Chapter 38: The Last Line

Magistrate Wen came through the outer door with two clerks behind him, and the hall was on its feet before he had taken three steps. He looked just as he had on the morning after the first snow: the black robe with its crimson underlayer, the jade plaque at his belt, the silver at his temples under the gauze hat. His clean hands were folded in front of him. He was smiling. He walked down the long room between the standing clerks without hurrying, and the crimson edge of his underlayer showed at the hem with every step, and Ming, standing at her desk by the window, watched him come and thought of a white name rising out of gray on a sheet of tissue paper. Wen, Magistrate of the First Chair. She kept it off her face. She had practiced that, all night. One of the clerks behind him…