Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My father used to say that our family’s embroidery needles could pierce the veil between life and death.

Every piece of “Pre-embroidery” was an order from King Yama’s Hall.

Yesterday, he finished his final client.

Wang Yuanwai from the east side of the city. His birth chart was pinned to the left side of the embroidery frame, his facial features and bone structure sketched onto silk paper. His recorded cause of death: falling from a horse, neck snapped, right hand still clutching a length of broken reins.

Early this morning, Wang Yuanwai was alive and well.

Not only was he alive, but he also sent three chests of silver ingots. He claimed that he had dreamed of a black horse bolting last night, so he had every horse in his stables slaughtered this morning. He said with a smile that Master Shen was truly divinely gifted for saving his life, adding that if the money wasn’t enough, he would provide more.

But I never saw Father go out to collect the silver.

The door to the third floor of the Shen Family Embroidery Tower was bolted from the inside. The window paper had been stained a yellowish-black by lamp oil. Father had been shut inside for three days and three nights without a drop of water.

I called out three times.

There was no answer.

When I kicked the door open, the first thing I smelled was a thick, heavy scent of blood.

Father was slumped over the embroidery frame, his white hair spilling across his back. His own gold-tailed embroidery needle was plunged into his chest. A length of Red Thread still hung from the eye of the needle, trailing out from his heart like a worm that had just burrowed out of his flesh.

His eyes were wide open, staring straight at the embroidery frame.

A new piece of silk was stretched across it.

Embroidered on the silk was the Shen Family Embroidery Tower. A woman stood before one of the tower’s windows. Blood leaked from her seven facial orifices, her hands hung at her sides, and her fingers were entwined with Red Thread. Beneath her feet bloomed a large pattern of black lotuses.

I leaned against the doorframe, my fingernails digging into the wood.

The woman was wearing my green bamboo-patterned robe. Hanging from her waist were the silver scissors my mother had left me.

The face was mine.

By the time Du Niang, the manager, heard the commotion and rushed up, I was still standing in the doorway.

She took one look and fell to her knees.

“Miss Shen, don’t touch it,” she said, her voice trembling. “Once a Pre-embroidery image is complete, no one else can touch it. If you do, the death omen will recognize its master.”

I looked down at my hands.

The tips of my fingers had already brushed the edge of the silk. A drop of blood on the white silk seeped along the threads, landing exactly at the corner of the embroidered woman’s eye.

It looked as though she had wept a single red tear.

Men from the yamen arrived soon after.

The coroner stated that Father died from a single needle to the heart-driven in with lethal precision. It was his own favorite needle. The doors and windows were locked from the inside, there were no other footprints in the room, and Wang Yuanwai’s Fate Paper and the Shen family’s secret ink were still sitting on the table.

The magistrate only wanted to close the case quickly.

“Master Shen leaked the secrets of heaven and suffered the backlash,” he said, covering his nose with a handkerchief, refusing to even step near the body. “Such supernatural matters are best not publicized.”

I asked him, “My father was murdered.”

The magistrate looked at me as if I were a madwoman.

“Miss Shen, who in Jiangnan doesn’t know of the Shen Family’s Pre-embroidery? Your father spent thirty years embroidering the deaths of others. He enjoyed the wealth and the fame. Now that divine retribution has arrived, it is not something that can be investigated by mortal means.”

He ordered the embroidery room sealed and had Father’s body taken away.

Before they left, Wang Yuanwai arrived in person.

He was wearing a new robe, his face flushed with health. As soon as he entered, he tossed two silver ingots onto the floor.

“My condolences,” he said. “Master Shen saved my life. I, Wang, will remember this debt.”

I stared at him.

“Did you really fall from a horse last night?”

Wang Yuanwai’s smile stiffened.

“I fell in the dream. Isn’t the Shen Family’s Pre-embroidery meant to let people avoid death in advance?”

He turned to leave.

I suddenly noticed a bit of red mud clinging to the sole of his boot.

Wrapped in that red mud was an extremely fine gold thread-identical to the Red Thread hanging from the tail of the needle in my father’s heart.