Back in the potter's cramped back room, she traced lines on a crude map with her little finger: Bai'an, the eastern front, Yong'an, Ye Cheng's scar. Qi's capital, fraying. The rivers, tired of being everyone's excuse.
"He will let Yong'an live as long as it is useful," she said. "But he has given himself a word to kill it with, when Zhang makes it profitable."
"Rebellion," the potter guessed.
"Worse," Feiyan said. "Contagion."
He grimaced. "Words that spread."
"Exactly."
She picked up one of the cheap clay tablets, thumbed the damp surface. "We need to be faster than their stories," she said. "If Zhang's letters are already here, his knives won't be far behind. And Qi's court will not stay weak forever. Some cousin will survive this and decide he likes the sound of 'Road Under Heaven' less than he likes old titles."
"Then what?" the potter asked. "You send word to your Lady? Tell her to stop carving law and start carving walls?"
Feiyan smiled, thin and fond. "She's already carving both," she said. "I'll send word. But I'll do more."
She put the tablet down and drew a sparrow in the dust between Bai'an and Yong'an. Then another between Yong'an and Qi's capital.
"Wang Yu in Qi," she said. "Li Shi here. Shuye's jars. Your bowls. The caravan tongues. This Road isn't just stone and oath. It's the people who carry stories."
"You mean to make them your spies," he said.
"I mean," Feiyan replied, "to make them our eyes. Our ears. And sometimes, our teeth."
She straightened, feeling the familiar itch in her feet.
"Bai'an will watch Yong'an," she said. "Zhang will watch both. Qi will claw its way out of its grave. Everyone will look at the walls, the banners, the cold courtyards."
She tied her scarf, fingers quick. "I'll walk where they're not looking. For as long as I can."
"Where first?" the potter asked.
"Qi," she said. "Zhang's letters are killing us quietly already. I want to see what else he writes. And I want to remind Wang Yu that keys can open more than locks."
She paused at the door, glancing back at the shelves of cheap tablets.
"Keep carving," she said. "When the Emperor's men come to break these, let them find too many to smash in one visit."
The potter laughed softly. "You sound like that woman you follow," he said.
Feiyan's eyes softened. "Good," she said. "Means I'm finally listening."
In Yong'an, the snow had turned to sleet.
Ziyan walked the wall with Li Qiang, cloak hood up, sparrows stitched on the inner hem. Below, the refugee quarter smoked and muttered. Sun Wei trudged past with another sack, his shoulders learning a different kind of weight.
Ren the scribe jogged up the stairs, breathing hard, a pigeon cage banging against his knee.
"From Bai'an," he said, thrusting the tiny tube into Ziyan's hand. "Li Shi's seal. And another mark I don't know."
Feiyan's tiny, precise scratch sat beside the official stamp: two crossed lines, the ghost of a sparrow.
Ziyan's heart did something painful in her chest.
She unrolled the scrap.
Ren ordered back. Emperor new, hungry. Yong'an tolerated but watched. Zhang's lies arrived before you. Border being drawn in ink around your name. Qi not as dead as we hoped. I go to see.
Build faster. Think wider. Do not let the Road sit still and call it safety.
There was no "be careful." Feiyan knew her well enough to waste no ink on that.
Ziyan passed the scrap to Li Qiang. He read it once, twice, then handed it to Ren the scribe, who pressed it flat, eyes already placing it among his growing archive of treacherous truths.
Han joined them, rain dripping off his hair. "News?" he asked.
"Yes," Ziyan said. "Our wolf has teeth on his back now, not just in front. Our ghost walks into Qi's shadow."
"And us?" Wei called from below, where he was teaching children to throw stones properly instead of at random. "What do we do while everyone else plays with crowns?"
Ziyan looked out at the road leading south and east, at the stubble of fields, at the half-collapsed watchtower where Chen Rui was shouting at someone about roofs.
"We make it harder," she said, "for anyone to kill us cheaply."
She tapped the wall beneath her palm. "We teach Sun Wei to count sacks. We carve law until even the children can recite it between curses. We make sure that when Xia's Emperor and Qi's corpse-king and Zhang of Ash look at Yong'an, they don't just see a city."
"What do they see?" Ren asked quietly.
"A question," Ziyan said. "They can't answer by burning."
Rain needled her cheeks. She let it.
"Feiyan says the Road mustn't sit still," she murmured. "So we won't. We'll send traders under our sparrow. We'll send letters to towns that still answer to no one. We'll build not just walls, but paths. When their armies come, they'll find they're marching on something that's already under their feet."
Li Qiang's hand brushed hers, a brief, grounding warmth. "You mean to build a kingdom without saying the word," he said.
"I've already said it," Ziyan replied. "Ink dries whether we whisper or shout."
She turned from the gray horizon back to the square, where the first children of the Road were drawing crooked sparrows in the slush and arguing about whether their heads should face left or right.
"Let them come," she said again, more to herself than anyone. "By the time they arrive, they'll find that the Road Under Heaven isn't a city at all."
Feiyan, walking alone toward Qi with snow in her hair, sneezed once, violently, and smiled at nothing.
"Talk less loudly in my head, Princess," she muttered. "Some of us are trying to sneak."
The wind swallowed her words and carried them east, where Zhang bent over his own maps and smiled at the little sparrow he'd drawn beside Yong'an, never imagining the bird might one day peck the hand that sketched it.