She came to the capital for a letter.
A cruel farewell letter with no osmanthus blossoms.
Su Wantang followed the trail from Pingjiang to the capital, but never found Xie Linyuan. All she got was a silk shop someone had used for their own purposes. She thought she was searching for a person, but with one wrong step she stumbled into a web of secrets stretching from an old goods depot and the military supply warehouses to the North Gate freight yard and the Grand Tutor's residence in the northern part of the city. The first person to die was one of her shop assistants. The second had once slipped a bundle of old ledgers into her hands. The third was someone she had brought trouble to herself.
Xie Linyuan was in this very city.
He was the emperor's most secretive blade, investigating military supplies, factions, and princes. The deeper he dug, the more he realized that from beginning to end, he was merely a hidden piece placed on someone else's chessboard. He protected her, but never in the open. Every case he investigated eventually collided with hers.
They lived in the same city, one investigating the trade routes, the other the official ones. They never met, yet crossed paths everywhere. It was only when a deadly case drove everyone to the old goods depot that he was forced to step out of the shadows.
But the capital was like a well.
Those at the bottom were drained dry before those above were willing to show their faces. Su Wantang now stood at the edge of that well, clutching a few pages of old accounts, a short length of blue thread wrapped around her wrist. If she took one more step, even she would become an echo in the well.
