Mancheng followed wei'Manman into the Gaol. The door shut solidly behind them, a patrol locking it after them. Musty air enclosed them and Mancheng paused, waiting for the captain's eyes to adjust to a dimness made only darker by the small barred windows set in walls as thick as a man holding out both arms. Wei'Namman led him down a long hall and into the main tower, then down a winding stone staircase. Moisture pooled on foot-worn steps furred with moss on the edges where no one walked. From the barred doors of the landings, Mancheng could hear the sounds of other prisoners: coughs, moans, someone calling out distantly. They came to a landing well below river level with one of the patrol standing at careful attention. The man opened the door and stepped aside.
They entered a square, compact room, the garda entering with them. Chains clattered: a man shackled to rings on the far wall stirred, his hands bound tightly to the wall so he couldn't move them to create one of the Mategician spells, his mouth gagged with a metal cage that trapped his tongue. Mancheng could see that the would-be assassin had been beaten. His face was puffy and discolored inside the bars of the face-cage, one eye was swollen shut, and a trail of dried blood drooled from one nostril. He'd soiled himself at some point—his torn hosiery was discolored and wet, and the smell of urine and feces was strong. "Captain," he said. "Has this man been mistreated?"
"No, Commandant," wei'Namman answered quickly. The patrol, behind him, sniffed in seeming amusement. "It was the citizenry who did this in retaliation. Why, our Huangd Patrol had tremendous difficulty even getting him away from the mob after the attack on the Guji."
Mancheng knew that to be a lie; the patrol assigned to the Guji had subdued the man immediately after the attack and hurried him away before the crowd was even certain what had happened. "The people do love the Guji," Mancheng said, more to the prisoner than to wei'Namman. "And hate those who would try to harm him." He stepped closer to the prisoner, taking a kerchief from his pocket and dusting the seat of a scarred, three-legged stool near the prisoner. The man moved his head inside the cage, watching Mancheng with his one good eye. "If I remove the tongue-gag, will you promise to speak no spells, Mister?" Mancheng asked, leaning toward him.
The man nodded. His gaze was not on Mancheng's hands, but the gleaming metal glasses. Mancheng reached around the man's head and loosed the leather straps that held the device in place. The man gagged as the metal spring holding down his tongue was removed.
"What's your name?" Mancheng asked.
"Dong jin'Zhuo." The man's voice was pain-filled and hoarse, and the syllables—unsurprisingly—held the accent of the north provinces.
"You're a Mategician?" A hesitant nod. "And who sent you to harm the Guji? Was it Envoy wei'Shamoke, perhaps?"
"No!" The denial was quick. The man's undamaged eye went wide, and the chains clanked dully against stone. "I... I've never met Envoy wei'Shamoke. Never. What I did, I did alone. That is the truth."
Now it was Mancheng who nodded. "I believe you," he said soothingly, watching his sympathetic tone leech the tension from the man's face. He sat there for several seconds, just gazing at the man. Finally he stood, going over to a small niche in the wall. From it, he took a brass bar, as thick around as a man's fist and perhaps two fists high, and satisfyingly massive and heavy. Both ends of the bar were polished and slightly flattened, as if they'd been battered many times. "I love history," he said to the prisoner. "Did you know that?"
The man's gaze was on the bar in Mancheng's hand now. He shook his head hesitantly. "Of course you don't," Mancheng continued. "But it's the truth. I do. History teaches us so much, Mister jin'Zhuo—it's from understanding what has happened in the past that we can best see the dangers of the future. Now this piece of metal..." He put his index finger into a large hole bored through the middle of the bar; only the tip of his finger emerged. "There was once a large bell in this very tower. The bell enclosure is still there at the top of the tower; you may have seen it when they brought you here, though I doubt you were much in the mood to notice such things. The bell was to be rung if there was a threat to the city so that the citizenry would be warned and react. Now, the bell itself has long ago been removed and melted down—I believe that the statue of Wenji in Oldtown was cast from the metal of the bell; you might have seen it. But this..." Mancheng hefted the bar again. "This was the bell's clapper. You see, a rope went through the hole here, knotted above and underneath to keep it at the right height, then the remainder of the rope dropped down to the floor of the tower so that someone could ring the bell at need. And it was rung, five times all told, the last being when the Hunanians sent their fleet of warships up the Yellow River to attack the city back in Yinping's reign." He took his finger from the hole and hefted the clapper in his hand. "So I look at this and I have to marvel at the history I'm holding, Mister, at the fact that this very piece of metal has been part of so much of what has happened here. It has protected us before, and—this is the part that's crucial to you, Mister jin'Zhuo—it continues to do so."