At nineteen, Xie Yunzhao wears her older brother's official robes, uses his name, and stands at the end of the last row in the Secretariat's duty room. She wraps a strip of silk around her wrist to disguise the shape of her bones, and adds an inch to her boot soles to change her stride. One wrong step is treason. One cough gives her away.
There are twelve lamps in her heart. When she lays a hand on someone else's wrist, within three breaths she can hear the words that person most wants buried in the earth. The price is one extinguished lamp. When all the lamps go dark, she dies. To relight one, someone else must willingly give up a memory.
On her first day at work, the elderly Minister of Rites throws down his memorial in the hall and collapses at the end of the Secretariat's ranks. Not one of the officials in their vermilion robes reaches out to help. She does. Three breaths. She hears five words.
From that day on, the eunuchs of the Directorate of Ceremonial Instruction sit at the mouth of her alley, counting the people she meets at night. The Censorate's measuring ruler scrutinizes her handwriting and cuffs inch by inch. The regent summons her to a side hall and offers her only two choices. The entire court wants to use her, and wants her dead.
She has eleven lamps left.
