There’s an unremarkable teahouse in the capital that sells eight-fruit cakes and trades in the city’s secrets. Shen Zhiwei tends the old shop her parents left behind, listening to the gossip of all kinds of people and keeping track of the favors and connections that bind them. Three years’ worth of fragments come together to reveal the truth: her parents’ deaths concealed the greatest conspiracy in the court. And the cold-faced official who comes for tea every day had already fallen into her trap long ago.
