“I am Chingkim, the Crown Prince. I should like you, Master Ping, to explain to this honored guest of mine the manner of giving the Death of a Thousand.”

The creature sniffed clerkishly. “I am not accustomed to requests of that indelicate nature, and I do not grant them. Also, the only honored guests here are my own.”

Chingkim perhaps stood in awe of the Fondler’s title of office, but he himself was entitled Prince. More than that, he was a Mongol being affronted by a mere Han. He drew himself up tall and rigid, and snarled:

“You are a public servant and we are the public! You are a civil servant and you will be civil! I am your Prince and you have arrogantly neglected to make ko-tou! Do so at once!”

The Fondler Ping flinched back as if we had pelted him with some of his own hot coals, and obediently fell down and did the ko-tou. All the other clerks in the chamber peered awestricken over their counting desks at what must have been a first-ever occurrence. Chingkim smoldered down at the prostrate man for some moments before bidding him to rise. When Ping did, he was suddenly all conciliation and solicitude, as is the way of clerks when someone has the temerity to bark at them. He fawned on Chingkim and expressed himself willing, nay, avid to fulfill the Prince’s every least whim.

Chingkim said grumpily, “Just tell the Lord Marco here how the Death of a Thousand is administered.”

“With pleasure,” said the Fondler. He turned on me the same benign smile he had bestowed on Chingkim, and spoke in the same unctuous voice, but his eyes on me were snake cold and malevolent.

“Lord Marco,” he began. (Actually he said Lahd Mah-ko, in the Han manner, but I eventually got so used to not hearing r’s when a Han spoke that I will henceforth forbear from remarking on the fact.)

“Lord Marco, it is named the Death of a Thousand because it requires one thousand small pieces of silk paper, folded and tossed haphazard in a basket. Each paper bears a word or two, no more than three, signifying some part of the human body. Navel or right elbow or upper lip or left middle toe or whatever. Of course, there are not one thousand parts to the human body—at any rate, not one thousand capable of feeling sensation, like a fingertip, say, or being caused cessation of function, like a kidney. To be precise, there are, by the traditional Fondler’s Count, only three hundred and thirty-six such parts. So the inscribed papers are almost all in triplicate. That is to say, three hundred and thirty-two parts of the body are thrice written on separate papers, making a total of nine hundred and ninety-six. Are you following this, Lord Marco?”

“Yes, Master Ping.”

“Then you will have noted that there are four parts of the body not inscribed thrice on the papers. Those four are written only once apiece, on the four papers remaining of the thousand. I will later explain why—if you have not guessed by then. Very well, we have one thousand inscribed and folded little papers. Every time a man or woman is sentenced to the Death of a Thousand, before I commence my attentions to the Subject, I have my assistants newly mix and toss and tumble those papers in the basket. I do that mainly to reduce the likelihood of repetition in the Fondling, which might be unnecessarily distressing to the Subject or boring to me.”

He really was a clerk at heart, I thought, with his finicking numbers and his calling the victim the Subject and his lofty condescension to my interest in the matter. But I was not fool enough to say so. Instead, I remarked respectfully:

“Excuse me, Master Ping. But all of this—this writing and folding and tossing of papers—what has this to do with death?”

“Death? It has to do with dying!” he said sharply, as if I had strayed into irrelevance. Flicking a sly glance sideways at Prince Chingkim, he said, “Any crude barbarian can kill a Subject. But artfully to lead and guide and beckon and cajole a man or woman through the dying—ah, for that, the Fondler!”

“I see,” I said. “Please do go on.”

“After having been purged and evacuated, to avert unseemly accidents, the Subject is securely but not uncomfortably tied erect between two posts, so that I can easily do the Fondling at his or her front or back or side, as required. My work tray has three hundred and thirty-six compartments, each neatly labeled with the name of a bodily part, and in each reposes one or several instruments exquisitely designed to be used on that certain part. Depending on whether the part is of flesh or sinew or muscle or membrane or sac or gristle, the implements may be knives of certain shapes, or awls, probes, needles, tweezers, scrapers. The instruments are newly whetted and polished, and my assistants are ready —my Blotters of Fluids and Retrievers of Pieces. I commence by doing the traditional Fondler’s Meditations. Thereby I attune myself not only to the Subject’s fears, which are usually apparent, but also to his inmost apprehensions and deepest levels of response. The artful Fondler is the man who can very nearly feel the same sensations as his Subject. According to legend, the most perfect of all Fondlers was a long-ago woman, who could so closely attune herself that she would actually cry out and writhe and weep in unison with her Subject, and even plead with herself for mercy.”

“Speaking of women—” said Nostril. All this time he had been standing, almost huddling for invisibility, behind me. But his ever lewd inquisitiveness must have overcome his timorousness. He spoke in Farsi to the Prince, “Women and men do differ, Prince Chingkim. You know … in their bodily parts … here and there. How do the Master Fondler’s labels and implements reconcile those differences?”

The Fondler took a step backward and said, “Who … is … this?” with dainty revulsion, as he might have done if he had stepped on a street turd and it had had the effrontery to protest aloud.

“Forgive the slave’s impertinence, Master Ping,” Chingkim said smoothly. “But the question had occurred to me, too.” He repeated it in Mongol.

The executioner sniffed clerkishly again. “The differences between male and female, as regards the Fondling, are merely superficial. If the folded paper reads ‘red jewel,’ that means the frontmost genital organ, of which there is a large one in the male, a tiny one in the female. If the paper reads ‘jade gland,’ left or right, it means the man’s testicle or the woman’s internal gonad. If it reads ‘deep valley,’ that literally means the woman’s womb, but in the case of a man can be taken to mean his internal almond gland, the so-called third testicle.”

Involuntarily, Nostril made an “ooh!” noise of pain. The Fondler glared at him.

“Now, may I proceed? After my Meditations, the proceeding goes thus. I select a paper from the basket, at random, and unfold it, and it tells me the part of the Subject destined for the first Fondling. Suppose it says left little finger. Do I simply step up to the Subject, as a butcher would do, and saw off his left little finger? No. Or what would I do if the identical paper came up again later? So the first time I may merely drive a needle deep under that finger’s nail. The second time perhaps slice the finger to the bone all along its length. Only if it came up a third time would I lop the finger off entirely. Usually, of course, the second paper I select will direct me to a different part of the Subject—another extremity, or the nose, or the jade gland perhaps. However, given the triplication of the papers and the randomness of choice, it can occasionally happen that the same part will be called for twice in succession, but that does not occur too boringly often. And in all my career there has been just one single occasion when three papers in a row all named the exact same part of the Subject’s body. Most unusual, that. Memorable. I later asked the Mathematician Lin-ngan to calculate for me the rarity of that having happened. As I remember, he said something like one chance in three million. Years ago, that was. Her left nipple, it was …”