The candle had burned low enough that its circle of light trembled. My notes lay in a careful stack—names circled, arrows drawn, questions pinned to margins like small flags—when a soft knock came at the outer door. I froze. The compound had a rhythm at night, a pulse of doors closing and one or two sentries walking slow circuits. This knock was wrong because it had the cadence of secrecy.
Old Bro Han's silhouette filled the doorway before I could move. He closed it behind him and set a kettle to warm without a word. "Someone come by," he said finally, not meeting my eyes. "Clerk needed a hand with late entries. Said he'd come alone."
The clerk. The same smudged-wrist man who had passed notes during the elder meeting. His face had looked like someone who had swallowed too many small fears and let them settle. He owed debts to no one I could place, which made him dangerous—and useful. I told my pen to be still and listened.
"He came at dusk, after I sent him off," Bro Han continued. "Said he had errands. I thought nothing. Now he's gone long enough for gossip to knit itself into a rumor."
The Codex hummed in the dark, a tiny heart beating against my ribs.
Observation: Opportunity. Risk: Elevated.Option A: Inquire publicly—risk exposure.Option B: Shadow the subject—risk confrontation.Suggested: Shadow. Low-visibility evidence is preferable.
Shadowing felt like a scholar's worst vice dressed as a soldier's prudence. I wrapped the fragment in cloth, tucked it into my robe, and let my feet learn the language of silence. Bro Han watched me go with a small, private pleading that I did not speak of. His faith in me was a fragile currency; I meant to spend it wisely.
The clerk walked with the loose step of a man who wanted to be noticed by no one. He kept to alleys lit by moon-silver and the odd lamp; he avoided the main road and hugged walls as if the stone itself might weigh down a whisper. I followed at a distance that felt both too near and too far—close enough to hear breath, far enough to hide my voice.
He crossed the river by the old bridge that sagged under memory and entered the merchants' quarter. Lamps there were honest and garish, the air sweet with oil and roast. He skirted the stalls as if he were a shadow, then slipped into a narrow courtyard between two storehouses. There, under the lean of an ancient fig, a figure waited.
At first, I thought it was Huo Ren; the man's silhouette carried the arrogance like a cloak. As they came closer, though, the lamplight revealed Master Qi—Master of ledgers and the man with coin-colored eyes. His robes were finer than the streets allowed; the folds hid a hand that did not tremble when it reached into a pouch.
"What news?" Master Qi's voice was all cultivated calm, the kind that made the air itself feel measured.
The clerk's shoulders hunched. "The ledger's missing the chain," he said. "I—" He swallowed. "I was told to update late entries. I—" he looked at his hands as if they had made decisions without him.
Master Qi smiled the way a man smiles at a math problem whose variables bend toward his favor. "Convenience, my friend. The granary must be paid for, and patrons are generous when they see the right gesture. Make it seem like it was a theft; they will accept loss. We will not disturb the patron's satisfaction."
The clerk's jaw worked. "But the entries—these names. If someone notices—"
"No one will notice who we do not let notice," Master Qi said smoothly. He placed a coin on the clerk's palm—brass stamped with a symbol I had seen on sealed donation cords. "You will mark it as a routine amendment. You will sign here." He pushed a small iron seal into the clerk's fingers. The seal's face was not ornate; it bore initials, the same initials I had seen on the newly written page at the granary.
My chest tightened like a hand squeezing bone. Men who loved the shape of law more than its spirit had found a way to move coin through a ledger without anyone seeing the bones. They could sell a granary and name it a charity. They could cut a chain and call it misfortune. The mathematics of greed had the patience to look legal and the stomach to call it necessity.
The clerk's voice was small as a turned page. "And if someone asks?"
Master Qi's smile steadied like a blade. "We will tell them the truth that suits us. We will keep the sect intact."
I had a dozen choices. I could retreat and return with Old Bro Han and make an accusation in the hall; I could seize the seal and make the clerk a public witness; I could take the coin and the seal and disappear into the night. Each choice had weights the Codex would calculate, each one a potential fracture.
The Codex pulsed against my ribs as if it were the thing advising me rather than I advising it.
Action: Disrupt. Method: Remove key evidence (seal). Benefit: Loss of centralized control over entries. Risk: Retaliation if traced.
I stepped forward without thinking—the scholar's sharp intuition had turned a corner into something that could not be measured only by ink. My hand found a stone and I hurled it with the practiced arc of a man who had once argued geometry by throwing pebbles at a bell. The stone struck the fig's low branch; leaves scattered like sparrows. The two men looked up. Master Qi's gaze found the alley and slitted.
The clerk—blessed coward that he was—took the moment to step aside, and in the same reflex I had, I moved like a shadow and closed the small distance. My fingers closed on iron—that iron stamped initials and, horribly, implied ownership. I wrenched it free and ran before the men could find their balance.
They shouted. The night became a sudden algebra of footsteps, the sound of pursuit jagged and immediate. I ran without thinking of pride or future consequence; I ran with that pure animal rhythm of a man who will not be held. Old Bro Han's voice reached me—urgent, stunned—and then I was over the bridge and into the tangle of narrow lanes where a dozen shutters turned into dark faces.
Behind me, I heard the splintered clatter of someone who had misjudged the turn. I did not stop. I did not look to see who fell. The seal burned hot in my palm.
When I reached the outer quarters, breath tearing at my chest like a bellows, I felt the Codex sing a note of approval.
Evidence acquired.Action: Submit to clerk or post anonymously.Warning: Tracing likely if handled openly.
Old Bro Han met me at the doorway, eyes wide in a way that made me ashamed. "You thief," he breathed. In his face, there was anger and a protectiveness that felt like stern weather. "What have you done?"
I showed him the seal without telling him all the way I had taken it. It felt small and heavy, the weight of a hinge in the back of my hand. He understood more than I said. "If they trace this, Master Qi will not only cut the granary. He will cut him who took it."
"That's the point," I said. My voice was raw. The scholar in me—trained to negotiate proofs with argument and footnotes—had been replaced in that moment by something more dangerous: a man who had watched the mechanism of theft operate and refused to let it be quieted with another polite accounting. "We cannot let the ledger be a tool for private ends."
Old Bro Han pressed the seal into my palm as if the metal might anchor me to sense. "There are other ways," he said. "You can expose—"
"Expose in the hall?" I almost laughed. "We have elders with coin and influence. We have Huo Ren to smooth stories. The clerk will be lost between their hands. We need a way to make the evidence public and undeniable."
His face folded with worry. "And then they will find you."
I considered the steady lines of the list pinned to the board in the yard—names, status, duties—the map of the sect. If someone put the seal on the board with an explanation and the ledger's chain appended, it would be messy for the elders to ignore. Their preferred mechanics were slow, private, and legal. Public accusations rip the fabric in a way that requires stitches in sunlight.
I could already imagine Master Qi's calm becoming a thing of splinters.
"What do you want me to do?" Old Bro Han asked.
"Tomorrow," I said, chest still stuttering with the run, "during the morning posting. I will pin the seal to the list and copy the ledger entries. We will watch who moves to cover it up. We will not accuse without proof. We will offer the proof to everyone."
He stared at me like a man who had been given an impossible spoon. "You think that will change things?"
"I do not know," I admitted. "I know only that if I do nothing, the sect will trade its bread for a monument and call the trade pious." I thought of the granary, of children sleeping lightly, and the elders counting coins. "I am not a man of the sword. But I can make words inconvenient to ignore."
Old Bro Han's hands closed around mine as if to steady a broken weather vane. "Then do it," he said softly. "But be careful. We do not have many victories to spare."
That night I lay awake with the seal under my pillow, the metal warm as if it had absorbed the day's heat. Outside, the compound breathed in slow fits, and the Codex whispered like a small prophecy.
Integration increases. Risk acknowledged. Moral calculus shifting.
I had stolen a thing not for greed but to break a ledger's convenient silence. If my action were a pebble on a still pond, the ripples would not stop at the sect's borders. They might reach donors in the city; they might reach the patron whose initials matched the iron. They might reach Master Qi's hand. They might reach Huo Ren, who had already told me to keep my eyes open.
I closed my eyes and thought of ink and rain and the tower that had been my first death. A life of proofs had taught me how to demonstrate a truth until others had no choice but to see it. This, oddly, felt like the same argument—only now the ink could be a blade.
The seal slept warm beneath my palm. Tomorrow I will pin it where everyone can see. Tomorrow I will make the ledger's breath become audible. Tomorrow, I would see what the sect would choose: to mend, to hide, or to punish the man who had opened the wrong door.