A desiccated corpse lies sprawled in the street, and the whole city cries that demons are at work. At the third watch, ghostly flames flicker, while rumor and slander turn into a death sentence.
In an age of ignorance, where schemes and power struggles form an inescapable web, the truth is the most extravagant joke of all.
In the south, the grain-trading guilds and salt smugglers are tangled in a web of competing interests. In the north, border troubles simmer beneath the surface, and clouds of suspicion hang over the court.
Great clans set their traps, and lowborn clerks walk right into them. No matter how brilliant you are or how keen your eye, it is hard to escape a web of fabricated charges and a death warrant.
Yet though truth may be subtle, it can tear through a thousand layers of deception. Logic may be simple, but it can cut through every kind of confusion.
Who could have imagined that an abandoned son of the Ministry of Justice would dare to use a coroner's knife to crack this ironclad empire?
People are hard to read. A few streaks of blood, half a bowl of leftover medicine, a single inch of an oddly placed footprint
could overturn one bizarre case after another and shake the very foundations of the court.
