Tao Zhiheng, a merchant's daughter disowned by her clan, enters the selection for female officials after discovering a fraudulent relief ledger bearing her late father's old seal. She knows grain prices, measures, and bills of exchange, but the cold-faced censor Pei Wenzheng names her his prime suspect. She wants to use his authority to access records and reopen her father's case; he wants to use her commercial expertise to track down the relief funds. They go from setting traps for each other to joining forces to investigate granaries, ships, and exchange houses. Each time they uncover another layer of falsified accounts, someone loses their food, their name, or their chance to survive. Faced with a web of powerful figures who maintain order by calling lives "necessary losses," Tao Zhiheng must prove that the people erased from the records must be entered into the ledger again.
