The Merit Assessment Register

In the Great Yong, officials are evaluated every three years. One word in the assessment ledger, "Outstanding," can send you soaring to the top; one word, "Abysmal," and you'll never be appointed again.

Shen Yan is the lowest-ranking copyist in the county office, earning twenty coins a day. He found that the Ever-Normal Granary was short 3,690 shi of grain. He took fifty taels in hush money and changed not a single number.

No one knows that Shen isn't his surname. Sixteen years ago, all thirty-seven members of his family were burned to death under an order accusing them of treason. The two words scraped off that document were "private treasury."

He doesn't kill people. He audits accounts. He'll keep climbing until the day he can lay this ledger before the emperor.