Only one thing was truly on my mind: Xiao Kai's family. Every moment we waited was another moment an old man toiled in desperate conditions, as my earlier visit to Lord Feng's iron mine did not leave me optimistic about the conditions there. Say nothing of the rest of her family which was enslaved and likely suffering in their own version of hell.

  So I had already put Toothman Yao to work. My inquiry was simple and the pay was heavy: I wanted to know where the Chen case files were located within the Ministry of Justice.

  Xiao Qi could handle the day to day of our burgeoning businesses, in a way it put him out of harm's way for the next stage of our plan, and as before any business could serve as an alibi for something we did together, after all he worked like two people put together.

  For her part Xiao Kai diligently rebuilt her strength, her injured leg now showing no signs of weakness. We'd already gone over her role, and she took it on with conviction. She trained diligently daily, toughening her mind and her body. Steeling herself for what was to come.

  It took him weeks. But suddenly, Yao requested an urgent, private meeting. He arrived at our courtyard gate himself, no longer bundled in winter furs but in a fine, brocaded spring robe, his sharp eyes gleaming with the thrill of purveying high-stakes information.

  "Master Zhang," he said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. I was honestly shocked at how much he seemed to be enjoying himself. "Your inquiry was a deep and dangerous well, but I have drawn water from it."

  He leaned in, his expression serious. "The original evidence and memorials from the Chen Huarong case are not kept in the main Imperial Archives. They were deemed too sensitive. They are stored in a secondary, high-security repository within the Ministry's own compound. A place they called the 'Silent Pavilion.'" I produced a map of Chang'an and he indicated its location.

  He shook his head, a gesture of profound respect for the obstacle. "Access is, for all intents and purposes, impossible. The Pavilion is guarded day and night by the Ministry's own elite wardens, men chosen for their loyalty and martial skill."

  He paused, letting the difficulty of the task sink in before revealing the opportunity.

  "However… I have learned that once a month, on the night of the full moon, the Chief Archivist personally retrieves specific files for review by the Minister himself. During this time, the seals on the main vault are broken, and the inner sanctum is accessible for a very brief period."

  He looked at me, his eyes shining with the value of his intelligence. I tipped him handsomely.

  I turned to Xiao Kai, dressed as she had been for weeks now in a simple, rough, and increasingly dirty cloth robe. "This is what we've been waiting for. The next full moon will be in three days' time."

  The next day a poor, middle aged clerk too poor to buy his shūtóng shoes, stumbled on a cane around the outer wall of the Ministry of Justice. We noted that the walls were high, but the pavilion itself was a mere three paces from the outer wall. It was non-descript and had Yao not pointed it out I would never have noticed its importance.

  Around it was a small market, consisting of shops of more discretionary goods for well off scholars. And the houses of the well off. The closest structure to the wall was the house tower of some elite, three stories tall, overlooking a view of Chang'an spread out below.

  Xiao Kai stood before me later that night, her posture straight. The last of the girl's uncertainty was gone, replaced by the quiet, waiting stillness I hoped was merely for the task at hand.

  "This isn't going to be easy," I began, my voice low and serious. "The Silent Pavilion is a fortress within a fortress. And I do not have the skills to infiltrate it." I didn't even have the skills to leap over the compound walls.

  I looked her directly in the eye, my gaze steady.

  "It should be you. It has to be you. This is for your father's name. My role in this is to be the storm, the thunder that draws the eyes of the guards. It is all I can do to ensure their attention is not on the shadow that slips past them in the chaos."

  Her eyes, which had held so much sorrow, now burned with a clear, white-hot fire of pure purpose. Her hand came to rest on the hilt of the dark-bladed jiàn I had given her. She gave a characteristic sharp, decisive nod.

  "I understand, Scholar Zhang," she said, her voice steady and she met my gaze, her own unwavering, without a trace of fear.

  I pulled out a plain tunic, similar to the one she had worn when we met on the road so many moons ago, one I had spent some time preparing, already torn, stained, and covered in soot. I held out the tattered, dirt-stained garment.

  "To review, this is the first step," I said, my voice felt heavy and I felt like I was imposing a burden. "You must appear as they would expect, as you were when I first met you."

  Battered, and unkempt. That was the official description of the fugitive daughter of Chen Huarong. It was why she'd trained for weeks before, toughening herself again after the months of comfortable recovery. She'd offered to starve herself too, but Xiao Qi pointed out it'd weaken her, and my plan relied in part on her face.

  "I will assault the Pavilion directly. Rest assured, I am only there to buy you time and will retreat as soon as you find what you need. When you have the documents, you will take them directly to Censor Wang's manor and beg him to reopen the case." I couldn't bring myself to look her in the eye as I delivered the hardest part of the plan. "You will allow yourself to be captured. You will likely face great suffering until your father's case is overturned. Censor Wang will protect you however he can, but there is a legal limit to his reach."

  I finally forced myself to meet her gaze, searching her expression for any sign of fear, for the natural instinct to recoil from the promise of pain and imprisonment. I kinda wished I could see something.

  There was none.

  "It will be a story that tugs at the heartstrings," I continued, my voice low. "A noble, good man's beautiful daughter, who went through hell and back to get a chance to prove his innocence. That must be the narrative. Layla is already seeding the teahouses with the tale; street performers are fermenting it as we speak."

  Xiao Kai looked from the ragged cloth to my face, and her expression was one of absolute, terrifying clarity. She understood the plan not just tactically, but thematically. She saw the terrible, poetic symmetry of it.

  She took the tunic from my hands without a word.

  "A story," she said, her voice low and steady, without a single tremor. "They used a false story of corruption to destroy him. We will use a true story of a daughter's loyalty to save him."

  She held the tattered cloth, her knuckles white. "Suffering is a currency I have grown accustomed to. If my pain can be used to purchase his freedom, I will spend it freely."

  Her mind had already moved past the fear and onto the execution of the mission. She looked at me, her eyes now focused on the practical details. "The documents," she said, her tone crisp and professional. "The vault will be full of scrolls. I will have only moments inside. How will I know which ones are the most critical to his case?"

  "Your father was a good and meticulous man," I said, the assumption feeling more like a certainty. "If there is any inconsistency, it will be in the very ledgers that condemned him. Look for evidence of wealth that was never found, because it never existed. Merchant Zhu has already confirmed this to the Censor; you are retrieving the physical evidence to prove his testimony."

  She listened, her expression hardening into one of absolute focus. "The official ledgers," she repeated, her voice a steady whisper, committing the target to memory. She gave a sharp, decisive nod. "I have what I need."

  She turned without another word and padded her way back to her own quarters.

  Xiao Kai underwent a grim transformation. She stopped bathing. She allowed her fine, silken hair to become a tangled, greasy mess. She rubbed dust and ash into her skin and into the tattered tunic. She practiced moving like a skittish, half-starved street urchin.

  Finally, the night of the full moon arrived, cold and brilliant. A perfect, silver disk hung in the cloudy spring sky, bathing the rooftops of Chang'an in an ethereal, ghostly light. Xiao Kai stood before me at the courtyard gate. She looked battered again, her face smudged with grime, her clothes little more than rags, and her shoes left behind. The dark steel sword was strapped to her back, wrapped in more dirty cloth, and a single, slim firework rocket was tucked into her sash.

  I, in turn, wore the simple, featureless mask of dark wood and flowing robes of dark-green silk. At my side was my original, trusty jiàn. I was Black Wind Sword.

  With a final, shared nod in the darkness of a side alley, we split apart, two ghosts moving on separate, converging paths. She melted into the shadows, a small, ragged figure making her way toward the southern wall of the Ministry of Justice compound.

  I, on the other hand, walked with a deliberate purpose toward the main gate. Near the compound, I unhitched a light, collapsible ladder I had stashed and, with the quiet, mundane effort of a man not trained in the flying arts of qīnggōng, I climbed to the ornate rooftop of a tower building directly opposite the Silent Pavilion. I knew it to be empty, but still I was careful as I pulled the ladder up behind me before setting it up again to get me to the next floor. The tower's owners being distant JieDuShi far from Chang'an meant I wasn't expecting to be distracted.

  I settled myself on the main ridge beam, a perfect, dramatic silhouette against the brilliant, full moon. The Silent Pavilion, stark, immense, and windowless, stood before me like a tomb. I felt for the taut rope I had prepared just after dusk.

  I brought a simple bamboo Xiao, a kind of vertical flute to my lips. I knew only one song, and my weeks of lessons with Layla's musicians were about to pay off.