He drew a breath that seemed to come from his boots.
"Zhang calls himself Regent still," he said. "Officially. The Emperor is alive, but only in the sense that a candle is alive when it's down to its last thumb of wax. Zhang holds court. He signs most edicts in the Emperor's name, some in his own. He spends his days sorting who is worth keeping."
"And nights?" she asked.
Wang Yu's mouth twisted. "They say he doesn't sleep," he said. "He walks the Ash Hall."
Feiyan cocked her head. "The what."
"His new audience chamber," Wang Yu said. "He had the old one pulled up. Burned the beams from Ye Cheng—or what he says are the beams. Worked their ash into plaster. He likes to stand on it when he talks of loyalty."
Feiyan's fingers twitched toward her knife again. "Poetic," she said. "I'll make sure to ruin his meter."
Wang Yu looked at the floor. "I signed the inventory for the beams," he said. "I couldn't tell if they truly came from Ye Cheng. But the story serves him better than the truth would."
"And his letters?" she asked. "To Xia."
Wang Yu closed his eyes briefly. "He paints Ziyan as hungry," he said. "Ambitious. Says she uses 'popular law' to cover her thirst for power. Says Yong'an is a 'proto-kingdom' and that if Xia does not crush it now, it will be forced to crush something larger later."
"Proto-kingdom," Feiyan repeated. "He's been listening to her too closely."
"He offers Yong'an up," Wang Yu went on. "Says: 'Let us crush her together. You from without, I from within. I will call her traitor; you will call her rebel. Between us, we will make sure no one thinks to write law from below again.'"
Feiyan's jaw clenched. "Ren took that letter to his Emperor," she said. "He showed it."
"Ren Kanyu plays his own game," Wang Yu replied. "In every report I transcribe he's quieter about Yong'an than Zhang would like. But the Emperor has other worries. He will let his generals arrange their borders as long as grain and obedience flow."
"And Qi?" she asked. "Any plan that involves saving it?"
Wang Yu laughed, short and bitter. "Zhang plans to save himself," he said. "If Xia marches far enough, he'll offer them provinces to chew while he takes the throne proper. If Xia stumbles, he'll claim he kept the heart safe by sacrificing the limbs." His hand tightened on a ledger. "He has so many stories and only one truth: he must stand on higher ash than everyone else."
"Yong'an," Feiyan said. "Road Under Heaven. It bothers him."
"It terrifies him," Wang Yu corrected quietly. "A city that owes him nothing and refuses to die when ordered. A woman who is loyal to an idea instead of a name. He cannot store that in any of his boxes."
He looked around at the shelves. "He asked me last week," he said slowly, "how one goes about erasing a word from every page."
"And what did you say?" Feiyan asked.
"That ink sinks," Wang Yu said. "And that if he tries, he'd better start with his own name."
Feiyan stared.
"And you are still alive?" she asked.
"For now," he said. "Perhaps he thinks I am funny."
Silence settled, heavy with decisions.
"You came here at great risk," Wang Yu said at last. "For what? To hear that men in halls are as stupid as we feared?"
"I came to know where the knife would land," Feiyan said. "And whether anyone inside the butcher's house was willing to turn it by a finger-width."
"You want me to turn the knife on my own master," Wang Yu said.
"I want you," she answered, "to do what you did in Yong'an. To decide which locks stay closed and which doors open quietly when someone needs to walk through."
He sank onto the low stool by the table. "Yong'an had law to stand on," he said. "These shelves have… habit. Fear. Obedience."
"Habits can be broken," she said.
"I know," he said. "I broke mine once. I watched you carry my keys into fire. I watched a midwife tell me my ledgers weren't worth the boy coughing on her floor." He rubbed his face. "I thought that would be the last time I betrayed a master."
"Then don't think of it as betrayal," Feiyan said. "Think of it as… choosing whose ink you want on your hands when you die."
He stared at his fingers, stained black.
"What do you need?" he asked finally.
She held up two fingers. "Letters," she said. "I need copies of Zhang's sweetest lies to Xia, so we can tear them apart before they reach the ears of men who want excuses. And names. The names of those in Qi who still think of more than their own bowls when they say the word 'kingdom.'"
"You mean to recruit them?" he asked, almost incredulous.
"Not yet," she said. "We're too small. But we can know them. Send them jars. Bowls. Stories. When the time comes, I want them to have heard of a place where law comes from below, not only from the top of these steps."
Wang Yu's voice dropped to a whisper. "You want to build the Road in Qi as well," he said.
"Not today," Feiyan said. "Today, I want to make sure when Zhang points at Yong'an and calls it a disease, there are enough people who have quietly been wishing for the same fever that they hesitate before lighting the pyre."
He laughed again, shaken. "You ask much."
"I ask what Ziyan would," she said. "If she were here instead of carving tablets and pretending not to start a rebellion."
He looked up sharply. "She is going to start one," he said. "Isn't she."
"Not against Qi," Feiyan said. "Not against Xia. Against the habit that says only men in these halls decide who counts. If you help, she may not have to do it with fire."
His shoulders slumped.
"I will be killed for this," he said. "Not today. But next year, or the year after, when some new ruler finds my handwriting in the wrong margin."
Feiyan's gaze softened. "Everyone dies," she said. "Few get to choose which words they stand beside when they do."
He smiled, crooked and tired. "You and she have the same cruelty," he said.
"Yes," Feiyan said. "That's why we fit."
He reached for a ledger, flipped it open, and slid a thin sheet of paper free from between two pages.
"Zhang's last letter to Bai'an," he said. "He asked me to make three fair copies. I made four. One went with the pigeon. One with the messenger. One stays in his chest. One… will walk out of here under your jacket."
Feiyan took it.
"The names?" she asked.
"I will write them separately," he said. "Not here. I will send them by jars. You still have potters?"
"We always have potters," she said. "Roads need bowls."
He hesitated once more. "Tell her," he said, "that I am keeping her first law. In here." He tapped his chest. "The one about witnesses."
"I will," Feiyan said.
She slid the letter into her sleeve.
Outside, a bell rang—the deep, heavy note that called senior officials to the Ash Hall. Wang Yu flinched.
"I must go," he said. "He counts missing faces faster than missing coins."
Feiyan followed him to the door.
"Wang Yu," she said.
He looked back.
"When you die," she said, "try not to do it quietly. Make it inconvenient."
He barked a laugh. "That, at least, I can promise," he said, and was gone.