Chapter 20: What the Throne Costs

Chengxiao rode to the Marquis's mansion with twenty riders and one useful arm.

Wanning had wanted to come.

He had told her to stay with her father.

She had looked at him a long moment and said that she would, this once.

It was the first time she had given way to him, and he was still thinking about it when the street turned red.

The east wing was burning.

Flames stood in every window of the Marquis's study, and servants ran across the front courtyard with buckets that did not reach.

In the middle of the yard stood Pei Zhonghe, bareheaded, in a stained robe.

He was carrying an armful of ledgers to a bonfire he had built on the paving stones.

"Highness!" Shi An shouted. "He has been at it since midnight!"

"Put out the east wing," Chengxiao said. "Leave him to me."

He dismounted.

His left leg held, which it had not that morning.

The Marquis saw him coming, and he threw another ledger on the heap.

"You will not have them," he said. "You will not have the lot of us. Do you hear?"

"My daughter, my sons, my wife. None of us signs anything."

"You signed it all, Zhonghe. In your own hand."

"The Crown Prince wrote it! I only copied!"

"Then let us read what you copied."

Chengxiao stepped to the fire and reached in.

The heat took his sleeve at once, and he felt the skin of his forearm tighten.

He pulled out the nearest ledger and beat it against his thigh.

It was black at the edges, and the inside was still whole.

Gold lettering on the cover said Seizures, Shen household, and a column of figures ran down the first page.