Dragon Bones (Red Princess 3)

“We passed his house walking out here,” Ma answered. “That was his widow and child.”

So Wu would have been very familiar with this terrain, Hulan thought.

“Could the Englishwoman have had anything to do with either Brian McCarthy’s or Wu Huadong’s death?” she asked.

Ma spat on the ground. “Not possible.”

“Dr. Ma, did you hear the way your group went after her? Accusations of murder and theft are hardly the usual conversation among friends.”

“You may have noticed Lily’s a bit high-strung,” Ma said. “Usually we only have to deal with her for a few days at a time. After two weeks, I think the team would do anything to get her to leave.”

“If she’s that difficult, then why let her visit at all?”

“Lily brought us Miller. If not for his funds, this site would have been worked with bulldozers.”

“How does Director Ho feel about this?” David asked.

“The fish would die if the ocean were too clean,” Ma observed. He looked out into the rain. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed suddenly fatigued. David and Hulan waited.

“You also want to know about objects that have disappeared,” he said into the silence. “Of the things that I know are missing, most are relatively minor pieces—some bone, stone, and jade artifacts.”

“That you know are missing?” David pressed.

“You have to understand, Attorney Stark, that we’re under tremendous pressure down here. We don’t have time to follow the usual protocol by cataloging every piece right as we find it. Some artifacts have disappeared from our storage tent before cataloging and condition reports were completed, but I’ve also had workers show me artifacts that never even made it to the tent.”

“So you were never able to take measurements—”

“Which is why I can’t put them on the international list of stolen artifacts,” Ma finished for David. “That’s not to say I don’t know some of what’s missing. For example, Brian showed me some jade bis he’d found. They’re perforated jade disks believed to embody the powers of Heaven and convey to the emperor the ability to commune and consult with the gods. But each one is unique. They come in different sizes and types of jade, while the decorative work can be plain or quite elaborate.”

“Valuable?”

“On the open market, I’d put them at three to six thousand dollars U.S. apiece.”

More money was at stake than Hulan had first realized, and that was just for the bis.

“Unfortunately,” Ma continued, “without exact measurements and details about the carving on them, I can’t prove they came from this site.”

“So they aren’t on the list,” David verified.

“That’s right, and I’m sorry to say neither is the one object that I consider to be truly significant. It was a ruyi.”

“That’s what Miller was talking about at lunch.”

Ma sighed. “Miller’s got the best collection of guis and ruyis in the world.”

“What are they exactly?” David asked.

“In the most simple terms, a gui is a kind of tablet that was given as an imperial gift either at the start of a mission or at the completion of a particular task,” Ma explained. “A ruyi was also an imperial gift—but it was more personal in nature.” He wiped away the map with his hand, then drew two objects in the dirt. The gui was long and flat with a triangular top. The ruyi looked like a scepter with a long handle and a head, which widened at the top into a circle with wavy edges about six inches in diameter. “A ruyi can be made from jade, bone, even bronze, but the one Brian found was formed from a fungus. The stem was knobby and very dark. The head, if it had been of jade, would have had carving—an insignia, characters denoting a name, or a simple geometric decoration. Obviously this one had no carving. It unfurled in a natural form.”

“A fungus?”

“Probably a lingzhi mushroom.”

“Would you consider this ruyi to be valuable?” David asked.

“Depends on how you measure value, but it might be, considering its provenance.”

“Could someone like Stuart Miller smuggle your ruyi out of China?”