The night in Sanio was not quiet. Xaishen's capital never truly slept, but it had a different kind of wakefulness after sundown. The streets under the amber glow of paper lanterns were alive with murmurs and music, the sharp tang of fried rice cakes mixing with the metallic scent of rain on steel roofs.
Cire adjusted the cuff of his plain charcoal coat as he leaned against the shadowed side of a tea house, letting the crowd wash by. His posture was loose, casual, but his eyes swept the street like a surgeon scanning a wound , precise, deliberate, searching for signs of infection.
"This is your idea of subtle?" Kingston muttered from beside him, his arms folded and his coat collar turned up. His sharp gaze flickered to the flickering red lanterns across the street, marking the entrance to one of Uncle Bao's distribution fronts , a herbal apothecary that never seemed to close.
"It's subtle if they don't know they're bleeding yet," Cire said, watching a man in a blue silk vest slip inside with a bundle wrapped in paper. "We're just checking the pulse tonight."
Ruby stood a step back from them, her hair pulled into a severe knot that caught the light. She looked like she belonged anywhere she decided to stand , here in the market's press, in the Governor's Hall, or on a battlefield. But there was a tension in her jaw tonight, the kind only Cire noticed.
Phuong was on the roof above, a phantom silhouette. Her voice was a whisper in their shared comm bead. "Two inside at the counter. One in the back room. Shipment's stacked along the east wall. No sign of Bao."
Ruby's reply was clipped but calm. "We're not looking for Bao yet. Tonight we test the edges."
Cire glanced at her. "Edges?"
She met his eyes without flinching. "You press on the edge of a blade to see if it bends or cuts."
They moved as a unit through the crowd, weaving past fishmongers closing stalls and drunken men spilling out of sake dens. The apothecary's painted sign swung overhead, its faded herbal glyphs almost too worn to read. Inside, the air smelled faintly of ginseng and bitter smoke.
The shopkeeper, an elderly man with hair like silver wire, looked up from his counter with a polite bow. His eyes, however, were too sharp for mere retail work.
"Looking for anything particular?" he asked, his voice smooth.
Cire let Ruby step forward. She was better at this game, the kind where every word was a blade with a smile on it.
"My friend here has trouble sleeping," Ruby said, tilting her head toward Cire. "We heard you carry a certain blend for… restless minds."
The old man's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Many blends for many ailments. But the one you mean is… expensive."
Kingston drifted toward a shelf, pretending interest in a row of tea canisters. His fingers twitched just slightly , to anyone else, it looked like idle fidgeting. Cire knew better. Kingston was mapping the shop's hidden signals: the etched marks under shelves, the faint hum of a chi-powered lock behind the counter.
"I'm willing to pay," Ruby said. "But only if it's fresh."
There was a pause. The man studied her, then nodded toward the back room. "Wait here."
The moment he disappeared behind the curtain, Cire exhaled slowly. He could feel it then , that subtle hum in his chest, like a heartbeat not entirely his own. The Warden System stirred faintly, brushing against the space around him. For a second, the edges of the shelves seemed sharper, the scent of herbs stronger, as though the world had been tuned one note higher.
Ruby caught him looking distant and gave him a slight frown, but said nothing.
The old man returned with a small lacquered box. He set it down on the counter with the care of a priest laying an offering.
Inside, wrapped in waxed paper, were thin glass vials of pale blue powder. The way it shimmered told Cire exactly what it was, even before the faint, bittersweet smell reached his nose.
Seishun.
Ruby leaned forward, her expression unreadable. "It's fresh?"
"As the morning frost," the man said.
Kingston's voice cut into their comm bead. "Mark it. I've got a pulse on the lock in the back , leads to a storage room. Two crates. Chi seal is weak. Could be bypassed."
Cire's fingers brushed the edge of the box. For a heartbeat, he felt a flicker , a shadow of something not here, not now. An image: a young man's laugh, eyes bright and eager, before it turned glassy with Seishun's embrace. The Warden System pulsed, tasting the klesha like a shark catching blood in the water.
He swallowed it back and straightened. "We'll take it."
Ruby's gaze flickered to him, something unreadable in her eyes.
They left the shop with the box, slipping back into the press of the market. The deal was a pretense , the real goal was the mark Kingston had planted in the apothecary's chi lock, a phantom thread they could follow back to Bao's network.
Phuong joined them in a shadowed alley two blocks down, her landing silent despite the rain-slick roof she'd leapt from. "You should see the east corner. Two more shops with the same mark on the doorframe. Bao's people are nesting here."
Ruby's lips curved in the faintest ghost of a smile. "Then we know where to cut next."
Cire leaned against the wall, arms folded. "Careful. Push too fast and Bao will feel it. We're not ready for the blade to swing our way."
Ruby met his gaze squarely. "I've been ready for years, Cire."
The quiet between them held for a moment , not hostile, but heavy.
Kingston cleared his throat. "So… subtle press accomplished?"
"Not yet," Ruby said. "One more step. Phuong, you take the east shops. Quiet disruption , no noise, no blood. Cire, Kingston, with me. We're paying a visit to the supply line."
The supply line was a small warehouse near the river, its walls a mix of brick and reinforced bamboo, humming faintly with embedded chi conductors. Two guards stood outside, rain dripping off their conical hats.
Kingston tapped his wristband, projecting a faint shimmer , a ripple in the air that bent the light around them. It wasn't perfect invisibility, but in the rain and the dim lantern light, it was enough.
They moved past the guards like shadows slipping between raindrops. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of dried herbs and the sharper tang of chemical distillation. Crates were stacked in neat rows, each marked with an innocuous herbal seal.
Ruby pointed to one crate near the back. "That's the blend that feeds half the city's Seishun supply. Kingston, plant the tracer. Cire, "
But Cire wasn't listening. The Warden System pulsed again, stronger now, pulling his attention to one of the workers moving barrels. For a second, Cire saw him as if through a second lens , the man's outline shimmering with threads of Greed, each one a tether to something beyond the warehouse.
He blinked and the vision was gone.
"Cire," Ruby's voice was sharper this time. "Focus."
He nodded, shaking it off. "I'm here."
Kingston finished his work, and they slipped out the way they came, leaving the tracer to feed them a steady stream of movement data.
Back at their safehouse , a narrow three-story building tucked between a tailor's and a noodle shop , they gathered around the small holo-table in the corner. The tracer's signal painted a thin blue line across a map of Sanio, leading from the warehouse into the heart of Bao's territory.
Ruby studied it in silence.
"This isn't a full strike," she said finally. "It's a whisper. But it's the start of a map."
Cire leaned back in his chair, watching her. "And when the map's done?"
She met his gaze, and this time there was no hesitation. "We cut the heart out."
The Warden System stirred again, almost in approval.