Old Crane always sent for him the same way, when he had fresh Intel.
Not with a note; that could be intercepted. Not with a messenger; that could be followed. Just a boy from the lower docks wandering through the Black Lotus quarter at dusk, whistling a tune only sailors used and only on days the tide turned strange.
Zhenan heard it as he crossed the inner courtyard.
Three notes, a short break, then two more. Off-key. Deliberate.
He didn't change direction immediately. That would have been too easy to trace. He finished the circuit he'd already begun, exchanged a few words with the gate guards about patrol rotations, even paused to correct a junior's grip on a spear. Only then did he drift toward the outer gate, steps unhurried, Qi coiled in its usual steady knot.
When he reached the lower streets, the boy was gone.
He took the long way to the docks.
By the time he stepped under the eaves of the noodle stall Old Crane favoured, the sky over Yunzhong had gone the colour of cooled iron. Lanterns flickered to life along the water; the air smelled of broth and river.
Old Crane was already there, of course. He sat on the low bench at the back.
Zhenan slid onto the opposite bench without greeting.
"Your timing is getting predictable," he said quietly.
Old Crane's gaze lifted. "And you Lotus boys are getting more and more unpredictable. Not just escorting drunks and tax chests these days. Half the crates you carry belong to that Bureau from the capital, the one that likes its chests black."
Zhenan didn't bother correcting him. Black Lotus carried those chests. Whether they 'belonged' to anyone wasn't something men like Zhenan were paid to know. Even if the shape of the truth had begun to press at the edges of his awareness.
Bai Lin and Qiang Shou had kept him a Senior Ascendant, and Zhenan had let them, keeping his true Qi buried; because promotion in Black Lotus didn't mean honor. It meant being the kind of "boy" who stopped coming back.
"Is that what you called me for?" Zhenan asked.
"No." Old Crane said.
Two bowls appeared in front of them, set down by the stall owner without a word. They knew the arrangement by now. Crane talked. Zhenan listened. Money moved, but not between them.
For a few breaths, the only sound was the soft slurp of noodles and the slap of water against the piers.
Then Crane said, in the mild tone he used when slipping a blade between two ribs, "You told me to mention it if anyone started sniffing too close to your sect's ships."
Zhenan's hand stilled on his chopsticks. "I did."
"Well," Crane went on, "someone's sniffing."
"City guild?" Zhenan asked.
"Worse." Crane twirled noodles lazily. "A girl."
That earned him a flat look.
Crane's mouth folded into something like a smile. "Don't look so relieved. This one's the dangerous kind. And she's from a sect, too."
Zhenan's attention sharpened in a way that didn't reach his face.
"Jade Wind?" he asked. There were only two sects in Yunzhong.
Crane nodded.
"Rank?" he asked.
"Saffron Yellow," Crane said. "Junior Ascendant."
Sect disciple or not, she was still a woman moving through Yunzhong's working streets. A man could ask questions on the docks and be called bold. A woman did it and men started inventing reasons she deserved what followed. Daylight made men more polite. Dusk made them more honest. And Black Lotus routes drew the worst kind of honesty.
"What did she ask?" Zhenan said.
"Questions with good eyes behind them," Crane replied. "She knows enough to be dangerous and not enough to stop being."
Vague. On purpose.
Zhenan let out a breath slowly. "Describe her."
Crane's brow rose. "Hm. Interested, are we?"
"Describe her," Zhenan repeated, voice even.
Crane scratched his jaw, thinking. "Tall, for a girl. Legs like she was built to be on rooftops more than floors. Yellow sash, pulled too neat to be vanity. Jade-green over-robe, split high: Pavilion cut, meant for movement." He shrugged. "Sharp eyes that look at everything twice."
The image settled with suspicious ease.
Market sunlight. A bronze mirror. A jade over-robe and bare, strong legs, weight set clean through the feet. Saffron Yellow caught at his peripheral vision. Eyes meeting his in reflection, her Qi flaring wide for a heartbeat before she snapped her gaze away.
Zhenan's thumb brushed his lower lip before he caught himself.
Crane saw it. Of course he did. The old man missed very little.
"I've seen her," Zhenan said, because Crane would guess that anyway.
"I thought you might." Crane's gaze went back to his bowl, but his tone stayed light. "She looks at routes the way you do. Only from a different height."
Zhenan didn't like the sound of that. "How many times has she come to you?"
"Twice." Crane tipped his bowl to catch the last of the broth. "First time, she took the upstairs window and tried to pretend she was only watching the street. Asked why certain barges looked lighter in the water than they did on their manifests." His mouth creased. "Didn't flinch when I told her the numbers lied more than the men."
"And the second?" Zhenan asked.
"Second time, she didn't bring questions." Crane set the bowl down, turned it idly between his palms. "She brought silence and those eyes. Sat, listened, let me talk into the space she made. Didn't argue, didn't preen. Just filed it all away behind that still face of hers. Smart girl."
"Too smart," Zhenan said.
His mind was already moving: unregistered crates, orders that arrived through three mouths and never in writing. "Necessary," someone had called it, once. A Jade Wind girl threading herself between all that.
And now he knew she'd been doing it with her eyes open, and Old Crane's words in her pocket.
"She shouldn't be anywhere near these routes," he added.
Especially not alone, he thought to himself. If she got caught, they'd punish not only her questions but also the fact that she'd dared to walk there alone as a woman.
"Mm," Crane said. "That's what I took you to mean."
Zhenan's chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth. "What do you mean?"
"I told her," Crane said, tone casual, "that if she was set on crossing paths with Black Lotus, there was one man in your sect who hadn't forgotten what a body costs."
Silence stretched.
"I did not," he added, "give her your name. Only a sash colour."
Zhenan set his chopsticks down very carefully.
The old informant slurped the last strand of noodle, swallowed, and only then looked fully at the young man.
"You told a Jade Wind girl," Zhenan said, "that there was someone with a Crimson Red sash inside Black Lotus she could lean on."
Crane corrected mildly: "Told her there was someone with a Crimson Red sash who'd rather not see more bodies piling up over a few questions. Not quite the same thing."
"It will be, if she finds me." Zhenan's jaw tightened. "She'll paint a target on my back and hers."
Zhenan could picture it too clearly: the way a crowd's gaze sharpened when a woman walked with purpose; the way a man's insult could become a license. Of course, the Ministry or worse, the Bureau, could want to make an example of her for being too nosy. But even if that didn't happen, there was the story the men would tell afterward.
"She should stop asking questions. I'm not getting involved," he added. "She's a woman. If she has sense, she'll step back."
He looked away, out toward the slow movement of the Xuekou river. Ships rocked gently against their moorings, lanterns nodding like tired heads.
Crane made a noncommittal noise. "Maybe."
Zhenan's gaze cut back. "You disagree?"
"I've seen a lot of people in this city," Crane said, fingers tapping once against the rim of his empty bowl. "Most of them follow the same lines. Gold, fear, ambition, habit." His mouth twisted. "Every so often, someone walks a little different. Girl like that? With that look in her eyes? She doesn't pull away from currents. She leans into them."
"A poetic way of saying she's reckless." Zhenan's tone was dry.
"A practical way of saying," Crane answered, "that if no one inside moves a finger for her, she'll drown."
Zhenan's hands curled under the table.
"Why her?" he asked, more sharply than he meant to. "You see dozens of foolish disciples every season."
Crane's expression went faintly flat. "Because once, long ago, there was another girl with eyes like that. And this time…" He paused. "I just keep a very short list in my head," he added at last. "A list of people I'd rather not see disappear again. She's newly on it."
Zhenan swallowed. Another girl with eyes like that. A girl the city had eaten and forgotten.
It would have been easier to tell the old man he was just romanticising a curious girl. Easier than admitting that the idea of her ending up as another ghost on Old Crane's list sat badly with him.
Instead he said, "You put her name on that list after two visits?"
Crane's eyes crinkled. "After one. The second only confirmed I was right."
Zhenan leaned back, letting the bench creak. In the crowded dusk, no one was watching them closely. To passersby, he was just another young man at a stall with an old one.
Inside, something he refused to name twisted.
The girl from the mirror. Saffron Yellow sash, jade robe, eyes that had looked at him like he was a map she hadn't yet decided whether to trust or burn.
"She's not my responsibility," he said at last.
"I know," Crane replied. "Your responsibilities are written by men with seals and titles. This isn't one of them."
"So, why tell me?" Zhenan asked.
Crane's voice went very quiet. "Because you're not as blind as the others in that lotus pit," the old man went on. "You don't step on throats for sport."
"You give me too much credit," Zhenan replied.
"Maybe." Crane's shrug was small. "Maybe I give her too much, too. But here we are."
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the river.
Finally Zhenan pushed the half-finished bowl away.
He should have felt only annoyed that a Jade Wind girl was poking at work that got people killed, and the tired knowledge that women who walked these streets paid twice for it. But under all of that, annoyingly clear, lay the flash of a bronze mirror and a pair of chestnut-gold eyes snapping away from his.
He tamped it down.
Old Crane stared at Zhenan. "You know, she's the kind who could change the way this city breathes. And whether Black Lotus eats her or not will come down to men like you."
Zhenan's shoulders stayed relaxed, but his fingers tightened around the chopsticks until the cheap wood creaked.
"Black Lotus doesn't ask men like me what to eat," he said. "Men like me get told where to stand and who to hold down. That's all."
Which was exactly where the teeth were…
Crane gave him a long, dry look that said plainly he didn't buy it.
Zhenan rose, smoothing his sleeve out of habit.
He didn't look at Crane when he said, "Enjoy your noodles," because anything more would have sounded like admitting Crane was right.
Then he stepped back into the city, Crimson Red hidden under plain grey again, repeating the only rule that had kept him alive this long.
Order, not mercy.
And still, every reflection he passed tugged a little too sharply at his attention, as if some part of him kept checking for those chestnut-gold eyes in the glass.
He folded that small betrayal away with every other thought he didn't intend to admit to.