They called it a council and arranged the chairs as if furniture could persuade men to be reasonable.
The Hall of Frosted Reeds had been swept and perfumed until it no longer smelled of decisions. Screens painted with cranes pretended the world was elegant. Lamps stood at measured intervals like polite witnesses. Outside, Ling An held its breath the way a city does when it knows a wall is about to crack.
The Lord Protector took no chair. He stood at the head of the room, a post hammered into bedrock. Ministers filled the flanks in silk colors that meant nothing and everything—Revenue in willow, Rites in smoke, War in ink. Wu Jin occupied a modest place near the fourth pillar, hands folded with the humility of a knife waiting to be lifted. General Sun kept his shadow on my side, not because he had chosen me, but because soldiers prefer the edge of the table where exit and attack both cost one step.
Shen Yue stood behind me, a blade at rest.
The herald tapped his staff once. The sound died in curtains.
"Wu Kang," Father began, voice iron filed smooth, "will be tried in due form before the Hall of Judgement. He will remain alive and untouched until the court pronounces."
A rustle of breath. The Minister of Rites bowed from the waist until duty creaked. "He is your son," he said gently, which meant: make us complicit in mercy. "The rites demand an appearance of balance."
"Balance," the Minister of War echoed with a mouth used to barking prices at armorers. "Balance asks whether we can garrison Huailing with fewer throats than you cut."
A murmur. Eyes slid toward me and slid away. Silk whispers, lacquered cowardice.
I did not sit. I let their courage braid and unbraid until it strangled itself.
The Minister of Revenue—narrow face, careful nails—cleared his throat. "The markets… complain," he ventured. "Grain moved cheap this morning. Merchants… hedge when the air smells of smoke."
"Merchants hedge when the air smells of harvest," I said. "They hedge when an old man coughs in the wrong courtyard. The city's hunger does not end because a man in willow silk finds his arithmetic offended."
He flinched as if I had named him in his cradle.
The Lord Protector lifted a hand, not to shield me, not to shield them—only to remind the room that hands exist for more than counting. "We have houses to keep," he said. "The South writes polite letters and sends rude riders. Zhou watches from the passes; their scribes sharpen phrases while their scouts sharpen knives. We do not feed them spectacle."
A minister in smoke-colored silk—Rites again, like mold—lowered his eyes. "Then, Your Excellency, might we… limit the parade? The stocks before dawn were… perhaps… sufficient."
"Sufficient for whom?" I asked. "For the man whose ink dries slower than blood? For the envoy whose face records our shame better than his scroll?"
No one answered.
Wu Jin's voice came soft, an oil poured so slowly it made no sound. "A trial gives us time," he said to Father without looking at me. "Time to find the Emperor. Time to starve moderate traitors of a banner. Time to remind the South that Liang still prefers laws to bonfires."
"And if the laws burn faster?" I asked. "If the trial becomes a stage where every coward in Ling An learns how to make his fear look like virtue?"
Wu Jin's eyes held mine for a breath. He was not offended. He was interested. "Then we will light fewer lamps in the hall," he said, smiling with his eyelids. "And invite fewer witnesses."
Laughter almost rose, then thought better of itself.
General Sun's jaw worked. He did not wear silk; he wore campaign leather and dust, the uniform of men who count in distances and bodies. "The barracks whisper," he said to Father. "Some admire the Prince. Some fear him. Most do both. The whisper is louder since Huailing."
"Let it be loud," I said. "Better to hear the roof creak than to pretend it does not."
Shen Yue's breath was a thread behind me. I did not pull it.