At first all goes well. You bury the coffin in an unremarked corner of the island. With the gold you can give your daughter her dowry and she marries her love. For a time all goes well and then things fall apart. Your daughter discovers that her new husband is indifferent to her and is miserably unhappy. Worse, there is an annual ceremony in which the Emperor and The Listeners to Ancestral Voices visit the Island of the Dead so that the Imperial Ancestors may offer the Emperor their wisdom and advice. During the ceremony one of the officials notices the unofficial burial. There is a great furor.

In the end it is decided that since the nobleman's father was buried on the Island of the Dead he must have been Emperor at some point. Accordingly the Imperial Annals are revised to show that he was Emperor for a day. You are removed from your post. All references to your family in the Annals are removed; it is as though your family had never been. A new ferryman is appointed and the Annals are revised to show that he and his ancestors have always been the ferryman. When all of this is accomplished you are torn apart by wild beasts.