That morning, the price of bread in the outer district tripled, and Yuan knew the festival had been announced before he heard the drums.
Markets knew these things before rulers did.
He saw the salt merchant replace his old wooden sign with a more expensive one, wiping his brow with feigned embarrassment.
He saw a woman standing before the cloth shop, counting her copper coins for the fourth time before walking away.
At the soup cart, where Yuan had sat with his bowl every morning for months, the old man stirred the ladle with a frown he rarely wore.
“One week every year,” the old man said without looking up, “the rich bring their children into the grand arena so everyone can see how much they’re worth.
We know how much we’re worth from the first morning.
We’re worth paying for their celebration.”
“Why does the bread go up?”
“Because people from the inner walls come here during those days, eat our bread, then complain about its taste.”
The old man shrugged.
“The festival is a stage, boy.
And every stage needs someone to clean it after the show.”
At the market entrance, the drummers struck their drums three times.
A hoarse announcer recited a proclamation he had clearly memorized long ago.
The annual Festival of the Walls would begin in twelve days at the Grand Arena.
Duels.
Puzzles.
A team trial.
The gates would be open to everyone, and the great temples would be present.
The great temples.
Yuan paused at those words as though he had found a hole in a wall.
During this week in particular, the temples searched for talents worthy of exclusive discipleship.
Every great family had enough pride to compete for their attention, but not always enough talent to win it.
That was why the festival was not a celebration.
It was a market.
The family whose young generation excelled gained prestige for an entire year.
The family whose youths failed could lose something worth more than prestige.
Their share of resources might quietly pass into the hands of their rivals.
A festival where the powerful sold dignity to one another by the lot.
Ming Hao arrived late that morning without sending anyone ahead.
That alone made Yuan raise his head.
Ming Hao sent guards for everything, even to fetch a cup of tea, and usually kept himself far enough away to keep the dust of the outer district from touching his silk robes.
Today, he had come himself.
Sweat still clung to his forehead, and the dragon pin on his chest was slightly crooked, as if he had put it on in a hurry.
“I want to participate in the competition,” he said without greeting.
He paused, then added in a voice that did not sound like an order.
“And I want you to help me.”
Yuan placed his spoon on the edge of the bowl.
“The Festival of the Walls requires combat ability.”
“I’m not asking you to fight.”
His patience ran out quickly, as usual.
“I’m asking you to help me win.
I’ve heard some participants choose opponents from smaller families that need favors from a major family.
The opponent then loses willingly in front of the judges and spectators.”
He lowered his voice.
“Arrangements.
I want you to find me someone.”
Yuan understood.
Ming Hao, a son of a branch that had still failed to cross the second threshold despite years of training in the family temple, knew what the elders said about him when they smiled.
He did not merely want to win.
He wanted to be seen winning.
He wanted to erase the title they whispered behind his back.
The boy they had sent to collect taxes.
Yuan could refuse, losing the young man’s trust while giving his guards time to wonder why.
He could also accept without thinking, stepping into a scheme between the families before he knew its boundaries.
Neither option appealed to him.
There was always a third.
Let blind greed pay the price for opening the wrong doors.
“I can do it,” Yuan said at last, leaving a hint of hesitation in his voice, as though the request were greater than him.
“But I’ll need access to offices people like me aren’t allowed to enter.
I’ll have to speak with intermediaries above my station.
I’ll need something bearing your name.”
“Something?”
“A token.
Authorization.
Anything that makes the guard at the door think I’m speaking with your authority rather than my own.”
Ming Hao did not think for long.
He pulled a thumb-sized piece of green jade from his sleeve.
The emblem of a two-pan balance was carved into it.
He handed it to Yuan as casually as one might toss a servant a tip.
Then he swaggered away.
He never realized that, for the first time in his life, he had handed someone a real key to a door he had no idea where it led.
A key, the dead merchant said inside Yuan’s mind, his voice carrying the satisfaction of someone who had just smelled a profitable deal.
Signed by a fool.
“The best kind of signature.”
The following day, Yuan passed through the gate separating the outer district from the middle walls for the first time.
The difference was not merely in the stones.
The ground itself seemed to rise beneath his feet, step by step.
The roads were paved with carefully cut stone instead of mud, and the air carried scents he did not recognize.
Polished wood.
Good ink.
Perfume that seemed designed to conceal the smell of power rather than reveal the scent of the perfume itself.
The guard turned the jade token over in his hand, then looked Yuan over.
He opened the gate without a word.
That was how arrogance worked.
It opened doors for those who carried its name.
The festival administration office stood inside a long building with a green roof.
Yuan wore the plain robes of an assistant and carried a roll of worthless papers beneath his arm.
He moved among the clerks like a man who had misplaced an important contract.
The shelves were crowded with lists.
Participants were categorized by family, age, and cultivation level, all written in elegant script that made every child from the inner walls seem as though they had been born with a seal already stamped upon them.
He searched the Ming list first.
Ming Hao.
Three others who did not matter.
Then he went through the smaller families, looking for someone who could afford to lose with dignity.
Finally, his finger moved down the He Family’s list.
There he was.
He Long.
His full name.
His branch.
No disguise.
Yuan stopped between two shelves.
He Long had always come to their meetings in gray robes, carrying himself with the caution of a man hiding his identity.
For his name to be written openly before thousands of eyes meant he had decided to be seen.
And choosing to be seen by the entire city meant something in his calculations had changed.
They met two days later on the same old warehouse roof where they had first encountered each other.
He Long lowered his broad body onto the tiles with a lightness one would not expect from a man with such wide shoulders, then crouched as though rooftops were familiar ground.
His square face held two expressions at once.
The excitement of a young man firing his first arrow.
And the unease of someone who understood the price of a mistake.
“I saw your name on the list,” Yuan said.
“I expected you to.”
His brown eyes were straight and unwavering, like a question that refused to bend.
“My elder brother twisted his ankle during training a week ago.
He won’t recover for another month.”
“The elders hesitated for two days before deciding the second son would go.”
The second son.
He said it without obvious bitterness, but Yuan could hear the bitterness sleeping beneath the words, like a stone buried beneath mud.
“This is my first chance to stand before them without my brother’s name walking into the hall ahead of mine.”
“What are the trials?”
He Long explained briefly.
Three stages.
Public individual duels.
Then a strategic puzzle trial before the judges, a siege scenario with limited resources.
Finally, on the second day, a team trial.
Teams of five contestants would be selected randomly from among the different families to test their ability to work together under pressure.
“Randomly?” Yuan asked.
“By a drawing overseen by the monks.
No one has a hand in it.”
Yuan let the wind pass between them for a moment.
Random among so many families meant there was a possibility, perhaps one in thirty, that Ming Hao and He Long would end up on the same team.
Ming Hao, who believed the world owed him victory.
And He Long, who had come to prove he was not anyone’s shadow.
Neither knew that the other held one end of the same thread.
Funny, the merchant said.
If you weren’t the one who had to pay for it.
That night, Yuan lit a candle before the mud wall of his hut and drew three names in charcoal.
Ming Hao.
Lin Shui.
He Long.
Each name occupied a corner, with thin lines connecting them.
The first knew nothing.
The second knew some things.
The third knew enough to be concerned.
One of Yuan’s greatest accomplishments over the past few weeks had been keeping these names in separate rooms, with none of them seeing the others except through a crack in the door.
In one week, two of them would stand in the same arena before thousands of eyes.
A plan like this requires accounting for every possibility, the dead Craftsman murmured from a precise corner of Yuan’s mind, his voice quiet enough not to interrupt.
Not relying on luck.
“I know.”
Yet he continued staring at the three names for a long time.
The man who had built his entire life around leaving nothing to chance found himself that night wishing, for the first time, that the monks’ drawing really was fair.