Tan Wei received us in a private meeting room at the Outer Censorate, which was not the kind of room you asked for if you expected an ordinary conversation. Private rooms at the censorate required a specific reason, and the reason that Shen Bao had communicated through the careful channels we had used was enough — barely enough, from the length of time it had taken to receive the appointment, but enough.
He was forty-four, with the careful grooming of a man who understood that presentation was its own argument. His desk, visible through the half-open door before he appeared, was immaculate — not the immaculateness of someone who worked little, but the immaculateness of someone who processed everything and left nothing pending. When he came in and closed the door behind him, his eyes went immediately to the case that Shen Bao was carrying.
