The wolves answered the light with distance and promise.
The promise sat under every word at the exchange corner.
"Queue here," Gao Fei said, and the empty air learned to be a line. He had a voice that put a hand on your shoulder without touching you. He Qiang stood half a step back and to the right, all patient knuckles.
Wang Lili planted a scrap of plywood on two crates and clipped a page to it: Ration Ledger - Public. She'd drawn columns so straight they could carry weight. Names, tents, counts; receipts pinned with bits of wire that were also promises.
"Maintenance one percent," Gao told a quiet man with a bandage ear, low enough to sound like mercy. "Keeps the table up."
"One percent of what?" Lili asked, pen waiting.
"Of the waste we're preventing," Gao said, smile warm.
"Numbers," Lili said, and her smile was a calm refusal to be charmed.
Wang eased to the side of the table where people pretend not to watch math. He counted how many coins fear minted in a minute. He listened to the move, not the words.
"Three crystals," a woman said. "My boy's cough - antiseptic if there's -"
"Tokens," Gao said, naming a rate that hid a small river in a bend. He wrote a receipt with a flourish and handed it to her before Lili's pen could reach. He Qiang's palm settled like a paperweight near the tray; not touching, reminding.
"Post it," Lili said, snipping the receipt from Gao's fingers with a graceful theft and pinning it to her board. She wrote his math beside it in plainer numbers - what came in; what went out; who touched it.
Gao's smile put a second hand on a second shoulder. "Mademoiselle Ledger, we're a team."
"We are," Lili said. "Teams use the same numbers."
A man tried to slide from the side with two crystals cupped like a small apology. He Qiang redirected him so gently it felt like kindness and became ownership.
Wang drew a breath and bought a problem.
"Odd numbers," he said conversationally, laying eleven crystals on the tray in a little stack that made counters itch. "Split purchase, two receipts." He tapped the board. "One for water filters, one for canvas and twine. Different tents, different hands."
Gao liked hard problems the way a cat likes a moving string. "Of course." His smile widened by a single molecule. He named two rates that looked like siblings but weren't. The excess from the first could roll into the second and be called efficiency on one page and maintenance on another.
"Receipt one," Gao said, sliding the paper over. "Receipt two," and the numbers did a soft trick.
"Post," Lili said, and pinned both. She wrote the effective per-crystal rate in small neat script beneath each. She drew a faint arrow where the two receipts kissed and one number tried to step into the other's shoes.
Old Ma shuffled closer, hands like shovels folded neat. "Read it to me," he said, not because he couldn't read - because people listen better when words travel a certain route.
"Here," Lili said, touching the first receipt. "Eleven in. Five to filter. Four to canvas and twine. This 'one percent' would be" - she did the math out loud, quick - "a little, if it were one percent of the total. But here it's one percent of each transaction plus the difference he calls efficiency - so three percents and a float."
"Float?" Old Ma said.
"Money that forgets where it came from," Lili said. "Wants to go where it's told."
Gao's smile didn't flinch. "And it needs a place to go: tape, twine, lamp oil. My table didn't walk here."
"Then call it table fee, not maintenance," Wang said, mild. He kept his voice in the shallow water where no one drowns. "Post it as a number. Choose if we want it. Right now it's a word that does math when we aren't looking."
A small crowd had formed without meaning to: the wounded who couldn't sleep yet, the helpful who didn't know what to do with their hands, the curious who wanted the flavor of control on their tongues.
Li Jianguo arrived like a sentence that ends arguments by changing the subject to work. He didn't take Gao's spot or Lili's. He stood where they could both see him and where the line could keep being a line.
"Problem?" he asked, and the word wasn't a challenge; it was a box to put the noise in.
"No problem," Gao said smoothly. "We're smoothing edges."
"Edges don't skim," Lili said, matter-of-fact. "Proposal: No fees tonight. Board shows crystal → token rate. Two signatures: giver and counter. If we want a table fee, we vote in daylight and post it."
Gao put his palms up - friendliness. He Qiang's shoulders shifted - annoyance. "I can live with that tonight," Gao said, and shaped tonight like a hinge he planned to close later. "We all want speed."
"Speed is fine," Lili said. "Speed that adds numbers without names makes graves."
Someone laughed and regretted it. The laugh didn't spread.
Wang let See Through Hearts brighten by a notch. Gao Fei tasted like predator who prefers applause to blood. He Qiang tasted like hunger that learned a job. Around them: Relief that someone else was watching the store.Resentment that would buy anything to make fear quieter.Three people who'd sell line spots for food within the hour if allowed.
"Public tokens," Wang said, as if he were thinking aloud and not closing doors. "Numbered. Two colors: white for food/meds, blue for tents/gear. Board lists each color's rate. If a token changes color, it dies."
Old Ma grunted approval, the sound iron makes when it likes a nail. "Numbers that shame themselves if they wander."
Gao's smile tucked a fraction inward. "Where do we get two colors of -"
Lili already had a blue marker from somewhere. She dragged a neat line through half the stack of chits. "There. Dyes later. For now, ink and shame."
"Receipts go here," Li Jianguo said, tapping the board, adopting the rule to keep the peace and make it fact. "Counters" - he looked at Gao - "keep your table. Lili posts totals every half hour. Anyone claiming a priority line or a private rate tonight can explain it to me in front of the board."
He didn't look at He Qiang when he said it, which made the looking louder.
"Of course," Gao said, all compliance. He turned to the line with a technician's cheer. "Filters are back in stock; keep boiling anyway. Antiseptic in singles - don't hoard. Tents… limited. We're prioritizing injuries and families with small kids." He said we're so that the line would feel like a committee and not a hand in their pockets.
Wang eased out of the inner ring, back toward the clinic patch and the kid cluster. He placed two antiseptic pouches where Dr. Zhang's elbow would be in thirty seconds. He set a second filter by the water bin. He left a canvas roll near the palisade pile where Rana would find it and call it hers. He didn't mention that his 73 cores would make bigger purchases later; he didn't mention that 73 crystals slept under grass; he didn't mention he had a furnace in his chest that could turn wolves into medicine. He left tokens on the table like bait and watched to see if anyone tried to move them with their eyes.
The line moved like a tired river. Receipts accrued to Lili's board like barnacles that told the truth. Twice He Qiang started to become a wall; twice Li Jianguo was a stronger idea of a wall and the muscle became a door instead.
"Blue tokens only for tents," Lili repeated, mild as rain. A man tried to trade a white for canvas; she tapped the rule with the back of her pen and looked at him until he liked it. A woman tried to "borrow" a token and promised to bring it back better; Lili wrote no so neatly the word looked like a friend you could trust.
Wang bought silence with usefulness.
"Twine?" Sun Jing asked without asking, eyes on a child who gnawed worry like a seed."Two spools," Wang said, and a minute later there were two loops across the children's corner in heights that caught a running body by the shoulders, not the throat. The little girl with the paper star tested them with a solemnity that made three adults breathe again.
"Name?" she asked Wang.
"Not tonight," he said, and she accepted that as if it were a real name.
Under the lamps, Old Ma read the board out loud every so often in his gravel voice. It wasn't for the illiterate; it was for the tempted. "Here: eleven in, nine out; no fee; no float. Here: five in, four out; one kept for clinic - posted. That's how you make a thing belong."
Gao counted the crowd and adjusted his smile by degrees. He Qiang started a tiny priority lane with his shoulders - just a nudge, just for the injured, just because he could. Li Jianguo drifted into that space without accusation, handed the injured woman at the head a token himself, and the lane learned its manners.
The wolves' chorus bent closer - not a charge; a mapping, Wang's mind translated. Count the lights. Count the soft places. Teach the young what walls taste like. The big gray changed tempo twice to see which heartbeat in the square would flinch at which rhythm.
Wang carried that rhythm like a coin on his tongue and worked.
"Every half hour," Lili told the line, tapping the board. "Total posted. If you see a number forget where it came from, call my name."
"What's your name?" someone asked, genuinely.
"Lili," she said. "Ledger Lili if that helps."
The name caught like a burr in friendly cloth. People began to use it without asking permission.
A rough hand pinched a token from the tray and tried to let the crowd carry it away. He Qiang's fingers closed over the thief's wrist with care that promised pain later. Wang took one step left and cut the angle between them without becoming a participant; Li Jianguo stepped in three beats later, making it an administrative correction instead of a muscle one. The token found its way back to the tray; the wrist found its way back to the arm without a bruise.
Wang breathed and didn't look outwardly at Gao Fei. In his head he wrote: Predator who prefers applause to blood. In his pocket he wrote: Keep odd numbers odd; make floats announce themselves.
The lamps burned lower and became decisions. The wok at the boil became background prayer. The board filled. The square learned how to own a rule.
Then the sound came through the noise - too thin for most throats to catch, tuned to one kind of ear.
aoo - aoo - aoo, high and soft, like a puppy that has found a hole in a fence and wants someone small to follow.
Half the adults didn't hear it. Half the children did.
The little girl with the paper star stood on her toes without meaning to, eyes turned toward the gate. The smallest boy in Sun Jing's cluster twisted his fingers in the twine and leaned.
Pup. Lost. Come, the cry sang in Beast-Tongue, which had never been taught to Wang and still sat in him like another sense. Soft ones. Come now.
His head turned before he told it to.
"Stay rope," Sun Jing said, palm gentle on two small shoulders - she heard the children, not the cry.
The aoo threaded the lamps again, a silver needle of noise.
Two steps. The boy took two steps the way a magnet takes a nail.
Wang moved before the third.