Read Chapter 9: — THE MAN WHO LIED

The court opened with ceremony Tang had previously found amusing.

This time nobody laughed.

Magistrate Zhou asked for his badge.

Tang reached for his belt and found nothing.

Li Sheng stepped from the side of the hall holding the counterfeit token between two fingers.

“Looking for this?”

He also produced the broken sword.

A real Jinyiwei blade would not have snapped so easily. A real senior badge would not have been plated brass.

The room changed around Tang.

Men who had bowed to him now stared with contempt.

Xiaoxi looked as if she had been struck.

“Tell me,” she said, “are you Jinyiwei or not?”

Tang could lie to officials.

He discovered he could not lie to her.

“No.”

Her face closed.

He tried to explain that he had first used the false identity to stop her brother’s arrest, then continued because the lie kept opening doors the truth would have closed.

“That does not make it true,” she said.

Tang bowed his head.

Then he raised it again and threw both ledgers onto the floor before the magistrate.

“I lied about who I was. I am not lying about him.”

He pointed at Li Sheng.

The ledgers were compared.

The dates matched.

The grain matched.

Li Sheng denied everything.

Tang called Lin as a witness.

When Lin entered, Tang expected support.

Instead Lin said, “He deceived me as well.”

Tang stared at him.

The betrayal cut deeper than the arrest.

But Lin was watching Li Sheng, not Tang.

He needed the deputy officer to relax.

He needed the conspiracy to believe the false inspector had lost every ally.

Tang was dragged toward the cells.

As he passed Lin, he hissed, “I trusted you.”

Lin did not look at him.

“I know.”