The autumn rain of the twenty-third year of Wanli was heavy with the scent of tung oil as Shen Xitang’s leather boots trod across the blue-brick grounds of the Hangzhou Textile Bureau. Three bloated corpses lay splayed beside the stone gutter outside the dye house. The one on the far right had its fingers tightly clenched around a scrap of Suzhou embroidery; the gold-threaded dragon pattern was missing its right eye, yet the stitching was clearly the work of the Imperial Household Department’s Directorate of Palace Accoutrements.
Xiao Heng’s scabbard pushed aside the collar of a corpse, revealing blue-black ligature marks on the neck. "An escort officer from the Suzhou Textile Bureau, dead in a government-run dye house in Hangzhou..." He suddenly used the tip of his blade to flip the scrap upward. "This missing-eyed dragon pattern is identical to the one on the ceremonial robe lost during the Prince of Lu’s move to his fiefdom last year."
The manager of the dye house trembled as he handed over the ledger. "These three were escorting this year’s tribute silks last night—eighty-four bolts of cloud brocade, twenty bolts of Song brocade, and..." Before he could finish, a sound of shattering earthenware came from the direction of the warehouse, and the pungent reek of saltpeter, mingled with the acrid stench of burning silk, billowed toward them.
Chapter 138