Snow fell with a brittle hush, muting the city's anger but not its eyes. In the aftermath of the annex fire, whispers multiplied like frost on glass: names lost, ledgers gone, the phoenix minister seen at the gates. Every hand wanted a culprit; every tongue wanted a tale. Ziyan gave them neither. She walked as if her step alone weighed the storm into silence.
In the teahouse, the brazier steamed with melted snow. Li Qiang leaned against the wall, sharpening a blade dulled from striking timber instead of flesh. Wei crouched by the window, half-shadow, watching the street with the old tension of a man who never forgot he had once worn another country's cords. Wen Yufei sat opposite her, his hood drawn low, but his eyes alert with the burden of things known too well.
"The records that survived," Ziyan said, spreading the damp papers she had saved, "speak of southern rosters. Not the present ones—the winter cohorts from three years ago. Students, exam lists, tutors attached to the academies."
Wei's brow furrowed. "Why burn lists of students?"
"Because students grow into officials," Yufei answered. "And those academies fed into the Southern Bureau. The same bureau Lord Gao commands now."
Li Qiang set his blade down. "So Gao erases the roots, Wenxu closes the channels, and Ning—"
"—decides who notices," Ziyan finished. Her tone was calm, but her fingers pressed too hard into the parchment. "That is the game. I thought they played separate boards. But the smoke carried all their seals."
Wei shifted, uneasy. "You mean—your father and Ning—?"
"On one side," Ziyan said flatly. "Gao's outrage, my father's silence, Ning's leash—they are pieces of one hand."
The brazier popped, sending sparks into the low air. For a moment, no one spoke. The idea was too heavy, yet too clean not to be true.
Li Qiang broke the silence. "Then why keep you alive? Why let you keep scraps when they could have drowned you in the river with the chest?"
Ziyan's gaze was steady. "Because a phoenix draws eyes. Kill me now, the ashes scatter wild. Keep me alive, they make the fire burn where they want." She looked down at the faint watermark of a cicada, nearly erased by water. "Even my mistakes are useful to them."
Wei's knife tapped once against the sill, restless. "Then we make your usefulness dangerous."
Yufei met Ziyan's eyes. "You knew this path would come. I warned you—your father taught me to read the cipher, then ordered me to forget. Gao baits you, Ning spares you, Wenxu shapes you. It is one net, Ziyan. You are the fish they fatten before the feast."
Her lips tightened, but she did not look away. "Then let them fatten me. But when they lift the net, I will not be the fish inside."
She rose, sweeping the papers into a case. "Tonight, two letters. One to Ning, speaking of Gao's men at the furnaces. One to my father, speaking of Ning's livery runner. Each will believe I play toward them. Both will wait. And in their waiting, we will move."
Li Qiang stood as well. "Move where?"
"To the river shrines," Ziyan said. "Old couriers still run messages there. Gao once used them when he was censor. If any names escaped the fire, they will flow through those tunnels." Her eyes sharpened. "If we catch even one, it is proof the fire was not mine."
Wei's smile was crooked. "Proof cuts both ways."
"Then let it cut," she said. "So long as I hold the blade."
They scattered before moonrise—Li Qiang to stir watchers off the main road, Wei to follow family couriers, Yufei to speak with students whose names should have burned. Ziyan herself rode south, the river shrines looming black against snow, her heart as taut as the reins.
The tunnels beneath smelled of damp reeds and mildew. Rats fled at the torchlight. And there, in the hollow carved by old river stones, she found it: a satchel lodged between rocks, half-wet, marked with the faint ribbon of the Southern Academies. Inside were scraps—one page singed, another intact, names of boys now serving as junior scribes under Gao's household banner.
Her pulse jumped. Proof. Just enough.
But before she could breathe, voices echoed. Torches flared at the far end of the passage. She recognized the colors—imperial guard, Ning's livery. And beside them, calm as if he owned the stones, walked Li Wenxu himself.
Ziyan backed into shadow, clutching the satchel. Li Qiang's signal whistle was faint in the distance, Wei's footfalls already circling. Yufei's shadow merged with hers.
They listened.
"…the satchel will be taken to Lord Gao by dawn," one guard said. "The ministers will see his seal and her hand upon it."
"And Prince Ning?" another asked.
Li Wenxu's voice, even, precise: "Already agreed. He tightens the leash. Gao barks. I steady the court. The phoenix sings where we tell her. The Emperor believes balance is kept."
Ziyan's breath caught. Yufei gripped her wrist, keeping her from moving, his own face carved with grief.
"They're one," she whispered, the sound breaking in her throat. "All of them—one hand."
The torchlight passed, the voices fading up the stone steps. The satchel in her grasp felt heavier than iron. Proof of names, yes—but proof of something else: that her battles had been staged, her choices measured, her survival permitted.
For the first time in weeks, her knees buckled. Yufei caught her, holding her steady as Li Qiang and Wei emerged from the opposite dark, both bristling, both silent as they saw her face.
"They're one," she repeated, louder this time, as if speaking it could make it less monstrous. "My father. Ning. Gao. They play the court like a board. And I—" her voice cracked—"I thought I was playing them."
The satchel slipped from her hands. Li Qiang stooped to catch it, but his eyes never left hers. Wei's jaw clenched, shadows twitching across his scarred cheek.
Snow hissed at the shrine entrance, falling harder now. The river swelled against its banks, carrying ash from the annex fire out to sea. Ziyan stared at it as though it might answer the weight in her chest.
"Then we burn their board," Li Qiang said at last.
Wei shook his head. "Not yet. Not until we know whose hand strikes first."
Yufei's voice was soft, but it carried. "Not until she decides whether she is phoenix or fire."
And in the silence that followed, Ziyan closed her eyes. The visions pressed against her: feathers of flame, bridges drowned, her father's gaze steady as ice, Ning's voice in the hall. All one hand.
When she opened them again, the storm had deepened. And the cliff she stood on no longer belonged to anyone but her.