On the north wall, the fire-sleds hit.
They came over the churned ground with horrible, inexorable momentum, pushed by teams of men under shield. Shuye's first jar caught the lead, flipping it sideways into a tumble of burning pitch and splintered wood. The second sled skidded through the flames, smelling of pine and oil and desperation.
"Buckets!" Wei roared. "Wet, then sand, then prayers if you've got any left!"
The sled slammed into the base of the wall and splintered. Fire crawled, licked, learned. For a moment, the stone seemed to shudder. Then water poured, sand smothered, and the beast choked.
Down the line, one of the other sleds made it closer, bumping and scraping, flame already guttering at its mouth. Li Qiang signaled. Archers shot the men pushing it first, not the sled itself. Without willing hands, it slowed, stalled, and finally tipped into the ditch with a hiss.
Xia's archers answered angrily, arrows slamming into the parapets. Men ducked. Two did not duck fast enough. Ren the scribe glanced once, noted their faces, and kept directing the bucket line around the smoke.
By midday, the worst of that tactic had spent itself. Xia pulled the remaining sleds back, half-burned, half-useless.
"They're learning," Han said grimly.
"So are we," Ziyan replied.
—
The conspirators knelt in the examination hall, hands bound, snow melting around their boots. The room smelled faintly of ink and worry.
Ziyan let them stew while Ren read out their words, each snatch of overheard plan, each careless sentence. Feiyan added with cool precision where she had followed them before—who they'd spoken to, who had shrugged and walked away instead of staying to listen.
"You weren't subtle," Ziyan said at last. "That surprises me. Men plotting to open gates usually at least pretend to be clever."
The clerk flushed. "We were only talking," he muttered. "Words aren't treason."
"Sometimes they're worse," Feiyan said. "Steel is honest. Words pretend."
The merchant's nephew trembled. "If we'd… if we'd done it, you'd all be dead by now. We didn't. No harm done."
The caravan guard said nothing. His jaw was set, his eyes steady.
Ziyan looked at him. "Do you believe that?" she asked.
He met her gaze. "I believe," he said slowly, "that if your law is real, you don't get to write it only when convenient."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Then we'll test it."
She walked to the nearest law tablet and laid her palm against the carved characters. "No punishment without named charge," she read. "No charge without witness. No witness unquestioned."
Feiyan stepped forward. "The witnesses have spoken. You can question me. I invite you."
The clerk swallowed. "You lied. You twist words—"
"I told you exactly who I was," Feiyan said. "You assumed I wasn't listening. That's not my lie."
Ren's brush hovered. "The charge?"
Ziyan looked at each man in turn.
"Conspiracy to open a gate to a foreign army in time of siege," she said. "Not thought. Not complaint. Plan."
The nephew burst out, "You can't prove we would have done it—"
"You're right," Ziyan said. "I cannot prove what you would have done tomorrow. I can only treat you according to what you tried to do today."
The clerk spat at the floor. "So you'll hang us. Under a prettier speech."
Ziyan's jaw tightened. For a heartbeat, she could taste Zhang's way on her tongue: quick terror, crowd cowed, no one else daring to whisper. Efficient. Clean.
Also the thing she had sworn not to become.
"You have two choices," she said.
Feiyan's eyes flicked, surprised.
"You can walk out of this gate now," Ziyan went on. "We open it for you alone. You go to the wolves and ask them for your lives. Maybe they welcome you. Maybe they don't. That is their law, not mine.
"Or," she said, "you stay. You take the hardest shifts on the wall and in the worst alleys. You go where the arrows fall thickest and the roofs burn fastest. Every man here will know what you almost did. If you fall, they'll be tempted to cheer. If you stand, you'll have earned your place back, if not their liking. You will not hold command. You will not hold keys. But you will hold a spear for something besides your own skin."
The merchant's nephew gasped. "That's not mercy. That's—"
"Work," Ziyan said. "The kind you wanted to sell to someone else."
The clerk licked dry lips. "And if we refuse both?"
"Then we are back to old law," she said quietly. "And I will not pretend the rope is anything but my failure."
Silence.
The caravan guard spoke first. "I stay," he said. "If I die under wolves, it will be from the wall, not crawling toward their gate."
The clerk hesitated, eyes darting. "I… I'll go," he whispered. "I can't— I'm not—"
"Open the postern," Ziyan told Li Qiang.
The little door groaned. Cold air slid in, sharp and honest.
The clerk scrambled to his feet, hands still bound. For a moment he looked at Ziyan, as if expecting her to call him back. When she didn't, he spat again, this time to the side, and stumbled out.
Li Qiang closed the door behind him.
"Feiyan," Ziyan said softly.
"I know," Feiyan replied.
Later, perched on the shadowed lip of a ruined tower outside the wall, she watched the clerk pick his way across the churned field, white scrap tied to a stick in his raised hands. He moved slowly, boots sinking, glancing back once, twice.
When he drew near Xia's forward pickets, three arrows hissed out, neat and quick. One struck the flag. One took his leg. The last went through his throat.
He dropped without ceremony. No one ran to help.
Feiyan watched a moment longer, then touched the inside of her cloak where Xu Min's cloth lay.
"Luo," she murmured to the empty air. "You're working very hard to misunderstand what you've been hired to break."
She slid back into the city.
On his hill, Ren Kanyu watched the small, pathetic attempt at defection through his glass.
"Who ordered that?" he asked.
The bow-captain did not flinch. "Standard protocol, General. No one crosses between lines without your seal. Deserters spread rot. We cut them before it takes."
Ren grunted. "See he's buried. Mark the spot. If we live, I'll want his name for the ledger."
"Yes, General."
He did not write a letter about that. Some truths did not need to cross walls.
By sundown, the day had taken its usual toll.
Two more assaults broken. Three breaches patched. A fire in the lower market put out with snow and curses. Chen Rui's westerners proved themselves on the wall, fighting like people who understood there was nowhere left to run.
The caravan guard who'd chosen to stay killed one Xia climber with a thrown stone and another with his bare hands when his spear snapped. Wei clapped him on the shoulder. The man grunted and said nothing.
In the temple, the steward scrubbed. His hands bled. The boy with river-frost in his lungs slept easier.
Ziyan climbed the north tower after final watch was set. The city hummed below, quieter now, a beast too tired to pace but not yet ready to lie down.
Feiyan joined her, boots soundless on stone.
"They'll keep trying," she said. "Inside and out."
"I know," Ziyan said.
"And you'll keep giving them choices," Feiyan added, not quite mocking, not quite approving.
"Yes," Ziyan said.
Feiyan leaned on the parapet, looking out at the dim glow of Xia's camp. "You're going to make it very hard to say later that this was only about revenge or stubbornness."
"It isn't," Ziyan said. "It never was."
She thought of Zhang's letter calling her a sacrifice. Of Ren's careful script admitting her law was better. Of a clerk bleeding under someone else's rule and a guard choosing to stand where arrows fell thickest rather than crawl.
"Tomorrow?" Feiyan asked.
"Tomorrow," Ziyan said, "we hold again. And we make sure that if this city falls, it falls in a shape that cannot be mistaken for anything Zhang ever wanted."
The wind off the river cut through cloak and armor both. She let it.
For the first time, the siege did not feel like the slow tightening of a noose.
It felt like a hammer.
Not yet struck.
But raised.