The physician's archive lay behind the east infirmary, housed in a room so damp the mold had its own scent. Officially, only medics with seal permits could enter.
Unofficially, no one cared if a servant slipped inside, so long as she didn't stay long enough to be remembered.
I stayed exactly thirteen minutes.
I had to walk past four rows of crumbling scrolls before I found the right section: treatments and prescriptions for the inner court. I looked for the gaps first, not the content. Missing records leave fingerprints, if you know how to read the dust.
There was a space between volumes 83 and 85.
Volume 84 was gone.
That was the ledger.
I scanned the surrounding entries.
Volume 83—"Medicinal Herbs Ordered by Imperial Concubines"
Volume 85—"Post-Surgical Observations: Failed Trials (Confidential Access Only)"
I narrowed my eyes.
Why would a single volume disappear between those two?
I leaned lower, fingers brushing the shelf edge and that's when I saw it:
A thin red silk thread, caught in the corner between volumes 85 and the back wall.
Fine, almost invisible. Dyed richly, expensive. Not from a medic's robe.
Someone who wasn't a physician had been here.
And they had taken Volume 84.
As I backed away, I passed a writing desk stacked with unused paper. One corner had a soot stain, as if a lamp had burned too close.
But no lamp sat there now.
Only a faint outline of ash… and the unmistakable crease of something once hidden there.
A page had been torn.
Burned, perhaps. Or saved.
And someone wanted the rest of us to believe it never existed.
I left before my shadow could be counted.
But as I stepped into the courtyard, I caught a scent barely there. Sweet. Faintly metallic.
Cinnabar ink.
Fresh.
And someone watching from the second-floor corridor above.