Shen Bao found it in three days.
Three days was fast, even for him. He was a man who prided himself on being thorough, which usually meant careful and slow. But the crane watermark had given him something rare in our line of work: a tangible, physical detail that could not be faked or explained away. Paper mills registered their watermarks with the Guild of Merchants. It was a matter of law. And the Guild, unlike the Ministry of Revenue, was not yet compromised.
He came to me just before midday on the third day, as I was sitting at my desk reviewing the household ledgers. The numbers were still steady—whatever disruption was happening in the legal realm had not yet begun to affect our commercial relationships—but I could feel the tension in each column of figures, a kind of breathless quality, like the pause before a storm.
Shen Bao placed a folded sheet of paper on the desk in front of me. He did not speak. He simply watched me unfold it.
