The throne hall of Bai'an had been built to impress men who thought columns and dragons could make their stomachs forget when they were hungry. Today it impressed mainly the dust motes that drifted through the high light.
Ren Kanyu knelt on cold stone with five other commanders. His armor was dull, worn with the honesty of marching and not polished for corridors. The new Emperor—once Regent, once servant of a weak throne—sat above them on a seat that did not fit him yet, back straight, fingers drumming the armrest.
Feiyan watched from a roof-beam, three halls away.
She had no need to see his face. She read the scene in the way courtiers shifted weight from knee to knee, in the tightness of the scribes' shoulders, in the way even the eunuchs' eyes kept cutting toward the entrance as if expecting wolves to stroll in wearing boots.
"The southern border is quiet," droned a minister. "The western passes are snowed. The northern tribes have received your gifts and bowed through their teeth. Only the eastern front—"
The Emperor cut him off with a flick of his fingers. "The eastern front," he said. His voice was smooth, but beneath it lay stone. "The eastern front has grown… inventive."
His gaze slid toward Ren.
"You were ordered to bring the border to heel," he said. "I read your report. Pacified cities. Local law. Tolerated variance." His lip curled slightly on the last word. "You speak of Yong'an as if it were an ally, not a spoil."
Ren bowed deeper. "Yong'an holds," he said. "It feeds itself. It blocks Qi's messengers. It gives wolves no excuse to cross our line screaming 'rebellion' to the peasants. It is useful."
"It is disobedient," the Emperor said. "It raises no Xia banner. It swears no direct oath to my reign. And it dares, most absurdly, to sign parchment without my seal."
The minister to his right simpered. "A little city playing at law, Your Majesty. It goes no deeper than the stones they carve."
"Stones last longer than seals," the Emperor replied. "As I intend to."
Feiyan watched Ren's shoulders. They did not flinch.
"The Regent—" the Emperor began, then corrected himself with the smallest of grimaces—"myself, at your last audience, commanded that the borders be made neat. That no lordling—no woman in a burned town—should imagine they might invent their own rules under Heaven while standing on my soil."
He held up Ren's report between two fingers. "And yet here," he said, "you describe not the suppression of a rebellion, but the… accommodation of it."
Ren kept his head down. "I describe the best way to keep that region from rising at all," he said. "If Yong'an falls in fire, Qi will call them martyrs, Xia will be called butchers, and every village between the rivers will decide they like the sound of that more than paying tax. If Yong'an stands, calling itself what it likes while sending grain under my ledgers, then the map stays quiet."
"You prefer quiet maps to loyal ones?" the Emperor asked.
"I prefer maps with fewer dead on them," Ren replied. "Loyalty can be taught in quieter ways than ash."
A low murmur. Dangerous words.
Feiyan's hand moved toward her knife by habit, as if steel could cut the air of this room.
The Emperor's fingers stilled.
"You speak boldly," he said. "Like a man who knows the river cannot be ordered to flow uphill."
Ren lifted his head a fraction. "Your Majesty," he said, "a river clogged with bodies does not care about loyalty either. It only rots."
Silence stretched until even the ministers forgot to breathe.
Then the Emperor laughed.
It was not a kind sound. But it was real.
"You think you are the only one who remembers bodies," he said. "I walked those halls too, General. I watched my predecessor sign edicts with a hand that shook because he had not eaten, while your old masters in Qi and mine in Xia argued over whose starvation was more patriotic."
He flung the report down. "Fine. Keep your… Yong'an. For now. Let it think itself special, as long as it does not infect others. But."
He leaned forward. "The Regent of Qi has sent me a gift. Letters. Names. Stories of a woman who burns her own cities to save them, of a 'Road' that claims to sit under Heaven and under no man. He means to make me angered. He succeeds."
Feiyan's teeth clicked together.
"He suggests," the Emperor went on, "that we crush her together. That we declare her the enemy of both thrones, so that peasants may have a proper name to fear." He waved a hand. "I do not share his taste for theater. But I do share his need to keep my empire from cracking at the edges."
He looked down at Ren. "So you will go back," he said. "You will watch this Yong'an of yours. You will keep its law pointed inward, not outward. If it raises banners beyond its own walls—if it gathers other cities to this… Road—" he tasted the word with distaste "—you will put it down. Quickly. Quietly. With regret, if you like. But with finality."
A hush.
"And if I judge," the Emperor added, "that you have grown too fond of your little experiment to do what must be done, I will send someone who has never written the word 'pacified' in his life."
Feiyan did not need a name for that someone. Zhang's emissaries were already in Bai'an, she was sure. She had seen their faces at the inn: men who smiled like knives.
Ren bowed, slow. "I hear," he said.
"Do you obey?" the Emperor asked.
Ren's mouth thinned. "I obey," he said.
The Emperor studied him a heartbeat more, then laughed again. "Of course you'll disobey, if you think it wise," he said. "That is why I still employ you. Go. Bring me a border that does not embarrass my cartographers. And General?"
Ren looked up.
"If this Road Under Heaven of yours one day decides that Heaven should listen to it," the Emperor said, "remind it that roads are for troops to march on, not for cities to sit upon."
Feiyan slipped away before the audience ended. She had heard enough.