Even among the rivers and lakes there was a hierarchy. Theft had always been looked down upon — even con-men looked down on thieves.

Chen Dawei had learned trickery; Gang Gang had learned thievery. Their masters had known each other for years and thought nothing of the other’s trade, trading insults for half a lifetime — yet in old age, they had come to seem almost like an old married couple: if one had a jug of wine, he’d call the other over to share it.

Drinking and bickering in equal measure.

Theft was not all the same kind of thing.

Gang Gang’s master had always said that the kind of thievery that deserved to be called a craft was governed by a code — there was honor even among thieves. The trade had its own hierarchy of contempt, and within Jizhou City’s lower two sects, the con-man’s branch was called the Thousand Gates, its arts broad and varied, its practitioners the keenest readers of people. The thief’s branch was called the Sparrow Gate.

Sparrow Gate practitioners trained from childhood; at the highest level, it was said, one could peel the shell from a raw egg single-handed without breaking the membrane inside, or hold a sparrow in one’s fist and never let it fly free no matter how it struggled.

Both Gang Gang and Chen Dawei had come without their masters knowing, because they thought their masters lived a little too humbly. Their masters each called themselves grandmasters of their respective traditions, yet neither had ever grown wealthy. They’d save up to buy a jug of wine between them — and water it down besides.

Chen Dawei had said: he’d started as an apprentice at six. If he reached his master’s age and was still living the same way, had this whole life been a waste?

Gang Gang had said: he’d started at five. If at his master’s age he still had to beg for drinks, then the tradition shouldn’t be passed on.

Yet none of that stopped them from looking down on freelancers. Gang Gang’s Sparrow Gate had its code of honor — three things never to be stolen: money meant for medicine or lifesaving was never stolen, money belonging to orphans and widows was never stolen, money earned at the cost of someone’s life was never stolen.

Gang Gang’s master had said: a person shouldn’t do those things.

And yet going after wealthy households was no easy business. Rich families kept guards. One mistake and you were beaten half to death and hauled before the magistrate. Once you landed in jail for theft, your cellmates would beat you half to death all over again.

And so Gang Gang had concluded: this was probably why his master had spent most of his life in poverty. His master had real skill, but too many rules, and wouldn’t use what he knew. Destined to go through life without enough money for wine.

Chen Dawei’s Thousand Gates was the same way — its code ran along roughly the same lines as the Sparrow Gate’s, more or less.

Both of them felt simultaneously that the code was too rigid, and yet looked down on those figures in the world of the rivers and lakes who’d steal or con anything from anyone. They thought those people deserved to be struck by lightning. A person ought to have a bottom line.

Gongshu Yingying had found them because they thought they were doing something for important people. She had told them the task was to rescue someone — and they figured that rescuing someone couldn’t go too wrong, could it? Rescuing wasn’t harming. And there would be a handsome sum of silver.

She had said: once the person was rescued, each of them would receive a hundred taels.

A hundred taels?

Gang Gang suspected his master had never stolen a full hundred taels in his entire life. Chen Dawei thought that was already being generous — he suspected Gang Gang’s master had never managed even ten taels his whole life.

In Jizhou City, the Thousand Gates in Chen Dawei’s master’s generation had numbered a hundred or so, operating as a loose company. By his own generation, his master served as the sect’s leader and had taken only one apprentice.

He’d asked his master why. His master said the Thousand Gates shouldn’t exist at all. He’d asked why, then, had his master taken him on? His master said: don’t be ridiculous — someone has to carry the mourning staff and the funeral urn when I’m dead.

Gang Gang had laughed when he first heard Chen Dawei say this, because his own master had said exactly the same thing. Gang Gang’s master had said the Sparrow Gate shouldn’t exist either.

So Chen Dawei and Gang Gang felt that the current decline of both traditions owed quite a lot to their two masters.

What neither of them knew was that many years earlier, those two young men who could stand the sight of neither the other nor their other’s trade, having witnessed their own sect-mates recite the code with their mouths while doing every evil thing it forbade, had made a vow that such things would not happen again.

About thirty years before, something had happened in Jizhou City. The Thousand Gates and the Sparrow Gate had joined forces to con and rob a family of considerable wealth into total ruin — both tricks and thievery, working in concert. The family was destroyed. The husband, believing it was his own addiction to gambling that had brought the household down, threw himself into a well.

When the wife was arranging the funeral, she learned the house itself had already been mortgaged away by her husband. The Thousand Gates men came to collect on the debt and drove mother and child out into the street.

In her grief, the woman took the child with her and leapt into the same well her husband had used.

At that time, Gang Gang’s master and Chen Dawei’s master were still apprentices themselves. They watched the whole thing happen — and were beaten and berated by their masters and uncles and senior brothers if they failed to recite the code.

The first time they ever met, both had been beaten badly enough to run from home. Two boys covered in bruises found each other in an alley. They looked at each other, and both felt contempt — each thinking the other had gotten a worse beating than himself.

Gang Gang’s master was called Gang Cai. Chen Dawei’s master was called Chen Youwei.

The day after they met, while reciting the code, the masters and senior brothers had taken them along on a job as an education. They watched the whole thing: how the family was tricked into ruin and the household broken.

Gang Cai asked Chen Youwei: do you think the code we recite is good for anything? Our masters do everything the code forbids. Why do they make us memorize it?

Chen Youwei said: I think it is. At least we should remember it ourselves.

Sixteen years later, the Sparrow Gate suffered what could only be called near-annihilation: in a single night, all the sect members were killed, leaving only Gang Cai alive. Gang Cai sat at the gate in a daze, the courtyard behind him full of corpses.

That same night, the Thousand Gates’ hall was also attacked without warning. Over a hundred members were killed until only one remained. That night, Chen Youwei sat at the gate and looked back at the blood pooling in the courtyard.

And it was that same night that the two men found each other in that alley, squatting there, one drinking wine and one smoking a pipe. For a very long time neither of them spoke.

Near dawn, a young man covered in blood found them — in that same alley — and knelt before them both, pressing his forehead three times to the ground.

Sixteen years earlier, when mother and child leapt into the well, Gang Cai and Chen Youwei had secretly dragged them out. Neither of them had any money; one had talked his way into borrowing two taels from his master by pretending to be ill; the other had simply stolen his master’s coin purse outright. They gave this money to mother and child, and saw them safely out of Jizhou.

Sixteen years later, the child had grown up and come back. He found Chen Youwei and Gang Cai, told them he had trained himself in the martial arts and returned only for revenge, and asked them to leave their homes on a certain night and not be there.

Gang Cai said: a sect like this should not exist. Chen Youwei thought it over, and nodded.

Over those sixteen years, the things they had witnessed — how much worse had it been than that one family?

They had tried hard not to take part in any of it, doing their best to appear dull and slow so they wouldn’t be assigned tasks. They kept busy at other things so they’d at least be fed — at minimum, sweeping the courtyard in exchange for meals.

They had put something in the evening food that caused all the sect members to fall into a deep sleep, and the young man had entered and cut them down one by one.

Chen Youwei had said: we should each take on an apprentice. What the two of us have done amounts to betraying our masters and destroying the sect — we’ll probably die horribly when the time comes. So we’ll need someone to collect the body. If we die in pieces, someone will need to pick them all up and put them together before the burial.

Gang Cai had thought it over and agreed it made sense.

And so there came to be Gang Gang and Chen Dawei.

When Gongshu Yingying found them, Chen Dawei had told Gang Gang: we can’t let the masters know about this. If they find out, we can’t take the job. The masters have said — starve first before touching anything with official connections.

Gang Gang nodded, and said: we’re not going to hurt anyone. We’re going to rescue someone. Rescuing a person earns a hundred taels each, and together that’s two hundred. Won’t that solve the problem of the masters never having wine?

And so the two of them had been quietly pleased with themselves.

Now, in this private room at Twin Phoenix House, both of them were visibly uncomfortable. They didn’t know who the fine young lord sitting there was — but one glance told them this was someone of no ordinary standing.

When they heard Gongshu Yingying address him respectfully as “Young Lord,” the two of them exchanged a startled look. There was only one proper Young Lord in Jizhou City: Yang Zhuo, son of Prince Yu.

The look they exchanged was complicated.

Gongshu Yingying bowed her head. “Your Highness, these two men have considerable skill. Though the Thousand Gates and Sparrow Gate have both fallen into decline, these two received genuine instruction from their masters. We can send them first to gather intelligence, and then find an opportunity to enter and rescue the captives.”

“Rescue the captives?”

Yang Zhuo needed a moment to catch up — he had been watching Gongshu Yingying. Across from him, Xu Yuanqing gave a small cough, and Yang Zhuo came back to himself.

“Oh, yes. Both seem capable.”

He moved his gaze away from Gongshu Yingying’s figure and smiled. “Go and see to it.”

He hadn’t thought carefully about why Xu Yuanqing had brought these two men before him, and why Gongshu Yingying had specifically used the title “Young Lord” in front of them.

Yang Zhuo was a man with little real depth or skill.

But had he thought it through, something would have felt wrong. When Xu Yuanqing’s men had moved previously, most of them hadn’t known his true identity — only a handful had. This time, not only had Xu Yuanqing exposed himself directly in front of two minor figures, but the Young Lord’s identity had been revealed as well. It was clearly deliberate.

In truth, Xu Yuanqing had had no other option. If Yang Zhuo hadn’t pressured him just now, he wouldn’t have done this. But from the moment he gave the signal for Gongshu Yingying to bring the men in, she had understood what he meant.

These two, however low their station, were witnesses. If something went wrong one day and the Young Lord wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair, these two could testify that it was the Young Lord who had sent for them, and that the Xu family had been under compulsion — even the mightiest family wouldn’t dare act against the Young Lord’s demands.

Compared to Xu Yuanqing, Yang Zhuo was not even close to the same level. Xu Yuanqing was a seasoned fox; if Yang Zhuo hadn’t had his title, Xu Yuanqing would have swallowed him whole and left no bones behind.

“Off you go, then.”

Yang Zhuo waved a hand with a smile. “If Mister Xu finds direct meetings inconvenient in the future, you may have this young lady come report to me.”

Xu Yuanqing also smiled. “His Highness is right. My position does make seeking an audience somewhat inconvenient. Going forward, I’ll arrange for the right person to deliver word to His Highness.”

Yang Zhuo made a sound of assent and rose. “I have pressing affairs and must return to the estate. Handle everything at your own discretion — I’ve always trusted Mister Xu. Full authority rests with you.”

He smiled at Gongshu Yingying. “And with you.”