Ren took the slips back, eyes bright despite exhaustion. "We'll make copies," he said. "Post them where we posted the battle tallies. Read them aloud in the wards. If we live, the ink will outlast us. If we die, maybe someone will find them under ash and decide not to make the same mistakes."
"Make them in simple script too," Shuye added. "Characters a boy who's only seen temple walls can sound out."
Ren nodded. "Already started."
A low bell sounded three times from the western quarter. Not alarm. Time. The city's old way of telling itself to change shifts.
Han rose. "Enough paper. Morning won't care what we signed."
"One thing more," Ziyan said.
They paused.
She picked up Zhang's letter to Ren and weighed it in her hand. "He called me a sacrifice to keep the weak in their place," she said. "Ren as much as told me his Emperor fears what we are doing here. Tomorrow he will try to make that fear go away with fire and numbers."
Wei's mouth tightened. "We can't match his fire. Or his numbers."
"No," Ziyan said. "But we can decide what they light and what they flood."
She spread a rough sketch of the city: walls, river, the tangled inner streets. Shuye leaned forward, pointing.
"Here," he said. "If they press the north convoy again, we can feign collapse down this alley and lead them into the old tannery square. I still have two smaller jars. Enough to turn cobbles into teeth under their horses' feet."
"And the southern ward?" Han asked.
Li Qiang traced another line. "Zhao's man reported rubble still clogging this lane from Zhang's purges. If we clear just enough for our men and leave the rest, Xia will think it useless and try elsewhere. We can hide archers here and here."
Ziyan listened, eyes half-lidded, committing every turn to memory. It was a strange feeling, building a defense not just to survive another day, but to prove something about the world itself.
When they were done, she dismissed them one by one. Han last, as always, grunting assent instead of goodnight. Ren and Shuye left together, already arguing softly about whether to carve or paint some of the law tablets. Wei limped out with a muttered promise to teach tomorrow's wolves some new vocabulary.
Only Feiyan and Li Qiang remained.
Li Qiang looked at her for a long moment. "You mean to stand on the north wall again yourself."
"Yes," Ziyan said.
"If you fall," he said, "everything we did here may die with you."
"If I hide," she replied, "everything we did here dies anyway, just slower."
He bowed, once, deeply. "Then I will stand where any arrow that misses you has to go through me."
Her throat tugged; she almost smiled. "That would defeat the purpose of having you."
"Too late," he said, and went.
The room felt larger without him. Emptier. Feiyan slid down from the window sill to sit opposite Ziyan, cross-legged, knife sheathed at last.
"When this is done," Feiyan said, "if you live, you will have done something no emperor of Qi managed in three generations."
"Lose the border provinces?" Ziyan asked wryly.
Feiyan shook her head. "Convince a city to bleed for a promise it helped write."
Ziyan's fingers tightened on the edge of the table. "It won't be enough."
"No," Feiyan said. "But it will be more than we had."
They sat in silence a while. Outside, the city drew breath. Somewhere a rooster, confused by clouds, crowed at the wrong hour. Somewhere a baby woke and laughed at nothing.
When Feiyan spoke again, her voice was softer than Ziyan was used to hearing it. "You said," she reminded her, "that this would be the last time you allowed betrayal to shape you."
"Yes," Ziyan said.
Feiyan's gaze sharpened. "Remember that tomorrow. When arrows come. When offers are made. When someone you trust freezes or breaks. Do not let their choice be the thing that writes you."
Ziyan looked at her friend—scar along her jaw, eyes that had seen more alleys than palaces. "What if the traitor is me?" she asked quietly. "What if one day I choose the easier road?"
Feiyan's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Then," she said, "I will remind you with something heavier than a law tablet."
"You'll kill me?"
"I'll knock you down until you remember," Feiyan said. "Then we can decide together."
Ziyan laughed, a small, cracked sound that still felt more like life than anything Zhang had ever offered. "Good."
She did not sleep. She lay on the pallet for an hour, eyes open, listening to the city's uneven breathing. When the next bell sounded—two strokes, then one—she rose.
Feiyan was already up. "North wall," she said.
"North wall," Ziyan agreed.
They strapped on armor that smelled of old sweat and new leather repairs. Ziyan tied her hair back and bound the blue silk firmer around her wrist. The knot bit into skin. She welcomed the pain. It proved she still had a body. That the road was not yet all idea.
As they climbed the stairs, dawn finally made up its mind.
Light seeped over the fields, revealing Xia's host in clearer detail than smoke and snow had allowed before. They had built no new towers. They had not drawn back. Their lines had shifted, though. More men toward the east, fewer directly in front of the main gate. Somewhere unseen, Ren had moved pieces on his board.
On the wall, men and women straightened when they saw her. No one cheered. That was good. They were too tired for waste.
Ziyan took her place at the section between the north gate and the broken tower, where yesterday the worst of the fighting had torn the parapet low. From here, she could see the river's band of dirty ice, the broken remains of Xia's first tower, the careful, breathing machine of their army.
She raised her sword, not high, not dramatic. Just enough that her own people could see it.
"We hold," she said.
The words went along the wall, carried from mouth to mouth. She heard them echoed, not like a chant, but like an agreement renewed.
Across the field, Xia's horns began.
Ren was keeping his promise. One night's pause. No more.
The wolves came on.
And for the first time since Ye Cheng burned, Ziyan felt not like quarry between jaws, but like the stone around which teeth had to bend.
Betrayal had taken her life once, twisted it into exile and ash. Tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, it might take her breath. But it would not, ever again, decide who she was.
That work, at last, belonged to her.