A laundry maid who only wants to save enough to go home can hear the last words the dead never got to finish, and everyone in the palace wants her to keep quiet forever.
A Zhao, who works in the Yeting Palace laundry, has a strange affliction: touch something that belonged to the dead, and she hears someone speak in her ear.
They always say the words they didn't get to finish:
"I didn't jump on my own."
"He said he'd take me away."
"A Zhao, save me."
Each corpse speaks only three lines. Not one more. With every line she hears, she feels more of the cold the dead leave behind.
A Zhao doesn't want to listen.
She only wants to finish her work and count the money hidden in her shoe: 120 taels to buy back her freedom. She's been in the palace for two years and three months, saved 85 taels, and still needs 35. If she holds on for eleven more months, she'll leave the palace and go home. Then she'll never have to watch anyone's mood again.
So she smears yellow ointment on her face to give herself fake freckles and wears the oldest gray shirt she can find. Everyone calls her "Gray Sparrow." She knows better than anyone that being pretty in the palace is a curse.
But the female corpse pulled from the well has a strand of silk caught beneath her fingernails, clean soles, and a handprint on the back of her neck that she couldn't have reached herself. Someone is eager to rule it a suicide and close the case. Someone else is eager to silence her.
The palace office that deals with the dead is called the Inner Justice Bureau. When someone dies, their body is taken there for an examination before it can be laid to rest.
That cold-faced Inspector Xiao puts the dead woman's wooden comb back in A Zhao's hand and says only four words:
"Listen one more time."
