Shuli Go Stories Vol. 6: Liars and Cheats

Part 1

In the final decades of the Shan dynasty, the Shuli Go – magic-infused lawmen and women who had kept the peace for two thousand years – were disbanded as a caste. Once proud protectors of order and righteousness, they were often reduced to baser responsibilities and robbed of the discretion that had let them act as arbiters of justice. Still other times their skills were exploited and their integrity broken in service to simpler, more direct masters.

12 Tai, 3270 CE – Qi Kingdom – Six years before Wamai

It was a filthy hovel, barely more than a hole dug into the hill, and every corner reeked of poverty.

"The money. Or we are going to have a problem."

A grandmother, the parents, and three children – none older than ten – all crying. Even the man, pleading with every look in Zhao Lian's direction, every wringing of his hands. "But I swear madam we don't have any," he pleaded.

Lian sighed. "I'd believe you, except for the pot." She pointed at the large cooking cauldron, standing over a weak fire of dry grass, coal, and embers.

The father looked at the pot, then back to Lian. "What... what about the pot? You can't take away our only way of cooking!"

Lian sighed harder. He'd missed her point. "The pot is newer than everything else in here. New enough that the outside hasn't been covered in soot from cooking with coal. So you bought it in the last month. It's too nice for you to have bought outright, so you're paying it back over time. But it's not so nice that you didn't plan a few payments in advance. A pot like that, secondhand, its forty copper. Which means you've got at least ten more somewhere. So either I take the pot, or I take the money."

The grandmother shrieked and pulled her grandchildren close. The ruse was up. They'd been found out. The grandmother had known it when Lian walked in the door. You can't lie to a Shuli Go.

The children shrieked too. The entire house was shrieking, which only hurt Lian's head. She took a step forward and adjusted the sword belt that cinched diagonally across her chest. The father stepped back in terror and somehow a new set of tears seemed to spring eternal from somewhere behind his eyes.

"Look," she said, "I don't want to take the pot. I want the money. So give me the money and you and your wife and your kids and that old woman can all stop screaming at the top of your lungs. And I can leave."

Tax collection was one of the jobs Lian hated the most, even when she'd been a real Shuli Go. Now that she was a freelance tax collector, she hated it even more.

She took another step toward the father and took his shoulder in her hand. "Go get it. Now."

She felt bad for the family. They really were the definition of dirt poor – except for the pot, nothing new had been brought into the home in years. The kids clothes were shabby and ill-fitting, the mother looked ill, and the father barely had enough meat on him to keep Lian from accidentally crushing his collarbone when she grabbed him. They had obviously had some bad things happen to them in the past, and they'd tried to do what every rational human would do when they possessed that history: they tried to save for the future, for bad times that were yet to come. A perfectly sane, reasonable, even commendable activity.

The only problem was, they owed their taxes. And these ones hadn't paid in a few months. Lian squeezed the man's shoulder. Firm enough to be clear: she was leaving with the money.

He nodded and tried to suck in the gobs of snot pouring out of his nostrils. He turned to retrieve the money and Lian slowly turned away as well: there was nothing a peasant hated more than to have his few sacred hiding spots revealed to their landlord. Lian gave him that minor courtesy.

When he returned his head was bowed, his wife was screaming like some sort of animal in heat, and the grandmother's eyes had turned rabid. He held up a small cloth bag, full of small holes. Lian took it from him and examined its contents. They'd been planning quite well: eighteen copper coins, some shiny and unsoiled. She swiped ten of them and started her way towards the door.

"That's better. Now remember this next time, Lord Baodong doesn't take kindly to being lied to or cheated. You pay your taxes on time, you don't need to see me ever again." She opened the thin door and put one foot out before dropping the coin bag on the ground and finishing her announcement: "Enjoy your pot."

She let the door shut behind her and walked out into a thick rain, the coins bouncing in her purse as she pulled up a hood and set back towards the landlord's estate. Before she could walk away though, the father found the coins she'd left behind and threw open the door.

"Thank you," he said, stepping out in the rain. "Thank you so much."

Lian shook her head. "Don't thank me."

"Then I will pray for you," he insisted. "For your safety. There's been talk of a five-headed snake out in the fields. Twenty feet long and four eyes on each head. Took one of herder Fan's goats last night. You'd do well to avoid it."

"I'll be fine," Lian scoffed at the peasant superstition, then walked away.

As she did so she couldn't help but hear the father walk back in, followed by the grandmother's renewed, more depressing and pathetic scream: "Praise the Gods! The Shuli Go have always been fair! Of all the liars and cheats in the world, the Shuli Go are the best!"