The ministers rediscovered their courage in procedure. Petitions were waved. Precedents invoked like ghosts. Half the Hall demanded execution before evening; the other half demanded the pleasure of days. Both halves acquired the same smell: men hiding fear under law.
I did not sit. I let them burn their tongues down to ash and then I spoke.
"Huailing is ash," I said. "The South counts. The Empire of Zhou counts twice. They want to see if the North kneels. Today it does not."
"Not justice," someone spat.
"Not mercy," another said, meaning: not ours.
"Rule," I answered, and felt the word choose the room.
Wu Jin's voice, soft as a veil: "Rule requires a throne."
The Emperor's empty seat stared back as if tired of being mentioned.
"We will find him," the Lord Protector said again, but softer, more to the wood than to the men.
"We will," I said, and turned to Wu Kang. "Tell me where he is and I will let you confess in the square before they cut your head. You can choose your words. You can choose to die looking at the sky."
He tilted his head, the rope creaking. "A gift," he said, "from a man who gifts only knives."
"Where," I said.
He smiled with all his teeth. "In a place that does not count as a room."
Ministers muttered; Shen Yue's eyes narrowed a fraction. General Sun's gaze slid to the floor where dust made its own maps. Wu Jin's mouth did the thing it does when numbers are being drafted behind his eyes.
The Lord Protector descended another step. "Son," he said to me alone, the iron not lessened, only moved. "We will not tear the hall apart before noon to shake answers out of a throat. We will not parade our panic. You will wait until evening. You will try again in a room with doors."
He meant: hold your winter.
I bowed the exact measure that obeys without agreeing. "Evening," I said.
The Hall dismissed itself in offended order. Ministers filed out, shoulders stiff, mouths already composing their after-dinner bravery. Wu Jin passed near enough to be smelled; he gave me a court-smile that could be sold by the pound. "If I were a missing Emperor," he murmured, "I would be where men are sure I could not be moved."
"Grain cellars," General Sun said behind my shoulder, as if answering a question I had not asked. "Or beneath water. The safest places are where rot travels slowly."
"Search both," I said.
"Quietly?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Loud enough for the South and Zhou to hear the floorboards screaming."
He inclined his head, weighed with a soldier's dislike of theater, and went.
Only Shen Yue and I remained in the great room with my father and the bound man who used to be my brother. The emptiness above the dragon dais felt taller than it had in years.
The Lord Protector's mouth thinned. "You thin the ice," he said.
"I walk where there is ice," I answered.
He looked at Shen Yue. "Keep him from breaking more than he means to."
She did not promise. She bowed like a sword acknowledging a whetstone.
We left the Hall by a side door. The courtyard light hurt after the lacquered dark. The city was holding its breath so hard the pigeons forgot to move.
Shen Yue waited until the pillars were a memory before speaking. "He will not tell you because you are you," she said. "He will tell you because you are not you anymore."
I stopped. "Explain."
"He wants the city to see you take a king out of a hole like a butcher drags a pig," she said, eyes cold as river stones. "He wants them to fear you past the point where rule is possible. He wants you to bring the roof down and call it proof."
The silence under my ribs listened with an attentiveness that did not flatter me.
"Then we ask without the city watching," I said.
"Not with the rope," she said. "Not with the knives. With what he still respects."
"And what is that?"
She looked at me as if measuring whether the old answer could still be spoken to the new person. "Brotherhood," she said at last. "Not the kind with toys. The kind with graves."
We went to the holding court where they had bound him to wait for evening. The room smelled of old rain and disuse. Lamps leaned a fraction; the dust on the floor had drawn spirals as if bored.
I dismissed the guards with a flick. Shen Yue stood in the corner with the exact posture that keeps blades from being necessary and makes them inevitable.
"Brother," I said.
His grin returned, weary now, honest in its malice. "Little winter."
"Where is the Emperor?"
"In a place that does not count as a room," he repeated. "A place where counting fails."
"Beneath water," I said.
"Above it," he said, pleased.
"In the bell tower," I said.
"In a bell," he said, and laughed until the rope scolded him.
The door slid; a eunuch bowed so low his spine must have thought it was a river. "Prince," he whispered. "A note—sealed with the Inner Seal's imprint—delivered to the southern postern and addressed to you."
He held it out on both palms as if it contained a fever. The wax bore the old mark of the Inner Seal—a sign no one had any right to carry anymore.
I broke it. The script inside was neat as cruelty.
COUNTING DOES NOT CHANGE THE NUMBER.
THE DRAGON SLEEPS WHERE PRAYER DOES NOT REACH.
IF YOU WOULD WAKE HIM, TAKE NO ROPE.
— THE MAN WHO COUNTS
The monk. The one who had taught the city to fear circles more than fires.
My brother watched my face and smiled in a way that did not belong to him.
"You wanted a door," he said softly. "He just opened one."
I folded the note. The silence under my ribs leaned—eager, almost. Lamps trembled.
"Where?" Shen Yue asked.
I looked at the characters again and tasted ash and old stone.
"Where prayer does not reach," I said. "Under the Hall, beneath the inner altar. The sealed cistern."
"And no rope," she said.
"Only winter," I said.
We moved. Behind us, Wu Kang laughed until it sounded like coughing, until it sounded like something pulled up from a well.
Evening had not come. The reckoning did not wait.