beget rain, fire creates wind. Thick, choking smoke made us cough. The scene was as chaotic as ants on the move, as raucous as a disturbed crows’ nest. Soldiers scurried back and forth with buckets of water. We took advantage of the confusion to slip past the outer cells and the women’s jail, as if our feet were oiled, spry as cats, undetected, all the way up to the condemned cells. The stench nearly made us gag. The rats there were bigger than cats; fleas and ticks were everywhere. Windowless cells were fronted by low doors, the interiors black as pitch.
As he unlocked the door, Master Four urged us to move fast fast fast! Zhu Ba tossed his firefly sack inside, abruptly flooding the cell with a green glow. I saw my dieh; his face was bruised black and blue, his mouth caked with dried blood. His front teeth had been knocked out. He no longer looked human. My shout of “Dieh!” was cut short by a hand over my mouth.
Dieh had been chained, hands and feet, to a “bandit’s stone” in the center of the cell. It was immovable, no matter how much strength was employed. In the flickering firefly light, Master Four removed the padlock on the chains and set him free. Then Xiao Shanzi took off his jacket, which he’d worn over tattered clothes the same color as my dieh’s, and sat down in the vacated spot, where he let Master Four put the chains on him as the others quickly dressed my dieh in the jacket Xiao Shanzi had taken off. With a disjointed stammer, my dieh sputtered:
“What are you people doing? What do you want?”
Master Four clamped his hand over his mouth.
“Dieh,” I said softly, “snap out of it. It’s me, Meiniang. I’ve come to save you.”
He was still making noise, trying to talk, so Zhu Ba doubled up his fist and hit him in the temple, knocking him unconscious. Xiao Luanzi bent down, slipped his hands under my dieh’s arms, and hoisted him onto his back.
“Let’s get out of here,” Master Four urged softly.
We squeezed out of the cell at a crouch and, as the confusion outside continued, ran all the way to the path behind the Prison God Temple, where we spotted a pack of yayi carrying water headed our way from the secondary gate. Magistrate Qian Ding was standing on the gateway steps shouting:
“Stay in line; careful with that water!”
Hidden in the shadows of the Prison God Temple, we froze in place as a line of red lanterns led the way for a high-ranking official who materialized on the pathway in front of the side gate, a cluster of bodyguards behind him. If that wasn’t the Shandong Governor Yuan Shikai, I don’t know who it was. We watched as Qian Ding ran up, knelt at the man’s feet, and sang out:
“Your humble servant has failed to keep the mess hall from catching fire and disturbing Your Honor. I deserve to die a thousand deaths!”
We heard Yuan Shikai respond with a command:
“Send someone to the jail to see if anyone has escaped, and do it this minute!”
We watched the Magistrate scramble to his feet and run with attendants in the direction of the condemned cells.
We held our breath, wishing we could disappear into a hole in the ground as our ears filled with shouts from Master Four in the prison yard. The cell doors clanged open. We kept our eyes peeled for a chance to run, but Yuan Shikai and his bodyguards were in no hurry to vacate the path in the center of the courtyard. After what seemed like an eternity, the Magistrate puffed his way up to Yuan Shikai, fell a second time to one knee, and announced:
“Reporting to Your Excellency: I have examined the jail cells. All prisoners are present and accounted for.”
“What about Sun Bing?”
“Chained to a stone.”
“Sun Bing is the Imperial Court’s foremost criminal. Tomorrow he is to be executed, and your heads are on the line if anything goes wrong.”
Yuan Shikai turned and headed back to the Official Guesthouse, sent off by the County Magistrate with a courtly bow. We breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived, for my dieh, that damned fool, chose that moment to regain consciousness, and with a vengeance. He stood up, disoriented, and blurted out:
“Where am I? Where are you taking me?”
Xiao Luanzi grabbed his leg and pulled him to the ground. But he rolled over, out of the shadows