"Lady Li Ziyan," he murmured. "Show me whether you're a spark blown by luck… or a fire with its own kind of wind."
Snow collected on his shoulders. He didn't brush it off.
He wanted to feel it.
In Yong'an's old examination hall, wisdom had once been measured in ink and eight-legged essays.
Now it was measured in voices.
The long room was cold. They'd stripped the old scholar-scrolls from the walls to make space for the law tablets. On each, Ren's careful script and Shuye's simpler characters marched side by side. No soldier seizing grain without payment. No lord raising tax in secret. Punishments written down. Names written down, too, already—men who had tested the new rules and found them less breakable than they'd hoped.
Ziyan stood not on a raised dais, but on the same level as the faces turned toward her: Han with his scarred hands clasped behind his back, Zhao lounging with deceptive ease, guildmasters with ink-stained fingers, riverfolk with braided hair, cooks with flour on their sleeves. Chen Rui leaned against a pillar, arms folded, eyes half-closed, listening.
Ren the scribe read out the tally of yesterday's dead and injured. He did not soften it. No one asked him to.
"Grain stores," Ziyan said. "Shuye."
He unrolled a cloth with careful squares drawn on it. "Two months at current ration if Xia sits still and we eat like monks," he said. "Less if they burn any more fields, more if Chen Rui's people bring in what they spotted along the western ditches."
"The merchants say they can find more if we let prices rise," Zhao drawled.
"The merchants signed the Oath," Ziyan said. "Every grain they find, we count. Every mouth we count too. They can profit later, if there is a later."
A plump man with a bronze abacus charm on his belt cleared his throat. "Lady Li, with respect, men fight harder if there is reward as well as duty."
"Men also fight harder if they know their children won't be bribed with stolen medicine," Ziyan said. "You tried that already. Ask the steward scrubbing pots in the temple whether the old 'rewards' are worth it."
Soft snickers. The merchant flushed.
Chen Rui spoke up, voice gravel-rough. "In the last town we lost, the quartermaster thought the same as you," she said. "He let his friends sell grain at double price to anyone with jade to spare. When Xia took the gates, their officers went straight to his cousin's house, took the coins, and hanged him from his own counting beam. They don't much care whether we cheat each other first. Only that we're used to it."
The hall shifted. No one quite met her eyes.
Ziyan let the silence work, then said, "The Oath was not written for good weather. It is for days like this. When every old habit tries to crawl back like a rat. If any of you want the old way—quiet theft, loud taxes, a ruler who hides grain and sells mercy—I suggest you go and dig Zhang out of his grave."
No one laughed.
Han's mouth twitched anyway.
They argued about watches, about latrine trenches, about whether to move the infirmary to a less drafty temple or to leave sickness and worship cheek by jowl. They argued about whether Chen Rui's people should be given wall posts or kept in reserve until someone proved they weren't Xia knives wrapped in Qi cloaks.
"Give us bricks to carry and spears to hold," Chen Rui said flatly. "If we'd wanted to kneel to wolves, we'd have stayed on the road."
By the end of it, Ziyan's head ached more than after a battle.
This, she thought, resting her palm on the law tablet as the hall cleared slowly, is what Zhang traded away when he sold my life in a letter. This noise. This difficulty. This choosing.
Feiyan dropped down from a high beam where she'd been sprawled listening, legs swinging like a bored cat's. "You looked almost happy when that merchant cursed under his breath," she said.
"I did not," Ziyan said.
Feiyan grinned. "You did. Quietly. In your eyes."
Ziyan was about to deny it when the doors at the far end slammed open.
A runner stumbled in, helmet askew, face windburned. He didn't bother with ceremony. "From the western out-watch," he gasped. "Chen Rui's scouts. Ambushed by Xia riders. Two dead, one missing. The last…" He swallowed. "The last came back with… this."
He held out a strip of cloth, stiff with frozen blood. On it, stitched in dark thread, was the wolf-head of Xia. Below, in smaller, crooked characters, someone had written: For the Road's Lady.
Feiyan was beside Ziyan in a breath. "Trap," she said.
"Invitation," Ziyan replied.
She took the cloth. Attached to it was a small, wax-sealed packet. No crest. No mark.
Han's hand dropped to his sword. "If that's poison—"
"Then best I take it before anyone else," Ziyan said.
She broke the seal.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded twice. The script was neat, unhurried. She recognized it from the copied orders.
Lady Li Ziyan, it began.
We found three of Captain Chen's people on the road last night. One died before he could speak. Two did not. One told me what you are attempting in Yong'an. The other refused to say anything until we had him bound for hanging. He shouted that he did not fight for Qi or Xia, but for his own city and a woman who signed the same law as he did. I respect that.
I have returned the bodies. I will return any others I can spare. War does not require we lie about what we see.
Tomorrow I resume the assault. I will not burn your granaries. I will not poison your wells. I will break your walls if I can. If you die under them, it will be because you would not bend, not because I chose to teach you despair first.
If you survive, the letter went on, and if I do, we will meet again. On yours or mine, I do not yet know. I would prefer to face a live foe on a road she built, than a province of terrified subjects who never had a choice. It is… easier to sleep that way.
Ren Kanyu.
Below, barely larger than a fly's footprint, one more line:
P.S. Your law about medicine is better than ours.
Feiyan's eyebrows climbed. "He has the gall to send you compliments in the same breath as promises to kill you."
"Efficient," Wei said grimly.
Han scowled. "And he thinks writing down that he won't burn us makes his arrows polite?"
Ziyan folded the letter again. Her face gave away almost nothing.
Almost.