Shuye's fingers twitched for a brush that wasn't there.
Sun Wei took a breath. "Then," he said slowly, tasting the choice, "we accept your terms. For now. The Road fits where there is room. If you leave us a hall to grow in, we will grow. If you crush even that, we will… change shape."
He did not say "fight." The word did not need to be spoken aloud to exist.
Du nodded once. "Keep your quarrels inside," he said. "Keep them noisy enough to cover mine. And if anyone asks, you are my informants, nothing more. Men who owe me favors."
"Do we?" Lin Chang demanded.
"You will," Du said dryly. "I drink expensive wine."
They laughed, strained but real. The worst of the tension eased.
As Du turned away, he paused. "Sun Wei," he said. "If the day comes when I receive an order with your name on it—"
"You can say you misplaced it," Sun Wei said.
"I can say," Du replied, "that the river washed the ink away."
Their eyes met once more. Something passed between them: not trust, not yet. An agreement to hesitate.
When the soldiers dispersed to their chosen corners, Shuye let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
"That went well," he said faintly. "We're not dead."
Lin Chang swatted his shoulder. "Don't say it out loud," she hissed. "You'll wake the gods."
Sun Wei went back inside, hand brushing the tablet as he passed. The carved characters were shallow but deep enough to catch his fingertip.
"Inside the door," he said.
Shuye nodded. "Inside the door."
That night, under the warehouse eaves, with fog pressing close and Du's men drinking cheap wine at the inn, Sun Wei wrote on a scrap of cloth.
Haojin: first visit from Zhang's hand. He knows we exist. His captain would rather not break what keeps knives sheathed. We fold law-house small to fit in his shadow. For now. Inside the door, it grows.
He tied the message to a pigeon's leg and sent it north.
In Yong'an, Ziyan read it in the council hall and smiled, sharp and tired.
"Stones in the river," she said. "And men learning how not to drown between them."
Ren reached for new clay. "Title?" he asked.
"On Doors and Lines," she said. "And on which ones we step over when the time comes."
Far away, in Ash Hall, Zhang listened to Captain Du's measured report—"minor disturbance, contained, no need for larger force"—and marked Haojin on his map with a tiny, dismissive dot.
The Road Under Heaven marked it too, on a different map, with a sparrow.
Between the two dots lay the space where the next choice would be made.