Chapter 43: The Forged Death

Bao was waiting at her desk before dawn. The outer hall was dark. The windows hadn't begun to pale yet, and the brazier was cold, and the dead clerks hadn't come up from wherever the dead went at night. Except Bao. He was standing beside her desk in his official cap, with his thin hands folded in front of him, holding a folded sheet of paper, and when her shadow came through the door from the back hall he straightened up, stiff from standing there for some time. "Recorder," he said. "Bao? What are you doing here?" He held out the paper. "I went to the inner archive last night," he said. "The Magistrates' archive. Behind the Hearing Hall." His voice was low. He had been dead since the flood of two reigns ago, and he had made up his mind about something. "I took a request slip. One of…