They left under a sky the color of dirty wool.
Shuye rode a stubborn little mare whose ears knew more curses than the horse-masters did. Chen Rui had three mules laden with jars, sacks, and a box of tablets wrapped in straw. Sun Wei walked, by preference; after thirty days, his legs did not trust saddles. Two of Chen Rui's westerners went along, bows slung easy.
Ziyan saw them to the south gate.
"Remember," she said to Sun Wei, "you are not missionaries."
He blinked. "What are we, then?"
"Shopkeepers with opinions," Shuye said. "We sell fairness by the bowl, not by the sword."
"If Zhang's men appear," Han added, "you sell whatever keeps you breathing."
Ren the scribe handed Sun Wei a folded scrap of silk. "An address in Haojin," he said. "There's a woman there who used to sell rice to our caravans. We sent her a jar and a tablet already. She sent back three curses and a promise to listen."
Sun Wei tucked it into his sleeve.
Ziyan touched his arm, briefly. "The law is not stone," she said. "Not yet. Don't break your back trying to drag Yong'an's walls to Haojin. Listen. Use what fits. Throw away what doesn't. Send word."
He nodded. "And if I die?"
"Do it inconveniently," she said.
He blinked, surprised into a rough laugh. "You and your shadow woman," he muttered. "You have the same humor."
"Yes," Ziyan said quietly. "I know."
She watched them until the bend in the road hid them. Then she turned back toward the square, where Ren already had his brush out, adding a new line under the fresh tablet:
First Road sent out.
Haojin smelled of fish, stale oil, and bad decisions.
It crouched where the river narrowed, a huddle of houses and warehouses clinging to both banks. A ferry-raft moved back and forth like a tired thought. Men in patched uniforms loitered at the landings, collecting "taxes" with hands that did not keep good count.
Shuye took one look and sighed in satisfaction. "Perfect," he said. "Everyone hates everyone and no one trusts anyone. We'll feel right at home."
Chen Rui snorted. "You're too happy when things are bad."
"Work for men like us," he replied.
They rented a corner of an old warehouse from a woman whose eyes weighed them better than her rusty scales. Her name was Lin Chang. She read the sparrow Shuye traced on the wall with a frown.
"You're those bowl-people from Yong'an," she said. "The ones who carve rules where anyone can see them."
"Guilty," Chen Rui said.
"Idiots," Lin Chang added. There was no heat in it. "Rules get you killed in places like this."
"Unwritten rules get us killed already," Sun Wei said. "We thought we'd try the other kind."
She snorted but didn't throw them out. "You sell grain?" she asked.
"We buy and sell," Shuye said. "And weigh. And hear complaints when someone thinks he's been cheated. We charge one coin for listening and two for lying."
"That will bankrupt you," she said.
"Not if we're good at it," he said.
They hung no banner. They set no guard. They opened their doors and stacked jars where passersby could see the quality of the glaze. On a pillar just inside, Shuye nailed the first tablet.
No soldier shall seize food or shelter within this hall without witness and record. Any who do shall repay double, in kind or in labor.
The carving was simple. The sparrow above it cruder. It still made certain shoulders stiffen.
The first to test them was not a soldier but a fishmonger who claimed the carter had short-measured the load. The carter swore by all the river gods that his cart's bed was true.
"Bring the cart," Chen Rui said. "And the fish."
Lin Chang rolled her eyes. "You're going to stink up my floor with your experiments," she complained.
They weighed the fish. They measured the cart. They made the fishmonger admit that he counted the eyes as well as the bodies when it suited him.
After two hours of argument, Shuye scratched a new line under the tablet with a charcoal stub:
Fish shall be counted by body, not by smell.
People laughed. The fishmonger paid his fine—half in coin, half in carrying sacks for Sun Wei—louder than he needed to but not quite angrily.
By nightfall, three more disputes had wandered in: about dock space, about a broken axle, about a boy caught cutting a mooring rope. Shuye listened. Chen Rui glared. Sun Wei, to his own surprise, found himself explaining the "no beating without witness" rule to a man used to taking a stick to apprentices.
"You're soft," the man said.
Sun Wei remembered thirty sacks. "My back says otherwise," he replied.
When the first pair of river-guards swaggered in, hands on hilts, they expected to find easy marks. They found Lin Chang at the door, arms folded.
"This hall weighs fair," she said. "You want to eat, you sign."
They scoffed—until they realized half the room was watching to see if the tablet meant anything.
Sun Wei stepped forward.
"You take grain without mark," he said, tapping the tablet, "you'll be carrying sacks for a month. Ask me how I know."
They stared at him, taking in the scars, the soldier's stance, the absence of a rank badge.
"Who are you supposed to be?" one sneered.
"Road work," he said. "If you like the sound of that better than whatever your sergeant calls you, test us."
They did not.
Not that night.
Three days later, a pigeon launched from Haojin's warehouse roof, a scrap of silk tied to its leg with unlovely care.
Ren the scribe untied it in Yong'an and spread it on the council table.
Haojin: smells worse than Wei. People argue as often as they breathe. Tablets not yet smashed. First soldier backed down from seizing food when half a room looked at the words instead of his sword. Lin Chang swears more than our midwife. This is progress.
Underneath, in Sun Wei's rough hand:
They call me captain again. I let them. I am deciding what it means.
Ziyan read it twice.
"We've put a stone in the river," Shuye said from his usual corner, ash on his sleeves. "Now we see if the current moves around it or if it starts to shift."
Ren's fingers tapped the scrap. "We should assume at least three sets of eyes are reading copies of this," he said. "Ours, Li Shi's, and someone who owes Zhang too many favors."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Let them. If they want to fear us, they may as well have accurate information."
Han grunted. "You court death with jokes."
"We court death by existing," she answered. "We may as well make it work for us."
She looked at the map, at the tiny mark Ren had made for Haojin, a sparrow beside the river.
"Feiyan walks in shadows," she said. "Sun Wei walks in mud. Between them, we are building something no one has a word for yet."
Wei yawned elaborately. "We have a word," he said. "'Tired.'"
"Add that to the tablets," the midwife called from the doorway. "Law: everyone must sleep at least one watch or they start dropping bowls."
Ren began to scratch another title on fresh clay.
"Don't you dare," Ziyan warned.
He grinned but did not stop.
Outside the walls, somewhere between Bai'an and Qi's capital, Feiyan paused on a hill and looked back once, though there was nothing to see.
"You're getting loud, Princess," she said to the empty air. "Good. Make them flinch."
In the Ash Hall, Zhang's newest courier knelt and reported that a 'sparrow law-house' had opened at Haojin, weighing fish and arguing with soldiers.
Zhang's smile this time had teeth.
"So," he murmured. "The Road learns to fork."
He dipped his brush.
Between one breath and the next, he began writing orders that would turn east, toward a city built on ash, and south, toward a city built on law, and a small, muddy town that had just nailed its first tablet to a pillar and dared to say "no."
The Road Under Heaven ran on.