The Drunkard

The hot wind, laced with the sharp tang of salt, slapped him in the face. Twelve-year-old Li Tong clung desperately to the last sack of green salt.

Grains of salt lay scattered across the county yamen's brick courtyard like shattered stars. They had spilled through a tear in the sack while his father kowtowed.

"Your Honor, please see reason!" Li's Father pressed his forehead against the official's boots. The skin peeled from the back of his neck in sunburnt curls like dead leaves. "All thirty dan are taxed government salt, properly accounted for!"

The Salt and Iron Commissioner in the green robe crushed a grain of salt underfoot and sneered, his voice scraping like a rusty blade against bone. "That's what every illegal salt trader says." He suddenly waved a hand, and the constables rushed the salt carts like hungry wolves.

Little Li Tong saw the four gilded characters "Salt and Iron Special Patrol" on their badges glinting in the blazing sun like blood.

"Stop!" He charged toward the sack being dragged away, his childish voice cracking. "Every grain was weighed on the official scales!" The moment his fingers touched the sack, a searing pain struck the back of his head.

The cowhide whip shrieked through the air, and Li Tong crashed into the mound of salt. The brine immediately seeped into the wound at the corner of his eye. Through his blurred vision, he saw his father pinned to the ground, his hairpin flying loose and stabbing into the yellow earth like a broken arrow.

The whip's barbs still hooked into his collarbone. A constable's voice came from somewhere above him. "Little salt mule, remember this: what's right or wrong—" A boot ground his fingers into the salt. "—is for the masters to decide."

Blood and salt mingled into