The ascent through the upper tiers of the Thousand Treasures Pavilion was a climb through the deserted wreckage of a fallen mercantile dynasty.
Lin Tao and Tie Shan climbed the wide hardwood stairs. Their boots splashed through the dropping streams of clear Precursor water that cascaded down the rosewood steps like an indoor waterfall. Along the sixth, seventh, and eighth-floor galleries, the fancy private showrooms lay abandoned. Display cases were smashed, silk tapestries torn from the walls, and drawers of counterfeit promissory notes dumped across the wet carpets by fleeing clerks and dishonest junior appraisers.
Everywhere lay the evidence of hasty flight. Scattered account books, broken inkstones, dropped bags of copper bits, and half-packed chests of stitched silk robes littered the halls. The great merchant houses that had ruled the river for a century had scattered like rats before the flood.
On the eighth floor, in the private executive safe hall of the trade ring’s chief accountant, an iron safe had been hastily pried open with a crowbar. Inside lay stacks of secret ledgers bound in blue sharkskin—records documenting three decades of covert payoffs to country court inspectors and sect elders. Lin Tao paused for five heartbeats, affixing an official trial wax seal to the safe’s door. Every scrap of paper would be entered into the state evidence ledger.
