Chương 219: 34. Buried Truth 3

The red-light district looked less respectable by day than by night. At night you could blame the moonlight, the wine, the lanterns conspiring to steam the sense out of a person's head. Daytime offered no such excuse. The signboards were clearer, the rouge more obvious, the women at the windows smiled with maximum efficiency, and even the boys splashing water at the doorsteps wore the expression of someone may have burned to death outside the walls last night, but today's business doesn't care.

Port lockdown, a fire beyond the walls, a dead governor, an all-night interrogation at the command post—anywhere else, that combination would have kept a city holding its breath for three days. On this street, it barely qualified as something to mention over morning wine. I looked down at the list in my coat and felt my stomach begin its familiar low-grade protest.

"Second time in the brothel district in a single day," I said, "and not once for any reason I'd want explained to my descendants. I genuinely fear that if someone writes my biography, the opening line will read: 'This man achieved much in his youth, and his final act of service was coughing blood in a back alley off Pleasure Street.'""No," Jessi corrected me, with the air of someone performing a public service.

"The opening line should be: 'This man spent his life in motion, and in the end, it was his job that delivered him to a brothel.'""That's not a correction. That's a finishing blow."

"It's the truth." Alvira walked on my left, her expression several degrees colder than before.

"If the two of you don't stop, I'll silence you both right now."

"See?" I spread my hands at Jessi.

"She's in a particularly bad mood today."

"If I'd been mistaken for a songstress and forced to perform, my mood wouldn't be great either," Jessi said. Alvira's hand moved to her hilt. I raised both hands with considerable urgency.

"Stop. Today's incident—hold the grudge if you want. Just please schedule it for after I die of overwork." Alvira gave a cold smile.

"Don't worry. I intend to keep you alive long enough to finish the job."

"That sentence has absolutely no comforting effect coming from you." Yozora walked in silence the whole way—but it wasn't the silence of confusion or fear. It was the silence of someone running the entire street through a filter. Who smiled too sweetly. Who stood too stiffly. Which house had changed its door greeter too recently. Which back door stayed shut yet saw constant traffic. She read it faster than I did, and more accurately. Halfway down the street, she spoke quietly.

"Jade Curtain House first." I glanced at her.

"Why?"

"It's too clean," she said.

"Too clean for this kind of place." I couldn't help a small laugh.

"Since when does too clean count as grounds for suspicion?" Yozora returned it, mild as anything.

"In a place like this? Since always." Fair point. The cleaner something looked in a district like this, the more likely it was that no one had gotten to the bottom of it yet. Jade Curtain House's exterior stood a full tier above its neighbors. The approach was paved in scrubbed pale stone. The curtains were woven from fine white gauze. The sandalwood plaque was polished spotless, and even the women receiving guests at the entrance dressed more carefully than the houses on either side.

If not for the incense drifting out in soft, heavy waves, you might have mistaken this for the kind of establishment where scholars came to drink tea and listen to music—not one that put people to bed for money. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I looked at it for two seconds and muttered, "See, I said this didn't look like a songhouse. It looks like a group of wealthy people put a gold frame around the entire concept of indulgence." Jessi nodded.

"The lies inside are probably more expensive too." The madam who received us bore no resemblance to the one at Azure Silk Pavilion. Not loud. Not theatrical. Her smile was precisely calibrated, her dress impeccable, her speech unhurried—even the lines at the corners of her eyes looked as if they'd been placed there by calculation rather than time. This kind of person was always the hardest to deal with.

"Gentlemen." She bowed slightly, her smile not shifting by a fraction.

"Things have been quieter than usual since the lockdown. Jade Curtain House continues to operate as normal today, though with rather fewer visitors. Are you here to enjoy the music, or—""To inspect the ledgers," I said, completing the sentence for her, and produced the temporary inspection seal issued by the command post. A ripple passed through her eyes—very faint, very brief—and was gone.

"I see." The smile held.

"With the fire outside the walls last night, it's only natural that the command post would conduct fire-safety and household census checks today. We are, of course, happy to cooperate." Too smooth. Smooth enough to make me want to pin her against the wall and ask exactly how many times she'd rehearsed this precise response. Unfortunately, we couldn't be that blunt yet. I smiled back.

"Much appreciated." Jade Curtain House's ledgers were immaculate. Too immaculate. Stage names, intake dates, client tiers, room rotation schedules—all present, all beautifully written, all perfectly formatted, practically assembled to be shown to official inspectors. If I'd been a first-time investigator, I might genuinely have concluded this was simply a well-run high-end venue. But Yozora had only made half a circuit of the main hall before she said, very quietly: "Something's wrong." I leaned toward her.

"Where?"

"The people." Her gaze settled on two Vixenfolk women pouring wine for guests across the room.

"The one on the left—her movement pattern belongs to a south-city house. The one on the right—when she raises her hand, her fingers retract half an inch first, like she's avoiding being touched. That's not a habit Jade Curtain House would have trained into her." The madam continued to stand beside us, smiling pleasantly, projecting complete cooperation. I flipped through a few pages with deliberate casualness and asked, as if the thought had just occurred to me: "Do you lend girls between houses here?"

She answered without hesitation.

"Occasionally. In this business, regular clients do enjoy variety."

"Mm." I nodded.

"And when a borrowed girl is here, does she get entered under your house's records?"

"Entered on intake, for clean accounting." Crisp. Complete. Not one excess word. Jessi added from the side: "How efficient. If you were any more thorough, you could probably record what the clients dreamed about." The madam smiled and let the barb pass unacknowledged. But Yozora had already drifted to the other side of the room, apparently at random, scanning several backstage attendants and house staff.

Her gaze stopped on a Harengon girl carrying a basket of warm cloths—for less than a breath—and the girl visibly contracted her shoulders. I saw it. Yozora saw it. She withdrew her gaze, turned back as if she'd noticed nothing, and as she passed me, said in a voice so low it was barely air:"She's afraid of me." That was enough. Fear meant recognition. Recognition meant this was not a clean establishment. I closed the ledger without pressing further, and turned back to the madam with a perfectly ordinary expression.

"Do you take overnight transfers from other houses?" Her lashes moved—barely, barely—in a way that could almost be explained away as nothing. Almost.

"Occasionally," she said.

"All part of normal business arrangements."

"Tailfeather Hall?" I looked at her.

"Any arrangements with them?" For the first time, she didn't answer immediately. Half a beat. Just half. But half a beat, in a room like this, was already an answer. Because sometimes silence is more honest than anything you manage to say. She recovered quickly, smile intact.

"Tailfeather Hall does a more transient trade. We don't mix with them often." Often. Not never. I let the subject drop. This wasn't the moment to press hard. Push too hard now, and she'd either go fully blank or get a message out before we cleared the door. What we needed was one thing—confirmation that Tailfeather Hall was worth visiting, and that waiting would mean finding nothing left. On our way out, Yozora glanced—apparently without purpose—at a small wooden tag hanging from an inner pillar near the entrance.

It looked like a routine marker for charcoal delivery and hot-water room changes. Outside, she said quietly: "That wasn't a standard rotation tag."

"Why not?"

"There's a notch missing." She didn't look back.

"Not worn away—deliberately shaved off. People in this trade sometimes use that to signal: this batch won't stay long, don't record them too carefully." I stopped walking.

"Meaning?" Yozora looked ahead, toward the street that was louder and hotter and more like something barely breathing.

"Tailfeather Hall," she said.

"That's where the ones who truly cannot stay are."