The council chamber still smelled faintly of ink and ash.
Not incense—ash.
It was the kind of smell that came after a bonfire or a house fire, the one you could never get off your skin and clothes, no matter how hard you tried.
The servants had tried to sweep it out, but ash doesn't leave easily. It settles into the grain, the joints of the wood, the cracks under doors.
I stood at the map table, sleeves rolled to my elbows, the skin of my arms nicked with the dry bite of parchment edges and frost air. Shadows from the candle rack quivered over the long lacquer surface, catching on markers laid like stones: red beads for bribes, black pins for deaths, silver ones for silence bought.
Three markers sat closest to me: Hua, Ren, Han. One breathing, one cornered, one nailed to a gate.
Behind me, the door thudded shut. A footstep—measured, even—followed by the faint scuff of leather on stone.
Deming came first.
