In three days, Shen Yan will be executed for selling army provisions.
But when the prison gates open, what he smells is not wind and snow, but the stench of the entire Northern Granary rotting away.
In seven days, heavy snow will close the passes, and thirty thousand frontier soldiers will run out of food.
Everyone hopes Shen Yan will confess quickly so they can close the case and be done with the provisions scandal. Instead, he tears off the seal himself and enters the rotten granary, a place that could get him killed ten times over.
Inspecting grain, auditing accounts, rushing supplies, distributing food, defending the city... Every batch he saves exposes another layer of a corrupt network of interests. Every group he keeps alive forces him to decide what another group must sacrifice.
Later, the border city survives. The famine-struck county survives. Even the northern frontier survives.
Only then do the officials at court realize that the low-ranking clerk who should have died in the granary has taken control of the supply routes that feed the entire realm.
