He heard it on a Friday evening, said by someone who had no business knowing it
The market was closing down for the night, vendors folding their stalls, the particular end-of-day sounds of wood and canvas and the tired satisfaction of people who had stood on their feet for ten hours and were now thinking about dinner. Yevhan was tying the last bundle of cloudmoss when he heard the two men at the stall three spaces down
Not the words themselves. The shape of them. The specific lowered-voice quality of men saying something they knew shouldn't be said in the open
He kept tying. Let his attention go sideways the way he'd learned, peripheral and still, a pool of water rather than a directed stream
"—heard it from Ox's place," the first man said. He was a fabric merchant, mid-forties, not someone Yevhan had reason to pay attention to before tonight. "Someone asking about the old formation scholar. The dead one.
"Shou Pei," said the second, younger, a regular at the noodle stall across the lane
"Right. And what they're saying is Shou Pei found something. Something old. And they're saying whoever he gave it to before he died—" a pause, the pause of a man choosing between versions of a story and picking the most interesting one "—they're saying it's the Hollow Saint.
Yevhan's hands kept moving. Cloudmoss, bundle, tie. Cloudmoss, bundle, tie
"That's a ghost story," the younger one said
"Ox's people aren't ghost story types.
"The Hollow Saint's been gone for three years. Probably dead.
"Probably," said the fabric merchant. "But someone in the lower district with no cultivation signature reads pre-Sovereign formation scripts. That's what they're saying.
A pause
"I'd stay clear of that business," the younger man said, with the finality of someone who had looked at a situation and decided it wasn't theirs
"Yeah," said the fabric merchant. "Yeah I would too.
They moved off. Yevhan finished the cloudmoss, stacked it, and began closing the stall with the same efficiency he used every evening, no faster, no slower
The Hollow Saint
He hadn't heard that name spoken out loud in three years. It landed differently than he'd expected. Not like an old wound reopened. More like hearing a word in a language you used to speak fluently and realizing you still understood every syllable
The question was how it had gotten into Ox's information network and what shape it was taking as it moved
He thought about it on the walk home. The chain was traceable if he worked backwards: someone had been asking about Shou Pei, Ox had noted a person with an unusual skill set active in the lower district, and whoever was asking had connected those two data points in the most logical direction. Not proof. Rumor. But rumor with a specific name attached was a different kind of problem than formless suspicion
He needed to know how wide it was spreading. And he needed to know before Mei Sulan heard it, because Mei Sulan with a name to research was a substantially more dangerous Mei Sulan than the one currently working from impressions and instinct
He bought his noodles. He walked home. He sat on his floor and thought
The decision he arrived at was one he'd been half-forming for a week and now finished quickly because the timeline had changed: lean into the rumor. Not confirm it, not deny it, something more precise than either. Let it exist in the district's information ecosystem as a story that was probably not true but couldn't be disproven, because a story that couldn't be disproven was a kind of armor
The Hollow Saint was a ghost story. Ghost stories scared people away from things. If the right people in Ashfen's underside believed there was a chance the person holding Shou Pei's work was someone with that name, they would think three times before moving against them. And the people who wouldn't be scared, the sect investigator, the private inquiry with the old house insignia, they were already looking, the rumor wouldn't change their behavior
But it might change what information they could gather. People who were nervous talked less
The execution was the part that required care. He needed to be the rumor without being the evidence. He needed it spread in the right channels and shaped the right way and done without leaving fingerprints
He thought about how to do that and arrived at an answer by midnight. It required him to do something slightly embarrassing, which was go back to Madam Shao's establishment
He went the next afternoon
She was in the same chair doing the same accounts. He was beginning to think the accounts might be a prop
"Twice in one week," she said without looking up
"I need a story moved," he said
She looked up. Set down the brush. "What kind of story.
"The kind that's probably not true," he said. "About a person who's probably not here. Moving through the lower district. Doing things that person would do.
She looked at him for a long moment. He met it
"The Hollow Saint," she said
He didn't answer. She hadn't asked a question
"The story's already moving," she said. "Has been for two days. You're not the first person to come to me about it.
He kept his face still. "Who was the first.
"A woman. Inspector's insignia. Left-handed. Came in yesterday evening, very professional, asked if I knew anything about an unregistered cultivator operating in the lower district." Madam Shao's expression was precisely neutral. "I told her the same thing I'm telling you. I know what I hear. I hear a name that hasn't been spoken publicly in three years suddenly surfacing in three different conversations in four days.
"What did she make of it.
"Hard to say. She has a very controlled face." A pause. "Less controlled than she thinks, but still.
Yevhan sat with that for a moment
Mei Sulan had been here yesterday. Had heard the name. Was now doing what Mei Sulan did, which was taking information and running it forward to its conclusions with the focused patience of a very good investigator
His timeline had just changed again
"The story I want moved," he said. "The shape of it is this: the Hollow Saint passed through Ashfen three months ago. Was seen in the night market. Bought something from a formation dealer and left. Nobody knows where.
Madam Shao considered this. "You want to place the ghost story outside the city.
"I want the ghost story to have a direction that isn't here.
"That's a more expensive request than information.
"I know." He named a price. She didn't agree immediately, which meant it was close to right. They settled two points higher, which he'd expected and budgeted for
"The inspector," he said, as he was leaving. "If she comes back.
"I don't work for investigators," Madam Shao said. "Official or otherwise.
"I know. I just mean if she comes back, she's doing her job. She's not the problem.
Madam Shao looked at him with the expression she wore when she found something interesting. "That's a strange thing to say about someone who's looking for you.
"She's not looking for me," he said. "She's looking for the Hollow Saint. Those are different people.
He left before she could answer that, which was probably the right call
He was back at his stall by mid-afternoon. The district had the sleepy weekend quality it got on Saturdays, fewer vendors, more browsers, the kind of foot traffic that moved slow and bought on impulse
He sold a woman enough dried herbs to last a small household three months because she was convinced winter was coming early this year and wanted to be prepared. He sold a young man some fever medicine and didn't ask why he looked nervous. He sat with a stall neighbor named Old Pen who was eighty-three and had opinions about everything and shared them freely, and listened to Old Pen explain for the fourth time this month why the river fish were smaller than they used to be
Nobody mentioned the Hollow Saint
Nobody looked at him strangely
The afternoon light moved across the lane in the particular way it did this time of year, golden and low, making the market look warmer than it was. He watched it and thought about a name he hadn't answered to in three years and the odd doubling of standing inside the ghost story of yourself
The Hollow Saint
He remembered the day the name had been given to him. He'd been nineteen and had accidentally solved a formation problem that three senior disciples had been working on for two years, and the master who witnessed it had stood very still for a long moment and then said, very quietly: there is nothing at the center of this boy and yet everything flows through him. The disciples had started calling him the Hollow Saint as a joke. The name had stuck the way names stuck when they were accidentally accurate
He'd liked it then. It had felt like a description of something he was proud of
Now it was a ghost story. A cautionary tale that junior disciples told each other to illustrate the dangers of straying from orthodox cultivation. He'd sat with the version of it that existed in the world for three years and been mostly fine about it
Mostly
He wrapped the last bundle of the day and thought about Mei Sulan sitting in Madam Shao's parlor yesterday evening, left hand holding the notebook, writing down the name
He thought about what she would do with it
He thought about the fact that the story he'd just paid to move would probably delay her by a week at most. She was too good for longer than that
A week
He needed to use it well
End of Chapter 9