someone bring you cold porridge."

He went out and returned a while later with a pretty girl of twenty-odd. "She's yours," he said, pointing at Yang Yan, and dug the dough out of his mouth. With his mouth suddenly free, Yang Yan let out a long breath.

"I'll wait on the young master," the girl smiled, and took up the bowl, feeding him spoonful by spoonful. He had not eaten in so long, and the cold porridge had minced meat stirred through it—it tasted wonderfully fresh and sweet. He gulped too greedily and coughed it up. "Easy, now—there's plenty," she laughed. "Hee."

Her voice was different from the first girl's, and that puzzled him. He turned and asked, "Where is this?" The words came out—and to his astonishment he found his speech was normal again, his tongue nimble.

"This is the Qunfang House," she laughed. Yang Yan was aghast. "A brothel?" "Not a brothel," she said, laughing still. "Where else would you find a bed this comfortable?" And she went on giggling without end.

Yang Yan rounded on Zhu Menshang. "You brought me to a brothel?"

Zhu Menshang, kneading dough again, answered, "And what if I did? A brothel's beds are soft, it has rooms to spare, it's a place of business so it's kept spotless, and the bedding's all scalded in boiling water. Where else will you find so many tender, attentive girls to nurse a man? And when the patient's mended, you take a girl into the next room and you'll know at once whether he's whole. Tell me—isn't a brothel a first-rate place to heal?"

The girl laughed. "If Master Zhu carries on like that, he'll be turning the Qunfang House into a surgery."

"Isn't it one already?" Zhu Menshang grinned. "Who else would treat the pox you girls catch—and where do you think this slack-jawed calf came from?"

She pointed at Yang Yan, laughing. "Look how you've tied him up. I never knew you had a taste for that."

"Care to try it yourself?" Zhu Menshang grinned.

"Gladly—I'll wait for Physician Zhu to light the candle." When she had finished feeding Yang Yan she took the bowl to go, and Zhu Menshang gave her backside a parting pat.

He carried the freshly kneaded dough over to Yang Yan. "Well—tongue better?" Yang Yan nodded. Zhu Menshang signed for him to open his mouth; he did, and the man packed the new dough in. "Wounds of the mouth and tongue are the hardest to dress. Yours are deep—to set them right you've to hold them fast. That old Sun: first-rate character, second-rate doctoring, third-rate brains."

Hearing his benefactor insulted, Yang Yan shoved at him. "The stubborn calf throws a tantrum?" Zhu Menshang said. "Take your medicine quietly, or must I force it on you?"

Yang Yan knew the man would do as he said, and guessed too that he was being healed. He gave a grunt and resisted no more.

"Quite apart from his having no sense of the world," Zhu Menshang went on, "your wounds are weeping pus, and he ought never to have washed the maggots off. Maggots feed on dead flesh, you see. Your wounds are small and many and hard to clean—I'd guess someone packed shards of pottery into your mouth—so you let the maggots have one round, and what's left is easy to deal with. This salve of mine old Sun couldn't compound to save his life: it eats the bad flesh first, then grows new—use it and you'll carry no scar."

Cramming the boy's mouth full, he carried on. "And this medicine-dough is to heal the wounds on your tongue. A man's tongue tastes sweet at the tip, bitter at the root, sour along the sides. That you taste sweetness means the tongue is half mended; when you taste sour it'll be seven parts whole; and when you taste bitter, it's whole through and through."

Then he gave a small "hm?" and bent to look at Yang Yan's eyes. The red still had not faded from around the pupils. He frowned. "Rest well. I'll look in on you tomorrow."

A day later Yang Yan got up. The pain in his tongue and cheeks had largely gone; only his stuffed mouth was a misery, and being bound head to foot, he could not stir.

"Behave," Zhu Menshang said, "and I'll cut you loose."

By now Yang Yan half believed in the man's skill and knew he was no villain. He nodded. Zhu Menshang freed him, had water brought, and let him bathe and change his clothes. Washed and combed, his spirits a little restored, Yang Yan asked for paper and brush and wrote: Why did you harm Physician Sun? He handed it across.

Zhu Menshang read it and swore. "Mother's—! Didn't I say it? First-rate character, second-rate doctoring, third-rate brains. I've cursed his doctoring before; now I'll curse his brains. To his dying day he'll never know what ails Master Zhu's lady!"

Yang Yan looked at him, baffled.

"What sickness is chest-tightness and shortness of breath and no lying together? The lady looks perfectly well, and old Sun can't find a thing wrong. What discipline is 'tightness of chest'? What discipline is 'cannot lie together'? And a pulse with nothing amiss—how do you square that? You're no doctor, so I'll tell you straight: none of it hangs together, because it's all a sham!"

Yang Yan stared. Was the lady, then, only feigning illness? But why, the moment Zhu Menshang treated her, did she claim to be mending? Were the lady and the doctor in league, conspiring to cheat Master Zhu of his money?

"Still don't follow?" said Zhu Menshang. "The lady really is sick—but those aren't the symptoms. What she's got is the pox."

Yang Yan was more at sea than ever. Seeing it, Zhu Menshang went on. "Last month I came to the Qunfang House on a charity round and found one of the girls infected; I treated her. Out on the street I'd heard of the lady's odd ailment, and I'd seen Master Zhu's accountant about the Qunfang House often enough. The Qunfang House is the biggest and best brothel in all of Fuzhou. On an accountant's wage, how could he afford to be a regular? Either he was skimming, or someone was funding him. Put the two together and the rest comes clear. Master Zhu is past sixty, fat and broad; the lady's a girl of twice-twelve—mismatched in face and years both. She's carrying on with the accountant, slipping him money on the sly—and the man caught the pox and passed it to her. The lady's terrified of giving it to Master Zhu and being found out, so she invents excuses not to lie with him. Tell me—could old Sun ever cure that? They say the gods themselves can't save a man whose span is run; well, this is a divine physician who can't cure a patient with no disease. Spend a hundred years on it and he'd not sniff out the smallest clue!"

The whole sordid tangle left Yang Yan gaping.

"I had the accountant brought to me and drew the truth out of him," Zhu Menshang continued. "A fire-mark walks up to your door like that—not to fleece him would be a sin against heaven. So I went round to the Zhu house, scouted it out, and ran my patter to frighten Master Zhu off the marriage bed. As for the medicine I prescribed the lady—every dose of it's a true remedy for the pox. By my reckoning a few more days and she'll be cured."

His speech ran now polished, now coarse, salted with the cant of the swindler's trade; but Yang Yan had been with him days enough to follow it, and wrote: You're a fine doctor. Why cheat for money?

"I promised my teacher I'd practice three years and take no fee. I heal and save lives for nothing, and at the houses where I treat the pox for free, the girls give me bed and board besides. The 'surfeit of yang essence' is a sham sickness, and the medicine I gave the lady's a sham too—it only happened to suit a real disease; that's chance. So the money out of Master Zhu was cheated, not earned. Doctoring's free. Cheating—that costs."

Listening to the man twist logic and yet hit the mark in every word, Yang Yan thought, 'Maybe Physician Sun misjudged him. But to call him a babbler of nonsense—there he was certainly right.'

"So—you've got it?" said Zhu Menshang.

Yang Yan nodded, then wrote: Where is my sword?

Zhu Menshang read it and frowned. "Your sword's still at old Sun's. I'll send for it in a day or two—after the wounds on your face have healed."

Yang Yan shook his head and wrote: I'm well. I leave today.

Zhu Menshang slammed the table. "Leave, my eye! I'm the doctor. You go when I say you can go!"

The blaze of his temper took Yang Yan aback; it struck him as strange. "I don't heal men by halves," Zhu Menshang said. "You don't stir till you're truly whole. You owe me that much!"

Yang Yan was by nature fierce—the harder you came, the harder he set himself—but the man had done him a kindness, and he did not flare up. Still, revenge was all his thought, and these days of delay meant his enemy was surely far away by now; the thought was an agony, and he turned to go.

"You'll never get your revenge this way," Zhu Menshang said. "Yang's your name, isn't it? Word came from Chongren. I've heard the whole of what happened to your house."

Yang Yan went rigid, then turned slowly and fixed his eyes on the man.

"I understand how you feel," Zhu Menshang said quietly. "But this is no way to avenge anyone."

No—you don't understand! Yang Yan stared at him. You're a good man, a clever man, perhaps even a man who knows the world—but you don't know what it is to watch your own kin die in front of you! That pain, no one who hasn't lived it can ever understand!

Zhu Menshang held his gaze, thought a moment, and then said, "I'm of the wiped-out blood too."

Yang Yan's eyes went wide.

"My father, my mother, my elder brother—all killed in front of me." He pulled open the front of his robe. A scar ran straight down from the left side of his chest; the hand that dealt it must have wielded a sword merciless and swift, for the wound to fall so clean and straight.

"That year I was a little older than you are now—just turned seventeen. That's why I saved you." And he stepped slowly forward and folded his arms around the boy.

"You haven't wept yet, have you? Nor had I, then." His voice was low. "Weep now."

The grief Yang Yan had dammed up at last broke its banks, and clinging to Zhu Menshang he wailed and wept his heart raw.

......