Greyhaven didn't care why you came.
It cared what you carried.
Li Shen left the Pavilion on a daylight exchange errand that looked like any other: lamp oil, binding twine, a sack of cheap grain for the quarter store. The slip was stamped. The list was dull. The half-shift credit was posted before he even crossed the gate.
He kept the receipts dry. He kept his pace steady. He didn't scan the road like a hunted man.
The wind was cold and honest. The stone road was crowded enough that no single servant mattered.
That was the point.
Greyhaven's outer market swallowed them with noise and breath and the smell of cooked fat. Li Shen bought the listed supplies first—clean stamps, hard presses, ink that would survive a clerk's fingernail. Then he stored the receipts in a wax sleeve and tied the sleeve into the inside of his sash where it wouldn't rub.
Only after the errand was real did he let himself become a man with a second purpose.
Stone Lantern Tea Stall sat at the edge of the seam between mortal booths and licensed tables—close enough to look like a normal stop, far enough that people with money could sit without being bumped.
The stall wasn't pretty. It was stable.
A low table. Four benches. A kettle that never stopped steaming. A lantern stone on the corner with a dark mineral core that held heat longer than it should.
Li Shen ordered a cup of bitter tea and paid in copper without haggling.
The vendor took the coin, weighed it in his fingers out of habit, then nodded once. No friendliness, no suspicion—just the bored competence of a man who sold warmth for a living.
"You want it hot, drink it now," the vendor said. "You want it safe, wait. Either way it's still bitter."
Li Shen didn't answer. He carried the cup like a tool and took the back bench, as the letter had instructed.
He didn't sit like a conspirator. He sat like a servant waiting for water to cool.
---
Qian Mei arrived without announcing herself.
One moment the space across from him was empty.
The next, she was there with a cup already in her hand, sleeves clean, hair pinned with a plain comb, posture straight enough to suggest she belonged but not so straight it begged to be tested.
She didn't smile. Smiling was a luxury people used when they weren't counting.
Her eyes flicked once—quick, clinical—at his sacks and the way his sash sat.
"Good," she said quietly. "You didn't bring wet paper to a dry fight."
Li Shen's tone stayed plain. "Everything on the slip. Stamps clean."
"That's not what I'm checking," Qian Mei replied, and her voice made it clear she wasn't teasing. She was calibrating.
She looked him over the way merchants looked over grain: not for beauty—only for spoilage.
"You've been buried in the forge," she said. "I can tell from your hands. And from the way you're sitting like the bench might charge you rent."
Li Shen took a sip and let the bitterness sit before he spoke. "Yes. Forge."
Her gaze sharpened slightly. "And the cough?"
"It's still there," Li Shen said. "Just… less loud."
Qian Mei gave a single nod, like she'd heard an invoice paid. "Tea bricks?"
"And paste."
"Good," she said. "Sleep is discipline's fuel. No sleep and you get sloppy. Sloppy is expensive."
She didn't wait for him to react. She moved straight to the point, because that was how she kept things from turning into sentiment.
"You said you wanted copper goods without turning points into dust."
"Yes."
"Then you need outside liquidity," Qian Mei said. "Not wealth. Don't chase wealth. You need a buffer—enough that a bad week doesn't make you desperate."
Li Shen kept his eyes on the tea. "I don't carry copper out of the Pavilion."
"You carry points," she replied. "Points can become stones. Stones can become copper here."
Li Shen didn't pretend the exchange rate wasn't a knife.
Qian Mei saw it anyway and didn't bother softening it. "The rate is meant to shame you out of using it. That's the point. But shame is not the same as useless."
Li Shen looked up. "And you make it worth swallowing."
She tilted her head a fraction. "I don't make it 'worth it.' I make it efficient. Worth is your decision. Efficient is mine."
Then she reached into her sleeve and set a folded paper on the table.
Thin stock. Cheap. Carefully folded, corners aligned.
No stamp. No seal.
Just… handled with care.
"A message," she said.
Li Shen didn't touch it immediately. He watched the fold lines.
He knew that fold—how peasants stiffened paper so it didn't turn to pulp in damp weather.
Qian Mei watched him recognize it.
"Your village has a courier channel," she said. "Not into the Pavilion. Into Greyhaven. Merchants move more than salt."
Li Shen's fingers tightened once around the cup. His voice stayed level. "Who wrote it?"
"Your father," Qian Mei said, simply.
Li Shen set his cup down.
He unfolded the paper under the table edge, using his forearm to block the angle from passersby—practical, not dramatic.
The handwriting was rough, steady, and spare.
> Shen,
We received your note.
We are alive. Work is hard. Taxes are worse.
Old He coughs blood some mornings but still refuses to rest.
Luo Yao helps with the fields. She is stubborn.
Do not send money if it risks you.
Eat. Sleep when you can.
— Li Heng
There were no blessings. No poetry. No begging.
Just the voice of a man who had learned that love was measured in restraint.
Li Shen refolded it exactly as it had been folded and slid it into the inner pocket of his robe.
The paper felt heavier than the salvage chit had.
Qian Mei didn't comment on his face. She respected silence the way she respected sealed jars.
She only said, "They're not collapsing. Not yet. But they're thinning. That kind of thinning doesn't look dramatic until suddenly it is."
Li Shen kept his voice low. "Bandits?"
"Not raids," she replied. "Visits. They take tools. Oil. Rope. Anything that makes work faster. The kind of theft that doesn't feel like war—until winter comes and nothing moves."
Li Shen's eyes flicked once—Bai Ren's missing saw, the road report—then returned to Qian Mei.
"And the magistrate?"
Qian Mei's mouth tightened with the contempt of someone who had paid too many 'fees.' "He calls it 'stability.' He calls it 'collecting early.' He calls it anything except what it is."
Li Shen didn't ask for details he couldn't use. He asked the useful question.
"Why bring this to me?"
Qian Mei tapped the table once, soft. "Because you asked to meet. And because your village is part of your risk profile whether you admit it or not."
It was her language. Risk profile. Not sentiment.
Li Shen accepted it as the form she could afford to speak in.
---
He took a breath and moved the conversation back to business, where it could be controlled.
"You mentioned consignment."
Qian Mei nodded. "Consignment is control without carrying. You don't want to be the man walking around Greyhaven with the same purchases twice a month. That's how people start recognizing your hands."
She reached under the bench and drew out a small pouch. Not heavy. Not ornate. Cloth tied tight.
She loosened it just enough for him to see: small sealed packets—tea bricks cut into smaller portions, a strip of dried herb, a small jar of dark paste like the River-Jade kind, and two wax sleeves identical to the ones from the mender.
"You can buy all of this yourself," she said. "But you'll pay retail, you'll waste time, and you'll be seen doing it. Seen is the expensive part."
Li Shen said nothing.
Qian Mei continued anyway, because silence didn't scare her.
"I hold stock. You draw when you have a legitimate errand. You don't wander. You don't linger. You don't turn a tea stall into a habit."
"And you take a cut," Li Shen said.
She didn't blink. "Of course."
"How much?"
"Ten percent on common goods," Qian Mei replied. "More if it requires a favor. Less if it's bulk and dull. Dull is cheap. Dull is safe."
Li Shen didn't argue. Ten percent was clean. Clean mattered.
"What do you need from me?" he asked.
Qian Mei's eyes didn't shift. "Seed capital."
Li Shen nodded once. Expected.
"I can convert points."
Qian Mei's gaze hardened a fraction. "Not often."
Li Shen held her eyes. "Often is attention. Once is leverage."
She watched him for a beat, then gave a slow nod. "Once, then. One move. Clean. You buy time with it. You don't buy a pattern."
Li Shen asked, "If I hand you a stone, how do I get value without you walking it through the gate?"
Qian Mei answered without hesitation. "I don't walk goods through the gate. That's amateur work."
Li Shen waited.
"I return options," she said. "I pre-stock what you actually use—tea, paste, sleeves, substitutes for powder when you can't afford powder. Small tools that look like servant purchases. Then when you come out on a legitimate errand, you collect what fits your carry and your story."
Li Shen considered it. It wasn't a smuggling tunnel.
It was logistics.
"And the profit?" he asked.
Qian Mei's eyes narrowed slightly, like he'd asked something too obvious. "Profit is reducing how many points you burn on staying functional. Points are your insulation. Don't set them on fire just to feel warm."
She was right.
Li Shen said quietly, "If I do this, you become a thread."
Qian Mei didn't flinch. "Everything is a thread. You choose threads that pay instead of threads that choke."
Then, almost as an aside, she added, "And if you ever need to send a message to your village again, this is cleaner than begging a clerk and praying the wall feels kind."
Li Shen's fingers tightened once at that.
The value wasn't just medicine.
It was a channel.
---
A shadow passed the edge of the tea stall.
A man in plain clothes—too still to be a drunk, too loose to be a guard. He didn't stop, didn't look directly at them.
But his pace slowed.
Qian Mei noticed without turning her head. She raised her cup and took a slow sip as if nothing in the world mattered more than bitter tea.
Her voice didn't change. "Hearthscale."
Li Shen didn't ask how she knew.
"They don't care about your tea," Qian Mei continued. "They care about repetition."
Li Shen said, "This is the first time."
"First is a blur," she replied. "Second becomes a memory. Third becomes a fee. That's how they do business."
She slid the pouch a finger-width closer—then stopped herself, like she was reminding Li Shen and herself what discipline looked like.
"Don't take anything today," she said. "You're already carrying quarter-store goods. Extra weight makes extra questions. Extra questions make extra eyes."
Li Shen nodded. That wasn't fear. That was competence.
He asked instead, "Do you have anyone inside?"
Qian Mei's gaze snapped to him, sharp. "No."
No mystery. No flirting with danger.
"I don't bribe gate clerks," she continued. "That kind of channel collapses and takes you with it. I use what already exists—merchants, stalls, daylight errands, and the fact the Pavilion doesn't search every servant's tea."
Li Shen absorbed it.
"You're not digging a tunnel," he said.
"I'm building redundancy," Qian Mei replied.
---
Li Shen touched the inner pocket where his father's letter sat like a weight.
Then he looked back at Qian Mei.
"I'll seed it," he said.
Qian Mei didn't brighten. She wasn't sentimental about commitment.
"Good," she replied. "Small. Clean. One move."
Li Shen asked, "What do I do next?"
"Next exchange errand," Qian Mei said immediately. "Bring a stone shard. Not a full stone. A shard is enough. Full stones make people curious."
Li Shen didn't like the conversion rate.
But he understood what the shard bought: copper power without copper visibility.
"And Old He?" he asked.
Qian Mei's eyes softened by a fraction—not warmth, just the human fact settling into her voice.
"Still alive," she said. "Thinner. Stubborn. She treats rest like surrender."
Li Shen's jaw tightened, just slightly.
Qian Mei went on, blunt but not cruel. "Your father doesn't ask for money. He's not trying to drain you. He's asking you to stay alive long enough to matter."
Li Shen didn't answer.
Qian Mei added, quieter, "And Luo Yao's still there. She's not running. If that was sitting in your head."
Li Shen exhaled slowly.
He hadn't known he needed to hear that until it landed.
"Any names I should know?" he asked.
Qian Mei didn't flood him with a map. She gave him one lever.
"A caravan called Pine Cart," she said. "They pass your region about once every two months. If you ever need to send something small—paper, not coin—you can route it through me when they're in Greyhaven."
Li Shen nodded once.
A channel.
Not a rescue.
Channels were the only honest help in this world.
---
The plain-clothes man drifted past again, closer.
Qian Mei nudged her cup a fraction so it covered a bit of table—nothing dramatic, nothing that screamed secrecy.
Just enough to make the scene boring.
Two people drinking tea. A servant with sacks. A woman with clean sleeves.
Boring was armor.
Li Shen finished his tea and stood.
He didn't offer gratitude. Gratitude could be read as weakness.
He said what mattered. "I'll be back before sun-lower."
Qian Mei inclined her head once. "Keep your stamps dry."
Then, as he turned, she added—soft, aimed at his back rather than his face, which somehow made it heavier—"Write your father again when you can. Not long. Just… proof you're still moving."
Li Shen didn't look back.
He walked out into the market flow, sacks balanced, face plain.
He didn't rush. Rushing invited attention.
He didn't linger. Lingering invited questions.
He returned to the Pavilion gate with daylight still high enough to be unambiguous.
At the registry, the brush scratched. The stamp hit his errand slip. The quarter store took his goods without looking at his face.
Inside the wall, paper became routine again.
But something had changed.
Not in the forge.
Not in his Qi.
In his options.
A folded letter pressed against his ribs.
A future stone shard waiting behind ugly exchange rates.
And a broker in Greyhaven who didn't sell miracles—only a supply chain, a message route, and the kind of redundancy that kept a man breathing long enough to become dangerous in the right way.
That was enough.
For now.