The news came at dawn: riverboats from the west, carrying grain.
The messenger knelt in the mud, blood still wet on his cheek. "Five barges, my lord. Guarded, but slow."
I looked west. The mist still clung to the river like a shroud. Beyond it, salvation floated toward Huailing.
"Burn them," I said.
The order went down the line faster than a prayer. Men rode out under the cover of the riverbank, wrapped in reed mats, faces blackened with ash. By noon, smoke smeared the horizon. The first barge cracked and rolled like a dying fish, its crew screaming as fire spread from prow to stern. The second went down with arrows sticking from its mast like a shrine to futility. The third we took — sacks of millet, rice, dried beans — and carted them back to camp, leaving nothing but cinders for Huailing to dream about.
The silence under my ribs did not stir. It simply approved.
By afternoon, the city knew. From the north tower came no horn, no drum. Only the figure of Wu Kang, standing with his bandaged arm pressed against the parapet, his face gray as ash.
That night, under a sky red from burning grain, a rider came with a white flag. His horse foamed at the mouth, ribs showing through its hide. He brought a letter sealed with Wu Kang's own signet.
I read it by torchlight.
Prince Wu An,
Huailing will not hold another day. I ask for terms, not for my sake but for the sake of the city and its people. Spare them from the sword and the fire, and I will yield the gate myself.
— Wu Kang
The torch cracked as if it had overheard. I folded the letter once, twice, until it was small enough to sit in my palm.
Shen Yue stood across from me, his face empty of judgment. "If you accept, the killing ends tomorrow."
"If I accept," I said, "we leave a city that will rise again in a year, perhaps less."
"Is that worse than a city that will never rise at all?"
I did not answer. The silence inside me filled the pause. The air thickened until even the torchlight seemed reluctant to move.
The first shot from Huailing's cannon broke the moment. The ball struck our forward mantlet and sent three men into the dirt, screaming as the splinters found them. A second shot struck the earthworks, throwing soil and blood together.
"Return fire," I said.
The stone-throwers answered with a rhythm that became music. Each impact chewed the wall a little lower. The gate shuddered with every blow from the ram. Smoke spread over the southern front until it seemed the sun had been blacked out.
Somewhere in the yard behind me, men cried out under falling debris. Others cheered when the breach widened. The sounds meant nothing.
Shen Yue watched me. "What will you write back?"
I looked at Wu Kang's letter in my hand. The seal was cracked, the words already smudged with mud.
"Nothing," I said.
The silence under my ribs widened until it seemed to fill the whole plain. The sky felt nearer, as if stooping to watch.
By nightfall, the southern wall was half-collapsed. Our ladders reached the parapets like the ribs of some great dead animal. Men climbed in silence, killing as they went, moving with the efficiency of knives being sharpened.
Shen Yue's cohort pushed through the breach, cutting down defenders not at the throat but at the knee, leaving them screaming in the mud. I saw him hesitate once, just once, before finishing a man with a single clean stroke. His face was pale in the smoke, his humanity still flickering like a candle in a storm.
Inside the city, the last bell of Huailing tolled. It was not a call to arms. It was a funeral.
I stood at the edge of the breach as the men poured past me. The silence inside me was no longer content to stay silent. It pressed against my throat, my hands, my thoughts, until I felt as though I had been hollowed out and replaced with its shape.
"Go in," I said, though my mouth might not have been my own.
The battle raged, but to me it sounded far away, like waves breaking on a shore I no longer stood upon.
When I stepped forward into Huailing, the torches guttered as if trying to warn me.