"Fine, show me," said Daniel.

  What did he have to lose anyway?

  He finished eating and as they walked out of the noodle shop the fog had already started rolling in for the night. It was cold, not quite cold enough for a thicker hoodie, but cold enough to cross his arms and think about other life choices. The broth was still warm in his stomach and that was something at least.

  She walked faster than a regular person, and he sped up to a brisk walk to keep pace. This is how people disappear, he thought. Follow a girl who tried to kill you into the fog. Real smart, Daniel. Real smart.

  The pavement was slick beneath his shoes, moisture seeping through the soles where the rubber had cracked along the ball of his foot. His breath came out in faint white puffs that vanished before they could rise. October in San Francisco. The city knew how to get cold when it wanted to.

  They passed a store with crates of fish stacked outside, the smell of brine and ice cutting through the night air. Whole tilapia lay on beds of crushed ice, their scales catching the streetlight, mouths open like they were still trying to breathe.

  An old woman sat on a stool by the door, not looking at them. Not looking at anything. Her hands rested in her lap and a broom leaned against the doorframe at an angle, bristles splayed flat against the concrete.

  Li Mei's pace didn't change.

  "That broom," Daniel said. "Is that a signal?"

  "It's a broom." She didn't turn around. "It means they're sweeping."

  "But I thought in Jianghu there might be signs. Codes. Ways to tell if a place was safe or..."

  "There are."

  "So, is that one?"

  "No. It's a broom and a regular old woman. Stop looking for secrets in everything."

  Easy for her to say. She already knew which secrets mattered.

  They turned down an alley. Narrower than the street. Darker. The fog pooled here, curling around their ankles, rising past their knees. A pipe dripped somewhere above them, and Daniel could barely see his own feet.

  Li Mei stopped.

  He almost walked straight into her back and stumbled.

  "Before we go further." She turned, her face half-visible in the gray. "Do you know the salute?"

  "The what?"

  "Bàoquán." She said it flat, like she was already disappointed. "The cupped-fist salute. It's a greeting between two martial artists."

  "I've seen it in movies."

  "Show me."

  Daniel brought his hands up. Right palm over left fist. Held it at his chest. Nodded slightly, the way he'd seen actors do in a hundred kung fu films. How hard could it be?

  Li Mei stared at him.

  The stare went on for a very long time.

  "What?"

  "You just challenged me to a fight."

  "I did?"

  "Right over left is aggression. You're saying your martial skill isn't restrained and you're ready to use it."

  She rolled her eyes, and he couldn't tell if she was annoyed or genuinely impressed by his ability to fail at something so simple.

  "Left is civility. Right is martial. Civility covers force. Left palm over right fist. You're saying you come with skill but you're not here to start trouble."

  Daniel switched hands. Left palm, right fist. Held it up.

  "Higher. At the chest, not your stomach. You look like you're begging for change."

  He raised it.

  "Elbows out slightly. Not tucked in like a chicken."

  He adjusted. His arms were starting to feel stiff from holding the position. How did people do this casually?

  "Better." She studied him with the critical eye of someone grading a particularly disappointing exam. "Still looks like you learned it five seconds ago, but at least you won't accidentally start a fight."

  A couple wandered past the mouth of the alley, the woman tucked close under the man's arm, her hair loose in long wavy curls that caught the light from the street.

  He paused, laughing at something she said, and they drifted toward the next bus stop, their voices carrying back through the fog. Talking about the nearest movie theater. Which route to take. One pointed left. The other pointed right. Their argument faded into the distance, mixing with the clatter of mah-jongg tiles from an upstairs window.

  "Why left over right specifically?" Daniel asked. "What's the actual difference?"

  Li Mei sighed like he was wasting her time. But she answered.

  "The concept goes back to the Zhou Dynasty. 文武雙修. Wénwu shuāngxiū."

  The words rolled off her tongue with a fluency that made Daniel realize the gap between them. He could do the moves, say the words, but Chinese wasn't a second language to her. It was her first.

  "'To cultivate both the civil and the martial.'

  Confucius taught that a true gentleman must master both. The closed fist is rigid. It represents violence, can't grasp new things. The open palm is openness, respect, courtesy. The capacity to learn."

  She demonstrated as she spoke. Left hand open, fingers together, the skin across her knuckles pale in the gray light. Right hand closed, thumb tucked.

  "When left covers right, civility restrains force. You have martial ability but choose not to use it. Respect comes before fighting."

  She held up her right fist.

  "The hand expression comes from the Five Lakes and Four Seas. The five lakes are the major lakes of ancient China. Dongting, Poyang, Tai, Chao, and Hongze."

  He tried to memorize the names, but they slipped past him the moment she said them.

  "The four seas are the waters surrounding China in four directions. North, south, east, west. In ancient times, China was thought of as the center of the world. When you bring both hands together, they mean 'everywhere under heaven.' All of China. All of the world."

  She showed him her left hand.

  "Together, you're saying: 'Across the five lakes and four seas, we are all brothers.' The thumb stays down. Pointing your thumb up means 'I'm number one.' You tuck it for humility."

  She pressed her hands together at her chest. The gesture looked different when she did it, like the final punctuation of complete sentence. The fog rolled around them and for a moment the alley felt like it belonged to another century, like the brick walls were paper screens and the dripping pipe was rain off a tiled roof.

  "Used properly, the full meaning is this: I am holding the whole world between my hands. Everyone in Jianghu. Every person I meet. I'm saying I recognize you. We're bound by the same codes. We're family."

  She dropped her hands.

  "Reverse it, and you're saying the opposite. You're no brother of mine. If you die tonight, I won't mourn you."

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  Daniel scratched his head, trying to commit it all to memory. Left over right. Thumb down. Don't bow too deep. Don't look like a chicken. The rules kept stacking on top of each other until they felt like a fence he couldn't see over.

  Li Mei must have seen something in his expression, because she kept going.

  "If you can't remember the full meaning, that's fine. Think of it like those old cartoons on TV when the bad guy is about to beat someone up. Usually, in these shows you'll see him smashing his fist against his palm. I'm going to beat you up. Same expression. Most people are right-handed, so a right fist is a fist to the face."

  That, he understood.

  Daniel nodded, getting a better picture.

  He practiced the salute again. Left palm. Right fist. Brought it to rest at his chest, elbows tucked out. It felt less wrong this time. Still wrong, probably. But less.

  "Stop doing it over and over. You look like a wind-up toy."

  "You just said I need to learn it."

  "Learn it. Not perform it for the fog." She started walking again, and he hurried to follow. "And don't bow too deep. You're not a servant. A nod is enough. Go lower and you're either mocking them or afraid of them. Both are insults."

  "What if I am afraid of them?"

  "Then hide it better."

  They walked deeper into the alley. The walls pressed close on either side, brick stained dark with moss and water. Somewhere a television was on behind a window, the blue flicker playing across the fog, and he could hear canned laughter from a sitcom he couldn't identify.

  "What about the other way?" Daniel asked. "If someone does right over left to me, that means they want to fight?"

  "It means they're not pretending otherwise."

  "So, what do I do?"

  "Depends. Can you beat them?"

  "Probably not."

  "Then don't accept. Left palm up, slight step back. You're declining the challenge. Not running. Just saying you have no quarrel."

  "And if they don't accept the decline?"

  Li Mei glanced back at him. The corner of her mouth twitched up for half a second before it was gone.

  "Then you fight anyway. And probably die." She turned forward again. "Welcome to Jianghu."

  The alley opened onto another street.

  A shop on one side sat closed and dark, but a light burned somewhere in the back, warm and yellow against the gray. Between the buildings, a door with no sign. Red paint, peeling. A brass knocker shaped like a lion's head, green with age, its mouth frozen mid-roar.

  Li Mei stopped at the store three doors down. A place selling paper offerings for the dead. Ritual money. Paper houses. Cardboard cars and televisions for ancestors to use in the afterlife. The window display looked like a diorama of the living world, miniaturized and flattened, waiting to be burned at a later time for good fortune.

  An old man sat inside, visible through the glass. Reading a newspaper. Cup of tea at his elbow. The fluorescent light above him buzzed faintly and gave his skin a bluish cast.

  "Watch," Li Mei said softly.

  She walked past the window. Didn't look in. Didn't slow down. Her stride stayed exactly the same.

  The old man turned a page. His left hand came up, adjusted his glasses. Then dropped back to the paper.

  That was it. The whole exchange lasted maybe two seconds.

  Li Mei kept walking. Daniel followed.

  "What was that?"

  "If he'd used his right hand, we'd turn around and leave."

  Daniel looked back over his shoulder. The old man was still reading like nothing had happened. How many signals like that had he walked past in his life, never knowing they were there?

  "How do you know he even saw us?"

  "He sees everyone. That's his job."

  "His job?"

  "Yanxian. An informant. Every street has one. Sits there all day, reads his paper, watches who comes and goes. By tonight, half of Chinatown will know we were here."

  They passed a barber shop. A man sat in the chair, head tilted back, face covered in shaving cream. The barber worked slowly, razor catching the fluorescent light, scraping in long careful strokes. The sound of it carried through the closed door, faint and steady.

  "The barber," Li Mei said. "Notice anything?"

  Daniel studied the scene through the glass. Barber. Customer. Mirror reflecting the room back at itself. Bottles of tonic on a shelf, green and brown glass, labels faded. A calendar on the wall with a woman in a swimsuit, smiling at nothing. February, three months behind.

  "No."

  "The towel on the empty chair."

  He looked again. There was a second barber's chair, empty. A white towel draped over the armrest. Folded into a triangle.

  "What does it mean?"

  "Someone's expected. We're not the only ones moving tonight."

  She said it the way someone else might mention the weather.

  They turned another corner. The fog thicker now, pressing in from all sides. Daniel could barely see ten feet ahead. Li Mei moved through it without slowing down.

  "How do you know where we're going?"

  "I've walked here before."

  "In fog this thick?"

  "The fog is why we're walking now. Otherwise, we'd have to avoid people."

  They turned again. The walls narrowed until Daniel's shoulders nearly brushed both sides. The ground changed from pavement to uneven stone, slick with moisture, and he had to watch where he stepped.

  At the very end, two small doors. A doorman stood in front of them, hands at his sides, wearing a black jacket buttoned to his throat. He took one look at Li Mei, nodded once, and pulled the doors open without a word.

  The noise hit Daniel first.

  Laughter. Clinking glasses. Shouting. Someone cracking a joke in Cantonese, the punchline landing with a roar from three tables at once. After the silence of the fog and the coded streets, it was enough to make his ears ring.

  Then the smell. Lobster, seafood, and noodles. And the sharp sweet bite of cognac. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, thinner than the fog outside but just as gray, drifting in layers beneath the red paper lanterns that hung from wires overhead. The lanterns swayed on their strings, casting the courtyard in shades of red and shadow that shifted when the wind blew.

  The space was larger than Daniel expected. Stone tiles covered the ground, dark and polished by years of foot traffic, and four tables sat across them, each draped in red tablecloths now stained with grease and sauce. Lobster shells, fish bones, and Hennessy bottles covered every surface.

  Several men sat around the tables, laughing, waving their hands through clouds of smoke, telling each other stories with their whole bodies. One man stood up to mime throwing a punch and nearly knocked over his chair, which got a bigger laugh than the story itself.

  A thin musical note threaded through it all from the far corner, where an erhu player sat on a wooden stool, sawing out something slow and mournful that nobody seemed to be listening to. His eyes were closed. His foot tapped a beat only he could hear.

  Daniel's eyes moved across the crowd. Most of them looked like regular thugs. Street muscle. Gold chains, leather jackets, the kind of men who got loud when they drank and louder when they didn't. But a few stood out.

  A big man sat at one of the closer tables, drinking alone. He wore a sleeveless undershirt despite the cold, suspenders hanging loose at his sides. His arms were thick enough to make him look more like a gorilla than a person, and the bottle in front of him was a third of the way gone. He didn't look up when Daniel entered. He just downed another bottle of liquor and ate quietly.

  Near the wall, a young guy in a leather jacket cracked his knuckles over and over, bouncing on his heels like he couldn't stand still. Gold chain at his neck. He was watching the door, watching Daniel, watching everything with eyes that moved too fast for someone who was supposed to be relaxing.

  And the last was a woman in a black-and-white suit and cape, half-asleep in her chair, a cigarette pinched between two fingers. The ember glowed in short fading wisps, the ash growing long enough that it should have fallen but hadn't.

  In the center of the courtyard, the boss sat with his back to the wall, facing the entrance. He hadn't touched his food. Two large men flanked him, standing instead of sitting, arms crossed, watching the room the way guard dogs watch a yard. He saw Li Mei and waved her over with two fingers. To the right, between the tables, a raised wooden platform. Red stains splattered across its surface, old and dark, soaked into the grain.

  Li Mei walked toward the boss's table. As she moved, the laughter died. The jokes stopped mid-sentence. The man who'd been standing sat back down. Even the erhu player opened his eyes, though his bow kept moving.

  "Stay here in the middle," Li Mei said quietly. "Don't talk. Don't bow. Don't do anything."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Cause a fight."

  She walked to the table and left Daniel standing alone in the center of the courtyard, surrounded by men who had all stopped what they were doing to look at him.

  "What are you doing here?" The boss scowled. "Your father should have gotten my message."

  "He did. Which is why I'm here." Li Mei poured herself tea from his pot, the ceramic clinking softly against his cup. "Dong Chi-wai. You know the rules. Don't break the balance. My father has let you run amok in this small part of the city as a generosity to your family's history. Not because he can't take it away from you."

  Dong Chi-wai laughed.

  "You're forgetting one more rule. One your father proudly follows above all else. Might makes right. So what if I violate the rules? Does he really think just you is enough to punish me?"

  "Yes."

  One of the men at Dong Chi-wai's right smashed the table. The dishes jumped. Tea sloshed over the rim of a cup and ran across the red tablecloth in a thin dark line.

  "Insolence! Even from you. You think just because you are his daughter we won't kill you?"

  "Won't is different from can't." Li Mei smiled. "Besides. I'm not alone."

  Dong Chi-wai looked past her shoulder at Daniel. Looked him up and down. Took his time doing it.

  "Just a pair of children."

  "A child who killed three of your men."

  The courtyard went dead silent. Even the erhu player stopped now, his bow hovering an inch above the strings. Daniel felt every eye in the place land on him. The big man at the near table looked up for the first time. The young guy by the wall stopped bouncing.

  Dong Chi-wai studied him for a long moment. Then he picked up his tea and took a slow sip.

  "Ah. The Three Wolves of Liaodong." He set the cup down gently. "I heard about that. Clumsy fools. Even after all their boasting and drinking, taken out by a child. Laughable."

  He turned the cup in his fingers, rotating it a quarter-turn on the tablecloth.

  "But killing three men is different from walking into a courtyard full of them. Do you really think you two are Liang Hongyu and Han Shizhong able to fend off a hundred men?"

  "I don't have to fight everyone," Li Mei said. "Just your experts. Or do you really think regular people have a chance against qi?"

  Li Mei laughed.

  "Hmph. Shameless and feckless. You broke the rules. You have one week to make it right, or my father comes himself."

  "One week." Dong Chi-wai smiled. "And if I decide to keep you here instead? As leverage?"

  "Then you'll lose more than a few men tonight."

  The men at the inner tables were already pushing back their chairs, the legs scraping against stone. Daniel counted eight standing, plus the ones by the walls. Dong Chi-wai raised a hand, and everyone froze.

  "Your father must be confident to send you here," he said. "So let me give you the respect you deserve."

  He nodded toward the courtyard entrance. A dozen men, at least, blocking the way they'd come in. Daniel hadn't even heard them move.

  "Might makes right," Dong Chi-wai repeated. "Whoever is on the floor is the loser. Whoever is standing is the winner. The highest rule in Jianghu. Since your father didn't teach you this properly, I'll make sure to teach you in his place."

  Li Mei didn't look at the men. She set down her teacup and smiled.

  "Good. I was hoping you'd make this interesting."