Threads of Ruin

The Enemy She Did Not Know She Had

Three months into her first season Suyin made her first independent sale, reported it honestly to Madame Pei, and received in return the most significant thing the old merchant had yet said to her.

"I want to know when my clerk is ready to stop being my clerk."

She walked back to her accounts and did not allow herself to feel the full weight of it until she was alone. Then she felt it completely, for exactly four minutes, and then she put it away and returned to work. Four minutes was what she permitted herself for things that felt good. Longer than that risked becoming comfortable, and comfort was a form of debt she had already decided she could not afford.

· · ·

Chen Liwei entered her professional life on a Tuesday morning in the second week of spring, and she did not meet him. She watched him.

He appeared at Merchant Cao's stall forty minutes before her scheduled quarterly review — a casual social visit that coincidentally covered every topic she had planned to address. Suyin observed from the gap between two adjacent stalls. He had researched her schedule. He had arrived early enough to plant doubt without appearing threatening. She gave him that much.

She waited until he left. Then she walked to Merchant Cao's stall and placed on the table a market analysis she had prepared the previous month — two seasons of price instability in Chen Liwei's supply chain. Western suppliers changed twice in six months. Not an accusation. Simply accurate.

"I am not telling you what to decide," she said. "I am giving you what a careful decision requires."

Merchant Cao studied it. "He said you were young. Said Madame Pei handed her accounts to a girl who would not last the summer."

"He is entitled to his assessment. The summer will tell us which of us is correct."

She left with the account secured. Chen Liwei — researches carefully, underestimates openly. Do not return the favour.

What she did not know — what she would not know for another three weeks — was that Chen Liwei had not come to Merchant Cao's stall because he had researched her schedule.

He had come because someone had sent him.

· · ·

Lu Hengyuan appeared at the East Market tea house that Friday with an expression that was different from his usual quality of careful attention. Something underneath it that she recognised after a moment as reluctance — the expression of a man who has information he would rather not deliver and has decided to deliver it anyway because not delivering it is worse.

"Chen Liwei," she said, before he could speak. "You know him."

A pause. "Yes."

"How."

"He is a former associate of Lord Shen's. They had a business arrangement that ended badly four years ago. Chen Liwei believes Lord Shen deliberately undermined his supply routes to remove a competitor. He has been attempting to rebuild his operation ever since." Lu Hengyuan wrapped his hands around his cup. "He learned about Lord Shen's placement arrangements six months ago. He does not know the full scope of them. But he knows enough to understand that Lord Shen is investing in something, and he wants to know what."

Suyin was very still. "He came to Merchant Cao's stall to get close to me."

"To observe you. Yes." A pause. "He does not know yet that you are aware of the arrangement. He thinks you are simply an unusually capable clerk that Lord Shen has taken an interest in. He wants to understand why."

"Which means he is going to keep watching me," she said.

"Yes."

"And if he discovers the placements — the seven of us — "

"He will use it," Lu Hengyuan said. "Not to help you. To damage Lord Shen. You would be a tool in that process, not a person." He met her eyes. "I wanted you to know before he gets closer."

She looked at him. "You knew about Chen Liwei before today."

"I learned about his connection to Lord Shen two days ago."

"And you waited until Friday to tell me."

The pause was fractionally too long. "I needed to confirm certain things first," he said. "Before I brought them to you."

"What things?"

"Whether Chen Liwei was watching you independently or whether someone had pointed him in your direction." He set down his cup. "Someone pointed him. I do not yet know who. But the instruction to approach Merchant Cao's stall this week came from outside Chen Liwei's own initiative."

Suyin looked at the table. At the lamp. At the city outside continuing its evening business with complete indifference to the fact that she had been in Chang'an for less than four months and already had three separate parties with competing interests watching everything she did.

"Lord Shen," she said. "The Ministry. Chen Liwei. And whoever is directing Chen Liwei."

"Yes."

"And you." She looked up. "Where do you sit in this, Lu Hengyuan? Honestly."

He held her gaze for a long moment. "Beside you," he said. "As much as I am permitted to be. Which is not as much as I would choose, if the choosing were entirely mine."

She looked at him for three seconds. Then she paid for the tea, rose, and left without answering, because the answer required more from her than she was currently willing to give and she had learned early that the most expensive thing a woman could do was give more than the situation required.

Walking home through the cold ward streets she updated the list of things she was carrying that no one knew she was carrying. It had grown considerably since Luoyang. It would grow further before it began to resolve.

She was beginning to understand that this was not unusual. This was simply what it felt like to be inside a game whose full board she could not yet see.

She had two choices: find the board, or become better than whoever was holding it.

She intended to do both.