Beyond the wall, Ren Kanyu read a different piece of paper.
The Emperor's hand was finer tonight, less hurried, as if the brush had taken time to choose each stroke.
The court hears of delay at Yong'an, it said. It hears of letters exchanged and of medicine shared. It hears of a general who forgets that walls are not people.
Ren's jaw ticked.
Take the city, the letter went on. Break the woman they whisper about as Phoenix and Road. Do it quickly. Do it visibly. Do it in such a way that no province considers writing its own law without my seal.
If you do not, there was no flourished courtesy now, the command of the eastern host will pass to a man who remembers that hesitation is merely treason with pretty robes.
It was sealed with jade. It needed none.
Ren folded it once, then again, and slid it under the edge of the wooden box that held his daily tallies.
"Orders?" his adjutant asked.
Ren looked out at the city.
"I have mine," he said. "So does she. Let us see whose road cracks first."
He did not know that at that moment, under the same sky, she was thinking almost the same thing.—
The gate they chose was not the great north, but a narrow postern half-buried in an old rampart to the west, where Yong'an's walls had once looped tighter before the city outgrew its first skin. Zhang had neglected it. Ziyan had not.
They went in dark colors, no banners, no shine. Feiyan at the front, moving like this was the first honest work she'd been given in weeks. Shuye with a padded pack that clinked faintly despite his best efforts. Wei with two spears and a grin that was all teeth. Chen Rui and three of her westerners. Zhao's man, thin and nervous, eyes too sharp to be as cowardly as he pretended. Li Qiang at Ziyan's side, silent but unmovable.
Han, Zhao, and the rest remained to hold the walls.
At the threshold, Ren the scribe unfurled the hastily written slip and read by lamplight: "This night, under cloud and siege, those named here go beyond the wall to strike at the force that would cage us. They go by choice. Their names are: Li Ziyan, Feiyan, Li Qiang, Wei, Chen Rui…" He read each name. The little group listened without flinching.
Ren ended, "If they do not return, let this stand as proof that law walked with them, and that they did not die as bandits, but as people doing the work they had a say in."
"That's a mouthful," Wei muttered. "Could've just written 'we went out to hit something that deserved it'."
Ren sniffed. "I'll carve that as a commentary."
Ziyan touched the tablet briefly, as if feeling whether the ink had dried. "You keep writing," she told him.
"I intend to," he said. His hands shook only a little as he rolled the slip and tucked it into its frame.
Feiyan opened the postern. Cold and dark rushed in like a held breath finally exhaled.
"Road," she said.
"Road," Ziyan agreed.
They slipped out.
The night outside smelled different. No incense, no human closeness pressed into stone; only trampled snow, old smoke, the iron tang of distant watchfires.
They moved in a broken line, hugging the shadow of the wall, then peeling off into the dead ground between Yong'an and the nearest Xia outpost. Twice, patrols passed close enough that Ziyan could hear saddle leather creak. Feiyan's hand signaled stillness; the group became rocks, bushes, hunched darkness.
At the first low rise, Shuye took the lead, guiding them along a fold that dipped between two modest hills. "This way," he whispered. "The ground drinks sound here. I tested it when we first came."
Wei snorted softly. "Of course you did."
They saw the supply slope before the guards did.
Wagons, a dozen at least, clustered along a long, gentle hill that sloped down toward a hollow. Barrels. Crates. Piles of timber under rough canvas. A few horses picketed, heads low, tails twitching. Sentries walked their patterns—two at the wagons, two on the crest, more at the edge where the stockpile thinned into the rest of camp.
"Too many?" Zhao's man breathed.
"Enough," Ziyan said. "If it were easy, it would not matter."
Shuye slid his pack off. Up close, the jars looked almost harmless: clay bellies with careful seams, fuses braided tight.
"I set them on the up-slope," he murmured. "When they go, the fire runs down, not back at us. Like convincing a drunk to fall on his own sword."
Feiyan's eyes flicked over the sentry routes. "I'll take the crest," she said. "Chen Rui, with me. Wei and Zhao's ghost handle the near pair. Li Qiang…" her gaze met his, then Ziyan's. "You keep her alive while she does something brave and stupid with a torch."
Wei grinned. "We've had practice."
They split.
It went wrong, of course.
Good plans always did when men with knives walked through them.
The first phase worked. Feiyan and Chen Rui slipped along the rear of the slope, dropped the two crest-sentries so quietly that one only realized he was dead when his legs refused to obey. Wei's spear found the nearer pair with ugly efficiency; Zhao's man, to his credit, moved without freezing, slit a throat with a hand that had probably signed more ledgers than letters.
Shuye set his jars, fingers sure. Li Qiang stood watch, sword a low, ready line.
Ziyan crept between wagons, heart steady, breath measured. She could hear her own pulse in her ears, but her hands did not shake. Each barrel, each crate, each sheaf of bundled timber was another arrow that would not fly, another ladder that would not scrape her walls.
She lit the first fuse from a small covered lamp, cupped, breath held.
Then someone shouted.