The prefect of the capital opened a case about a shop fire.
That was all it was. A three-generation pawnshop burned to the ground; the owner blind; the owner's daughter accusing the Tongyuan Trading House of arson.
Nobody had mentioned three thousand men at Wangsha yet.
To mention them, you had to get through this door first.
Wei Changsheng arrived in a chair carried by four men, in his brown silk robe, a string of beads in his hand.
He brought no advocate. He brought nobody at all.
He simply bowed to the prefect, very correctly, and then turned to me and did something that pulled a noise out of the whole courtroom:
He bowed to me.
"A-Zhen," he said, his voice catching. "It hurts to lose a house. I understand. Accuse whoever you like, child. Go ahead."
I knew at once I had lost half the round.
Old Tan testified first.
He described three thousand sets of armor. He described the Tan family workshop. He held up the hand with no thumb for the whole room to see.
Then the prefect asked: "Who placed the order?"
"I don't know."
Wei Changsheng bowed. "Your honor. An old man who mends pots in an earth-god shrine outside the city, whom this humble merchant has never met. He says someone ordered armor. Very well. Was that someone me? Let him say so."
Old Tan said nothing.
He couldn't. He didn't know.
Then I testified.
I recited the line from the eighth month. Nineteenth day, hour of the Dog, raining, one piece of iron, pawned by a man named Tan, two taels, needle-mark of one stroke and three dots.
The prefect asked: "Where is the ledger?"
"It burned, your honor."
"Then where are you getting this?"
"Out of my head, your honor."
The courtroom laughed.
Wei Changsheng didn't laugh.
He only sighed, very softly — the sigh of an old man who loves his niece.
"Your honor," he said. "I have carried this girl since she was ten years old. Her father went under; I put silver on his counter and never asked a copper of interest. For eight years she has called me uncle."
"Three months ago she married into the Yongchang estate. The whole capital knows what is left in that house. And now she stands here reciting a book that is ash, in order to accuse the man who saved her family."
He turned to me. His eyes had gone red.
"A-Zhen. Who has been talking to you?"
I felt the whole room tilt.
Tilt toward him.
Not because he argued well. Because in thirty years he had paid to rebuild half of that street, and every one of them remembered.
That was a thing he had bought. He had bought it a long time ago. He had paid honestly.
"Your honor," I said. "I ask leave to submit an object."
They carried in a zitan box.
The prefect had sent men to take it from Wei Changsheng's study, on my petition. He hadn't objected. He didn't object to anything.
"This box," I said, "was pawned at the One Word House in the seventh month of the twentieth year of Jinghe, for five taels, on a two-year term. My father took it in. The boy cut the shop's mark into the edge of the base. Two months ago I sold it to Tongyuan in a lot of expired goods."
"Then it's mine," Wei Changsheng said. "She sold, I bought. Where is the wrong in that?"
"There is no wrong, Uncle."
I turned the box over and held the base outward.
"Only one thing. My family's mark has been ground off it."
The whole room leaned in.
Zitan is black as ink. Under the lamps the base was glass-smooth and there was nothing to see at all.
"Ground off? Where?"
"There's nothing there!"
Wei Changsheng said nothing. He only looked at me.
And for a very short moment I saw him frown — not from fear.
From irritation.
He had told the man to grind it properly. He had checked it himself. He hadn't found anything.
He cannot bear a discrepancy sitting somewhere he can't find it.
"Your honor," I said. "I ask leave to call my father."
They led my father in.
He walked slowly, one hand on an old servant's shoulder, in cotton, white-haired, his eyes clouded.
The courtroom went silent.
"Su Ping," the prefect said. "You are blind?"
"Three years, your honor."
"Then what can you testify to?"
My father didn't answer.
He only held out both hands.
They put the box into them.
I stood and watched.
Those hands. My whole life I have watched them go over tens of thousands of objects. Nails cut short to the quick. A thin layer of callus on the fingertips.
His index finger touched the lid first. Then the grain. Then the edge. Then the hinge.
Slow. Even.
"The left hinge is stiff," he said. "It was stiff then. I offered to put a drop of oil in it. The customer said no, leave it."
I saw Wei Changsheng sit up straight.
My father's hands turned the box and swept down to the edge of the base.
Then stopped.
He went over that place three times.
"This," he said, "has been ground."
The room broke into noise.
"The old man's raving!" somebody shouted. "It's smooth as glass — there's nothing to see!"
My father lifted his head.
Those clouded eyes were not looking at anyone.
"Gentlemen," he said. "This wood was planed by hand. Hand-planing runs the grain one way. Stroke with it and it's slick; stroke against it and it catches."
"This place is slick with the grain, and slick against it."
"That is not planing. That is grinding. Ground with a fine stone, ground a long while, ground carefully — ground until the eye can no longer find it."
He held the box back out, politely, in both hands.
"A forgery is made to fool the eye," he said. "Nobody has ever made one to fool the hand."
The courtroom went dead quiet.
The prefect sent out for ten zitan boxes, bought in haste from the market, identical as peas, and had Wei Changsheng's shuffled in among them.
My father went over all ten.
It took him a quarter of an hour.
Then he pushed nine of them aside, and lifted up the tenth.
