Morning fog crept under the morgue door, smelling of wet charcoal, stale ditch water, and rotting straw roof.
Lu Chen wiped the notched ox-bone cleaver with an oily hemp rag, his slate-gray fingers moving with steady, measured care. Across the room, water bubbled in an iron kettle over the small hearth, throwing a meager halo of heat into the freezing morgue.
The heavy door groaned on its hinges.
Doctor Bai shuffled in, a worn leather satchel slung across his rounded shoulders. He was a small, gaunt man who moved with the stiffness of dried sinew. He grabbed a smoldering pipe of wild bitterleaf between teeth stained the color of rusted iron.
“Close the latch, boy,” Doctor Bai wheezed, coughing up a glob of gray thick spit into his handkerchief. “The river draft is freezing the ink in my brush.”
Lu Chen barred the door without a word.
Doctor Bai dumped his satchel onto the pine worktable and untied the greasy rawhide cords. Inside lay his tools of trade: rolls of boiled catgut thread, curved bone needles, a brass jar of bitter pine-resin wax. A twelve-inch serrated bone saw.
The physician pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his crooked nose and sniffed the air.
“Vinegar, burning lime powder, and scorched lard,” Bai muttered, squinting through the haze. “Did you roast a pig in here last night, Lu Chen?”
“Cleaned the floorboards with lye, Doctor,” Lu Chen replied in his quiet, flat rhythm.
Doctor Bai took a slow drag from his pipe. His bloodshot eyes swept across the flat stone slabs until they caught the corner beneath the lime chest. A dusting of fine gray ash lay trapped in the wood grain.
He crouched down, wincing as his knees cracked like dry pine kindling. He pinched a sample of the gray powder between his nicotine-yellow fingers and brought it to his nose.
“Red stone pigment,” Doctor Bai murmured, his brow furrowing deep. “High-grade southern river silk. Burnt to powder within hours.”
He stood up slowly and walked over to the central granite slab where corpse number four lay beneath the greasecloth.
“Old Man Song swore to the Judge that his girl fell into the locks wearing hemp work sandals,” Bai said. He pulled the cloth back to expose the girl’s gray, waterlogged face. “Why would a merchant’s daughter have wedding silk burning under the dead-house table?”
Lu Chen stepped to the opposite side of the slab. “People lie about the dead.”
“The living always lie,” Bai grunted, untying his oilcloth apron. “The dead are just broken plumbing—pipes burst, valves fail, bile leaks. Nothing magical about it.”
He gestured toward the instrument roll. “Bone saw and cedar pins. Let’s open her chest before Qian’s clerks come barking.”
Lu Chen handed the physician the wide-bellied clean cut knife. As their fingers brushed, Doctor Bai paused, pulling his hand back with a sharp hiss.
“Heaven above, boy,” Bai snapped, staring at Lu Chen’s palm. “You’re running hotter than a baker’s oven. What’s your blood doing?”
“Stoked the hearth coal early,” Lu Chen said. “I’m well.”
Doctor Bai shook his head. He muttered under his breath as he laid the knife against Lady Yan’s chest bone. “Young men run their boilers too hard. You’ll burst a vessel before you see thirty.”
With a practiced, rasping stroke, Bai drew the blade down the midline of the girl’s chest, cutting through the pale, leached skin. There was almost no bleeding. The corpse’s blood had settled into deep purple livor along the dorsal tissues hours before.
Lu Chen reached in with the iron rib spreaders. His hands were steady, his slate-hardened muscles effortlessly cranking the iron gears apart without a tremor.
Doctor Bai peered into the chest cavity, his cynical expression hardening into a frown.
“Look at that, Lu Chen,” Bai said. He pointed the tip of his razor knife at the exposed lungs.
The lung tissue was pale pink and remarkably light, resting loosely inside the rib cage.
“There’s no canal silt,” Lu Chen noted quietly.
“No silt, no river weeds, no drowned foam,” Bai confirmed, his voice dropping an octave. “When a wench drowns in the Black Water canal, her lungs weigh four pounds, packed solid with gray mud and foul water. These bellows are dry as cured ham.”
Doctor Bai set the razor knife down and reached for a pair of brass tweezers. He pried open the girl’s stiff jaws, tilting her head toward the gray light of the window.
Deep in the back of her throat, packed tightly behind her rear back teeth, sat a dark, stringy plug.
Doctor Bai worked the brass tongs carefully, extracting the wad of soaked material and dropping it into an empty fine china saucer.
He leaned close, teasing the wet fibers apart with the point of a needle. A distinct, fragrant aroma rose from the saucer, cutting cleanly through the stench of rotting flesh and bitter pine-resin wax.
“Imperial Red Mountain leaf,” Bai whispered, his yellowed fingers trembling slightly. “The autumn harvest. The kind only Merchant Song’s private river fleet brings down from the northern prefectures.”
Lu Chen stared at the damp tea leaves.
The girl had not fallen into the canal. She had been gagged with her father’s most expensive freight tea. Then she held under until her breath ran dry.
“There’s more,” Doctor Bai muttered.
He turned the girl’s head to the left and pulled back the damp hair clinging to her ear. Inside the hearing canal, pressed deep against the tympanic membrane, was a pellet of hard red wax.
Bai picked it free with the tweezers. On the flattened surface of the wax was the clear indentation of a carved jade seal. A coiled carp encircling a square coin.
“The Water Freight Guild’s clearance stamp,” Bai breathed, his cynicism entirely gone. “Song’s personal cargo mark.”
“Why plug her ears with guild wax?” Lu Chen asked.
“To keep the soul from hearing the prayer of release,” Bai said grimly. He reached for his pipe again with shaking fingers. “Old folk taboo. If you sacrifice kin to placate a river specter, you plug their ears so they can’t call your name from the bottom of the lock.”
Lu Chen’s eyes narrowed. “Song sacrificed his daughter.”
“Song’s freight barges were being dragged down by the canal locks every three nights,” Bai said. He spat into the drainage trench beneath the slab. “He lost six shipments of royal tribute grain. The Judge gave him until the new moon to clear the channel or face the execution ground.”
Doctor Bai looked toward the barred door. He listened intently to the faint sounds of morning traffic outside.
“So the bastard fed his own blood to the canal,” Bai finished bitterly. “Dressed her in red bridal shoes to draw the water ghouls, plugged her ears with cargo wax, and dumped her into the water gate.”
A heavy knock rattled the wooden panels of the dead-house entrance.
“Open up in the name of the District Yamun!” a shrill, arrogant voice called from the lane.
Doctor Bai sighed heavily, reaching for a towel to wipe his blood-stained hands. “That will be Clerk Sun from Bailiff Qian’s office. Right on schedule.”
Lu Chen unbarred the door.
A thin, rat-faced clerk stepped inside, wearing a grease-spotted blue cotton robe and carrying a stamped wooden docket. Behind him in the alley stood two burly coolies with a cheap pine coffin and thick hemp ropes.
“Is the Song girl wrapped?” Clerk Sun demanded, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the morgue’s smell. “Merchant Song paid the fee, and Bailiff Qian ordered the cremation done before the midday bell.”
Doctor Bai picked up his ink brush, dipping it slowly into the black inkstone.
“She’s not ready,” Doctor Bai said flatly.
Clerk Sun’s brow twitched with irritation. “Doctor Bai, don’t play games with the judge’s paperwork. Song’s family wants to burn the bad luck before dusk.”
“The girl didn’t drown in the canal,” Bai said. He pointed his brush at the open chest cavity. “Her lungs are bone dry, and her throat was choked with Imperial Red Mountain tea.”
Clerk Sun’s face drained of color for a split second before twisting into a sneer.
“You’re an autopsy physician, Bai, not a royal investigator,” the clerk snapped. “Court guard Qian has already signed the accidental drowning docket. Your job is to stitch the skin and stamp the seal.”
Doctor Bai set the brush down with deliberate slowness.
“The plumbing was stopped from the outside,” Bai said, his voice cold and raspy. “I don’t stamp false seals. Tell Bailiff Qian to come sign it with his own fat thumb.”
Clerk Sun pointed a trembling finger at the physician, then glared at Lu Chen.
“You old fool,” Sun hissed. “You think you can fight the gentry? Court guard Qian already reassigned your watch shifts to the outer marsh tonight.”
The clerk turned on his heel, motioning to the coolies. “Leave the coffin at the threshold. We collect the ash tomorrow, whether you like it or not.”
The door slammed shut behind them, the iron latch rattling in its socket.
Doctor Bai stared at the open chest of Lady Yan for a long moment, then picked up his bone needle and a length of coarse catgut thread.
“He’s sending you into the marsh, Lu Chen,” Bai muttered, beginning the rough cross-stitches along the clean cut. “The willow marsh south of the water gate gates. That’s where Song threw her in.”
“I know the place,” Lu Chen said.
“Take extra salt,” Bai warned, pulling the thread tight with a wet snap. “Whatever Song fed with his daughter’s blood, thirty silver coins won’t keep it satisfied for long.”
Lu Chen looked at his slate-gray palms, feeling the iron heat coursing steady beneath his skin.
By the Hour of the Boar, he would be standing in the black water where Song had fed his daughter to the locks. Whatever had taken her was still hungry.