Chapter 74

Zhuo Siheng went in person to the city outskirts to see Pan Guangling off to the crag kiln. Watching the man's brimming, undisguisable delight, he couldn't help a gentle word of caution. "We've made the trial work, true, but it hasn't been into the kiln yet and shown its result, so don't wear it on your face just yet. When you see Wu the kiln-master, thank him for his years of hard study too. He's laid us a good foundation, so that we could build on it and see a result. All of it rests on the work of every man at the kiln. Never take the credit to yourself and let it swell you. Just mind you don't only think of your own gladness."

He had a born knack for nagging when he charged a man with a thing. Pan Guangling, itching to bring Wu Xing the good news, nodded quick and yes to whatever Zhuo Siheng said, and there was no telling whether any of it went in.

Still, these days Pan Guangling had grown a great deal, and Zhuo Siheng was easy about letting him do it. A man had to be tempered to improve. Zhuo Siheng would be in Jinzhou two terms at most, six years, and after that the running of this place would need men who truly cared and took it to heart.

There was no better man for it than Pan Guangling.

If he could truly settle his temper and quiet his heart, and take in this officialdom he didn't like and turn it to his own use, he was sure to become a fine official who did good for a whole region.

By rights Zhuo Siheng should have gone himself. The glaze-color was his own working-out, after all, and not seeing it through left him uneasy. But there was a reason he couldn't leave Quanzhang City.

One was these tiresome, slack officials. A few had secretly sent men to carry word to He Mengchun, begging him to come back quickly. Luckily Zhuo Siheng had seen to it beforehand, and placed a few newly-raised clerks at the post-stations south, to hold back first of all any official letter sent out of the commandery. They understood well enough. If their backer, Lord Zhuo, fell, this rising post of theirs fell with him.

The other was Cui Lu.

Zhuo Siheng strongly suspected it was Cui Lu who'd stirred up those secret letters.

But no matter. He'd stayed on just to settle with this former superintendent of the Jiangxiang Academy.

These days he'd kept from troubling or burdening Lord Cui on purpose, to let him sit easy gathering Zhuo Siheng's faults and evidence of wrongdoing, to report them one by one to Wang Botang. The post-couriers had come back several times to say that Lord Cui's household used the station's horses, but not to carry official mail, and that every one of these riders went to the Jinzhou prefecture seat at Yongming City. What they were up to, carrying word to a fellow-schemer, needed no saying.

---

Cui Lu had never been so eager to come to the yamen.

These days, however loudly Zhuo Siheng made free with everyone else, with him he'd not touched a hair.

Today, though, Zhuo Siheng had asked him to come and discuss important government business, without saying what it was.

Cui Lu was a little uneasy. But remembering Wang Botang's word not to worry, that Zhuo Siheng surely wouldn't dare turn things upside down, that he was a fresh out-posted official who wanted no more than to make some noise so those above would hear he'd not come for nothing, as most newly out-posted officials did, and that this was in fact a rare chance for them, he took heart.

These days Cui Lu hadn't been idle at home either. He went about comforting the officials Zhuo Siheng had put through the wringer, and gave them counsel. Though Zhuo Siheng undid each of his moves in turn, he wasn't anxious. By Prefect Wang's instruction he only set down all these men said and all their grievances, ready at the key moment to join the prefecture's officials in a memorial, and charge Zhuo Siheng as a cruel official who bullied his colleagues and held the law in contempt.

The commandery yamen looked another place than before. Once it had been like a charity home for childless old folk, everyone strolling slow, talking poetry and tasting tea. Now each man's heels near kicked the back of his own head, with more government business than he could finish.

Cui Lu saw Zhuo Siheng saying something to a document-clerk come from Luling County, and did not step up to break in, but stood to one side and waited for them to finish. Only when Zhuo Siheng had seen the man off with a smile did he speak. "You've worked hard, Vice-Prefect Zhuo."

If the examinations had a subject for sourness and sniping, Zhuo Siheng would back himself for the top of that too. As the best hand there was at it, though he could often only mutter it inwardly, he could tell at once what the smiling, mirthless Cui Lu meant.

He showed the man into the inner hall, all genial, and said, "I'm only seeing to a few odds and ends. The counties below have a good many things that want their rules set up afresh, not like the yamen here, where the rules are all ready-made, thanks to your long diligence, Administrator Cui."

Stung by the words, Cui Lu still had to follow Zhuo Siheng in, pretending nothing was amiss.

"Administrator Cui, going over last year's roll of appointments, I found that when an Ever-Normal Granary clerk retired home with age, the man who filled his place was registered outside our commandery. By our dynasty's standing policy, unranked local clerks are all filled 'from fit men of the locality, mostly townsmen.' Why was this man an exception? And there's more. Last year there was a vacancy in the inner yamen guard too, and the man appointed was registered in Qingzhou, with no record of three generations on his father's side in our commandery's rolls. Did this man spring out of a crack in a Qingzhou rock? These two matters both passed through your hands, Administrator, I believe, so I thought I'd ask what the reason was."

As Zhuo Siheng put the questions in that even, unhurried, winding way, the sweat gathered thicker and thicker on Cui Lu's brow.

Of course he couldn't answer. For one of the two men was his kinsman, and the other an old student of his.

Zhuo Siheng did not press him. He poured, at his leisure, a cup of tea for himself and for Lord Cui, and waited quietly for an answer he didn't in the least care about.

The truth was that at the emperor's side Zhuo Siheng had learned the easiest place to find a hole was never money and grain, but personnel.

A figure off in the accounts, a gap in the stores, these are easily patched. But the coming and going of a living man, and everything tied to that living man, can all be made much of.

The emperor most loved to catch officials out on their recommendations for office, and officials in the same way were glad to pick holes in the emperor's appointments and removals. Ruler and ministers, all in seeming harmony, knew just where a poke would spring a leak. It was a kind of unspoken understanding.

No wonder the Ministry of Personnel was called the Office of Heaven.

Zhuo Siheng's way of making trouble for Cui Lu was the very same.

Three years' steeping at the emperor's side was not just copying books and keeping as a secretary. Watching and weighing how officials behaved was the most precious method Zhuo Siheng had. But what he meant to do with these skills was not to build a faction or grab power for himself. It was something more important.

For the state and for himself alike, he would not let a man like Cui Lu hold the least real power in the yamen of a commandery under his charge.

His words in order at last, Cui Lu said, "My lord, allow me a word. Matters of appointment were all approved by Lord He. I dared not act on my own. So weighty a thing must wait for Lord He's return to answer for, and if there is... if there is some hidden reason, Lord He should deal with it."

"That's reasonable enough."

Cui Lu had thought Zhuo Siheng meant at last to seize a handle and come down on him, and would surely press for a quick finish. He hadn't looked for him to be so easy.

Then Zhuo Siheng said at once, "Word came today that Lord He will be back in four or five days. We'll take this up again then. Thank you for your trouble, Administrator Cui."

With that he rose and left, with no ceremony at all.

The fingertips of Cui Lu's two hands trembled a little, and would not quiet even when he was home. Only when a maid brought him hot tea and he smashed it to the floor in a rage did the pent breath come out.

But harder to quell than his anger was the fear in his heart.

He Mengchun was wholly in Zhuo Siheng's grip. Even if Lord He didn't want to meddle, once this was dragged out, he'd push it all away to keep himself clean of the mess, and Zhuo Siheng surely knew it, which was why he took the excuses and delays so calmly.

Still, he and Prefect Wang had already agreed. To accuse Zhuo Siheng alone, to pull him down, was, first, too light a charge to kill at one blow, and second, too plainly aimed, since all the court knew of the bad blood between Zhuo Siheng and the Tang house, and he might bite back. So they'd planned long since to drag He Mengchun down with him. The memorial, already written, stated plainly that the two shielded each other for private ends and openly colluded over a whole region, that the two, slack and idle by habit, covered for each other and stopped at nothing for private gain, treating a commandery's government as a toy. One wasted the people's wealth roaming about, while the other gripped the orders and the talk of the yamen and kept the officials' grievances from reaching above, a cruel hand choking off the flow below and a dimming of the emperor's hearing above.

Dragging in He Mengchun made the charge heavier, and cleared the two of them of suspicion.

...And there was one more good in it. Cui Lu knew that for himself, this was the most important of all.

Now that Zhuo Siheng had a handle on him, if he waited for He Mengchun to come back, wouldn't he be left without a grave to die in, made the scapegoat first?

It could not be allowed!

"Someone! Ready a horse!" He had a servant ready a horse, and summoned an underling, and had him take a sealed memorial-box, long since written, and a letter. "Ride fast and get this memorial into Prefect Wang's hands. Use my seal on the road and change horses at the stations. Get it there as fast as you can. And remember, this must not fall into anyone else's hands!"

Only when he'd watched the man go did Cui Lu breathe a little easier.

---

And on Zhuo Siheng's side, the tension was only beginning.

He had goaded Cui Lu into a desperate move on purpose, but didn't know which post-road he'd take. Luckily he'd set men at every station, saying only that a good many officials had been using the stations' couriers and horses for private ends lately, which was past all order, and that any caught must be reported to him for heavy punishment. He'd also sent a few law-office clerks with yamen guards to patrol the stations, with orders to let no suspicious traveler through either. With these two layers in place, there should be no slip.

Zhuo Siheng was not a man who liked to strike first. But this time he had to hold the lead, and keep the chance to deliver the blow firmly in his own hand.

Two hours later, a fast rider came from the mountain station ten li east of Quanzhang with word: one wrongdoer caught. The man had Administrator Cui's private seal but no official seal or warrant, yet wanted to requisition the station's fast horses. The station-master, not daring to refuse the Administrator's seal, had secretly switched the carried item while changing the horse. When the man ran off and then came back to demand it, and failed, he actually set fire to the station. Luckily patrolling law-office guards were about, so there were no casualties. The wrongdoer was now being brought back under escort, and the letter he carried had been sent ahead by fast rider.

Zhuo Siheng thought: this station-master is so quick and clever, truly a man to make something of. When this is over I must praise and nurture him well. As for the fire, no casualties was the main thing. The man likely set it, held back from worse by fear the letter might fall into another's hands, as a last resort.

In fact Zhuo Siheng already knew roughly what the letter and the memorial said, no more than binding him and He Mengchun into a pair of local blights, piling on alarm and embellishment to be rid of them both. He opened the letter and found it just as he'd thought, but left the memorial-box untouched.

Foreseeing the content did not mean he had no need of these two treasures.

By now the dusk was quietly giving way to night, and with the dark came the thin, pattering rain of early summer in the hills. The damp heat in the air rose and fell under the beat of the raindrops. This mood was just the thing for a good play to begin.

Zhuo Siheng took the seized memorial and letter, and without changing into his official robe or putting on a rain-cape and hat, mounted and rode straight for the Prefect's residence.

Prefect He was of course not yet back. But his wife was home.

He Mengchun's wife was surnamed Liu. Zhuo Siheng had met this lady before, and found her then frank and understanding, not stiff and pedantic like He Mengchun. He'd learned afterward that Madam Liu was a daughter of the imperial clan. Her father had not inherited a princedom, but was truly of the imperial kin, with a military rank besides, and no small standing. The story went that the year Lord He placed in the second class of the palace exam, Madam Liu, then an unmarried girl, had picked him out on the parade to the graduates' assembly, and thrown a flower into his arms, making a fine tale.

This Madam He was a chief reason He Mengchun had muddled along all these years and still stood unshaken.

And of course it had bred in He Mengchun a certain trait.

He feared his wife.