Li Shen didn't lose points because he made a mistake.
He lost points because somebody decided his week looked different.
That was how the Pavilion worked at the bottom: it didn't punish crime first. It punished irregularity. Crime was messy. Irregularity was measurable.
He felt it before anyone said his name.
The forge had its own accounting—yield tags, scrap bins, tool returns—but those numbers lived in soot and muscle. Intendance lived in paper. Paper didn't smell the same, and it didn't forgive the same.
After second bell, a runner stopped by the forge lane without stepping into the heat.
"Li Shen," he called, already half-turned away as if names were errands too. "Registry window. Now, while it's still daylight."
No tone. No explanation. Just process.
Li Shen wiped his hands on a rag until they looked less like a confession, told the fireman he was stepping out, and walked.
He didn't hurry. Hurry looked guilty.
He also didn't stall. Stalling looked like defiance.
Intendance sat in the cleanest part of the servant world—the kind of clean that came from barriers, not comfort. Iron bars. Narrow windows. A corridor where shoulders brushed plaster worn smooth by generations of people who had learned to keep their heads down while being measured.
At the end was the registry window.
Two lines formed naturally: one for those who needed something, and one for those who were about to lose something.
Li Shen stood in the second without being told.
A servant ahead of him argued softly about ration tokens, voice fraying at the edges.
"I'm not asking for extra," the man insisted. "I'm telling you the count is wrong. I didn't take them. I didn't—"
The clerk behind the bars didn't argue back. He waited until the man ran out of breath, then stamped once.
"Count stands," he said, as calmly as if he were announcing the weather. "Next."
The argument ended because the stamp ended it.
When it was Li Shen's turn, the man behind the window didn't look up.
He didn't need to. Names were easier than faces.
"Name," he said, and the brush was already moving.
"Li Shen."
A scratch across paper. A pause. Then another scratch.
The clerk finally lifted his eyes, and Li Shen recognized him—not from the forge, but from the points board. From the kind of work that turned people into lines.
Shen Qiu.
He wasn't old. He wasn't powerful. He was worse: he was consistent.
His robe wasn't nicer than anyone else's. His hands were clean anyway.
Shen Qiu slid a thin slip of paper under the bar.
EXCHANGE ERRAND — GREYHAVEN
POINTS: HALF SHIFT
RECEIPTS REQUIRED
STATUS: PENDING
Li Shen's chest didn't tighten. He didn't let it.
"Pending," he said, like he was repeating a number to make sure it was real. "Why is it pending?"
Shen Qiu's mouth moved a fraction. Not a smile. The faintest sign of habit.
"Because your credit line looks irregular," he said, and he said irregular the way other men said dirty.
Li Shen kept his voice flat. "I signed out. I signed back in. I handed over receipts at the gate. Everything was stamped."
Shen Qiu tapped the slip once with the back of his brush.
"The gate ledger shows your return," he agreed. Tap. "The receipts were submitted." Tap again. "One vendor stamp does not match the approved list for exchange errands."
Li Shen didn't blink. He had learned to keep his face from reacting before his mind finished sorting the problem.
The approved list.
Not did you buy the items.
Not did you bring the items.
The stamp.
"Which receipt?" Li Shen asked.
Shen Qiu reached to the side, drew a folded strip from a stack, and slid it under the bar with the care of a man placing down evidence.
Lamp oil.
A seal in one corner, slightly smeared.
Li Shen recognized it instantly. That day had been misty—enough damp to soften sleeves, enough to make ink behave like a bruise.
Shen Qiu watched his eyes as if he were watching a scale settle.
"Smudged," Shen Qiu said. "Unclear. I can't read it clean. That means it can't be verified."
Li Shen didn't say what he wanted to say.
He wanted to say: You can see the oil. You can smell it. You can weigh the jar.
But the Pavilion didn't pay Shen Qiu to smell jars.
It paid him to prevent excuses from becoming loopholes.
Li Shen reached into his sleeve and produced the job note—the stamped exchange errand slip he'd kept folded and dry.
He slid it through the slit without flourish.
Shen Qiu looked at it. The red stamp. The item list. The half-shift clause.
Then Shen Qiu set it aside as if it wasn't the argument Li Shen had hoped it would be.
"Your authorization is valid," Shen Qiu said. "No one is disputing that you were permitted to go."
Li Shen waited.
Shen Qiu's brush moved, making a small mark on a ledger page Li Shen couldn't see.
"The question," Shen Qiu continued, "is whether you are using exchange errands as cover for private transactions."
There it was.
Not accusation. Not proof.
A paper trap.
Li Shen kept his voice steady. "I bought what was listed. I returned with it. I submitted the receipts."
"And one stamp is unreadable," Shen Qiu said, patient the way a knife was patient.
Li Shen didn't move. "The ink ran. It was wet."
Shen Qiu's brush paused, as if he were granting Li Shen the privilege of that sentence.
"Then the receipt is unverifiable," Shen Qiu said. "And unverifiable expenses do not receive points credit."
Li Shen felt the cost in numbers instantly.
Half shift points weren't luxury. They were his buffer between "steady" and "forced."
He didn't have points to waste. Not with powder and grain draining his line. Not with the forge demanding its own payments.
He looked at the smeared seal again.
"Check the vendor," Li Shen said.
Shen Qiu's gaze sharpened just slightly, like a clerk hearing someone propose extra work.
"Which vendor," he asked, mild as poison, "do you imagine I'm going to 'check'?"
Li Shen named the location, not a person. "Outer market strip. Second oil seller past the rope knots."
Shen Qiu made a small sound, almost amused.
"You want me to send a runner to Greyhaven," Shen Qiu said, "to confirm lamp oil… because your stamp got wet."
Li Shen didn't answer.
Because the answer was obvious.
Shen Qiu let the silence hang long enough to become instruction.
Then he said, calm and absolute, "Points are not awarded for effort. They are awarded for verified completion."
Li Shen held his ground.
"Then verify it by the goods," he said. "I can bring the jar here. It still has the vendor's string seal."
Shen Qiu's eyes flicked, quick and assessing, to Li Shen's hands.
He was weighing him.
Not physically.
Administratively.
Li Shen could almost see the decision tree inside Shen Qiu's head.
If Shen Qiu accepted physical verification, he set a precedent: people could bypass paper with objects. Objects could be faked. Objects created arguments. Arguments created work.
Paper was clean.
Paper was cheap.
Paper was absolute.
Shen Qiu leaned forward slightly, voice still level. "A jar can be bought anywhere," he said. "And a string seal can be copied. The receipt is there to remove ambiguity."
Li Shen nodded once, as if conceding the principle.
Then he pulled out the other receipts—the salt, the nails, the cloth strips. Clean stamps. Clear ink.
He slid them through.
"Those are clear," Li Shen said. "Same day. Same run. Same errand. One stamp smeared, the rest readable."
Shen Qiu looked at them without emotion.
Then he said, "And the oil receipt is the only one that can't be verified."
Li Shen didn't plead.
He placed a wedge.
"The gate ledger shows my sign-out and sign-in times," he said. "The errand slip lists the supplies. The goods were delivered to quarter store on return. Those goods were accepted."
Shen Qiu's eyes narrowed slightly, like he had found the thread he could pull.
"Accepted by whom," he asked, and his voice made the question sound like a blade being unwrapped.
Li Shen gave the quarter store clerk's name. Not as a threat. As a citation.
Shen Qiu stared at him for a long heartbeat.
In that heartbeat, Li Shen understood the real game:
Shen Qiu didn't want to dock him for lamp oil.
Shen Qiu wanted to see whether Li Shen could be pushed into sloppiness. Whether he would panic, argue, or offer extra details. Whether he would become someone worth watching.
Li Shen stayed still.
No extra details. No apology. No anger.
Just references to the Pavilion's own procedures.
Shen Qiu leaned back.
His brush moved again.
He didn't stamp.
Instead he tore off a small strip of paper and slid it through the slit.
NOTICE — RECEIPT QUALITY REQUIREMENT
UNREADABLE STAMPS = NO CREDIT
REPEAT OCCURRENCE: REVIEW
Not a punishment.
A lever.
Li Shen looked at the strip.
Then Shen Qiu spoke softly, almost conversational, as if he were explaining the wind.
"I'll credit the half shift this time," Shen Qiu said. "Because quarter store acceptance gives me something I can cross-check."
Li Shen didn't relax.
"But don't mistake that for a habit," Shen Qiu continued. "If it happens again, it becomes a pattern. And patterns get reviewed."
There it was again.
Pattern.
Rhythm.
The thing Qian Mei had warned him about, from the outside.
Shen Qiu added, as if it were a kindness he could bill for later, "Make your paper clean. Don't make your name harder to file."
Li Shen nodded once.
Shen Qiu slid the updated slip through the bar.
STATUS: CLEARED
HALF SHIFT CREDIT: POSTED
And under that, in smaller script, a note Li Shen couldn't pretend not to see.
FLAG: RECEIPT IRREGULARITY (MINOR)
A mark.
Not fatal.
Not free.
Li Shen took the paper, folded it, and slid it into his sleeve.
He didn't thank Shen Qiu.
He didn't threaten him.
He turned and left, because staying invited a second question.
On the way back to the forge lane, he passed the points board and didn't stop.
He didn't need to. He already felt what had happened.
The Pavilion hadn't blocked his movement.
It had narrowed his margins.
The system didn't need chains when it had paperwork.
Outside, Greyhaven offered options.
Inside, the Pavilion offered insulation.
And both charged a price.
Li Shen walked into the forge heat with the same posture he always used—steady, unremarkable, useful.
Only now, he carried an additional discipline in his sleeve:
If he went out again, he would make the paper clean enough that even Shen Qiu couldn't smell a seam.
Because the first time was a mistake.
The second time became a rhythm.
And rhythms were how people like Shen Qiu built cages without ever touching iron.
That night, when the dormitory settled into its usual sounds—coughs, sleep-breath, a soft curse from someone's bad knee—Bai Ren spoke once from the dark.
"Registry called you," he said. Not curiosity. A statement. He'd heard it the same way everyone heard everything in the servant quarters.
Li Shen didn't ask how Bai Ren knew. Smoke traveled. So did information.
"Smudged stamp," Li Shen said.
Bai Ren made a small, humorless sound. "So now lamp oil needs to be brave enough to survive paperwork."
"It's not the oil," Li Shen replied. "It's the seam."
Bai Ren was quiet for a moment. Then, lower, like he didn't want the dark to remember the sentence.
"Greyhaven will still be there," he said.
Li Shen stared at the ceiling, counting breaths like he was counting points.
"Yes," he said. "That's the problem."
Because Greyhaven would still be there.
And so would Shen Qiu.
And the space between them was where Li Shen would either grow—or get filed into a corner where nothing profitable ever happened again.