◎Sir◎

The people at the Ministry of Justice worked with reasonable efficiency — within half a day, they’d confirmed that the ornament had indeed been purchased at the Liu family’s workshop. The record only noted the buyers’ surnames: one Gu, one Yan.

The woman surnamed Gu was fully named Gu Xianghui, from the outskirts of the capital. Her father had originally been a tenant farmer on an estate outside the city, but the family seemed to have suffered some disaster, and the whole household had been gone for several years now.

Gu Xianghui had presumably drifted into prostitution after her family’s ruin, ending up as a low-ranking courtesan at the Heart of Fragrance House on North Street.

The pleasure house on North Street was nothing like the Hall of Spring Breeze and Timely Rain that Zhou Tan had taken Qu You to before. The Hall of Spring Breeze and Timely Rain sat between the prominent district and the imperial city, near the Bian River and close to Fan Tower. The women there were mostly official courtesans registered under the Bureau of Music, talented and beautiful, with even someone like Ye Liuchun, a true reigning courtesan, among them — scholars across the entire capital held her in high regard.

But North Street was near the docks, and the neighborhoods and alleys there were mostly filled with laborers. In pleasure houses like the Heart of Fragrance House, women whose families had been ruined, who’d been sold off to earn money, or who were drowning in debt, were everywhere.

It was already a chaotic, disorderly place to begin with, so the register of courtesans there wasn’t kept nearly as carefully as in the central districts. Aside from what was recorded in the register, the madam knew nothing at all about Gu Xianghui.

Afterward, Zhou Tan went on to interrogate three or four more people connected to the Heart of Fragrance House. Since this case had been transferred over from the capital prefecture by verbal decree from above, to show it was being taken seriously, both he and Liang An conducted the interrogations personally.

Qu You was settled in the back hall of the Ministry of Justice, where she read through the madam’s statement.

She had earlier changed into the robes of a minor clerk, and fearing Liang An might recognize her, she hadn’t gone in to listen to the interrogations.

Besides her, there was another young man in the back hall dressed in the same style of clothing, looking to be barely in his twenties, who struck up an enthusiastic conversation with her. “Brother, I haven’t seen you before — did Lord Zhou just recruit you?”

“That’s right,” Qu You said noncommittally.

The man went on, undeterred. “I was sent here by my father to work under Lord Liang. I’ve only been here a month myself, but I’ve got more seniority than you. My name’s Li Hongyu — if you don’t mind, just call me Elder Brother. Ah, what luck, running into a case like this right when we’ve just started — I heard…”

He kept chattering away behind her, but Qu You found herself drawn to a snow-white folding screen standing before her.

The screen was made of fine rice paper, entirely plain and white, except for a few lines of writing scattered across the panel facing her. Finding it curious, she casually asked, “Little Brother Li, why doesn’t this screen have any printed pattern on it?”

“Oh, that,” the man said, eager to explain. “You wouldn’t know this, would you — this screen was originally evidence. A criminal murdered someone and replaced the screen panels to cover up the bloodstains, but traces of blood were left on the wooden frame. The man’s already in prison. Three months ago, when Lord Zhou first came to the Ministry of Justice and had everyone tidy up the place, this got pulled out and set aside here temporarily — meant to be disposed of eventually. But that very night, someone wrote a poem on it.”

“Oh? Who wrote the poem?”

“Ha! That poem got the whole Ministry of Justice talking, but I’m a rough sort myself, I can’t make heads or tails of it.” Li Hongyu scratched his head and grinned sheepishly. “Quite a few of the brothers here, and even a rare few of the sisters who guard female prisoners, started coming to the back hall often after that, writing on this screen. That’s how I learned about it, actually. The one who wrote the first poem started responding to them too — everyone calls him ‘Master White Snow.’ They say he’s an extraordinarily good person, able to comfort anyone’s troubled heart with just a few words.”

Qu You listened with great interest. “So why is the screen blank now?”

Li Hongyu answered, “Master White Snow hasn’t come by in a long while. Some guess it’s because the previous screen got completely filled up with writing, and he couldn’t find any space left to write on, so he hurried off and swapped it for a new one. Sure enough, not long after, Master White Snow wrote a poem on this one — but it’s missing its final line. The regulars who couldn’t complete it themselves have been puzzling over it lately, and nobody’s dared to write anything else on it rashly in the meantime.”

Qu You walked up to the screen and fixed her eyes on the modestly sized lines of writing.

Master White Snow’s handwriting was an elegant, delicate regular script, striking against the backdrop of the Ministry of Justice’s back hall, which still faintly carried the smell of blood.

“Clear bamboo, snow blanketing all, and nothing amiss / Racing my horse, sword in hand, through this small corner of the world / A blue-robed newcomer pours out fresh wine / A white-haired elder lights a candle over old letters / Might I hear the sound of spring snow through three months of spring / No longer able to hear virtuous words, laughing in old Gusu / What remains of this humble, wasted life is only watching the sun pass by…”

She read the lines slowly, and privately gave a small nod of admiration.

Whoever this person was, they clearly had some real literary talent — the poem was no less accomplished than the works of several great masters of this dynasty, and yet it hadn’t survived into the historical record; she’d never come across it before.

Who was Master White Snow?

Qu You’s first thought went to Zhou Tan, but this poem wasn’t in the Collection of Spring and Sandalwood. And Zhou Tan was so cold and aloof, so far above ordinary matters — surely he wouldn’t do something like this.

“This screen… can anyone write on it?”

“Sure, sure, want to add the last line, brother? There’s brush and ink over there,” Li Hongyu said, and seeing her still fixed on the screen, turned and headed toward the front hall. “Go ahead, make yourself at home. I’ll go check if Lord Liang needs anything.”

“All right,” Qu You murmured vaguely.

She picked up the brush and ink from the desk and, at the end of that poem, added a final line.

“…Might I hear the sound of spring snow through three months of spring / No longer able to hear virtuous words, laughing in old Gusu / What remains of this humble, wasted life is only watching the sun pass by / Better to return south to till the fields, and rise early to tend the lotus with a hoe.”

Qu You had always been quite fond of traditional culture — she’d studied calligraphy for nearly ten years, and had a broad grounding in literature, history, and philosophy, enough to manage composing a line herself, however roughly. She genuinely loved this poem, but once she’d finished adding her own line, something about it felt slightly off.

Master White Snow’s poetry carried a note of sorrow and grief even amid the clear, bright imagery he described, while the line she’d added felt too open and carefree in spirit, a bit out of step with what came before.

But the original lines were so steeped in desolation and loneliness — she hoped that if he ever saw her line, it might at least give him some small comfort.

Qu You sighed at the verse, then found her thoughts drifting back to the madam’s utterly worthless statement, and then to that flash of suspicion she’d felt the day before, upon first learning Gu Xianghui’s surname.

Zhou Tan… was the treacherous minister recorded in the history books.

She had studied history, and of course she knew better than to take the histories entirely at face value, understanding that any person had to be judged from multiple sides. But these past few days of contact with him had, she suspected, already left some subtle impression taking shape in her subconscious about who Zhou Tan really was.

Perhaps he was that treacherous minister — but perhaps he wasn’t quite so terrible after all.

Yet he’d done nothing particularly notable either way, treating her with cold indifference, barely bothering to respond to her half the time. That woman had clearly recognized Zhou Tan; his suspicion in this matter ran quite high — so why did some part of her keep trying, in her own mind, to absolve him of guilt?

Following this line of thought, Qu You considered it further: if Zhou Tan really was one of the people who had persecuted Gu Xianghui — or perhaps hadn’t directly persecuted her, but had simply turned a blind eye while powerful men toyed with her — then after Gu Xianghui’s death, with him in charge of the investigation, all it would take was the slightest gesture on his part, and no matter what scandal might come to light, it could all be pressed down and buried entirely — exactly as recorded in the unofficial histories.

It was a perfectly reasonable line of reasoning. And yet she still felt, somehow, that Zhou Tan wouldn’t do such a thing.

Qu You stood there lost in scattered thoughts, then suddenly looked up and noticed a silhouette behind the thin panel of the screen.

Zhou Tan was standing quietly at the threshold — there was no telling how long he’d been there.

Seeing her come back to herself, he stepped closer, and upon noticing the handwriting she’d added to the screen, paused faintly in surprise.

“When did you come out — is the questioning all finished?” Qu You coughed, pushing down her tangled thoughts. “Oh, have you seen this before? Who is Master White Snow?”

“Mm,” Zhou Tan answered her question, then glanced sideways at the screen and said coldly, “How would I know who it is. It’s the same tired clichés, moaning over nothing.”

Though he called it moaning over nothing, he had never once had the screen taken away.

Qu You felt she’d already grown quite familiar with his two-faced way of doing things.

She walked around the screen, changing the subject. “Did you find anything useful?”

“The thugs and errand boys at the Heart of Fragrance House kept their mouths shut tight, said nothing at all. But the beggars and vagrants in front of the establishment recognized the man surnamed Yan,” Zhou Tan said. “He was the deceased’s lover. I had someone sketch a rough portrait based on their descriptions.”

So Northern Yin already had this kind of portrait-sketching technique!

Qu You took the scroll of paper from his hand, puzzled. “How did they know his surname was Yan?”

“The errand boys at the entrance all called him Young Master Yan. Young Master Yan usually arrived by carriage, rarely on foot, and only ever brought the woman surnamed Gu — so it’s assumed he was her lover.”

Qu You nodded and looked down at the sketch. “Um… isn’t this a bit too rough?”

There was only clothing sketched, no face.

“This is a round-collared official’s robe, with a jade hat ornament, and occasionally a standing-collar cloak,” Zhou Tan said, pointing. “Not many people dress this way — but I find it strangely familiar.”

Following his description, Qu You made sense of the rough sketch, and realized she recognized it too. “Ah — he’s… someone from the Court of Judicial Review?!”

Author’s Note:

A shared hobby of Little Zhou and Little Qu: laboring away at writing poetry (and me? Just mindlessly cheering them on!)