Chapter 10: Furs on the Terrace

On the ninth night the first frost came to the lotus pond.

The winter terrace of Ningshou Palace jutted out over the water on carved pillars, and its floor was covered in white fur rugs.

A brazier burned at one end.

Beyond the rail the pond was black, with the dead lotus leaves curled brown on its surface.

The moon hung over the roof.

Qinglan had come out to look at it while Murong Yue finished reading her reports in the study.

The study door stood open behind her.

A paper had blown off the Dowager's desk and landed against her slipper.

She picked it up to put it back.

It was a river-port slip, the thin yellow kind used by the grain barges, with an official stamp in red.

Three chests, said the slip.

Shipped south to Yangzhou, paid in full.

It was dated the same morning the third physician was supposed to have been buried.

At the bottom, pressed into the wax, was a small seal in the shape of a phoenix.

It was the Dowager's own.

Qinglan stood very still.

Three chests, she thought.

South.

It was not strange.

Families took their dead home.

A kind woman would pay to send the coffins to the villages the men came from, quietly, where no one in the palace would see.

She felt a warm rush of tenderness for the woman at the desk, and a small sour thread of something else.

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