The mist over the Suzhou Canal began to dissipate in the morning light. Shen Qingya stood on the riverbank, kneading a piece of melted beeswax between her fingertips. The wax was sticky and carried a scorched, bitter scent of burnt pine, as if it had been scraped off some sealed container.
She looked up at the water. A few early-rising fishing boats drifted slowly past. The boatmen, wrapped in rain capes, exhaled clouds of white mist that mingled with the river fog, making it hard to tell where the men ended and their shadows began.
"Miss Shen, take a look at this." Old Zhou squatted beside the corpse, using tweezers to extract a small scrap of dark red paper from the victim's collar. "It looks like a ticket soaked through by the water."
Chapter 89