The Jade Enchantress. E. Hoffmann Price

I knew, I’d not be asking you, would I?”

      He sniffed the breeze. “You smell funny.”

      “I could say a thing or two on that subject myself,” she retorted.

      “But you’re just ignorant,” Yatu elaborated, explaining that the drumming, the rattles, the whanging of cymbals, and the bellowings of his familiar spirit would draw a crowd. Even if she whispered her question, the answer would sound like a cavalry charge in a thunderstorm. Yatu concluded, “I live in the Mongol camp outside the wall of Ch’ang-an, west of the Jin Guan Men.” He paused and eyed her, a section at a time. “If you’re in a hurry, round up a couple of musicians to chant and sound off until I’m in a trance. We can go out into the hills four or five li so nobody would hear.”

      “Thank you, Old Master, but I’m not dressed for moonlight walking in the Ta-pa Range. Do you have many female customers?”

      He refilled his cup and wagged his head. “One of the best whores in Ch’ang-an consults me regularly. She started out as a street slut and now she’s the darling of a prince. Haiii! Don’t get discouraged, maybe I could do something for you.”

      Yatu didn’t understand enough Chinese to know what Lan-yin called him, but he smiled and said, “Well, so are you.” Then, to the cooked-food man, he confided, “That flossy bitch is up to some land of dirty work or she wouldn’t be so shy about asking me a question.”

      Chapter IV

      Before Ju-hai could begin to convince himself that Mei-yu and her promises were other than hallucinations, or the whimsical doings of a devil or a fox-woman to kill an idle hour, he was called before his father instead of going to the village school; and before the talk began, he expected bad news. Nothing short of major disaster would justify cutting a class.

      The Old Man, a blocky man well over forty, always looked grim unless he decided that pleasantry would not be unharmonious. His wind-burned, sun-blasted, squarish face was deeply seamed. He was half a head shorter than his eighteen-year-old son, but he stood two heads above the tallest man in the settlement, because he never had to remind even a towering Manchu that Kwan Yu-tsun was in command.

      “The Old Man should have been a war lord,” was Ju-hai’s summing up—an exaggeration, yet far from absurd.

      Quizzical, almost smiling, the Old Man appraised the boy.

      “Son,” he began, “you’re doing well, but things have to speed up. The way it is in Ch’ang-an and the whole dung-eating Empire, I want you to take the examinations sooner than when I mentioned the matter. Do you understand?”

      “You want me to get three or four years of study done in two years.”

      With his short, solid neck and his head hunched forward, Kwan Yu-tsun seemed a bit hump-shouldered. “All I ever ask for is the unreasonable! My great grandfather told me that that was how the Ancestor did it. That’s why we’re not coolies today.”

      “Sir, if I knew more about your long term aims, I’d know better how to go about all this. What I do and how I do it has to fit into things as you see them. I ought to see where I’m going.”

      The Old Man wagged his head. “When my father was about your age, a man could take a few risks during the fall of one kingdom and the building up of the next. With good luck and quick wit, he had a chance of keeping what he had and adding something to it, doubling it maybe. But the great days are gone, and you’ll never get it as good as I did; and I never had it as good as great-great-great grandfather Kwan did. The good soldier—today he’s turtle-dung.”

      Father and son bowed in memory of the man so many generations closer to the Ancestor Kwan whose name was carved on the wooden slab of the family shrine. Then the Old Man resumed, “The Son of Heaven remembers how many Emperors were finished by good soldiers. So, instead of getting better ministers to run the country right, he lets the Civil Service Bureaucracy get stronger every day, getting all the loot, all the face. A handful of generals can’t possibly rob us the way a million bureaucrats are doing. Bastards who’ve never marched arse deep in water or ridden in the teeth of snow, never got more arrows between their teeth than they could spit aside—that’s the Bureaucracy. They grab the goodies, tax us to death, and the mother-lovers never got plough handle calluses on their fine hands—they don’t even get calluses on their lard bottoms. And soldiers and farmers get dung on their pancakes instead of honey, largely because they’re too dumb to tell the difference between the two.”

      “Sir—Honorable Father—•”

      “Shut up and listen! So these battle-dodging, work-dodging sons of diseased whores get the high positions. Shut up and don’t interrupt me! The reason I want you to be a scholar is so we can have a bureaucrat bastard in the family. You’ll be a magistrate—then a prefect—finally governor of a province. Get enough graft, without being oppressive, mind you—just enough honest cumshaw to buy another two or three or four pieces of land, or clear and improve wooded lands—now listen with both ears—and keep the other bureaucrats from robbing us with taxation.”

      “Yes, Honorable Father.”

      “That slave girl, Hsi-feng—remember? Well, good family, but not important enough, so what happened? Tough luck, so twenty taels bought her. If the Kwan Family hadn’t had enough land, I might have had to sell your sisters and either you or your brother, just to keep the family topside.

      “Family is one of the safeguards against government. Particularly when the bureaucrats crap on the army that keeps the barbarians from Tibet and Mongolia and Manchuria and Turkistan from taking over. Farmers and armies made T’ang great—bureaucrats are ruining it. So I want you to stack up status, and your brother will marry into a worthwhile local landowner family.”

      “Sir, Younger Brother fits into your specifications for a bureaucrat—”

      “Manure! He’s a good farmer, but he’s too dumb to pass an exam, even if you gave him a book of approved solutions.”

      “Well, Honorable Father, I’m not so bright.”

      “No, you’re not, but he is dumber. I’m smart enough to know it’s time we got off the dung heap and did things.”

      “Sir, when do I go to Ch’ang-an?”

      Having got his son conditioned, the Old Man smiled. “Don’t pull such a long face. I’ll tell you when, and meanwhile, read The Book of Rites, or is it Odes? Learn how to be a gentleman. Pour me another cup!”

      Ju-hai grabbed the jug and poured wine.

      “Yes, revered Father?”

      “No more Lan-yin for you. Is that clear?”

      “Am I going to a school or to a Buddhist monastery—I tremble and I obey—but—”

      The Old Man laughed heartily. “Don’t holler before you’re hurt! Why, in a year of thirteen moons, do you suppose I bought Hsi-feng?”

      Kwan Yu-tsun fist-thumped the table. Ju-hai knocked over a wine cup trying to check the one his father had set rolling.

      “Between now and the time you go to Ch’ang-an, you’re going to be sleeping with her to find out what it’s like with a girl of good family, instead of with a farm woman.”

      Shock left Ju-hai groping. He was wondering whether Mei-yu would drop him like a honey bucket or cling to him and harm Hsi-feng. After some gulping, he said, “I hear, with fear and trembling.”

      He meant exactly what he said.

      The moment amorous and ardent Hsi-feng crawled into bed with him, he’d have a case of cold horrors from wondering whether Mei-yu would materialize. Or even if she did not appear at the very worst possible moment, he could not help but be apprehensive. Even if she never came to the apartment, the horrible possibility would haunt him, nag him, and he’d be helpless, useless, emasculated without surgery. He’d qualify as a eunuch in the Imperial palace.

      After