73. Hazard Pay

Lin leaned back against the wooden post of the noodle stall, idly twirling a chopstick through her fingers. Watching the street had gotten boring nearly half an hour ago, and while she wasn’t exactly worried Jiang would ditch her – he’d been oddly reliable so far – she was definitely curious. Not many things piqued her curiosity these days, but somehow, Jiang kept managing it.

It wasn’t long before he finally reappeared, emerging from around the corner with a scowl etched deep into his features. Lin’s eyebrows shot up in surprise; he somehow looked more rattled leaving a quiet little tea house in the fancy Scholar’s Quarter than he had leaving that sketchy tavern in a part of town even rats avoided. That alone made her deeply suspicious.

“Rough tea party?” she called out lightly, pushing herself away from the stall with a smirk. “Who knew scholars were scarier than gangsters?”

Jiang just grunted something unintelligible, clearly not in the mood to chat. He brushed past her, already moving down the street without bothering to slow down. Lin hurried to catch up, unwilling to let him off the hook so easily.

“Come on, seriously,” she pressed, nudging his arm with her elbow. “What happened in there? Did the tea kettle insult your mother or something?”

Jiang stopped abruptly, turning to glare at her. She instinctively took half a step back, raising her hands placatingly.

“Alright, alright. No need to look so murderous,” she muttered, noting the reaction. Family was off-limits, good to know. “Forget I asked.”

He sighed, visibly forcing the tension from his shoulders. “I need your help with something,” he said finally, pulling a small folded piece of paper from inside his robes and holding it out to her. “Read this.”

Lin blinked at the paper, hesitating for half a heartbeat. Reading wasn’t exactly her strength; she could barely piece together enough characters to avoid getting scammed at market stalls. Still, she took the offered slip and squinted at the neatly written script. Her gut twisted slightly as she scanned the first few characters. Most of the words were
 longer than she preferred. 

Her pulse quickened slightly, anxiety creeping up the back of her neck, but she stubbornly forced it down. Jiang had plenty of reasons to ditch her; she knew that – plenty of excuses to find someone better, more educated, more useful – and she refused to give him another one. 

It was one of the many strange things about him – he was both far too dismissive of money, and yet clearly not rich enough to justify that. Paying an entire silver piece to a street rat for directions of all things was ridiculously extravagant – and yet he was dressed in practical, worn clothing instead of the golden robes such wealth would imply. Or whatever else rich people wore – not like she would know.

Either way, if she could manage to keep him satisfied, even for just a few more days, she’d earn more than she usually made in months. This was the kind of opportunity that just didn’t come around for people like her, and like hell she was going to let it slip easily. 

The first line wasn’t too tricky, luckily, though it was
 confusing. It had what looked like a name, then a series of letters and numbers. She silently mouthed the unfamiliar words a few times before they clicked.

“Dawn’s Fortune,” she murmured aloud. “Then
 a bunch of letters and numbers. Am I supposed to know what that means?”

Jiang sighed. “I was sort of hoping so, yeah. It’s supposed to be talking about a shipment, I think.”

“A shipment?” Lin ignored her rising curiosity about what Jiang wanted with a shipment in favour of turning the letters and numbers over in her head. “Oh! I think I get it then. It’s probably talking about the docks – they all have numbers on them.” She squinted back down at the note. “So I guess the shipment’s going to be at dock... 17, then?”

“Sounds about right,” Jiang said thoughtfully, clearly filing the information away. Lin eyed him warily, curiosity warring with caution.

“What exactly is the point of this?” she asked, lowering her voice instinctively, even though the street around them was nearly empty. “You
 meeting someone on the ship?” 

As far as she could tell, that was what he’d been doing for the last couple of days. Maybe he was some kind of courier? A high-paid one, if that was the case, but it made as much sense as any of her other ideas.

Jiang shrugged casually, as if discussing nothing more serious than lunch. “No, I’m not meeting anyone there. We just need to destroy it.”

Lin blinked. “I
 must have misheard you there. I could have sworn you just said you needed to destroy a shipment.”

“That’s what I said,” Jiang replied with a raised eyebrow.

“You can’t be serious!” Lin hissed, suddenly very aware of the number of possible observers on the street. “Are you out of your mind? Messing with an entire shipment like that means crossing someone with real influence. You know what happens to street rats who get caught up in things like that?”

“I’m guessing it’s bad?” Jiang replied mildly, raising an eyebrow at her reaction.

“Yes, it’s bad!” Lin snapped, barely controlling the urge to smack some sense into him. “We vanish. Not just ‘leave town’ vanish – more like ‘never found again’ vanish. You might not care about consequences, but I do.”

Jiang looked taken aback at her sudden panic. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, then closed it again, seeming genuinely confused at her reaction. Lin stared at him incredulously, feeling more than a little unsteady. She’d already revised her opinion of him half a dozen times since meeting him on that rooftop—first assuming he was just another desperate street rat, then upgrading him to some rich kid playing pretend—but none of those ideas fit right. He had too much coin to be a street rat, but lacked the polished arrogance of wealth. He wasn’t a gang member either—gangs didn’t mess around with quiet tea shops in the Scholar’s Quarter. Every time she thought she’d figured him out, he went and did something to shatter her assumptions all over again.

In an unsettling way, Jiang was exactly what Lin wanted to be herself: confident, unafraid, completely unbound by the rules that kept her firmly in place. He walked right through doors she wouldn’t dare approach, spoke to people who’d never look twice at her, and paid her silver as if it were copper. If she could unravel even half his secrets, she might finally have a chance to claw her way out of the gutter for good.

But this – destroying a shipment – felt like an entirely different game. It was the kind of thing that would attract a lot of attention from everyone. She didn’t know how much a shipment of goods cost, but was willing to bet it was more than enough money to kill over. 

Noticing her continued silence, Jiang sighed and glanced around, finally understanding how tense she was. “Look, relax. No one’s going to connect it back to you,” he said quietly. “If anything goes wrong, I’m the one who’ll take the fall. You’re just the guide, remember? You don’t have anything to do with it.”

“That’s not how it works, Jiang,” Lin muttered bitterly. “You think they need an excuse to go after people like me? Street rats are vermin. They’d kill me just to make a point, just to make sure no other rats get any ideas. Hell, they’d kill me for the fun of it.”

That was life on the streets of Qinghe. That was why she was willing to take a chance on some random guy she met in the middle of a heist.

Jiang regarded her silently for a moment, a flicker of understanding passing through his expression. “Alright,” he said finally. “You don’t have to be a part of this if it’s too dangerous. If you just point me in the direction of the docks, I’ll handle it myself.”

“And you think that would make a difference now?” Lin asked tiredly. “People have already seen me showing you around. The association alone would be enough. If you’re going through with this, my best chance is to find a place to lay low now, and hope I can keep my head down for long enough that they lose interest.”

Jiang looked away, running a hand through his hair. “Look, it sounds like this is only going to be a problem if they know it’s me that did it, right? As long as nobody spots me, it’ll be fine.”

“You got caught stealing a comb from a random merchant,” she pointed out. “This is a little bigger. They have actual guards at the docks, you know.”

“Technically, you got me caught stealing a comb,” he groused, incorrectly. “Besides, if you help me plan this, there’s a lower chance of me getting caught, which means a lower chance of anyone coming after you.”

Lin bit her lip. That
 was technically true, sure, but it ran counter to her usual way of doing things, which was to keep low and avoid anything that looked like it could be too dangerous. Playing things safe – relatively, at least – had kept her alive in a place that was very unfriendly to young, orphaned girls. 

Playing things safe would also mean she would never be able to leave the streets.

“How about this,” Jiang said after a moment, “I’ll pay you an extra silver for helping me with it. Consider it hazard pay.”

Lin narrowed her eyes, studying him carefully. Not suspicious, precisely—just
 calculating. A single silver coin was still a ridiculous amount for someone like her. More than enough to live off for a while if she were smart about it. But it wasn’t really about the coin anymore.

“You’re really not good at this bargaining thing,” she said, arms crossing loosely. “One extra silver? You’re asking me to help sabotage an entire shipment, piss off some powerful merchant or noble or gods-know-who, and maybe get hunted through the alleys like a rat. That’s worth a little more than ‘hazard pay’. I want 
 five silver.”

This wasn’t just greed talking. Oh, certainly, Lin was greedy as all hell – when she could get away with it – but this was an opportunity to scout Jiang out a little more. He had a pouch full of silver, but what did it mean to him? Was that all the money he had in the world, or was it not even worth mentioning? Even asking was a bit of a risk – five silver was a stupid amount of money to ask for – but she didn’t think he was the type to cut her loose just for asking.

Jiang scoffed. “You want five silver to walk me to a dock and give me some advice?”

“To walk you to a dock,” she replied evenly, “help you avoid guards, identify patrol patterns, find a spot to get in and out unnoticed, and maybe help carry a barrel of whatever gods-damned contraband you’re planning on getting rid of. Yes.”

Jiang rolled his eyes. “Two,” he said flatly.

“Four,” she countered, mostly out of habit. The fact that he was entertaining this at all was
 something. She didn’t quite know what yet, but it was certainly something.

“Two extra,” he said, tone final. “That makes three total. And I’ll do all the actual work. You just help me make sure I don’t walk face-first into a guard’s spear.”

Lin hesitated, then gave a slow nod. Truth was, even three silver was enough to live off for a month or two if she stretched it right – and that was in winter. And while she didn’t like the idea of stirring up trouble with people powerful enough to afford whole shipments of
 whatever it was the Dawn’s Fortune was carrying, she liked the idea of going back to stealing mouldy bread even less.

“Fine,” she said, though it came out more reluctantly than she intended. “Three total. But if this goes sideways, I’m blaming everything on you.”

“Was already planning on it,” Jiang said, turning to walk.

Lin followed, a strange hollowness growing in her chest. Not fear exactly, though that was there, bubbling beneath the surface. No, it felt more like she’d taken a step onto a rope bridge and only just realised how far the drop below was. The game had changed. And somehow, she was still playing.

Whether that was bravery or stupidity remained to be seen.