A sound like a held breath leaving a hundred chests at once passed through the square.
Ji Lu's face had gone very still.
"And Xia?" he asked.
"Xia's Emperor can call us what he likes," Ziyan said. "General Ren has already found a way to live with what we are without demanding that we kneel. If his master forgets that, he will find that borders are harder to erase than ink."
Ren the scribe glanced at Han; both men knew exactly how contingent that was. Still, the words landed where they needed to: in the ears of people who had forgotten they could be something other than subjects.
Ji Lu rolled the scroll back up, slowly.
"You understand," he said, "that I must report this refusal. That when I write it, I will have to use words like 'defiance' and 'insubordination' and 'self-claimed sovereignty'. That men who have never seen these tablets will read those words and plan campaigns."
"I expect nothing less," she said.
"You could have lied," he said. "Signed something in private. Sent a letter saying one thing and done another. That is how these games are played."
"I am done playing their kind of games," Ziyan replied.
They regarded each other for a long moment. Behind Ji Lu's measured gaze, she saw a man whose ink-bent back was tired, whose loyalties had been stretched until they creaked.
"If you stay in Yong'an tonight," she said, "you will sleep under our law. No one will touch your escort. No one will seize your food. You will be cursed in at least three dialects and offered tea by people who blame you for their dead but still know their manners. If you leave now, you may reach the next post before dark and tell yourself you were never tempted."
His mouth twisted. "And if I stay longer?" he asked. "If I watch?"
"Then you may have to decide," she said, "whether the word 'kingdom' belongs only in halls like the ones you serve, or if it can live in places like this."
He bowed—this time lower. "You are dangerous, Lady Road," he said. "Not because you threaten thrones, but because you invite men like me to imagine work that isn't wasted."
"You're free to refuse," she said. "It seems everyone is making that choice lately."
He laughed once, unexpectedly. It sounded almost young.
"I will stay tonight," he said. "I will eat your bread and let your midwife glare at me. Tomorrow I will ride and write what I must. We will see, later, whether I chose badly."
The officer with the faded dragon watched him, mouth open.
"Counsellor—"
"Hush," Ji Lu said. "For once, I'd like to sleep in a town where the law has more words than the latest edict."
The crowd broke, people returning to their tasks with the restless energy of those who had just stepped over an invisible line.
Ziyan exhaled.
Li Qiang touched her elbow, steady. "You meant every word," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," she said. "And this time, if they betray us, it will be over something we chose, not something we begged for."
Wei sidled up, grinning crookedly. "I liked the part where you told him his heart lives here now," he said. "Very poetic. Very rude."
Ren was already writing, capturing the exchange. "Title?" he asked absently.
"'On Forgiveness Not Requested,'" the midwife suggested.
"'On Who Gets To Name Rebels,'" Han countered.
Zhao lifted a brow. "Why not both," he said. "We have plenty of stone."
Ziyan looked up at the sky. It was still grey, still cold.
"Call it whatever you like," she said. "Just leave room at the bottom."
"For what?" Ren asked.
"For when their armies come," she said. "We'll need somewhere to carve what we did then, too."
On a hill far away, Feiyan felt the faint echo of her friend's stubbornness like a tug on the blue silk at her wrist. She smiled grimly and walked faster toward whichever court she was meant to stir next.
In Bai'an, Li Shi read a brief, careful note from Ji Lu—Yong'an refused with courtesy. Law there is… different—and tucked it into a folder labelled Problems that cannot be solved with the usual tools.
And in the Ash Hall, Zhang listened to his own envoy's report and, for the first time, understood that Li Ziyan was no longer asking anyone for a place in their story.
He began to plan, in earnest, how to end hers.
The Road Under Heaven, unaware of the exact shape of the knives being sharpened, set about enlarging its square. They would need more room, Ziyan had decided, for the next gathering.
Somewhere, soon, they would stand in that space and decide whether to remain a city that refused banners—or to become something with a banner of its own.