A shop in the Middle Rim cost sixty low-grade stones a month in rent and another twelve to keep the city’s array running. Then Captain Meng Kui came around for his share. A merchant could raise his prices, dilute his medicine, or go without. Push back too hard and an audit or a fire might take the whole shop before sundown.
Pei Jing walked through the Under-City with his bamboo hat low. The bracer on his left arm held thirty-six needles. A blackened ash staff took his weight on the wet stones. His new vision picked out tiny scrying wards in the mortar above the doors. He kept the Chaos Qi deep in his bones and let the wards read the weak aura of a sick laborer.
He’d chosen the name Silent Pavilion because he wanted buyers to know the mark without knowing where he slept. Now he needed a place to leave an order and someone willing to sell it.
He spent four hours in the drains of the Lowest Mire. Some places were watched. Others flooded when the tide came in. One sat under a node of the Star-Suppressing Great Array. He passed eleven sites before he found one he could use.
