The Jade Wind Pavilion had been built high on the mountain ridge above Yunzhong, so that nothing ever felt close enough to cling. Height was its first lesson, a reminder that clarity lived where nothing pressed too close.
From the training terraces, Yunzhong below looked small, distant, like something that could be crossed in a few light steps and left without regret. Up here, the wind handled discipline, cold, sharp, insistent. It slipped under robes, flattened fabric to skin, whipped hair across faces, and stole warmth until the flesh learnt not to hold on to anything.
The Pavilion Elders liked disciples who did not flinch when the wind pushed. If you could stand straight with nothing to cling to, you were worth the effort.
The Ministry of War liked Jade Wind for similar reasons: disciplined, predictable, and clean. They delivered what was written and left no stain behind.
Jade Wind's cleanliness was not a matter of purity. It was accounting.
In Yunzhong, everything cost something, and someone wrote it down: rice, cloth, medicine, favours, escort routes, even silence.
The Pavilion kept ledgers too. They just tried to keep them honest. Their supplies came from endowment fields, from old donors who liked the idea of a righteous sect on a mountain, and from clinic offerings: millet, thread, honey, and the occasional coin someone could barely spare.
Disciples such as Jinx received what they needed: food, robes, salves. And a modest stipend that arrived on time because someone, somewhere, had balanced the books and made sure the Pavilion owed no one.
Once, before Jinx was born, a writ had come up bearing the Ministry's authority. Yet everyone in the Pavilion knew who had sent it: The Bureau of Forbidden Methods, an internal branch with thorns, stamped its jagged sigil over the seal.
Pavilion Master Yun Fang read it, burned it, and sent the ashes back down in a clean jar.
Since then, contracts with that scent had simply never reached the ridge.
Jinx crossed the receiving hall with a lacquered box balanced on her palms. The box wasn't large, but it carried the weight of someone else's expectations. Red cord. Double knot. Seal unbroken.
Her Qi brushed it cautiously, the way you tested a door before you touched the latch. It didn't seem to be a trap or carry ill intent. But there was a pressure to it anyway, the quiet insistence of money offered with a smile.
Yan Hui waited near the window ledge, sorting bamboo slips into stacks. Her dark hair was braided simply; her Saffron Yellow sash, the same as Jinx's, was folded so neatly it looked like it belonged more to a clerk than a fighter.
Her Qi looked quiet at first glance, but Jinx could feel the thin, constant alertness along its edges, like a listener who never quite stopped counting the room.
Without looking up, she said: "Tea. Old leaves. Southern blend."
"You didn't even smell it," Jinx said, stopping beside her.
Yan Hui's mouth curved faintly. "They always choose the same things."
"It's a gift," Jinx said.
Yan Hui's gaze flicked to the box then away again, careful not to linger. "They always are," she said, already reaching for the next slip. "Is the seal unbroken?"
"Yes."
"Good. Unbroken seals are clean refusals. Broken seals become city stories." She slid one bamboo slip into another stack as if it were obvious.
Jinx didn't like how true that felt.
Footsteps approached. Senior Ascendant Wen Yue entered the hall without ceremony, as if doorways had learnt to get out of her way. Her eyes went straight to the box.
"Who sent it?" she asked.
"A Ministry courier," Jinx said. "For continued cooperation."
Wen Yue's gaze sharpened a fraction. There was no softness in her Qi. It gathered close around her like a fitted cloak, held tight by habit and rule.
"What did he say?" Wen Yue asked.
Jinx remembered the courier's careful smile, the way his eyes had dipped to her sash before they had lifted again, as if rank were the only language that mattered.
"He called it gratitude," she said. "For keeping order. For… being reasonable."
"Reasonable," Wen Yue repeated, the word coming out dry in her mouth. "And did his gratitude come with paper?"
"A note, stamped by the Ministry."
Wen Yue's mouth didn't move, but her Qi tightened; a quiet warning flare and then control again. "The Bureau doesn't always sign its own name when it can hide behind the Ministry's."
She stepped closer, close enough that the wind off the window caught her sleeve and tugged at it. She didn't resist. Fighting small forces was how you showed strain.
"Return it unopened," she said. "Thank them for the thought. Clarify that Jade Wind does not accept gifts."
Hui didn't look up. "No gifts," she said.
Wen Yue's eyes flicked to her. "No leashes," she corrected.
Then she looked back at Jinx. "Especially not from the Ministry."
Jinx's fingers tightened on the lacquered box. Somewhere under the cord and lacquer was something expensive enough to matter. Enough to buy medicine for the clinic for a season. Enough to rebuild a lower courtyard wall. Enough to pay a dozen stipends without touching the endowment stores.
Which was exactly why it had come.
Wen Yue read that thought in Jinx's face without needing words. The corner of her mouth softened into something that might have been sympathy if she ever allowed herself to show it plainly.
"Gifts are how people tie silk around your wrist and call it courtesy."
Jinx swallowed. "Then we refuse the gift."
"Exactly." Wen Yue held Jinx's gaze for a moment longer, then left.
Jinx bowed, then turned and carried the box out again.
The descent path curled down the ridge, stone worn smooth by feet trained not to linger. The wind pressed lightly against her back as she walked, as if reminding her of the ridge she was leaving.
The box stayed shut.
By the lower gate, the sun had climbed high enough to thin the mountain shadow. The wind warmed. Yunzhong lay wide below her: pale stone, tiled roofs, the Xuekou River threading through it in bright flashes.
At the courier station, the Ministry clerk straightened when he saw her. His eyes flicked to her sash.
"Junior Ascendant," he said, polite and quick.
Jinx set the box between them. "With thanks," she said, "the Pavilion declines. We serve Yunzhong by vow, not by favour."
The clerk hesitated, then accepted the box with both hands.
The bells from the lower markets rang out. The sound carried up the slope, striking the mountain like a reminder that another world existed below.
She hesitated. Then she continued down the path toward the city.
By the time she reached the lower streets, the bells of Yunzhong had long finished their morning song. The day was already tipping toward noon.
The city was awake. Steam rose from noodle stalls. Hawkers called. The smells of fried dough and oil braided with river damp and human heat. The market swelled around her in waves.
She did not hurry.
Old Crane's corner was near here, under the leaning shadow of a cracked archway. She wasn't going all the way. Just close enough to listen.
Jinx had only crossed Old Crane's path a couple of times so far.
The first time, she was balanced on the beam above his teahouse door, watching the flow of the street through the gap in the eaves. Lantern-light from inside threw her outline long across the paper screen.
Old Crane didn't even look up. He just snorted into his cup and said,
If you're going to stare holes in the street with those eyes, girl, you might as well sit. Tea's warmer from a chair than from a rooftop, he'd said to her.
She'd stayed on the beam that day, listening while he talked more to the air than to her about boats that rode too high in the water for the weight their ledgers claimed, about dockmen who kept their mouths too carefully empty.
She still wasn't ready to call him a source. But she'd remembered the way he'd said those eyes. As if he'd weighed them, too, and not found them wanting.
She moved like someone on an errand with a return time, even as she slipped where she wasn't supposed to. When the crowd thickened, she yielded half a step before it became contact, choosing gaps the way she chose rooftops: early, clean, without drama.
Her attire did part of the work for her. Muted cream close to the skin. Over it, the light jade-green robe split at the sides, panels shifting with each step. Saffron Yellow sash at her waist. Two swallow-wing knives with curved blades made for wide, returning arcs were half-hidden beneath it.
The third blade, a short spine dagger had its edges deliberately blunt and never sharpened. It was tucked flat against her spine, hilt up, for her to retrieve it from above her shoulder if needed (improve phrasing?). Only the point was kept keen. It wouldn't slice her if she was slammed into a wall, but at close range, if driven straight into the soft parts of someone foolish enough to grab her, it would still go in deep enough to matter: a private promise that she would not ever be the only one bleeding.
Daylight didn't stop hands. It just made them careful.
She gave the street nothing to take hold of. No warmth. No challenge. Not even irritation. The safest thing a marked woman could be in Yunzhong was not invisible.
It was unapproachable.
She drifted past a stall selling cheap silk, fingers brushing a sleeve. Soft. Wrong weave. Too heavy. She let it fall.
A year ago she wouldn't have been trusted to go down by herself. Most Jade Wind women didn't. The Pavilion preferred an escort, another disciple, often male, because a woman alone in Yunzhong was almost an invitation, to some.
She paused in front of a stall selling bronze mirrors. Cheap polished metal for vain merchants or nervous brides.
The Jade Wind Pavilion had taught her that a reflective surface was never just vanity. It was another sightline. Mirrors caught movement. Patterns. Blind angles. Mistress Yun had once told her, lightly, The Ministry's scribes watch people's faces. We watch where their feet go and how their shadows move.
She angled her body so she could see behind without looking behind, and let her reflection blur with a tiny tilt of her head, focusing past it. Into the crowd behind her.
Who moved light. Who moved trained. Who had learnt not to look.
Her gaze drifted.
Then caught.
A pair of boots near the edge of the reflected frame.