Trust Among Nations

After transmigrating into the office of the Maritime Trade Supervisor in Quanzhou at the end of the Song Dynasty, Lin Cang's first order of business upon taking up his post is to arrange his own funeral. Someone killed him last night. This morning, the killer came back to finish the job. He remembers clutching a sea-trade contract in his final moments. He doesn't know this city of Citong, but he knows how a ship's cargo is supposed to be handled. In the eighth year of the Xianchun era, an unclaimed merchant ship drifts back into port. The ship is old, the cargo is fake, but the seal on the manifest is genuine. And only people in the inner office of the Maritime Trade Supervisor can access the seal box. Ghost ships, missing shipping records, coins smuggled overseas, manifests stamped with the seals of the dead... Using an inspection method no one has ever seen, Lin Cang uncovers the port's riches and deadly secrets, one document at a time. As long as he still clutches that official certificate, he's still alive, even if the name he bears belongs to a dead man.