The older boy from Reed Mouth. The one they had sent because his ears were sharp and his hands quick.
"I hid this in the eel-pit," he said at once, before anyone asked. "And the ledger's under the floorboard under the stove. And there were two of them who looked like they didn't like what the sergeant was saying."
He swallowed. "And one of them took his own copy of the decree back off the beam before they left. Folded it up. Like he didn't want it seen there any longer."
That pricked Ziyan's attention.
"Which one?" she asked.
The boy pointed, not to a face but to the lane. "The one with the scar on his neck," he said. "He looked at the goat like he wanted to apologise to it."
A ripple of bleak laughter moved through the square.
Li Qiang crouched beside the boy. "Did you hear names?"
The boy nodded fiercely. "The sergeant called him Mian once. And said if 'Captain Qiu' found out he'd gone soft around sparrows he'd have his rations cut." He looked up at Ziyan. "I remembered."
"You did well," Ziyan said.
His shoulders straightened under the words like a rope pulled taut.
She turned back to Luo.
"How many can fight?" she asked.
Luo blinked. "Fight?"
"Not win a battle," she said. "Hold a square. Delay. Witness."
He hesitated, then answered honestly. "Maybe fifteen men. More women with staves and hot water than men with courage, if I'm blunt. Twenty if you count boys who think dying would be a fine story."
"Don't count those," Wei said. "Boys are stupid weight."
The tavern woman smacked the back of his head on principle. He almost looked grateful.
Ziyan looked at the square. The goat. The decree. The sparrow.
She had ridden here to stand witness under the tile and make the Road Commonwealth real in a way even Zhang's men could not ignore. But the village had already been forced to stand without her. What they needed now was not a speech. It was a shape their fear could lean against.
"Luo," she said, "call the village. All of them. In the square. Now."
He stared at her, then at the road. "If the patrol comes back while—"
"Then let them find us in a ring, not hiding in corners."
He hesitated only one beat, then shouted for the bell.
It rang badly, because Green Dike's bells had not been made for history, only floods and stray cattle. That was fitting.
People came.
Slowly at first. Then all at once. From lofts, cellars, the reed path, behind the kiln, out of ditches and under carts. Faces pinched, angry, suspicious, tired. The village's breathing uncoiled into the open.
Ziyan stood under the sparrow with Zhang's decree at her shoulder and the goat still hanging like a joke from a cruel child.
"I'm not here," she said without preamble, "to promise you that no one will ever ride in under a dragon again. That would be a lie, and we are already too full of useful lies from other men."
A few snorts. Good. They were listening.
"I am here," she said, "because yesterday someone came and tried to teach you that your sparrow is worth less than a threat nailed under it. That your law exists only until a louder man arrives."
Her hand lifted and touched the decree, not reverently. Simply to show she knew what it was.
"He is wrong," she said. "But only if you decide he is wrong together."
Silence spread, taut as hide.
"The Road City—" she stopped, corrected herself. "The Road Commonwealth," she said, and heard the slight intake at the new word, "is not Yong'an on a horse. It is not me. It is not a wall you can see from here. It is this: that when one hall is threatened, another sends warning. That when one village's beam is nailed with a decree, a city rides to stand under it and say: these people are counted."
She nodded to the Road House shed.
"You moved the records. Good. That means you understand the first law of survival: save the names and tools before the planks. Now you learn the second."
She turned and, before anyone could stop her, took the board from around the goat's neck.
ROAD TAX PAID.
The paint was still tacky.
She held it up for all to see.
"This," she said, "is what he thinks of you. Not traitor. Not rebel. Not even citizen. He thinks of you as payment. A thing to hang where others can measure their fear."