At first only children looked. Children look when adults have been paid not to. Then two men at a wheelwright's stall stood very still and then very fast, as if remembering that standing up has uses beyond politeness. A woman in a green jacket turned away as if to hide an unpurchased thing, then turned back and tied a scrap of blue thread around her wrist with the fierce concentration some women reserve for embroidery and some for grief. A city learns speed slowly. It learned.
Above the market, a drum sounded once, not alarm, not ceremony—curiosity. A squad tramped out under a banner that had never been asked to mean anything. Their officer called something about permits and penalties. Feiyan's shadow detached from a doorway and whispered to his second that his captain had been named in a list this morning and might want to learn how to disappear before lunchtime. The officer glanced at his second, saw a truth he couldn't carry in public, and lowered his spear a fraction, which is how men avoid dying foolishly.
Ren reappeared with six boatmen who had decided they preferred rivers to drums. Han sent a rider to the gate and another to the grain store and a third to the barracks staircase with instructions to wear his boots louder than his orders. Shuye banged on a kiln with a wooden mallet and a potter stuck his head out and swore to serve whichever army asked him first, so long as the order was sensible; Shuye asked him for bowls. He brought forty.
By dusk, Ye Cheng was not won. It had only remembered that it could refuse a little. Ziyan took that as a victory because she had learned to count small numbers as if they were seeds. She stood at the old school wall, ran her palm over the wrong bricks, and let anger become a more useful thing.
Feiyan appeared with snow on her hair like ash. "The prefect meets with a Xia quartermaster at moonrise," she said. "They plan to count our grain as theirs with ink. The quartermaster likes his tea with apricot. The prefect likes to think he understands poetry."
"We will arrange both," Ziyan said. She set her hand flat against the wrong stone and felt nothing that would help. She took it away.
Night loosened. The riverside lanterns were lit with the stinginess of men who had been taught to fear fire. The jar by Ziyan's tent pulsed like a patient ember. Wei checked the point of his spear against his thumb and said, to no one, "Don't break." Li Qiang wrote another line on his will and smiled at it without joy. Ren folded his maps into his sleeve where they could warm each other by friction.
Before sleep, Ziyan walked to the ridge above the river and watched ice build logic at the banks while the current argued. She spoke softly, to the part of the city that had listened to her as a girl because children have nothing else to do but listen.
"If you remember me," she said, "do not remember how quiet I was."
When she returned, Feiyan was a weight by the tent entrance, eyes open, blade visible to those who needed the comfort and hidden from those who would mistake it for permission.
"Tomorrow," Feiyan said.
"Tomorrow," Ziyan agreed.
The night did not bless them. It took their breath and gave it back, weighed, colder, adequate. Somewhere in the rebuilt quarter a child woke and did not cry, which was the best the city could do. The river muttered. The banner's blue vein lifted and fell and did not break. The road, sightless and stubborn, lay down under their feet like a promise it meant to keep.