In the Imperial Archives, everyone knew Shen Fuyi as a meek, voiceless clerk with no temper.
With her head bowed, she spent her days immersed in piles of moldy books. Even when the eunuch in charge withheld her charcoal or the Palace Justice Bureau slapped her in public, all she knew to do was hunch her back and say, "This servant was wrong."
No one knew that before the ink on her brush had dried, she had quietly erased the three most damning lines from each of the seventy-three unsolved mass-murder cases marked by the emperor's own hand.
On the night a heavy snowfall sealed the city, Xiao E, the Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, sealed off the inner archives with a blade in hand.
This fearsome official, famed throughout the court and blindfolded in white silk, stepped over paper ashes and lifted Shen Fuyi's chin with the cold back of his blade.
"Clerk Shen, the last case file the Minister of Justice read before he suddenly died last night bore the scent of storax from your wrist."
Shen Fuyi dug her fingertips into her palm, her voice trembling. "Your Excellency, please see the truth. This servant is timid. I wouldn't even dare kill a chicken."
Xiao E bent close. Through the plain white silk, his breath brushed her earlobe as he let out a low laugh.
"Is that so? Because I clearly heard the mechanism click three times on the concealed blade in your sleeve, pointed straight at my heart."
She thought she was a sparrow hidden in the long night, unaware that the lone wolf lurking in the abyss had sensed the kinship in her blood from the very first instant the snow began to fall.
Theme: The blind-eyed Yama who sees nothing x the record-keeping clerk who hides a blade between the lines
