“Empress Cixi was a woman on a mission, but onlookers in the palace gardens would not have guessed this from the delicate footsteps she took in her silk shoes. The scroll Cixi had recently received from her Spy Chief was tucked into a sleeve of her fur-trimmed robe. A dragon was embroidered on its back. As she gripped the message, the Empress remembered she hadn’t paid her usual morning visit to her baby son Zaichun and his wet nurse yet. It would simply have to wait.”

From ‘The Lost Magician’ – included in the showcase