The yard didn't wake up.
It was already awake.
Lanterns still hung in the corners where night work bled into morning work, their light dirty with ash. The air tasted of damp cloth and thin porridge and latrine trench. The ground underfoot had been packed by so many steps it didn't feel like earth anymore—just a surface designed to take weight.
Li Shen moved with his team toward the tool-cage.
Not because it was new work.
Because the yard had begun shifting tasks without warning, and the tool-cage was where shifts became visible.
A fenced enclosure sat near the center of the buffer belt, wire and wood and iron bars—overbuilt compared to everything else. Inside were shovels, hooks, poles, ropes, buckets, and the simple truth that tools mattered more than bodies here.
Bodies were replaceable.
Tools were inventory.
A uniformed cage-keeper stood behind a counter with a slate and a short stick of chalk. He didn't look up when Li Shen arrived.
"Tag," he said.
Li Shen held it out.
The cage-keeper checked the number, then made a mark on the slate and reached beneath the counter.
What he slid back wasn't a shovel.
It was a cord.
Thin. Gray. Waxed, so it wouldn't rot in sweat.
He looped it around Li Shen's tag and pulled it tight with a practiced motion.
No announcement.
No explanation.
Just a small change that made the tag sit differently against Li Shen's wrist—more secure, harder to "lose by accident."
Li Shen's eyes dropped to the cord.
Gray. Not red. Not black. Not anything that looked like a reward.
A maintenance choice.
"Tool return by dusk," the cage-keeper said, already moving on. "Missing tool, missing ration."
Li Shen nodded once and took the assigned load—hooks and rope bundles.
Bai Ren arrived a heartbeat later and slapped his tag down like it had personally offended him.
The cage-keeper didn't react.
He looped the same gray waxed cord around Bai Ren's tag.
Bai Ren stared at it, then at Li Shen. His mouth twitched like he wanted to say something stupid.
Li Shen gave him a look.
Bai Ren swallowed the words.
He was learning.
A small body slid into the lane behind them—quiet as a shadow, tag held politely in both hands.
Yun Xue.
She looked worse in the daylight. Not sicker—just more obviously built out of less. Her cheeks were pale under grime. Her wrists looked too thin for the bucket scars already forming.
The cage-keeper glanced at her tag, then reached under the counter and pulled out… a cord.
The same gray.
He looped it around her tag with the same indifferent efficiency he'd used on the boys.
Yun Xue bowed her head slightly. "Thank you."
The cage-keeper didn't answer.
Yun Xue stepped aside without taking up space.
Li Shen filed the detail away.
Gray cord.
Standardization.
Not a reward.
A classification.
They left the tool-cage and fell into the yard's lanes.
Work started.
Not with orders. With motion.
Hooks carried to the water line. Rope moved to the wash yard. Bins shifted. Buckets filled. Cloth dragged.
The bell rang at some point. Li Shen heard it like a distant piece of weather.
The yard didn't care whether he tracked time.
It cared whether he kept moving.
By mid-morning, the quarantine lane appeared.
It hadn't been there yesterday.
Or it had, and Li Shen hadn't been close enough to notice.
Now it was obvious: a narrow corridor between two fences where uniformed servants stood with water, rags, and small bowls of something that stung the nose.
An overseer walked down the main lane with a slate and called out without shouting.
"Coughers. Wet clothes. Skin rot. Step out."
No threat.
No comfort.
Just a sorting instruction.
A few people hesitated. Pride fought with fear.
Then a man from the river side stepped out, coughing into his sleeve. His hems were still damp despite days on the road.
A girl followed, eyes glassy.
Then another.
The lane filled with quiet sickness.
A uniformed servant scrubbed hands. Checked mouths. Pressed fingers to throats. Looked at tongues.
Those who passed were waved back into the flow.
Those who didn't were directed toward a side pen where bodies sat on straw under a canvas roof.
Not removed.
Not yet.
Placed in a bin.
Li Shen watched one of the assistants make a small chalk mark on a tag before pushing its owner into the sick pen.
A mark that meant something to the system.
Bai Ren leaned close, unable to help himself. "That's new."
Li Shen didn't look at him. "Everything is new if you weren't watching."
Bai Ren bristled, then—surprisingly—lowered his voice instead of arguing.
"Jiangshui people always bring coughs," someone muttered from the lane ahead, accent rough.
A woman snapped back without turning. "Fengkou people always bring dust. Pick your poison."
Two prefectures in one sentence.
Two versions of the same resentment.
Li Shen didn't care who was right.
He cared that the yard had created a lane to turn sickness into paperwork.
He tightened his grip on the rope bundle and kept moving.
Yun Xue stayed out of the quarantine lane.
Not because she was safe.
Because she was careful.
She kept her breath low now—less panic in it. She kept her sleeves dry by tucking them up when she carried water. She did small things that meant she was learning to exist inside constraints.
At one bend near the wash yard, she faltered—just a fraction—when her bucket caught on a rut and pulled at her wrist.
Li Shen saw it and didn't reach to take weight this time.
He watched.
Yun Xue adjusted her stance the way he had shown her—feet wider, wrist neutral, weight shifted to the leg instead of the forearm.
The bucket steadied.
She didn't drop it.
She didn't look for help.
She simply kept going.
Bai Ren noticed too.
His expression changed, as if something he'd dismissed as fragile had become real.
"She learned," he whispered.
Li Shen answered, quiet. "She adapted."
That was higher praise than anything else in this place.
Later, at the wash yard, a supervisor tried to speed them up the way supervisors did—by choosing someone to blame.
"You," he snapped at a boy who was already shaking. "Dragging."
The boy opened his mouth.
Bai Ren's jaw tightened like he was about to jump in.
Li Shen didn't stop moving. He only said, under his breath, to Bai Ren:
"Don't."
Bai Ren hissed, "He's not even—"
Li Shen's eyes flicked to the supervisor's slate. "You want a mark?"
Bai Ren shut his mouth.
The boy took the blame because the system had decided it needed blame, not truth.
Li Shen hated it in the way he hated winter: as a fact.
By dusk, they returned tools to the cage.
Hooks accounted for. Rope counted. Buckets checked.
The cage-keeper's slate filled with marks.
Li Shen watched him work and realized something that made his stomach tighten:
The cage-keeper didn't care who returned the tool.
He cared whether the tool returned.
If you were strong enough to bring it back, you remained useful.
If you weren't, the yard didn't ask why.
It adjusted.
As the last light faded, the yard changed tone.
Not quieter—just different.
Day work ended.
Night work began.
Lanterns were hung in rows. Assistants moved through dorm lanes with slates. Tags were checked with more care than usual.
People started whispering.
Not because they knew something.
Because they felt the machine tightening.
Li Shen sat on the edge of his sleeping platform and watched a uniformed servant walk the aisle, stopping at random intervals to look at wrists.
The servant tapped two people's tags with the end of his pole.
"Tonight," he said.
No explanation.
Just: tonight.
Two bodies stiffened.
One swallowed hard.
One nodded quickly, relief or fear—hard to tell.
Bai Ren leaned toward Li Shen, voice barely a thread. "That's it, isn't it?"
Li Shen didn't answer.
He watched.
Across the shed, Yun Xue sat with her knees drawn up, hands folded around her tag like it was the only proof she had that she existed.
A uniformed servant paused in front of her.
His eyes dropped to the gray cord on her tag.
Then, with a motion so small it could have been accidental, he ran his thumb along the edge of her wooden number—checking.
He moved on.
Yun Xue didn't breathe for a moment.
Then she exhaled, slow and low, exactly the way Li Shen had taught her.
Li Shen felt something click into place.
The gray cord wasn't a gift.
It was a filter.
A way to keep certain tags from being lost—so the system could find those bodies again later, when it was time to move them.
Quiet marks.
No announcement.
No ceremony.
Just changes applied so gently that only someone who watched like Li Shen would notice.
When the lanterns finally dimmed and the shed settled into thin sleep, Li Shen pulled his ledger close and wrote in the smallest space he could find.
Tool-cage: gray wax cord issued.
Quarantine lane appeared. sick pen = bin.
Night checks: "tonight" called for some tags.
Rule: marks happen before movement.
He paused.
Then added one more line beneath it, blunt as a nail:
Stay cheap. Stay visible. Don't get sorted out.
He closed the ledger and lay back, eyes open, listening.
Somewhere outside, a gate hinge creaked.
Somewhere in the yard, footsteps moved with purpose that didn't belong to day labor.
The second cut was approaching its end.
Not with a speech.
With a list.