By late Month Two after the Conclave, the Pavilion's outbound work came back to the wall the same way it had left it: in silence, in lines, and under stamps.
No announcement. No welcome.
Just a rope line in the service yard, two guards with bored eyes, and an inventory table set like a courtroom for tools.
The air tasted cleaner here than at the forge, but it carried a different kind of grit—road dust, wet leather, old sweat. A cold wind slid down from the slope and made the returning servants hunch without meaning to. It wasn't kindness. It was the wall reminding them it didn't care where they had been.
Servants filed in as if they were sacks being counted.
Wrist bands were cut off and tossed into a basket. Wooden tags were collected and stacked by number. Carry frames were set down, then lifted again by registry hands that treated them like property first and evidence second.
The registry man didn't look at faces. Faces were stories. Stories invited disputes.
He looked at hands, tags, and missing weight.
"Name," he said, without looking up. "Say it clearly."
A man answered.
"Role."
Another answered.
The brush scratched. The ink stayed calm.
"Missing item," the registry man said next, as if he were reading from the air.
Someone tried to explain.
The registry man didn't debate him. Debate was for people whose words could change an outcome.
He stamped. The stamp was the argument.
One boy—barely past childhood—stood shaking with a split lip. His frame was missing a corner brace. The registry man traced the break with the tip of his brush, then wrote a number without hurrying.
"Two points deducted," he said.
The boy blinked, stunned by how fast a number could become pain. "But—sir, it broke. It just… snapped. We were on the slope and the load shifted, and—"
The registry man still didn't lift his eyes. "It returned broken," he said, voice flat with practice. "That's what the record sees. Next."
The guard beside the table shifted his spear butt half an inch. Not a threat. A reminder.
The boy swallowed hard, nodded too quickly, and stepped away like he'd been pushed.
An older servant came next, trying to stand straight through a limp. He laid down a tool bundle wrapped in cloth. The registry man unwrapped it with quick hands and counted as if counting was a kind of prayer.
"One chisel missing," the registry man said.
The older servant's jaw jumped once. "It wasn't mine. I swear it. It was in the shared crate. I didn't sign for it, and I didn't take it out."
The registry man paused, not to consider—just to let the silence do its work.
"Then it was shared missing," he said at last, and stamped again, harder. "And you shared the deduction. Next."
The older servant's shoulders sagged. He didn't argue again. He picked up his bundle and moved on.
Li Shen watched from the service side—close enough to see the ink and hear the numbers, far enough that no one could accuse him of lingering like a curious child.
This was what "work for the Pavilion" meant at the bottom:
You left with tools that weren't yours.
You returned with less than you left with.
And the difference was priced into you.
Bai Ren was in the return line.
Not early. Not late. Placed where the system had placed him.
He looked thinner. Not starved—spent. His hands were raw in a way forge soot didn't make: splinters, rope burns, blisters that had reopened and sealed badly. A bruise sat under one shoulder like someone had struck him with a beam and then kept walking.
He kept his eyes down. He didn't scan for friends. That was how you got noticed by the wrong people.
At the table, the registry man didn't look up.
"Name."
"Bai Ren."
"Role."
"Servant."
Brush. Scratch. The pen paused for half a beat longer than it had for the others, as if the registry man had already seen Bai Ren's line on a list before Bai Ren had become a body in front of him.
"Missing item," the registry man said, reading from a slip like it was weather.
Bai Ren's mouth tightened once, then he forced it loose. "A saw."
"Quantity."
"One."
"Deduction," the registry man continued. "Four points. Two ration tokens."
Bai Ren didn't flinch, but his shoulders went rigid in that tiny way that meant the hit landed.
He said, carefully, "It was taken."
The registry man's eyes lifted a fraction. Not sympathy. Inventory.
"Proof?"
Bai Ren stared at the table as if proof might be hiding in the grain of the wood. "No."
The stamp came down.
The deduction became real.
Bai Ren stood still for a heartbeat with the stamped paper in his hand like it weighed more than the frame straps cutting into his shoulders. Then he folded it once, tucked it into his shirt, picked up his carry frame, and stepped away without looking back.
Li Shen waited until Bai Ren cleared the rope line and the guards' attention shifted to the next body. Then he stepped into Bai Ren's path where the yard traffic made privacy by force.
Bai Ren saw him and let out a slow breath, the kind you didn't realize you were holding until it left.
"They docked me," Bai Ren said first, too quick, like saying it out loud kept it from turning into shame. "Four points and tokens, just like that."
"I saw," Li Shen said. "You didn't give them anything to chew on. That's something."
Bai Ren's gaze flicked to Li Shen's mask looped around his neck, stained grey.
"You smell like smoke," Bai Ren said, roughly. Not a complaint. A fact.
Li Shen's eyes stayed steady. "And you smell like road. Wet leather and bad sleep."
Bai Ren gave a short sound that wasn't laughter. More like disbelief that they were both still standing on this side of the wall.
Then he leaned closer, voice dropping until it was just for Li Shen.
"Bandits," he said. "Not a raid. Not screaming and torches. More like… a visit. They came at night like they belonged there."
Li Shen didn't change posture. The yard didn't need a story.
"They didn't touch the escort," Bai Ren added. "Not him. Not his gear. They weren't stupid. They took tools, food—anything that didn't shout 'Pavilion' the second you looked at it."
"And the saw?" Li Shen asked.
Bai Ren's eyes sharpened. "They wanted speed. That's what it was. Not copper, not trinkets. Something that turns two days of work into one."
Li Shen filed it away. Tools over bodies meant time, confidence, and planning.
"And beasts?" he asked.
Bai Ren's gaze slipped toward the open road beyond the wall.
"Tracks," he said, then corrected himself like he hated understatement. "Big tracks. Not a normal wolf. The kind that makes the escort shut up and stop joking."
His fingers flexed once, remembering rope and weight.
"The escort dropped something on the return path," Bai Ren went on. "Fast. One hit. We didn't even see it clean. Just a blur, blood on the dirt, and then—" He swallowed. "And then we were walking again, because that's what you do when the man with the seal tells you to keep moving."
That was what the low world got from cultivators in the wild: results, not explanations.
Bai Ren straightened slowly, testing his bruised shoulder like a man checking inventory on himself.
"I'm staying inside for a while," he said. Not a request. A boundary. "I've had enough of roads."
"Good," Li Shen said. No softness, but no mockery either. "Let your shoulder knit. Let them find someone else to bleed for their paperwork."
They walked back toward the servant quarters at the same pace. Not rushing. Not lagging. The pace of people who understood attention was a tax.
On the way, Bai Ren kept his voice low—information, not complaint.
"There was a kiln camp," he said. "Old charcoal pits. Men working like they owed the earth money. The Pavilion's name opened doors, sure… but it didn't feed anybody. Not out there."
Li Shen listened without prompting.
"They charged more the moment they saw the escort," Bai Ren added. "Not to his face. To the registry man. 'Transport fee.' 'Road fee.' 'Winter risk.' They didn't even pretend it was honest."
Li Shen's eyes stayed forward.
"That's how it'll be this winter," Bai Ren said, and the certainty in his voice made it heavier than the wind. "Everybody will squeeze what they can. The ones with nothing will get squeezed first."
Li Shen didn't answer. A month in the forge had taught him the same truth in a different language: when supply tightens, the poor pay first.
Bai Ren slept for twelve hours and woke up still tired.
That wasn't drama. It was arithmetic.
The next morning, a reassignment slip was pinned to the dormitory board—cheap paper, black stamp, no explanation.
BAI REN — TEMPORARY DUTY
YARD SORTING / WATER RUNS
DURATION: 10 DAYS
POINTS: STANDARD
FAILURE: DEDUCTIONS APPLY
He read it once, expression blank. Then he folded it carefully, like neatness could keep the Pavilion from changing its mind.
"Ten days," he murmured, not quite to anyone. "At least it's inside."
He put it away as if hiding the paper could hide the decision.
That night, Li Shen didn't seek him out.
He simply left a small tin of salve under Bai Ren's mat, where only someone looking for it would find it.
Not expensive. Just better than the watery paste the ration window handed out.
Bai Ren found it, stared at it for a long time, then wrapped it in cloth like it might be taken.
He didn't thank Li Shen.
He didn't have to.
Objects accepted without words were how people like them admitted care without giving the Pavilion something to overhear.
The forge kept moving.
Li Shen's lungs weren't healed. They were managed.
The breathing method didn't make him comfortable; it made him less predictable to smoke. He used it in short windows and paid for it in Qi fatigue—clean, measurable, the dull heaviness behind the navel that forced discipline into every shift.
His hands stayed cracked. His shoulders stayed tight.
But his yield stayed clean.
And clean yield created its own kind of attention, even when you didn't ask for it.
Two nights after Bai Ren's return, a clerk tapped the dormitory doorframe and called a name without stepping inside.
"Li Shen."
Li Shen rose immediately. Delay was a kind of disrespect the Pavilion punished.
At the service window outside the quarters, iron bars separated servants from the small privileges the system handed out. A wooden box sat on the counter—messages that had survived the gate's filtration.
The clerk's fingers were ink-stained. His expression was blank in the practiced way of people who had learned that curiosity created problems.
He didn't hand the box over. He opened it, thumbed through folded papers, and stopped on one that didn't have the right markings.
No wax seal. No Pavilion stamp.
A private letter.
Li Shen felt his stomach tighten.
The clerk slid the paper through the slit anyway, like he wanted it out of his hands as fast as possible.
"Dropped at the outer gate," he said. "City side. Someone paid to have it routed, so it's on record."
Li Shen kept his face flat. "It's… for me?"
The clerk's eyes flicked up, irritated at the question, then down at the neat name on the outside as if that ended the conversation.
"It says 'Li Shen,' doesn't it?"
He pushed a thin receipt strip through after it.
"Sign," he said. "Same as always."
Li Shen signed.
That was the real cost. Not the paper. The paper trail.
The clerk didn't offer a greeting, didn't ask who it was from, didn't even look curious in the way normal people looked curious. He only collected the strip and moved on like Li Shen was another item processed.
Back at his mat, Li Shen unfolded the letter under the weakest lamplight, keeping the page shielded by his knee.
The handwriting was small and precise.
Li Shen,
I can't come in, and you can't come out without a pass. Fine. A wall is only a wall if you let it do all the thinking for you.
If you want copper goods without turning points into dust, meet me in Greyhaven's outer market on your next supply-errand day.
Stone Lantern Tea Stall. Back table.
Come alone. Don't talk at the gate. Don't bring a story with you.
— Qian Mei
No money enclosed. No goods. No proof.
But the letter itself was proof of something else: she had a channel to the gate that didn't require her to cross it, and that channel could be traced if anyone chose to look.
She had also chosen her words carefully—no mention of scrap, no mention of buyers, no mention of anything that would read as theft if the wrong hands unfolded it.
That meant she was serious.
It also meant she expected Li Shen to be equally serious.
Bai Ren saw the paper in Li Shen's hand and didn't ask what it said.
That restraint was part of why Li Shen trusted him.
Instead Bai Ren said, quietly, "Huh. Someone outside still knows your name."
Li Shen refolded the letter, clean along its creases. "Outside knows profit," he said. "Names are just the handle you grab it by."
Bai Ren nodded once. "Profit or not… it's something." He hesitated, then added, like he didn't like giving warnings but wouldn't pretend he didn't have them. "Greyhaven's market will be thick right now. After the Conclave, everybody's selling something, or trying to buy time. Crowds make it easy to disappear. They also make it easy to get followed."
Li Shen wasn't thinking about crowds.
He was thinking about passes.
Supply errand day meant leaving the inner compound under supervision—paper permission, a route, a return time, and someone else's eyes on your hands. If he went, it would have to look like work, not like choice.
He put the letter away neatly, like a stamped form.
Neat. Final. Dangerous.
Later, when the dormitory finally quieted into sleep-breath and coughs, Li Shen wrote only what mattered.
Late Month Two post-Conclave.
Bai Ren returned from outbound work. Docked -4 points (missing saw). Bandits targeted tools. Large tracks near road.
Reassigned: Bai Ren to yard sorting/water runs (10 days).
Gate message received: Qian Mei requests a Greyhaven market meeting on supply errand day. Receipt signed. Paper trail exists.
Risk trend: roads worsening outside; attention sharpening inside.
He closed the Journal and lay down.
Across the room, Bai Ren's breathing was heavy but steady—road exhaustion turning into the slower work of recovery.
Outside the wall, the road carried bandits and tracks.
Inside the wall, paper carried names.
And paper was starting to remember Li Shen.