The bells broke the night like a lung full of knives.
They did not toll as bells should—measured, obedient—but lurched, staggered, colliding with themselves until sound felt drunk. Lanterns guttered thin. Dogs forgot how to bark. In a darkened arcade a scribe drew a circle with ash from his sleeve and flinched as if the line had burned him.
Shen Yue found my wrist. Her thumb pressed the point beneath the bone; the courtyard steadied a fraction. Liao Yun stood at the arch, ash dusting his hair, jaw set hard enough to chip a cup.
"Reports," he said. "Spirals chalked at the fish market. One burned into a shrine step by the river. The watch refuses to cross a painted line on Magistrate Lane. The bells at the Gate of Autumn swing by themselves."
"The monk?" I asked.
"No one saw him," Liao said. "But the acolytes from Still Waters are in the streets. Heads bowed. Mouths wrapped. They move like men counting, and the counting is not numbers."
A eunuch ran past us. His slippers left black crescents on the stones. He was mouthing a message so fast the words tripped. Fear travels like that—faster than orders.
We moved with it.
The outer courts were full of men who had forgotten why their feet knew these stones. Ministers drifted like lacquered leaves. The bell-strokes clung to sleeves and breath. A young clerk stood with both hands pressed to his ears, eyes wide and empty as lamp glass.
"Who called the bells?" Shen Yue asked him.
"Heaven," he whispered, then flinched at his own blasphemy. "Forgive me. Forgive me."
Wu Ling appeared at the jade stair as if she had been carved there at dusk and only now remembered to move. Crimson veil. Folded hands. Her shadow refused to step down. The lanterns knew better than to throw it.
"Attend," she said.
Men did.
Her voice was not raised. It sliced the mangled rhythm like silk unthreading across a blade. Ministers drew into a half-moon. Even the soldiers in my colors paused, snared by the invisible net of her composure.
"These bells," she said gently, "are Heaven's teeth. They bite when the mouth tires of warning. Liang has been warned."
Eyes turned to me as if she had pointed. The spiral under my ribs turned too, listening.
"Since the prince returned from the South," Wu Ling went on, "our streets wear circles; our shrines smolder; ink crawls where it is told to sleep. He carries in his sleeve the South's favor—a cousin freed by a king who smiles like a serpent. What gift is that?"
Liao's hand brushed his hilt and left it. Shen Yue's shoulder touched mine; the ground still existed.
I looked past my sister to the long shadow of the dragon dais. I waited for the herald, for the stately theater that teaches men they are not animals. It did not arrive.
An inner attendant in plain blue stepped out of the smoke, breath tight, haste insolent enough to earn a beating yesterday. He bowed—not to the dais, not to me or my father under a smoke-dimmed lantern—but toward the crimson veil.
"By His Majesty's word," he said, voice fraying, "the council assembles at once in the Hall of Records. All ministers, princes, commanders."
His eyes flicked up at Wu Ling and did not look away quickly enough. She saw that he had seen her. A small wire pulled under the skin of her throat.
He fled before her consent could be mistaken for command.
For a heartbeat the bells found a steady measure. Then, like a drunk remembering shame, they lost it again.
My father's gaze found mine across the court. He did not speak. He did not need to. Move.
We crossed galleries while servants fled sideways like fish escaping a net. The Hall of Records was narrow and honest: ledgers, sealed baskets of census slips, the dust of taxes and grain. The Emperor waited there already. No incense. No painted screens. A plain dark coat. A pin of horn in his hair. The dragon mark on his brow was a smudge thrown small by lamplight.
He did not sit.
For years, he had been a robe held upright by custom, a soft mouth for harder men's words. I had thought him air in a crown. Tonight, the air had weight.
"The council meets here," he said, and did not raise his voice. "Not in the Hall of Judgement. There is too much theater there."
It was the tone that stilled the room more than the sentence. Calm. Certain. Stones placed where rivers must break around them.
Wu Kang stepped forward, pride already in his throat. "Your Majesty—"
"The city," the Emperor continued, as though the sound behind him were wind, "needs water more than spears, bread more than banners. Rice will be weighed fairly. Wells watched. Streets kept calm."
His gaze moved—unhurried, inevitable—and settled on Wu Kang. "You will remain in the palace. That is my will."
It was a tether thrown silk-soft and iron-true. Wu Kang's face hardened, pride swallowing itself jagged. He glanced toward Wu Ling for a cue. The veil did not stir.
The Emperor's eyes found me next. For a breath I felt like a knife laid among ledgers.
"Prince," he said. "Take the men you can count on one hand. Liao Yun. Shen Yue. No banners. No trumpets. Westward wards first. Find me the hand that tolled out of measure and the hand that drew circles where stone should sleep. Bring me one of them breathing."
I bowed. "Yes."
He did not look to my father. He did not glance at a minister to borrow authority with his eyes. He placed the pieces himself, as if he had waited years to move anything at all.