The eighth year of the Former Yuan era, first month.
The New Year had just passed, and the snow in Chang'an had not yet fully melted. The atmosphere in the Eastern Palace was different from before the holiday. Courtiers came and went far more frequently than usual. Liu Che spent more time with the Emperor; sometimes he was gone all day. The workshop was quiet. I sat at the workbench repairing a lacquer ear-cup—the one left unfinished before the New Year. The broken edges had been filled with raw lacquer; now it only awaited polishing.
Qingxing peeked her head in at the door. "Lady Lu, His Highness wants you to go to the study."
I put down my tools. The study? He had never allowed me to enter the study where state affairs were handled.
Liu Che's study was on the west side of the Eastern Palace's main hall. It was not large, but filled with a cold, hard scent of ink. Piles of bamboo slips and silk books stood like mountains on the desk; a low couch sat in the corner. He sat before the desk, several extremely heavy wooden tablets spread out before him, his brows tightly knitted.
Hearing footsteps, he looked up. Dark circles were clearly visible under his eyes.
"You're here." He pointed to the seat opposite him. "Sit."
I sat down opposite him. The bamboo slips on the desk were not ordinary classics; they bore bright red official seals—from the Office of the Imperial Censor, from the Commandant of Justice. I glanced at them and saw several shocking phrases: Colluding with the Xiongnu, Smuggling salt and iron, Embezzling military rations.
"Your Highness is investigating a case?"
"Mm." He handed me a roll of silk book. "Look at this."
I took it. The silk book contained a confession, the handwriting messy. It spoke of Li Yan, the Governor of Hedong Commandery, who had been impeached by the Imperial Censor for colluding with the Xiongnu. The evidence was a secret letter. But Li Yan cried injustice in the Commandant of Justice's prison, insisting the letter was forged.
"His Majesty has entrusted this case to Your Highness?"
"Mm." He leaned back in the chair, an exhaustion I had never seen before on his face. "Father said to let me learn how to judge cases. But I've looked at it for three days, and the more I look, the more confused I become."
"Where is the confusion?"
"The evidence doesn't match." He pointed to a pile of wooden slips on the desk. "The Commandant of Justice verified the handwriting three times. The first time they said it matched; the second time, they said it didn't; the third time, they said it matched again. Someone tampered with things within the Commandant of Justice's office, but I cannot find out at which stage."
I looked at him. Fifteen years old, touching such life-and-death court politics for the first time. Those old foxes in the court had fought for half a lifetime, their methods vicious and cruel. He was like a young beast just leaving its den, learning how to identify traps.
"Your Highness," I asked softly, "what do you want me to do?"
He looked at me, silent for a moment. "Lu Xingye, when you repair artifacts, you can piece together lacquerware shattered into powder. This case—it is also shattered. I want you to help me piece it together."
I paused. "Your Highness, every trade has its specialty. Investigating a case involves laws, human hearts, and factional struggles. I am just a craftsman—"
"You don't understand court politics, but you understand traces," he interrupted, his gaze burning. "The Commandant of Justice looks at the law; the Censor looks at the charges. But you look at things differently. You don't treat them as evidence; you only look at the break points, the textures, at those places that 'don't match'."
My heart stirred.
"Your Highness," I said, "I can try. But I can only help you examine these physical objects. As for whether we can solve the case, I dare not guarantee it."
He smiled, a hint of relaxation appearing after days of tension. "That is enough."
That afternoon, he had all the key evidence of the case moved to the workshop. Bamboo slips, silk books, seal tokens, clay seals—they piled up, filling the entire workbench.
I lit all the lamps and began the "autopsy."
The Imperial Censor's Impeachment Document: Accusing Li Yan of using his private seal to write a letter to the Xiongnu Chanyu. The evidence was a roll of secret letter written on fine silk (jianbo), bearing the private seal of the Governor of Hedong.
The Commandant of Justice's Inspection Record: The handwriting identification flipped back and forth repeatedly. The artisan who verified the seal said the seal itself was real, but felt something was off.
I did not look at the characters first; instead, I looked at the silk itself.
Han Dynasty textiles had strict origins and grades. Li Yan was the Governor of Hedong; Hedong did not produce silk. His official supplies should have been "Qi Wan" (silk from Qi) issued by the court, or "Jin" (brocade) from Shu. But this piece of silk—I leaned close to the light source, carefully observing the weave of the warp and weft threads. The warp was dense, the weft slightly sparse, with tiny node-like bumps.
This was typical "Lu Gao" (plain silk from Lu). The Lu region produced this kind of thin and brittle raw silk; it was cheap, but rarely used as a carrier for official letters because it blurred ink too easily.
Next, I looked at the red seal mark.
In Han Dynasty document transmission, a piece of clay was sealed over the rope knot, then stamped with a seal. Once dried, it became a "clay seal" (fengni). This secret letter had no clay seal; the cinnabar seal was stamped directly onto the silk book.
The color of the cinnabar—was dark. The edges had extremely fine blurring, as if there was too much oil.
"See anything?" Liu Che had appeared behind me without my noticing.
"Two flaws." I put down the bamboo slip and pointed to the silk. "First, this silk is Lu Gao, not the Shu brocade or Qi Wan commonly used by the Governor of Hedong. A governor who has embezzled huge sums of money, involved in something as major as colluding with the Xiongnu—would he casually find a piece of cheap, inferior silk to write it on?"
Liu Che's expression grew grave. "And the second?"
"Second, this seal." I pointed to the red square. "It is real, yet not real."
"What do you mean?"
"The seal itself might be Li Yan's true private seal. But this seal impression is forged." I explained, "Han official seals mostly used clay seals; stamping directly with ink paste on cloth was extremely rare. Even if stamped, they used ink paste mixed with honey and cinnabar. But the edges of this seal mark have an oily blur—this means someone used a rubbing technique to 'transfer' the seal from another document. To hide the traces of the rubbing, they特意 (specifically) added oil to mix it."
"Transplanting a flower to receive a tree (a metaphor for deception)," Liu Che sneered coldly. "Good method."
"To have access to Li Yan's past documents and obtain his true handwriting for rubbing, this person must be either by his side or within the Commandant of Justice's office where archives are kept."
I wrote these two conclusions on a blank bamboo slip and handed it to Liu Che.
He took it, read it through, and his tightly furrowed brows finally relaxed.
"Lu Gao... oily seal..." he murmured to himself. "Lu Xingye, you truly can see what others cannot."
"Your Highness," I looked at him, "piecing the puzzle to this point, we can roughly see the outline. The one capable of doing this must be someone inside the Commandant of Justice's office, or—someone with power great enough to extend their hand into it."
The room fell deathly silent.
Liu Che toyed with the roll of bamboo slips, then suddenly asked: "If I say—this case might involve Princess Guantao, Ajiao's mother, would you believe it?"
I fell silent too.
Although I had suspected it, hearing that name still sent a chill through me. Princess Guantao Liu Piao, the greatest contributor to Liu Che's ascension, was also the greediest woman in this palace.
"This Li Yan, the Governor of Hedong, obtained his position by buying a path through the Princess." Liu Che's voice was cold. "Now someone wants to bring down Li Yan. Either it is the Princess's political enemy, or—the Princess herself wants to kill him to silence him."
"Silence him?"
"If Li Yan bites randomly while in prison, the Princess's selling of offices and titles will be exposed. Letting him die as a 'Han traitor' is the best outcome."
The fifteen-year-old boy, speaking these words in this cold spring night, displayed a cruelty and helplessness beyond his age.
"Your Highness, then what do you plan to do?"
"Investigate." He spat out a single word. "Father let me investigate to see if I dare. If I turn a deaf and blind eye because she is Ajiao's mother, then I will only be an obedient puppet for the rest of my life."
"If Ajiao finds out..."
"I won't tell her." He cut me off. "This matter stops with you and me."
I looked at him. The candlelight flickered, reflecting on his eyebrows and eyes, which were not yet fully grown but already showed their sharpness.
"Your Highness," I walked to his side and gently held his fist clenched within his sleeve, "I will help you. Not for anything else, but just to piece this shattered mirror back together."
He turned his head, grasped my hand in return. His palm was slightly cool, but very strong.
"Good," he said. "Let's piece it together."
For the next half-month, the workshop became a temporary "case investigation center." I was responsible for comparing ink traces, silk quality, the knotting methods of bamboo slip cords, and the patterns on the back of clay seals; Liu Che was responsible for sorting out relationships and capital flows.
Doubts rolled up like a snowball, growing larger and larger: the artisan who verified the seal died suddenly; the Justice Official responsible for guarding the evidence suddenly retired due to old age; Li Yan encountered multiple "accidents" in prison...
This was a very large chess game. Someone was playing a game of death, and we were trying to find the living eye.
Outside the window, the icicles under the eaves finally melted completely, dripping drip-drop, drip-drop onto the green stone slabs.
"Your Highness," I looked at the mess on the table, "this case may be deeper than we think."
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
"No." I smiled, picking up a roll of bamboo slips. "People who repair artifacts are least afraid of messes. The messier it is, the more sense of achievement when it's fixed."
Liu Che looked at me, some of the gloom in his eyes dispersing. He lowered his head and lightly kissed my fingertips.
"Lu Xingye, although I've said this many times, I must say it again."
"What?"
"I'm glad to have you."
The spring of the eighth year of the Former Yuan era arrived quietly on this battlefield without smoke.
[End of Chapter 15]