They brought another letter from Huailing, this one wrapped in gold-thread silk, as if embroidery could teach a threat manners.
The herald's lips shook against the seal. He unrolled the strip and read, voice scraping like a blade over rice-stone: the same demands, sharpened to points. Crown Wu Kang Lord Protector by first bell.Cut off Wu An's head by second.Bind Wu Jin in irons until Heaven remembers which tongue was clean. Refuse, and the Golden Dragon Army would march on Ling An and "teach the city the difference between silk and scar."
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the hall shattered into voices.
"Parley," the rites minister yelped, neck glossy with sweat. "A three-day truce—rituals at the ford—incense and drums—"
"Man the river gates," a general snapped. "Shutter the southern sluices. If he carries siege ladders, drown them."
"Call him grieving," another minister pleaded. "Not traitor. Let the South hear a family quarrel, not a collapse. Offer him—"
"Offer him a bowl," someone snarled. "With his teeth in it."
The Lord Protector raised a hand. The noise died the way fires do when you show them a black river.
Illness had pared him thin, but command sat on his shoulders like a familiar hawk. "You will not tremble the roof," he said. His gaze went from Wu Jin to me and then, pointedly, to the unrolled letter. "The roof will either hold or it will learn to breathe. Until then, stand."
They stood. Their eyes did not.
Shen Yue hovered at my right—quiet, iron under silk. Liao Yun carried maps like fresh scars behind my left shoulder. Wu Jin stood at Father's shadow with that mild, efficient smile which always means he is already on the next page.
I let them spend their panic before I spent my breath.
"An ultimatum is not an invitation," I said. "It is a clock." I tapped the letter. "He sets the hours and offers us the courtesy of dying on schedule."
Faces flinched. Some looked at me with the fear they save for plague. I have stopped apologizing for the shape of my shadow.
The Lord Protector nodded once, as if the roof had decided to hold a little longer.
"Orders," he told the generals. "Not songs."
Liao Yun dipped his head. "We choke the Huailing road. Along the low fields we burn the ditches; where water denies flame, we salt the berms and feign disease with reed bundles and ash. The granary caravans split in thirds under different crests—none large enough to lure a raid, none small enough to surrender to hunger. Skiff-channels under the jade quay will be sealed by nightfall. We teach travel to fear itself."
"Do it," Father said.
Shen Yue spoke without stepping forward, as if the air itself carried her voice. "My cohort drills at dusk, then again at moonrise. No drums. No banners. We move where fear will pull the tapestries down. If he comes to the gate, he will find we learned to strike behind a closed hand."
"Do that also," Father said.
Wu Jin waited until pens scratched adequately, then bent his smile to the room. "Send a delegation," he murmured. "Old priests. Younger scribes. A 'conciliation of family obligations.' No promises, all courtesies. They bow at Huailing's outer gate while our knives count the inner locks."
The ministers sagged with grateful relief that felt exactly like breath after coughing. The generals' mouths tightened; they understood that kneeling at a door is a way to measure whether you can break it.
The Lord Protector's eyes returned to me. "Say the word 'traitor' if you mean us to kill," he said, without softness. "Otherwise keep our throat uncut."
"He is already killing," I answered. "Whether we pronounce the word does not teach the blade its work."
Wu Jin's smile didn't alter, but the weight behind it did. "Then perhaps," he said gently, "we teach ourselves the difference between cutting and breaking."
The council dissolved into tasks. You can hear a city put on its armor if you listen for the places it rubs the skin raw.
By afternoon, the courtyards rattled louder than prayer. Blacksmiths spat sparks until the air tasted of pennies and regret. Horses were counted twice, then lied about. Boys who had been men in their dreams the night before became men without noticing. The training ground sang with wood striking wood, then wood striking bone. Laundry lines filled with washed bandages; someone laughed, which told me our fear had found a jaw.
Omens arrived uninvited and sat where they could be seen.
A temple bell cracked without being struck; the priest swore his mouth was closed when the sound came out. A murder of crows chose the palace roof and refused to move when a hundred hands threw stones. At the west sluice, the water ran clear and then pink and then clear again, as if a throat had considered bleeding and thought better of it. The people avoided the puddles the way you avoid a mirror that remembers what you did.
Messengers returned from the boundary towns with nothing alarming—which is the most alarming news I know. The South tethered its boats and sold spice as if winter were polite. Their envoys bowed deeper than manners require and kept their eyes wider than gratitude allows. Waiting is a profession there; they were working.
I walked the city until it admitted I was one of the things it had to carry.
Shen Yue made stone from chaos in the eastern yard. Her voice did not rise; spears did. She corrected a stance with two fingers; a man learned that balance is the difference between dignity and a mouthful of teeth. When she saw me, she didn't salute; she held my gaze. We do not waste ceremony where breath will do.
"Your men?" I asked.
"Less afraid," she said. "More honest about it."
Liao Yun trailed me to the river gate, muttering about timbers, wedges, locking bars, the stubbornness of rope; he loves rope, not because it holds, but because it remembers to fail at the right moment when you've taught it well. He wanted oil here, sand there, prayers written on the underside of the lintel because even gods read if you put the words where their fingers rest.