Green Dike's Road House looked less like a room and more like an argument with weather.
They converted the old granary shed because it stood closest to the main lane and because Headman Luo's wife had already begun storing messages in one of its rafters "just until somebody decided what to do with them." By the time Ziyan's copy of the new tablet arrived, they had a beam for it ready.
"Not too high," Luo warned, watching his eldest nail the clay plaque to the post. "If the old can't reach to spit on it when they're angry, it won't be real."
Aunt Cao's nephew, still travelling with a packet of spare tiles and too many opinions, laughed.
"You think people spit in Haojin?" he asked.
"People spit everywhere," Luo said. "That's how you know it matters."
The first official use of Green Dike's Road House was less noble than Haojin's fever-child and more educational.
Three youths from the neighboring village of Mill Bend arrived at dusk with a goat and a complaint.
"Your cousin stole this from us," one declared, shoving the animal forward. "Or he says he bought it. There's no witness. He keeps pointing at the sparrow and saying he wants 'Road judgment' because our headman beats first and asks later."
Luo stared at the goat, which stared back with the solemn disappointment of all goats everywhere.
"You walked two hours with a stolen goat," he said.
"It walks itself," the boy muttered.
The Road House tablet glimmered in the lantern light above them. The rule was simple enough. No judgment without hearing both sides.
So they sent for the cousin. Sent for the would-be seller. Sent for the old woman everyone agreed remembered all market exchanges because she forgot nothing that wasn't a prayer.
By the time everyone arrived, half the village had drifted into the shed, ostensibly because of the weather and not because goats were more entertaining than most songs.
It turned out the cousin had indeed bought the goat—using grain he did not technically own yet, from a sack meant to pay his sister's dowry share. The seller had taken the grain, then regretted it and told his nephews the goat had been stolen so they would retrieve it before his wife learned how cheaply he bartered.
When the truth emerged, the whole room laughed except the seller's wife, who boxed his ears so hard the goat sneezed.
Luo scratched the judgment into the tally book.
"No theft. Bad barter. Worse lying. Goat stays with buyer. Grain to be replaced by cousin before the thaw. Seller to spend three market-days under witness so everyone remembers what his word is worth."
The boys from Mill Bend stood there looking cheated of a righteous fight.
One of them glanced up at the tablet. "That's it?" he asked. "No beating?"
"Not unless his wife asks politely," Luo said.
Even the old woman cackled.
By the end of the week, two other villages had heard of "the goat case" and brought their own grievances, not because they loved the law yet, but because they liked the idea of not being struck before they'd finished speaking.
That was how roads really spread, Ziyan would later tell Ren. Not on beautiful ideals, but on goats and blankets and coughs.
—
In Yong'an, the square had become too small again.
That was one sign the Road City was real.
The delegates who had come the first time now returned with lists. Tallies written in different hands, on different materials. Reed Mouth sent theirs on bark when paper ran out. Haojin sent an actual ledger page with dried fish scales stuck in the ink. Green Dike's was clean and neat, because Luo's daughter had good penmanship and no patience for men who dripped wax on records.
Ren laid them out on the floor around the central map.
"Grain Ford has taken down its sparrow but still sends word in secret," he said. "Pomegranate Bend asks if a Road House can be only a loft and a cupboard because they've no whole room to spare. Reed Mouth offers two boys with sharp ears and no useful plough skills."
"Take them," Feiyan said at once. "Those are the best sort for listening under windows."
Han frowned at the map, at the lines thickening. "This is beginning to look like supply," he said. "Like responsibility you can't shrug off with a pretty speech."
Ziyan knelt among the tallies, sleeves rolled, hair loose from the wind. The circle of papers around her looked less like a council and more like a camp about to march.
"That's because it is," she said. "Just not the kind you're used to."
She held up Pomegranate Bend's note. "They can't spare a room. Fine. A loft and a cupboard become Road House enough if there's a pallet, a box for messages, and three copies of the first tablets. Write back and tell them so."
Ren scratched.
"Haojin wants to know if the Emperor's edict should hang inside the Road House or outside it," he said.
Lin Chang, who had come up for the tally circle and had no intention of letting anyone else answer for her town, crossed her arms.
"Outside," she said. "If they enter, they've already accepted our law enough to shut the door. Let the Emperor stand with the weather and Zhang's decree."
Feiyan grinned. "You are wasted on fish."
"Fish don't argue as badly," Lin Chang said.
Reed Mouth's line about two boys with sharp ears made Ziyan pause. "How old?"
"Fourteen and twelve," Ren said after checking the margin note.
"Too young," Han said instantly.
"Old enough to be conscripted by Zhang in a year," Aunt Cao's nephew countered. "Better they learn to listen before someone teaches them to march."
Silence.