Chapter 1
Character's introduction:
LIAN - The Edict Reader: Age: 20. Position: Low-ranking eunuch of the Imperial Secretariat. The one who reads the Emperor’s midnight edicts. Secret: He cannot read. Not really. Since he was cut at 17, his tongue was shortened. He memorizes the shape of words, not their meaning. If a new edict comes, he will die. He has survived 3 years by having a little maid read to him in secret. What he wants: To live long enough to find out who had him cut. Trademark: Dark indigo robes, soft cloud slippers that make no sound, and a court smile that makes younger eunuchs flinch.
WEN YU - The Forger: Age: 22 Position: A former Hanlin Academy scholar, top of his class, now rotting in the Cold Palace archive because he corrected the emperor's poem. Secret: He can copy ANY handwriting after seeing it once. Seals, memorials, even the Emperor’s private seal. He forges pardons every night, not to escape, but to remember what freedom looked like on paper. What he wants: One hot meal and for someone to return his shoes. He is always barefoot to save his only good pair. Trademark: Faded blue robe, ink on his cheek even when asleep, barefoot, calls everyone a rat until they prove otherwise.
SIR MITE (Lord Mite)—The True Emperor of Cold Palace. Species: Fat orange palace cat, former Imperial Kitchen cat, now self-appointed landlord of the archive. Likes: Sitting on forged edicts, judging Lian, stealing Wen Yu’s buns. Dislikes: Rats, cold, people who don’t feed him. Will play a very important role in Chapter 3.
The Cold Palace archive has no fire, no coal, and no hope. But tonight, it has two people who should never have met and one cat who thinks they are both idiots.
The archive door creaks even when there is no wind. Some say it’s the ghosts of burned books. Wen Yu says it’s just bad carpentry. Lian knows it’s because someone else is always listening.
CHAPTER 1: The Archive of Cold Palace
The library of the Cold Palace had no fire.
That was the first rule. The second was that no one spoke above a whisper. The third, unwritten but obeyed by everyone, including the rats, was that you did not enter unless you had already been forgotten.
It was summer outside. Even from beyond the high, crumbling walls of the Cold Palace, you could hear it—cicadas screaming in the imperial gardens, concubines laughing by the lotus pond, and the distant drums for the Double Fifth festival. The world was alive and sweating.
But in the archive where disgraced books went to die, the air was damp and years old and cold. It was a cold that lived in stone. Ink froze here in winter, cracking the inkstones. In summer, it just molded, growing a soft green fur if you did not grind it every day. The scrolls on the shelves were swollen with moisture, their titles bleeding.
Wen Yu was asleep with his face in a forgery.
He had not meant to sleep. He had meant to finish the pardon, then the grain tax memorial, then practice Minister Zhang’s seal three more times before dawn. The brazier beside him had no coal—had never had coal since he was moved here eight months ago—so his bare feet were tucked under his robe for warmth. His shoes, the only decent pair he still owned, were placed neatly by the empty brazier, soles up, so the damp would not rot them.
In his sleep, his brush had left a long, inky trail across his cheek.
Lian found him like that at the hour of the dog, when even the patrol eunuchs were too tired to walk properly, and the palace cats took over the corridors. He had come because Xiao Tao—the little palace maid who read his edicts to him, who was the only person in the palace who did not flinch at his silence—had a fever. Without her, tomorrow’s midnight reading in the Hall of Mental Cultivation would be his execution.
Lian could not read. Not the cursive edicts the emperor favored.
He was seventeen when he was cut and sent to the Imperial Secretariat. Twenty now. Three years of memorizing the shape of words without knowing their sound. He could copy an edict perfectly; he could recite the entire penal code from memory if you gave him the first line, but put a new memorial in front of him, and his mind went white.
He needed someone who could read without asking questions. He had been told by the laundry eunuch, for the price of half a silver hairpin, that there was a half-broken Hanlin in the cold archive who would read anything for a steamed bun.
What he found was not half-broken. Or rather, it was a very beautiful kind of broken.
A man in a faded blue robe slumped over a low table that was too low even for the Cold Palace. His hair, which had once been oiled and tied in the proper scholar’s topknot, was coming loose, a few strands stuck to his ink-stained cheek. Around him, the floor was a sea of paper. Not thrown, but arranged. In careful, desperate piles, like a city.
Lian moved without sound. His soft palace slippers made no noise on the damp stone. He picked one up.
It was a perfect copy of Minister Zhang’s memorial, seal and all. The seal was slightly heavy on the left side, exactly as Zhang’s was when he was drunk. Which he always was after noon.
Then another — the Grand Secretariat’s hand. The strokes are arrogant, the dots like knives.
Then another—an edict of pardon, with the Emperor’s private seal, the one kept in the sandalwood box that only three people had seen—copied so well Lian’s stomach dropped to his feet.
This was not calligraphy practice. This was a key to every locked door in the empire.
The sleeper breathed. A small, cold breath. Ink on his cheek moved.
Lian should have left. A forgery this good meant death for both of them if found together. A disgraced eunuch who could not read and a disgraced scholar who could fool the Emperor—the Censorate would have a poem about them before their heads hit the basket.
Instead, he knelt. His dark indigo robe, the color of the Imperial Secretariat, pooled around him. He was careful not to touch any paper.
And tapped the table once, lightly, with a fingernail.
Wen Yu woke like a startled cat.
He didn’t scream. That was the first thing Lian noticed. Most people screamed when woken in the Cold Palace. Wen Yu’s eyes went immediately to the papers, counting, then to Lian’s face, then to Lian’s robe—the dark indigo—and his whole body went still, coiling inward.
“You’re early,” Wen Yu said, his voice hoarse from disuse and cold. “The rats usually come later. To steal my paper.”
“I am not a rat,” Lian said. His voice was quiet. It always was. Since his tongue was cut short, he had learned to make every word count.
“You wear the shoes of one. Quiet ones.” Wen Yu’s eyes dropped. “Palace shoes. Soft soles. For listening at doors.”
Lian looked down. His palace slippers were indeed soft-soled, embroidered with a small, almost invisible cloud pattern. Wen Yu was barefoot, his feet pale and cold, his own shoes neatly placed by the brazier that had no coal. There was a strange dignity in it.
Lian lifted the pardon. The paper crackled.
“You practice your own pardon every night?” He held it so the seal caught the dim lamplight. “The phrasing is wrong, by the way. The Emperor never says ‘deeply moved by heaven.’ He says, ‘in accordance with heaven’s compassion.’ He thinks it makes him sound less weak.”
Wen Yu’s jaw tightened. He was handsome in the way poor scholars often are — not fed enough, but well-structured, like a statue left out in the rain. His lips were chapped from ink-licking. “It’s calligraphy practice.”
“It’s treason practice.”
“If you were going to report me, Eunuch, you would have called the guards already. You would have been rewarded. A bag of rice. Maybe two.”
Lian smiled.
It was his court smile, the one that made younger eunuchs flinch and older eunuchs look away. The one he had perfected in the Hall of Mental Cultivation while pretending to read.
“No,” Lian whispered, leaning forward just enough that Wen Yu could see the small, faded scar at the corner of his mouth. “I came to hire you.”
Wen Yu stared.
Outside, a cicada screamed and was immediately eaten by the cold.
[END OF CHAPTER 1]
Author’s Note: Welcome to the Cold Palace Archive. Do you think Lian should trust him? And what should Wen Yu charge—a bun or something more dangerous? Ch 2 drops in 3 days. Follow + vote so Sir Mite doesn’t eat the manuscript.
