Part 5

Lian stood in Prefect Tai's waiting room: a gargantuan hall off the main entrance that was lit by a triangle of fireplaces in the center pillar and a larger hearth on the long wall. That wall was adorned by a mural depicting the Prefect's family history, and Lian pretended to examine that history with her hands behind her back and her body hunched over to take only half the space she normally would. An had suggested the stance while they walked towards the estate.

"You still look too… strong. Hunch over… you know, like this."

"Why?"

"Lian, you're an accountant now. You spend all day at a desk looking over papers. Lose the backbone."

She took the advice, and finally felt like the character she was to play became complete with the hunch. She waited patiently in the large room with two of Tai's security men, somehow more confident on account of her crunched physical stature.

When Tai arrived to speak with Lian, his appearance was as extravagant as that of his waiting room. A tall, handsome, and imposing man, with a thick, carefully kempt head of hair and a stride that wasted nothing, he swept into the room with a trail of servants tailing him. He stopped beside a table that had been set up for their meeting, swept up his luxurious robes, turned to Lian and performed the short, tilted head bow of greeting between respective bureaucrats. Lian returned the favour and then approached in her hunched gait.

"You say you're from the Tax Commission?" Tai sat down on one side of the table and motioned for Lian to join him. She did, slowly. "And there's some sort of issue that needs resolving?"

"Yes," Lian kept her head low but made sure to make eye contact with Tai. "Commissioner Wei himself sent me. It appears there are some irregularities in the receipts from last year." Tai's eyes did not flinch or buckle in the least. Lian couldn't tell what part of her lies he was seeing through. "Some very serious irregularities."

"I see," Tai responded before snapping his fingers and having one of his servants – an accountant, based on the haircut – saddle up to him carrying a rather large book of what was sure to be the accounts for the past year. "Shu, did you receive a notice about this re-assessment of last year's receipts already?"

Before the other accountant could even begin to protest, Lian hoisted her own book onto the table – an old ledger of one of Zu's front businesses she'd hastily mocked up as a tax ledger. "As I said, senior Prefect, the irregularities were so serious that the Commissioner wished to avoid the possibility of suspicion unfairly falling on your impeccable record. Hence no letter, nothing that a prying eye could unfairly copy and use in an unflattering way."

Tai's eyes remained locked on Lian's, and for a long moment neither said anything more. Lian worried he might try and have her killed right then. But instead he smiled and repeated the short head nod of civil service. "I'm sorry, madam, I failed to introduce myself properly. I am Tai Wulai, Prefect of Liangyong."

"And I am Zhu Zhuyang," Lian replied with the reciprocal nod once again, "supervisor class accountant with the Ministry of Treasury, Tax Commissioner Office." Even though she had not been an agent of the state for decades, she remembered the proper introductions easily enough.

Tai's smile widened, and Lian knew her fate was sealed. His smile was that of a sadistic child about to crush an insect under his foot. "I see. A thousand graces on you and your ancestors."

"And a thousand generations of prosperity for you and your family."

"Thank you Madame Zhu. It was my understanding that Commissioner Wei and I had already worked out this year's irregularities. However, I'm sure my lead tax assessor here will be able to sort out any issues you may have. I trust his oversight in these areas absolutely."

"Of course, glorious Prefect. I would not wish to waste any of your time. I'm sure we two accountants will be able to sort out the Commissioner's problems."

"It is no waste, I assure you. My duty as Prefect includes clean books and clean lines of communication with Nianjang. I take very seriously every message I receive from the capital."

Lian just bowed again, finally dropping her eyes and admitting that she'd been caught in the lie. Tai swept himself up and away from the table, all the servants but the accountant following him. After he reached the exit, he pivoted back towards Lian and remarked in his powerful, booming voice. "I trust we may meet again, but if not, I hope you have nothing but the most comfortable stay in my estate."

Lian stood and bowed formally towards him, working hard to keep the hunch in place. "Thank you for your kindness and generosity, honourable Prefect Tai."

He smiled again, glanced quickly at the security guards, and then left. Within seconds the room was empty except for Lian, the accountant, and the two security guards.

"Why don't we find a more appropriate place to work?" Suggested the tax assessor, not even daring to make eye contact with Lian.

The two guards approached and the larger of the two said, "We have a room that should suffice."

Lian smiled and acquiesced happily. "Of course. Please. Lead the way."

The guards led the way out of the room and began to take Lian and the other accountant down a labyrinth of corridors. Their path twisted and turned, going up and down stairs and through short anterooms, obviously to confuse and further complicate any escape on Lian's part. Every hundred yards or so the accountant would say "Almost there" as if they were going to a real place and not a prison. Lian continued to play the dutiful accountant, even as the hunch began to hurt her back and she realized they had actually gone through some hallways three or four times. After twenty five minutes of this, one of the guards stood in front of a door at the end of a very short hallway, the other guard fell behind Lian, and the accountant turned to her and said: "We're here."

The one guard opened the door as the other guard scooped Lian up in his arms and tossed her into the pitch black room. She landed hard on her hip and elbows as her nostrils were instantly flooded with the stench of stagnant air, feces and urine. As far as dungeons went, it was pretty standard.

She took a moment to stretch out her back on the ground, then remembered she should probably at least play her part for a little while longer. "What are you doing?" She shouted weakly. "I am an official of the Imperial Tax Commissioner! This is treason." She quickly heard the guards lock the door and leave though, the accountant presumably behind them, after which she let herself relax, twisting the kink out of her back and letting her body adapt to the lower oxygen in the air. All she had to do now was get taken to the torture chamber. Compared to acting like an accountant, it'd be easy.

She couldn't tell the size or shape of the room – it was truly completely dark, not even a sliver of light came around the door. It was a few minutes before she heard a few someones approaching up nearby stairs, and almost another minute before they appeared with a single torch in hand. It was two relatively average looking guards, whom she could have easily beaten in order to go looking for the book on her own, but she had no idea how large or complex the dungeon would be, so she turned back into her Zhu Zhuyang, wrongfully imprisoned accountant, and plead her innocence.

The first guard slapped her across the face. While Lian had literally been hit harder by thirteen-year-old girls, the urge to snap his neck right then nearly boiled over her in an instant. Yet she managed to keep it down and even work the rage into her character. She cried in agony and begged them not to hit her again, which seemed like something an accountant would do. The one without the torch grabbed her by the newly cut hair and dragged her after him, the two wordlessly leading her down the nearby staircase, which twirled down at least twenty five yards before opening onto a huge, typically dark and ominous dungeon. All the usual implements and accoutrements were present – the wheel, the rack, the flaying knives, the bamboo shoots and the wooden horses – nothing Lian hadn't seen before.

What Lian hadn't seen before were instruments so clean and rarely used. She'd imagined a man like Prefect Tai had more than enough enemies to keep a place like this working most of the time, but it wasn't until her guards shackled her wrists in chains that she managed to take a look around and confirm the existence of the Prefect's numerous victims: some in tiny locked chambers, some in cages that dangled above the ground, others just standing still along the edges of the room, bound by no visible ties whatsoever. There were men, women, old, young, well dressed and shabby. The only things they shared was an absolute stillness – their chests' glacial rise and fall their only hint of life – and the fact that their eyes were closed tight, as if to keep out some terrible vision that haunted them all. None of them made a single motion or emitted a single sound, and not one of them appeared to have a single wound. By the time the guards brought her to a tiny cage and shoved her inside, she realized that these two appeared to be the only servants in the entire dungeon. She'd expected to be wrong about parts of the plan, but something about the scarcity of screams and begging, and the scarce resources dedicated to the victims, deeply unsettled her.

The rectangular cage was tiny and uncomfortable – too high off the ground for Lian's feet to reach the damp earth and too cramped for her to do anything but continue her hunched position – but she'd managed worse. Given she appeared to be the only fresh victim, she figured she wouldn't be there long before someone came to investigate. She pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged on the bars of iron, meditating away the discomfort and waiting for her appointment with Tai's staff.