That night, Zhang stood in his hall of ash.
The plaster under his feet looked ordinary. Only he and the men who had mixed it knew how much bone dust and burnt wood lay in it. The hall's pillars rose like blackened trunks. Light from hanging lanterns crawled over carved dragons that no longer belonged to a dying Emperor.
He held a pigeon-letter from Bai'an in one hand, Wang Yu's careful copy of Ren Kanyu's report.
Yong'an: pacified for now. Local law tolerated. Grain moving. People unsettled but not rebellious. General recommendation: observe.
He smiled, thin and cold.
"Tolerated," he repeated. "Observe."
He turned to the map table, where Qi's territories lay in ink and little wooden blocks. Yong'an was a small square on the eastern frontier, ringed now not in the black of rebellion but in grey.
He picked up a stick of charcoal and drew a circle around it, larger this time.
"Road Under Heaven," he murmured. "You think yourself above thrones because you have none."
His hand moved, marking routes from the capital to Yong'an, from Yong'an to the border towns, from border towns to places he had never cared about before.
"You give me such gifts, Li Ziyan," he said softly. "You gather all the stubborn hearts in one place and give it a name. When the time comes, I won't have to hunt them house by house. I will only have to cut this… road."
He pressed the charcoal down until it snapped.
Ash dusted his fingers.
He did not see, in the corner of the hall, a small fleck of plaster flake away from the wall, as if the ash within refused to keep still.
—
In Yong'an, Ren the scribe lit a lamp and squinted at the second letter from Li Shi that had arrived with Feiyan's: a copy of Zhang's accusations, forwarded like a bad joke.
"Proto-kingdom," he read aloud. "Infection. Rebellion spread by law."
Ziyan sat cross-legged on the floor, the sparrow hairpin and jade ring between her palms.
"Then he sees us clearly," she said.
Li Qiang frowned. "He means to make that a curse," he said.
"Then we will make it a banner," she replied. "If he tells the world the Road spreads, we will make sure it has somewhere to travel."
Wei, snoring against the wall, twitched. "More work," he muttered in his sleep.
Shuye leaned over Ren's shoulder. "If he thinks we're already a kingdom," he said, "we might as well start collecting taxes like one."
Han grunted. "On the roads, not the throats."
Ziyan smiled, grim and bright.
"Feiyan says to think wider," she said. "Zhang will come. Xia will look away until it suits them to look here. Qi will tear itself apart trying to decide whether to kill us or copy us." She closed her fist around the hairpin and ring. "We don't have to win all their games at once. We just have to last longer than their certainty."
Ren dipped his brush, ready for a new tablet.
"Title?" he asked.
Ziyan looked at the blank clay.
"On Rebellion," she said. "As defined by men who fear being disobeyed."
Ren's grin was sudden and sharp. "I've been waiting to carve that one," he said.
Outside, sleet pattered on Yong'an's roofs. In Qi's capital, ash whispered in the seams of a hall that thought it could stand forever. Between them, Feiyan walked, carrying one stolen letter and the first spiderweb strands of a network that did not care where maps said kingdoms ended.
The Road Under Heaven stretched, invisible and real, under the feet of people who had not yet learned they were walking on it.