chapter 1

chapter 1

On the seventh day of the third month in the fourteenth year of Yong’an, the Pei family stood at the height of its glory.

Octagonal lanterns of red gauze hung along every corridor of the chancellor’s estate. Red silk and scarlet wedding emblems blazed wherever one looked. Every woman of the household rushed about while maids and matrons carried cosmetics chests and bridal robes from room to room. Even the family’s closest friends had come to help.

The next morning, my eldest legitimate sister, Pei Wan, was to enter the Eastern Palace as crown princess.

I was only thirteen. I clung to her and insisted on sleeping in her room.

“Once you enter the palace, it will be so hard to see you again. Let me spend your last night at home with you.”

In that great enclosed estate, my sister and I had always been closest. I was happy for her marriage, but beneath the happiness lay a grief I could not name.

Mother laughed helplessly. “You little monkey. In another two years you’ll have your coming-of-age ceremony, and still you behave like this.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mother,” my sister said with a smile. “Let her sleep in the little room behind the gauze screen. If I cannot sleep, I’ll have someone to talk to.”

She even had my favorite crisp milk pastries and sweet glutinous-rice wine prepared for me.

The pastries melted on my tongue. They made me thirsty, so I drank several cups of the wine and fell into a sleep so deep that I never heard the night watchman’s clappers.

I woke to shrieks and wailing at daybreak.

The Directorate of Astronomy had chosen sunrise as the auspicious hour. The Eastern Palace’s bridal procession was already waiting outside. An imperial wedding did not follow the customs of ordinary households; every moment was fixed by decree.

The wedding music stopped halfway through a song.

I ran from behind the gauze screen and saw the image that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

My sister hung from a ceiling beam in her crimson wedding dress. An overturned rosewood stool lay beneath her feet.

Mother stumbled forward, wrapped her arms around the rigid body, and screamed until her voice tore.

She had been fine the night before.

I stood frozen, as though plunged into ice.

“How were you watching over your sister?”

“Tell me what happened!”

Mother demanded answers again and again, but I knew nothing. In her fury, she struck me three times. Father pointed at me and cursed me for being greedy and lazy—for sleeping in the same room while my sister hanged herself without my knowing.

I knelt beside the body and held her cold hand while they condemned me. I could not shed a single tear.

“I have never touched those pastries or that sweet wine since,” I said.

“For ten years, I have hated myself every waking moment. If I had not been so greedy, if I had not slept so deeply, perhaps I could have stopped her. Would everything have been different?”

Ten years later, I sat in the Court of Judicial Review’s archives opposite its chief minister, Xiao Yan. My voice was hoarse. A decade of silence had not dulled the taste of blood in my throat.

“Have you considered,” Xiao Yan asked, “that you may not simply have drunk too much?”

My head rang. “My lord means…”

“A hanging is not silent. She had to step onto the stool, place the noose around her neck, and kick the stool away. You were only a few paces from her. Even a faint sound should have woken you.”

He studied me. “How did you feel the next day? Were you dizzy? Did your head ache?”

Cold shot from the base of my spine to my skull.

“My sister had just died. I never thought about my own condition. But now that I look back, yes. I was dizzy and nauseated, and my head pounded. I assumed it was shock.”

“Did your sister prepare the wine and pastries herself? Who handled them?”

“They came from her private kitchen. Her personal maid, Cuiguo, placed them on the table.”

My heart sank. “You think someone in her household did it?”

Xiao Yan nodded. “Sweet rice wine is mild. How could it have caused such a hangover?”

In the past decade I had examined more than a hundred poisoning victims. Other people missed poison hidden in wine or food; I recognized it with a touch. Yet I had never dared consider poison in my own home.

Everyone—including me—had decided that my greed and drunken sleep were to blame. I had spent ten years investigating other cases and had never investigated myself.

“What did the postmortem show?” he asked.

He pushed the files aside and slid a cup of warm tea toward me.

After a moment, I answered. “The report said the ligature mark rose toward the ears and did not meet at the back. There was a gap beneath the hairline. If she had been strangled, the mark would have run level around her neck and crossed. She did die by hanging.”

“And the scene?”

“The room was orderly. There were no signs of struggle. Taken alone, it looked exactly as though she had slipped away from everyone and killed herself in shame.

“A matron and two maids were on watch in the courtyard. The door was unlocked, and I was inside. No one heard anything. Had an attacker entered, my sister would have cried out. Even half a cry should have been heard before dawn.”

I stared at the tea until my eyes burned. “I always knew something was wrong, but I could never name it. Please guide me, my lord.”

I had believed those memories sealed away. The moment I spoke them aloud, they became sharp again and cut straight into my heart.

“You are right,” Xiao Yan said, running a finger over the file. “If your sister truly conceived in secret, disgraced herself, and then quietly took her own life, the silence would make sense. A woman dying of shame would want no witness.

“But you said that only hours before, she happily agreed to share her room with you. She prepared your favorite food and settled you behind the screen.”

He leaned forward, shadows from the candle deepening in his eyes.

“Would a woman determined to put her neck in a noose that very night invite her little sister to sleep in the same room?”

“Coroner Pei, the question is not merely why you heard nothing. It is this: how did such a woman come to hang alone and silent only a few hours later?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound emerged.

For ten years, every question had died against the wall of my guilt. I had never dared take one step beyond it.

“Then my sister was…” My hand shook so badly I could no longer hold the cup.

“There is only one explanation,” Xiao Yan said. “The hanging was sudden, and it was not her choice.”

His gaze fell on me like a blade.

“She died by another person’s hand.”