Chapter 17 17
They moved before midday.
Auntie Shu packed them food without being asked — two cloth parcels, practical and dense, the kind of provisions someone packs when they know a person might not get another chance to eat for a while. She pressed them into Xiao Miyao's hands at the back door and held on for a moment.
"Come back after," she said simply.
Xiao Miyao squeezed her hands. "I will."
They went out through the alley, moved west first to mislead anyone watching, then looped south through the temple district where the streets narrowed and the foot traffic thickened enough to swallow two people without difficulty. Xiao Miyao navigated from memory, never hesitating, her eyes moving constantly without looking like they were moving.
He stayed close and watched her work.
"Third street past the incense market," she said quietly. "There's a safe house registered to a textile merchant. Old Council contact, completely clean." A pause. "We'll stage from there tonight."
"How far from the eastern Shadow Sect point?"
"Eight minutes on foot. Twelve if we're being careful."
"We'll be careful."
She glanced sideways at him. "You say that now."
"I was careful last time."
"You headbutted someone."
"Carefully."
The corner of her mouth moved. She looked away before it became anything.
The textile merchant's safe house was above a warehouse that smelled of raw silk and cedar. The merchant himself — a quiet man of around fifty with careful eyes — showed them upstairs without conversation, brought tea, and left them to it. Another person in Xiao Miyao's network who asked nothing and gave everything. He was starting to understand that she had spent years building these relationships with the same patience and precision she brought to wei qi. Every stone placed deliberately. Every connection maintained.
She was extraordinary at the long game.
The afternoon passed in preparation.
She mapped the route to the eastern staging point across three different documents, cross-referencing from memory against what her informants had reported before they went silent. He watched her work and asked questions when something wasn't clear and she answered them without condescension, treating his strategic ignorance the same way he'd treated his wei qi ignorance — as simply a current condition, not a fixed one.
"They'll have between four and six operatives at the staging point," she said, tracing the building's outline. "Ground floor entry, two upper windows facing the street, rear exit into a service alley." She tapped the rear exit. "This is the problem. If any of them get out this way they'll scatter into the district and we lose them."
"I can cover the rear before going in the front."
"You can't be in two places."
"I don't need to be." He studied the map. "If I come over the roof from the building behind, I'm above the rear exit before they know anyone's there. Drop down when movement starts inside."
She looked at the map. Looked at him. Back at the map. Her finger traced the roofline of the building behind.
"The gap between the two roofs is approximately four metres," she said.
"I know."
"Enhanced agility," she said. Not a question.
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment. "And the front entry while you're on the roof?"
He looked at her. "That's where you come in."
Her head came up sharply.
"Not fighting," he said immediately. "The front door. Knock. You're a city resident with a complaint about noise from the building. Merchant house cover means they have to respond like a merchant house." He held her gaze. "You buy me forty seconds to get into position on the rear."
Xiao Miyao processed this rapidly. He could see it happening — every angle examined, every failure point identified and assessed. The same thing she did with wei qi, with Council proposals, with everything.
"It's not bad," she said finally. Which from her he was learning meant considerably more than the words suggested.
"I have my moments."
"Don't oversell it." She rolled the document closed. "We go at the second night bell. Sect operatives work late but they eat at the first bell. There'll be a window of reduced alertness."
"You know their meal schedule."
"I know everything I can find out." She looked up at him steadily. "It's the things I can't find out that worry me."
He understood that. The two informants who hadn't reported. The note through Auntie Shu's back door. The fourth attacker who'd run from the pavilion and hadn't been heard from since.
"Whatever we don't know," he said, "we handle when it shows up."
She looked at him for a moment. "You're comfortable with uncertainty."
"I've had a lot of practice recently."
She considered that. Then she did something that surprised him — she unrolled the wei qi board she'd apparently packed along with the strategic documents, smoothing it flat on the low table between them. She set the stone boxes at either side.
"We have three hours until the night bells," she said. "Sit down."
He sat.
She placed the first stone without preamble and looked at him expectantly.
He picked up a white stone and placed it.
She responded in two seconds.
They played in the warm silk-scented room while the city outside moved through its evening. She didn't correct his stones tonight, didn't rearrange them into better positions. She just played against him — genuinely, fully, the same opponent she was against anyone.
He lost comprehensively. Obviously and completely.
But somewhere in the third game he made a move that made her go still for four full seconds before she responded.
She didn't say anything about it. But when she placed her counter stone her expression had shifted into something focused and privately pleased, the look of someone who had found a more interesting problem than they expected.
\[Ding. Affection with Xiao Miyao +10%. Current: 80%. She sees your potential before you do. That matters to her more than she'll admit.\]
The first night bell rang across the city.
They packed the board away in silence. The merchant appeared briefly with two oil lamps and disappeared again. Xiao Miyao checked her robe, straightened her hair, and became in the space of thirty seconds the precise composed public version of herself — the Jade Strategist, unreadable and certain.
She looked at him.
He rolled his shoulders, felt the system settle into readiness at the edges of his awareness, the enhanced strength and agility humming quietly like an engine at idle.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Been ready."
She picked up her lamp. "Don't fall off the roof."
"That's your version of be careful?"
"It's more specific." She moved to the door. "Specificity is more useful than sentiment."
He followed her out into the night.
Eight minutes to the eastern staging point. Four metres of rooftop gap. Forty seconds to get into position.
And somewhere beyond tonight, a Council vote that would change fourteen provinces.
One step at a time.