Horns rolled out of the mist like questions that expected blood for answers.
Ziyan was already on the north wall when the first notes sounded. The air bit at her bandaged arm; the wound had stopped speaking two bells ago, but the skin around it still thought about protest. She kept her hand light on the sword hilt. The weight of the cloak on her shoulders felt a fraction heavier where Feiyan had stitched Xu Min's blood-stiffened scrap into the lining.
"Wolves are punctual," Wei muttered, blowing on his fingers. "I'll give them that."
"They're early," Feiyan said, squinting at the shifting gray. "See how their camp fires are still busy, not banked? He's moving before his own tea is hot. Something's changed."
Ziyan followed her gaze. Xia's lines were thinner directly opposite the north gate, thicker toward the east, where the river bent under the wall. Banners there bristled, ranks dense.
"He wants the river quarter again," Han said, climbing up to join them, breath fogging. "Or he wants us to think so."
"He knows we broke his ice yesterday," Ziyan said. "He'll try to make us break ourselves today."
As if in answer, the first wave advanced—not in a solid block, but in loosened clumps, shield teams and sappers leapfrogging, ladders carried nearer but not yet raised. Their archers loosed not in volleys, but in small, precise flurries meant to test and distract.
Li Qiang's voice cut clean through the morning. "Hold. No countercharge. Aim only when sure. Let their mistakes cost more than ours."
Arrows from the wall answered, disciplined, measured. Two Xia men went down. Three moved into their place without hesitation. Behind them, low, rough shapes on runners slid into view.
"Fire-sleds," Han grunted. "Logs packed with pitch, pushed at the wall, lit at the last moment. Let them burn at the base and hope the heat splits the stone."
"Shuye?" Ziyan called.
"Already offended," he replied from the parapet's shadow, wiping soot from his cheek. "I have three jars and a deep appreciation of physics."
"Good," she said. "Make the river jealous of your explosions again."
Feiyan's hand brushed Ziyan's elbow, not enough to distract, just enough to remind. "Inside," she said softly. "It might be a day for cracks."
Ziyan nodded once.
Feiyan vanished down the stair like a dropped shadow.
Inside the walls, the siege sounded different.
Less of horns, more of rumor.
The story of Chen Rui's dead scout and Ren's letter had already grown teeth. Some swore the Xia general had sent back the man's head with silver in his mouth as honor. Others swore he'd written an apology for every arrow. Ziyan had done what she could—read the true letter aloud in the hall, posted it beside the Oath—but words liked to breed in corners.
In the grain square, under the carved tablets, a small knot of men stood too close, speaking too low.
"—says Xia's taxes are lighter than Qi's ever were," one murmured. "They fix the roads, don't they? They keep the bandits from cutting caravans to bone."
"They take your sons first," another snapped back. "That's why there's no bandits left."
A third sucked his teeth. "What's the difference? Sons go to die under anyone's banner. At least the wolf pays on time."
"And what does the bird pay?" someone asked, jerking her chin at the tablet where Ziyan's name sat attached to law and burden both.
"A beating with work instead of a rope," the steward from the temple said dryly, shuffling past with water sloshing from his pails. "Feels different when it's your hands doing the hauling, not someone else's neck in the knot."
Luo Fen listened from the edge of the square, his cloak plain, his hair tied like any middling clerk's. He watched where eyes went when Ziyan's name was spoken. Which hands curled into fists at the mention of Xia's "lighter" rule. He had a list, invisible but precise, in his head.
Ren had told him: Bring me pillars if you can. Cracks if you must. But no rats who run simply because someone shakes a bag of grain at them. I need to know what kind of walls she has.
So Luo went hunting.
His first mark was a tall man with old scars on his arms and new calluses on his hands—former caravan guard, now hauling sacks at the granary. The man spat every time someone mentioned Zhang. He spat only once when Xia came up. When Ziyan's name was spoken, he fell quiet.
Fear, not hate.
Promising.
Luo sidled closer, letting the conversation wash around him. "If the wolves take the city," he said in a tone meant for no one in particular, "there will be work. Guarding stores. Keeping order. Men who know how to keep lines straight will eat."
The tall man's eyes slid sideways, then away. "And if the wolves lose?"
"Then the bird will reward those who helped her fly," Luo said. "One doesn't stand in the middle of the road when two carts charge. One steps aside and holds out a hand to whoever's still on their feet."
He let the suggestion hang.
By the time Feiyan arrived on the grain square roof, two of Luo's invisible marks had formed a little cluster: one merchant's nephew, one clerk with ink under his nails, and the scarred caravan man.
She lay flat along the beam and watched.
"—say there's a sally gate near the old north kiln," the nephew was whispering. "A little one. Used to bring clay in and out before Zhang walled it. My uncle swears it still opens if you lift the right beam."
"And what?" the clerk hissed back. "You open it for wolves and they… what, give you the gatehouse keys?"
"They give us a seal," the nephew said. "Xia law over this quarter. We keep our ledgers. We keep our own petty rules. Better than starving under someone else's idea of justice."
The caravan man grunted. "Better than watching my boy cough himself weak because we won't use the herbs properly."
It was the kind of conversation Feiyan had lived half her life spying on.
She slid back from the edge and dropped into the alley. By the time the conspirators turned the corner of the granary, she was leaning against the wall, arms folded, expression almost bored.
"If you're going to open a secret gate for wolves," she said conversationally, "you shouldn't plan it under tablets that say 'no secret deals' in three different scripts."
The men froze. The merchant's nephew went pale; the clerk went red. The caravan guard reached for a knife and found nothing. Ziyan's soldiers had disarmed him days ago.
Feiyan smiled without warmth. "Come along," she said. "Let's go tell the bird what you were planning to do with her walls."