The attack came three nights after the Duke's confession, in the hour of the rat when the streets of Yizhou were empty and the watchmen slept at their posts. Li Xun was walking home from the prefectural compound along his usual route, a narrow lane that ran behind the leather tanneries. The air was thick with the smell of curing hides and the distant smoke of the night kilns. His mind was still full of the day's work, the supplementary report he had filed, the testimony he had recorded, the endless chain of crimes that continued to unwind.
He did not hear them until they were almost upon him.
A scuff of leather on stone. A breath drawn sharply in the darkness. Li Xun spun, his hand reaching for his knife, but the first blow caught him across the shoulders and sent him sprawling onto the cobblestones. He rolled, saw movement above him, and thrust upward with the blade. It struck something solid, and a man grunted in pain. Then another blow came, this one to the side of his head, and the world dissolved into a blur of pain and spinning stars.
He did not lose consciousness entirely. He was aware of hands searching his clothing, of voices muttering in low, urgent tones, of his satchel being torn from his shoulder. He tried to rise, but a boot pressed down on his chest, pinning him to the ground.
"The report," a voice hissed. "Where is the original?"
Li Xun could not speak. The weight on his chest was crushing the breath from his lungs. Through the blur of his vision, he saw a face hovering above him, a young man's face with a scar across the cheek and eyes that held no particular malice, only the detached focus of a craftsman doing a job.
"He cannot answer if you crush him," another voice said, calmer and more educated. "Let him breathe."
The pressure on his chest eased. Li Xun gasped, drawing air into his burning lungs. The two men resolved into clearer shapes: the scarred one standing over him with a cudgel in his hand, the other kneeling beside him with the patient expression of a clerk conducting an audit.
"The report, Clerk Li. The original of your supplementary findings. The document in which you catalogued the Duke's additional crimes. Where is it?"
Li Xun's mind clawed its way back to coherence. The report. He had filed it that morning, sending copies to the magistrate and to the courier station for transmission to Chang'an. But the original draft, the one in his own hand, was still in his office, locked in his desk drawer.
"I do not have it," he managed. "It has already been sent."
The educated man sighed. "That is unfortunate. For you, and for us. The Duke's allies in Chang'an can intercept the courier, but only if we know which route and which courier. You will tell us."
"I will not."
"You will. Everyone does, eventually." The man gestured to his scarred companion. "Bring him. We will continue this conversation somewhere more private."
The scarred man hauled Li Xun to his feet. His knife was gone, kicked into the gutter. His head throbbed, and blood was running down his neck from a cut above his ear. They half-dragged, half-marched him through the dark lanes toward the western gate, where a cart was waiting, the same kind of cart that had crushed Kang the blacksmith against his forge.
But before they reached it, a voice rang out from the darkness.
"Stop. In the name of the prefectural court."
The scarred man froze. The educated man turned, his hand moving toward his belt. But the street around them was suddenly full of shadows that resolved into armed men, constables in the prefectural livery, and at their head was a figure Li Xun recognized with a shock that cut through the pain.
Deputy Prefect Chang.
"Drop your weapons," Chang said. His voice was cold and steady, nothing like the cautious, evasive tone he had used in their previous meetings. "You are under arrest for the assault of a prefectural official."
The educated man hesitated. "Deputy Prefect. You of all people should understand that we are acting in the interests of—"
"I understand perfectly. You are acting on the orders of Duke Du, who has been convicted of murder and forgery and who is attempting to suppress evidence against him. You are his agents, and you are now in my custody."
The constables moved forward. The scarred man dropped his cudgel with a clatter. The educated man's face went pale, but he did not resist as the constables seized his arms.
Li Xun leaned against the wall of the lane, his hand pressed to the wound on his head. He stared at Chang, trying to reconcile this decisive, commanding figure with the weak-willed bureaucrat he had known for years.
"You saved my life," Li Xun said, his voice hoarse.
Chang met his eyes briefly, and something passed between them that Li Xun could not quite read. "You are more valuable alive than dead, Clerk Li. The Imperial Inspectorate will want to question you. And I have a great deal to answer for. Protecting you is the least I can do."
"You knew about the Duke. All along, you knew."
Chang's face tightened. "Yes. I knew. Not everything. Not the murders. But I knew the original trial was corrupt. I knew the confessions were forged. I knew the Duke was involved. And I said nothing, because the Duke was my patron, and because I was afraid."
"And now?"
"Now I am still afraid. But I am also tired of being afraid. The Duke is finished. His allies in Chang'an will not be able to protect him, not once your report reaches the Inspectorate. I can either go down with him or try to salvage something from the wreckage."
Li Xun pushed himself off the wall, ignoring the wave of dizziness that washed over him. "Then help me. There is more evidence. The Duke's crimes go back two decades. Zheng gave me a list, but I believe there is more that even he does not know. The prefectural archives must contain records of the Duke's early activities, the ones he tried to erase."
Chang hesitated. "The archives are sealed. The order came from the Ministry of Justice."
"The same ministry that employed the prefect who framed Yuan and Wei. The same ministry that has protected the Duke for twenty years. If we wait for them to unseal the records, we will wait forever."
Chang was silent for a long moment. Around them, the constables were binding the prisoners and loading them into the cart. The night was very still, the stars hard and bright overhead.
"Come to my office tomorrow morning," Chang said finally. "I will give you access to the sealed archives. Whatever you find there, you may use. But be careful, Li Xun. The Duke's network extends further than you know. Tonight's attack will not be the last."
He turned and walked away, his constables falling into formation around him. Li Xun watched him go, then retrieved his knife from the gutter and limped home through the silent streets.
He slept poorly, his dreams full of shadows and falling stones. But when dawn came, he rose and dressed and made his way to the prefectural compound, where Chang was waiting in his office with a key of black iron and an expression of grim resolution.
"The archives are in the basement," Chang said. "The sealed rooms are at the far end of the eastern corridor. No one has been inside them for fifteen years. Whatever you find there, it is yours to use. But when you are finished, I want you to leave Yizhou. For your own safety."
Li Xun took the key. "I will not leave until the work is done."
"Then I hope you work quickly. The Duke's sentencing is in three days. His allies will use every resource they have to disrupt the proceedings. If they succeed, he may yet escape justice."
"He will not escape," Li Xun said. "I will not allow it."
He descended into the basement alone, carrying a lamp and the black iron key. The sealed rooms were behind a heavy door of iron-bound oak, its lock stiff with rust and age. The key turned with a shriek of metal, and the door swung open, releasing a gust of cold, musty air that smelled of old paper and mold.
The room beyond was crammed with shelves of scrolls and document boxes, their labels faded and crumbling. Li Xun set down his lamp and began to search. For hours, he worked his way through the stacks, examining inventories and correspondence, financial records and court transcripts, the accumulated paperwork of a town that had been ruled by corruption for two decades.
He found the Duke's early financial records in a box marked with the seal of the prefectural treasury. They showed a young nobleman deeply in debt, borrowing money from merchants and money-lenders, pledging lands he did not yet own as collateral. And then, in a single year, the debts vanished. The Duke's fortune appeared fully formed, as if conjured from nothing.
He found the prefect's private correspondence in a locked chest that he opened with a chisel from his satchel. The letters revealed a long and intimate collaboration between the prefect and the Duke, stretching back to the years before the trial. They discussed the forgery scheme openly, using coded language that Li Xun could easily decipher now that he knew the truth.
And he found, at the very back of the room, a small box of black lacquer that had been hidden behind a loose stone in the wall. Inside were three items: a jade seal bearing the Duke's personal crest, a letter written in a woman's hand, and a small leather-bound journal.
The letter was from the widow of Wei Dashuai, written to the prefect in the weeks after the execution, begging for information about her husband's death. Someone had never sent it. Someone had hidden it here, where it would never be found.
The journal was the Duke's own, written in his elegant calligraphy, spanning the years of the forgery scheme. It detailed his transactions, his meetings, his fears and his ambitions. And it named names: the prefect, the merchants, the militiamen, the clerks. Everyone who had been complicit in the conspiracy.
Li Xun sat on the cold stone floor and read the journal from beginning to end. When he finished, the lamp had burned low and his hands were trembling. The evidence was complete. The Duke's crimes were laid bare in his own handwriting.
He gathered the documents and carried them up from the basement. In his office, he spread them across his desk and began to write a final, definitive report. The Imperial Inspectorate would have everything: the confessions, the witness statements, the physical evidence, and now the Duke's own journal. There would be no escape for the man who had built his reputation on a mountain of bones.
As the sun set on his second day of work, a knock came at his door. It was Chang, his face pale and drawn.
"The Duke has escaped," Chang said. "His guards were bribed. He is gone, and no one knows where."
Li Xun set down his brush and looked at the documents that covered his desk. The dead were patient. But the living, it seemed, were not.
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