Yun Caishi came to us on the seventh day.
She arrived at a house in the northern quarter that Shen Bao had arranged through a connection neither of us had used before — a secondary residence belonging to a retired official who was currently spending the winter at his family's property in the south. Neutral ground. No connection to either of us that could be traced quickly.
I arrived first, with Shen Bao. Kaien had confirmed that she had not been followed. We waited in a room that had the comfortable neglect of a house temporarily unoccupied — dust at the edges of things, no fire in the brazier yet, the cold that settles into a space when there's no one living in it. We built a fire ourselves, which was the kind of practical self-sufficiency that I had always found useful across lives regardless of circumstance.
She came in precisely on the hour, which I noted. Punctuality was a discipline, and discipline was information.
