Chuzhou Songlim Garden (5)
Wang Oh, a kindhearted twenty-four-year-old native of Qingliu County, had drawn gate duty at the yamen today.
"Just go already. You kids keep this up and you're going to be in real trouble. Get out of here while this big brother's still cutting you a break, huh?"
For some time now, though, he'd been at his wit's end.
A pack of four or five youngsters had shown up claiming they were Rank 5 this and Rank 8 that, insisting they had come to see the county magistrate — a figure who, to Wang Oh, might as well have been the heavens themselves.
"You lot, if the registrar comes back out here you're really done for, you hear me? Get going! Shoo! Shoo!"
The official-impersonation case over in Qianliu County last month was still fresh in his mind, and Wang Zhen's trio and Jeong Go looked so painfully young that pity got the better of him. Did they even know what kind of punishment was waiting if this went wrong? Better than high summer, sure — but even in the dead of winter, a flogging killed you nine times out of ten.
A short while earlier, Jin Myeong and the Depot guards had explained their affiliation and ranks, saying they had come from the Directorate of Ceremonial. It might as well have been a foreign language. Wang Oh had been born and raised in a northern backwater of Qingliu County; he had never heard of any of it. Eunuchs were the sort of people you only ever saw in Yingtianfu, or in the princely estates scattered across the realm, and they figured so rarely in ordinary conversation that a country-bred soldier could hardly be blamed for not knowing the names of bureaus and offices like the Directorate of Ceremonial or its Directorships.
"Then just fetch the magistrate and we'll be done with it."
Jin Myeong understood the situation perfectly, and he could hear genuine concern in Wang Oh's tone and manner, so he made no move to force the issue. The man in front of him was nothing more than a kind, simple neighborhood older brother — a decent commoner, nothing else. If they shoved their way through on raw power, the county officials would wait until Jin Myeong was gone and then pin the whole thing on Wang Oh for failing to stop them.
"That's how you kids end up getting flogged, that's what I'm trying to tell you! Aigoo, it's like talking to a wall! Who puts kids like you up to filthy work like this? You join some Qingliu gang?"
"I understand how you feel, but—! There he is."
"What? Huh? — Hup!"
Jin Myeong broke off and jerked his chin. Wang Oh turned, snapped his spear upright, and offered a military salute on the spot.
Yang Hong, the magistrate of Qingliu County, was walking toward them with the registrar in the lead.
"Those the ones?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"Kids these days have no idea how terrifying a yamen can be. Well now? You've got the clothes and the hairpins all matching, I'll give you that. Must've spent a pretty coin."
The boys standing at the main gate were dressed well enough that Yang Hong thought he understood how Qianliu County had been taken in. Rural soldiers and registrars who didn't know the ways of officialdom could easily have swallowed a performance like that.
"Those underworld types aren't worth a corpse without money, Your Honor."
"True enough. So who did they claim to be?"
"Pardon? Ah — they said they were Rank 5 officials. If you're going to lie, at least lie within reason."
"Rank 5? They've got some nerve. You lot! Do you have any idea where you've crawled into—"
Whoosh!
Yang Hong had meant to start with a light dressing-down. Then something came flying at his chest, and the words died in his throat.
"Hup! Has this brat lost his mind?!"
He snatched the object as it struck his chest and started to fall, shot Jin Myeong a glare — and then, without thinking, dropped his eyes to whatever he was holding.
It was a flat iron plaque, no bigger than his palm. Gold leaf caught the light across the characters raised in the center.
"East…"
One face of the plaque bore a character raised in gold leaf: East. And on the reverse…
"Depot…? Eastern… Depot…?"
Yang Hong stared at an iron plaque he had never seen in his life, baffled for a heartbeat — and then his eyes blew wide, as if they might tear at the corners. They were a rabbit's eyes, finding a tiger. He locked them on Jin Myeong and did not blink.
"Hahk! The Eastern Depot?!"
"You're the magistrate?"
The voice that answered his stunned cry was calm. Almost bored.
A short while later, in the magistrate's office.
Jin Myeong took the seat of honor. Behind him, Wang Zhen's trio and Jeong Go stood in a line. Yang Hong stood before the cross-legged Jin Myeong like a man already convicted.
"Gonggong, what business brings you to our humble county…"
Yang Hong's pupils had been wandering since the moment they sat down, as lost as the thoughts spinning behind them. He kept rolling his trembling eyes in every direction, too rattled to hold still.
The place has barely been established, and they show up here! Shit! What is this? Why the hell would the Eastern Depot come to a hole like this?
The Eastern Depot. A bolt from a clear sky — their visit was a shock in itself. It didn't feel like a disciplinary inspection, though. What would palace eunuchs, shut up in the Forbidden City, know about the fine grain of a county's administration?
"What? Is there a problem?"
"Pardon? No! A problem? There's no problem at all, Gonggong!"
"Is that so? From where this official is sitting, there is one."
Jin Myeong didn't even look at Yang Hong, who was answering with every ounce of military discipline he could scrape together. He simply studied the office the way a man inspects a room for rot, his gaze idle, and asked his questions as they occurred to him.
"I don't follow, Gonggong…"
"The place reeks of liquor."
"Pardon? Ah — two days ago, a close friend's father passed, and…"
"Did you sleep?"
"Pardon?"
"I asked if you slept. Your eyes are bloodshot. The skin of your face is creased from a pillow. What a sight."
Only then did Jin Myeong look at him, and the expression on his face was as cold as a north wind over snow. He had half intended, as a fellow official eating the same state rice, to offer a word of encouragement for braving the cold — and then his mood had soured completely. This was not what he had come here for.
"Th-that can't be, Gonggong. How could an official, in the midst of public duty…"
Yang Hong, with his spoiled-fish eyes and the smell of last night's wine still rolling off him, was winding up an excuse that had no hope of landing when—
"Silence!"
A roar like splitting thunder tore the air in the office in two. Hot air rushed outward; cold air settled in its place.
"Hhkk—!"
Yang Hong took the inner-force shout full in the face, clapped his hands over ears that had gone numb with pain, and groaned.
"An official who draws His Majesty's stipend and the nation's grain, too hungover to stay on his feet during office hours, and he lies there sleeping? When is the registrar supposed to arrive? Clerk Jeong Go — find the assistant magistrate and the registrar and bring them here!"
"Aye, Gonggong!"
Jeong Go answered at once, fists clasped, and was turning to leave the office when a voice called from outside.
"Y-Yeongban! Assistant Magistrate Go Ryeong and Registrar Yi Gam, reporting!"
Go Ryeong announced them from beyond the door. The assistant magistrate was Rank 8; the registrar, Rank 9. Both were the officials who actually ran the county's day-to-day affairs.
"Enter."
Jin Myeong's permission fell, and Go Ryeong and Yi Gam — already cowed by the roar they had heard a moment before — poured in like a burst dike and dropped flat to the floor.
"Produce the yellow registers!"
"Yes, Gonggong! Here…"
Still prostrate, Go Ryeong held out one volume from the corvée yellow registers he had brought. Both hands were shaking so hard the book nearly slipped.
"What rate do you levy on agricultural produce?"
Jin Myeong opened the register as he asked.
"The agricultural tax is—!"
"Not the assistant magistrate. The county magistrate will answer."
"T-two fen."
Yang Hong stammered, terrified. In truth, even two fen was him talking the number up. He had been skimming more than half of everything collected into bribes and private property.
"Two fen?"
Jin Myeong asked again, as if confirming it. Two fen was the wrong answer. He remembered the agricultural tax of this period exactly. It had not changed many times.
"Th-that's correct, Gonggong!"
"You're not confusing it with something else?"
He asked once more, half-suspecting Yang Hong had simply mixed up the figures.
"No! I'm certain, Gonggong!"
The answer that followed was the opposite of everything Jin Myeong had been willing to give him. Agricultural tax was the first tax, the foundational tax; the idea that a county's own magistrate would not know the rate was absurd on its face. Not unless he had a private game of his own — a hand in the till.
"Hah… So you take this Gonggong and his eunuchs for fools and imbeciles."
"Pardon? That's a monstrous thing to say, Gonggong, utterly unfounded. How could this minor official…!"
"The agricultural tax is three fen and three li. Did you think this Gonggong asked because he didn't know? Assistant magistrate — whose words are correct?"
"G-Gonggong's words are correct! The magistrate seems to have been momentarily confused."
"Th-that's right, Your Honor! This minor official was momentarily confused, and…!"
"Enough. Attendant Wang Zhen."
Jin Myeong ignored Yang Hong's excuses entirely. His face had gone cold and hard, and he called for Wang Zhen with his glare still pinned, full of anger, on the kneeling magistrate.
"Aye, Gonggong!"
"Search the yellow registers for Yang Hong and Yang Hong's kin. Search the land registers for any plots held in their names. The yellow registers are the household rolls; the land registers are the cadastral ledgers. Yang Hong has not been in this post a full year, so the most recent year's records will suffice."
"Aye! Leave it to this humble official!"
This was exactly why he had brought Wang Zhen. Young as he was, no one in the group had a sharper eye for text or a quicker head for figures. Wang Zhen's face lit up as he snatched the bundles of land registers and yellow registers out of Go Ryeong's hands.
"Clerk Jeong Go."
"Aye, Gonggong!"
"Take the registrar and send a messenger falcon. In the name of the Eastern Depot, summon the following four men: the Junior Rank 5 Prefect of Chuzhou; the Rank 7 Judge of Chuzhou; the Rank 5 Assistant Surveillance Commissioner of Southern Zhili; and the Rank 7 Investigating Censor of Southern Zhili from the Censorate. Take this official's command plaque, stamp the orders, and hand them off to Zhao Gou and Yang Gwang."
Once Jin Myeong had decided, he did not hesitate. Rank 5 same as himself, Junior Rank 5 just below — the grades meant nothing to him. The Prefect of Chuzhou was Yang Hong's direct superior; the other three were the officials who handled surveillance and the law.
"Aye, Gonggong! Registrar — you will lead the way at once."
"Attendants Zhao Gou, Yang Gwang."
"Aye, Gonggong!"
"The two of you will find the Shanxi merchants and the Xin'an merchants. Check whether any wealth or goods have been deposited under Yang Hong's name or the names of his kin. If there is anything, secure it and bring it back. Collect this official's command plaque from Jeong Go before you go. If they refuse to comply, join Yeongban Gongsun and handle it."
The Shanxi merchants and the Xin'an merchants were the two great trading houses that split the Ming realm between them. In the entire empire, they were the only concerns with the means to run shops that lent and held money in every prefecture-level administration. Which meant that unless Yang Hong had used a borrowed name outside his own blood, it was only a matter of time before the physical proof of everything he had stolen was sitting in front of Jin Myeong's eyes.
"Aye, Gonggong!"
The eunuchs scattered to carry out their orders, leaving only Wang Zhen behind. His commands given, Jin Myeong's face had settled back into that particular look of his — the mouth smiling, the eyes not.
He had stopped at the yamen on the way to strike Songlim Academy. He had not expected to find a corrupt official gnawing at the state from the inside.
"The common people are living on grass roots and tree bark, and the man who calls himself their shepherd is too hungover from last night to stay on his feet. Judging by the state of your mind and by the tax rate you just underreported, you have been embezzling the nation's wealth."
"N-no! Absolutely not! Absolutely not, Gonggong!"
"How far up did you feed the bribes? The prefect? The Administration Commissioner? Did you go as far as the Surveillance Commissioner?"
"G-Gonggong!"
The Administration Commissioner was Rank 2; the Surveillance Commissioner, Rank 3. Even a Rank 5 official did not throw those names around. The intent in Jin Myeong's words was unmistakable — if it came to it, he would haul those men in and wring them too — and Yang Hong shook from head to foot.
"This Gonggong and the Eastern Depot will drag every last one of them out!"
A short while later.
Wang Zhen was still confirming Yang Hong's additional crimes in the land registers and yellow registers. Jin Myeong was digging into Songlim Academy.
"Nothing for it but to go there in person, then."
He frowned, dissatisfied. On paper there was nothing particularly wrong, and no visible point of contact with the Suchengye. The owner of Songlim Academy was Yu Jin. His family had lived on the grounds for generations; the land and the halls had been handed down the same way.
"Gonggong?"
"It's nothing. Attendant Wang, don't concern yourself — keep working."
"Yes, Gonggong."
"Yang Hong."
Jin Myeong turned to the man still kneeling to one side. Yang Hong's face had gone the color of old ink. He had understood that punishment was no longer something he could avoid.
"Yes? Yes, Gonggong!"
"Tell me everything you know about Yu Jin, the headmaster of Songlim Academy."
Wang Zhen, who had been going through the documents, and Jeong Go both looked up with sudden interest. Songlim Academy was the place the Zhuge Clan had invited them to. They might even be visiting it this evening. And hadn't they been talking with their colleagues only yesterday — Songlim Branch Academy, Songlim Academy, how strangely the names seemed to connect? They were curious, that was all. Neither of them knew that Jin Myeong had been digging into Songlim Academy from the start.
"Ah! He's a distant relative of Liu Ji."
"Who?"
"Liu Ji, Count of Chengyi, Gonggong. In the reign of His Majesty Taizu he served as Vice Censor-in-Chief and Grand Astrologer…"
"Ah. The Count of Chengyi. I see…"
Liu Ji, Count of Chengyi, a founding meritorious official, had retired to the countryside in his later years and died of illness four years after. There had always been a suspicion, though, that Hu Weiyong — another founding meritorious official — had poisoned him, and that Emperor Taizu, Zhu Yuanzhang, had looked the other way. If that suspicion was true, there might be a point of contact with the Suchengye here.
Yi Yugyeong was a descendant of Yi Seonjang, whom Zhu Yuanzhang had killed. Nam Woo-jeong was the same — a descendant of Nam Ok, whom Zhu Yuanzhang had also killed. If Liu Ji had been put to death on Zhu Yuanzhang's order, and if someone among Liu Ji's descendants knew it? He would be a perfect candidate for recruitment into the Suchengye.
"Yu Jin owns most of the land in Qingliu County's central district. The Yu holdings here in Chuzhou."
"Yang Hong is telling the truth. I've been seeing Yu Jin's name all over the land registers. Yu Jin, Yu Jin, Yu Jin… huh? Gonggong?"
Wang Zhen, who had already been going through the land registers, had been nodding along with Yang Hong when something caught his eye. He cocked his head. Tap, tap. He rapped the center of the page with a finger, as if to say the problem was right there.
"What is it."
"It's strange."
"What is."
"Looking at it again, Songlim Academy has three owners."
"Three?"
This time it was Jin Myeong who cocked his head, baffled. Land was supposed to have a single owner. Three masters? It didn't make sense at a glance.
"It was recorded in sequence, so I thought it was the next plot after Songlim Academy. Looking again, about one-tenth of the land right in the middle of Songlim Academy is registered under other names. The way it's set up, Yu Jin couldn't sell the property even if he wanted to."
That was exactly why Jin Myeong had missed it. Laid out in writing rather than as a map, it was easy to read the entries as separate land classifications. The owners were different, but the plot numbers sat nested among the numbers of the Songlim Academy land that Yu Jin himself held.
"Someone else's land in the middle of the estate? What is that supposed to mean. Who are the owners?"
"Two of them. Of that one-tenth, five fen belongs to Song, given name Jeon. The other five fen is land under Yi, given name Yugyeong."
"Yi Yugyeong!"
In that instant Jin Myeong shuddered as if lightning had gone through him. The other name for that tremor was exhilaration.
Yi Yugyeong. That was the name of the woman who had appeared at the Yingtian Gathering. It could be a coincidence, another person with the same name — but inwardly he was already certain it was hers. Gong Jeong-mun, who had cooperated with the Suchengye, had left them the clue: Songlim Academy. And one of the landowners of that same Songlim Academy was Yi Yugyeong. If it really were a different person, that would have been the stranger thing.
"Yu Jin… Song Jeon… the Zhuge Clan…"
The pieces that still had to be taken to the site and fitted together were those three. Yu Jin and Song Jeon already looked certain to be connected to the Suchengye, directly or otherwise. The Zhuge Clan still needed confirming.
Roughly two hours before sunset, Qingliu County Yamen.
The Inspection Bureau guards who had gone out to make inquiries had gathered in Yang Hong's office, and Jong Deok was reporting what they had turned up in Qingliu County.
"Songlim Academy's looking real suspicious, Gonggong."
"Go on."
"There's four academies that can take anywhere from three hundred souls on up past a thousand, see. Three of 'em keep somewhere between fifty and eighty laborers on the books."
Academy laborers were the ones who did the heavy work the frail scholars wouldn't touch.
"And Songlim Academy?"
"Thirty, sir. Biggest grounds of the lot, too, see. Ordinary days, the people staying on-site run on the low side. But when it fills up, they say it fills up enormous — so as far as this official's concerned, we asked the right questions."
Scholars lived more or less the same way everywhere. That Songlim Academy alone kept a labor force so far below what its size demanded was the sort of thing a man was right to find strange. Jong Deok's inquiries, in other words, pointed at Songlim Academy the same way the yamen investigation had. And that, in turn, was cause and grounds enough to move the armies of the Great Ming. For a single afternoon's work, the haul was perfect.
"Jeong Myeong-su."
"Yes, Gonggong!"
"Contact the Left Commander-in-Chief of the Central Military Commission at once and request that Qingliu County be sealed off by the midpoint of the You hour. Take this official's command plaque and Yeongban Gongsun's, and stamp the request."
"Aye, Gonggong!"
Jeong Myeong-su took Jin Myeong's and Gongsun Dajing's command plaques and moved to send a messenger falcon.
"Jeong Go. What of the officials I ordered summoned?"
"They will arrive at the yamen by the start of the You hour, Gonggong!"
The guilty officials of Qingliu County, and the officials Jin Myeong had called in, were all people they would need if this evening's affair was going to run cleanly.
"Officer Jong and Clerk Jeong will take communications outside Songlim Academy, and they will bring the criminals there as well."
"Aye!"
"Follow me!"
The preparations were complete. It was time to go dance with steel.