The Empress Who Balanced the Ledger
Chapter 4 · free to read
The practice-sheet led us to the annex — where the palace keeps the hands that copy scripture, decrees, and, it seemed, other people's crimes.
Row on row of me. My slant, my pressure, my one secret hook — copied by a hand that was not free to refuse.
We found her in the last stall. Little Reed, the annex called her — a copyist who could not speak, only write. She could not scream for help. So no one had ever come.
She wrote what she could not say. That they held her family. That she copied my hand or watched them starve. And then, trembling, she wrote something she was never meant to give me.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.