The far whistle chirped once - left - attention, not alarm. Heads turned because the village had learned the shape of the sound.
"Square," Li Jianguo said, and people moved the way a book turns a page - not a scramble, a decision.
Lamps lifted. Crates slid inward. The corridor for the clinic held. The Ration Ledger - Public board took center with its small gravity - Wang Lili in front of it, pencil tucked behind her ear, plank ready. Old Ma sat on a crate at her left like a hinge.
"Totals," Lili said, clear and even. She posted fast: LAMPS: 17 out, 15 in, 2 burning. OIL RETURNS: 11 - token due 5. INJURIES: 6 minor, 1 moderate. WOLVES DOWN OUTSIDE WALL: 0. She wrote RUNNER BONUS - PLEDGE and the three names already there, then drew a box labeled TALLY AFTER NIGHT.
"Operations," Gao Fei said with a warmth that tried to be an invitation. He carried a crate like an idea that had just happened to him. He Qiang ghosted a half-step back, a polite thunderhead. Gao set the crate down and the crate became a table because he'd taught it the trick earlier. "We made it through the worst of the probes," he said, "thanks to heroes on the wall. To keep momentum, logistics needs one throat - mine - so we can act without tripping over our own virtue. Tokens and Store should centralize for speed."
Lili smiled without softness. "Speed has to fit through the board."
"Of course," Gao said, hands open. "Board is heart - operations are limbs."
"Limbs take orders from hearts," Old Ma observed. His voice made gravel into scripture.
Gao laughed as if blessed. "We have to be nimble - oil, rope, nails, runner pay. Let me pool tokens temporarily - we'll post after."
"Post during," Lili said. "Numbers that go for a walk get lonely and make bad friends."
Murmurs - tired, interested. People like to be part of arithmetic they can point to.
Wang eased into the circle of listeners and laid three white tokens and one blue on the lip of Gao's crate. "Here's a problem," he said mildly. "Four tokens - white for food/meds, blue for tents/gear. If I hand you all four and you buy lantern oil and canvas and antiseptic and tape - what happens to the blue when it touches oil?"
"Nothing," Lili said, pen poised. "Blue dies if it changes color."
Gao's smile didn't flicker. "We keep colors honest - but let me hold them while I buy. I'm not eating tokens."
"Eat is not the worry," Wang said. He slid the blue token a hair, so it touched the white stack without mixing. "It's float that bothers me." He turned to the near ring of faces. "Float is the coin that forgets which job it had."
"Examples," Li Jianguo said. He wasn't taking sides; he was making a lesson happen in front of a crowd so it would stick.
Wang broke the stack into two piles - three white, one blue - then separated one white and put it near Gao. "Say Gao buys oil at one rate and marks it up by maintenance - a percent that lives between lines. Then he buys canvas with the blue and charges a priority because tents feel urgent. Now you have a fee on food, a fee on light, and a fee on shelter - all called maintenance, all slightly different."
"You're saying I'm stealing," Gao said gently, as if consoling a child who had misused a word.
"I'm saying name the fee," Wang said. "If the village wants a table fee, write it on the board - rate and purpose - and nail it to the word fee so it can't call itself maintenance one hour and priority the next."
"Clarity is virtuous," Gao agreed at once. "So - fee, posted. Small. Temporary."
"Temporary means it leaves when asked," Lili said, and wrote FEE? on the board with a box next to it and VOTE AT DAYLIGHT underlined once. "Tonight - no fee. Posting live."
Gao adjusted a lantern so the light kissed his cheekbones the way honesty would have. "Live posting slows purchase windows."
"Live posting makes theft unromantic," Old Ma said, deadpan, and a smothered laugh traveled out and came back with more patience in it.
He Qiang leaned his knuckles on the table - not hard - enough to teach the wood about mass. "Ops needs decisiveness," he said for the first time, baritone smooth. "You want us fast - let us be fast. The board can follow."
"Board leads," Lili said. She wrote TOKEN FLOW on her plank, drew two arrows - white and blue - and boxes labeled IN and OUT, each with SIGNATURES: GIVER / COUNTER beneath. She dotted a small square TIME and left it empty so it would itch.
"Dual signatures," Wang said. "Giver and counter. Tokens numbered. Board shows where each went in the last half hour. If a token wanders, the number should miss it by name."
Gao nodded - a grand concession he could afford. "We can live with that - tonight. But after - in the day - vote me as Operations so I can keep these tables flowing."
"So moved," a tired man said, hoping for a shortcut to sleep. Three others nodded for the same reason.
"Public first," Li said. He pointed to the ring of faces. "Anyone against pre-assigning Operations?"
Wang Lili held her pencil over FEE? like a metronome. Old Ma did not blink. Sun Jing didn't look up from the rope and still managed to be present.
A woman with ash on her sleeves lifted a hand. "Against. If he wins a vote - fine. Not now - I didn't survive tonight to hand my kids to a smile."
Two more hands went up, one with a callus like stone, one with ink smudges. The square learned it wasn't fetched yet.
"Daylight vote," Li said. "Tonight - posted numbers. Gao - keep moving goods; your table writes to Lili's board."
"With pleasure," Gao said, pleasantly, as if he had just suggested it. "He Qiang - bring in the returns - oil first, then nails."
He Qiang straightened, annoyance shuttered behind a professional exhale. He lifted two empties, set them by Lili's plank to be tallied, then drifted into the line and began redistributing bodies with the minimal touch of a man who had once earned money for making crowds act like they'd agreed.
Wang watched the redistribution pattern - who moved, who wanted to be near power, who wanted to be near the board. He let See Through Hearts open a little, just enough to tag a man with a lopsided grin and quick fingers - trader who will invent urgency to sell speed. He tagged a woman whose voice had cut earlier - will police rules because it keeps her from crying. He closed the lens before it made him cruel.
"Seals," Lili said. "If we're pooling anything - we seal it." She raised two empty jars. "One for white tokens, one for blue. Token numbers posted on the board when dropped. Wax seal with two marks - mine and a random witness."
"Witness," Old Ma said, and pressed his thumbnail into warm wax like a signature that remembered hammers.
"Second witness," Wang said, and handed the wax to a teenager with rope burns. The boy pressed a rough X that would be hard to forge and looked taller afterward.
"Receipts," Gao said amiably, handing Lili a stack he had prepared that said OPERATIONS RECEIPT in crisp letters. "In triplicate."
"Board copy only," Lili said, and handed two back. "Your table keeps one; the village keeps the other. No private copies."
Gao laughed softly. "Trust issues - adorable. Fine."
"Words," Old Ma said. He pushed himself up on his crate, slow and sure, and read the board in his gravel voice so numbers would travel in a way shame could hear. "Oil out - names - back again - names. Tents - blue only. Food and med - white only. Fee? - empty box. Vote - daylight."
He paused and turned his head toward Gao Fei without malice. "Your name is long. You want it to fit in a line that belongs to all of us."
"Of course," Gao said, bowing slightly as if someone had just introduced him to a very patient door.
A small flurry at the edge - two men murmuring fast, one reaching for a token like a reflex he hadn't trained out. He Qiang appeared with a palm that closed without bruising and put the token back on the table the way you put a child's hand back on the rope. "Not your turn," he said. It sounded like he was practicing being useful.
"Board," Lili reminded, and the token got its number in public and learned to behave.
Wang set the three whites and the blue where everyone could see them, then counted them into Lili's jar one by one so that faces could own the sound. Numbers do better when they have ears.
"Now," Gao said, tone a touch brighter, "Operations proposes a runner pay of one white per three laps along the wall - signed by Lili on completion. I'll front the liquid tonight - tokens to be settled from daylight vote."
"Board," Lili said, and added RUNNER PAY → 1 WHITE / 3 LAPS - DUE AFTER NIGHT - SIGN: LILI. Four runners in earshot straightened. Two signed beneath the pledge box to be sure.
"Clip the laps," Wang said, and took a strip of canvas, cut it into three tabs, and tied them to the first runner's belt. "Every pass of the square, Lili removes a tab. When they're all gone - pay." Simple beats honest when you're tired.
The runner grinned like a person who had found a rule they could carry and trotted to his loop.
The square's energy changed - not up, not down - into a work the night understood. Gao's table flowed goods that the board named while it flowed. Lili's pencil moved like law. Old Ma read receipts at intervals to shame float into staying small. Li walked lanes with that chin-counting habit that made fear pick smaller numbers.
Wang drifted - clinic lane, kid rope, lamp rack, oil return - placing hands where gaps threatened to explain themselves too loudly. He set a jar two inches left so a stack wouldn't tip. He lifted a crate half a breath before it would have fallen. He adjusted the coil he had buried so its tin plate wouldn't flash a tell.
"Operations," Gao said, voice carrying with a friendly brass, "asks the square to consider a ballot at dawn - Elect an Operations Lead for tokens and Store. Not for glory - for speed. I will serve - or whoever you choose." He smiled in a way that bid against his own name while polishing it.
"Ballot posted," Lili said, and added OPERATIONS LEAD? - DAWN with three lines under it: Gao Fei, Wang Lili, Open. She left a fourth line empty on purpose. The empty line made people breathe easier.
Gao pointed at the Open line as if he had suggested it. "This is how adults live," he said, and fed a lantern to a runner like a priest doling out host.
"Adults also sleep," Old Ma muttered to his crate, and three listeners snorted softly without breaking the lines.
The night seemed to loosen its jaw. The wall hummed with the aftertaste of pressure rather than pressure itself. People dared a sip of water without looking over the cup rim.
Then a heavier bark rolled from the north curve - not close, not casual. Lamps tilted as if they had ears. Heads turned without being told to. The boy with the whistle brought it to his lips and remembered not to blow - attention, not alarm - while his eyes found Li Jianguo.
Li's chin counted nothing this time. He looked north. The square looked with him. The wall, which had remembered to be a drum, remembered why drums were invented.