Shen Yue moved closer as War and Revenue began to tally how many torches a city could carry without setting its sleeves on fire. Her voice found the hollow between sounds. "You have to bend," she said quietly. "Not now. Later. Soon. Or every room you enter will split along its worst seam."
"Rooms do what they are built to do," I said.
"People don't," she said. "They break first."
I did not answer. I watched Wu Jin watching me. His face made the shape of a friend. His eyes did math.
The meeting broke like rotten wood. Ministers bled into corridors, shoulders tight, mouths rehearsing what they would say to wives whose brothers' names were on my list. The Lord Protector remained, arms folded, looking at the empty dais the way a man looks at a grave he might yet refuse to dig. General Sun left to arrange searches with the quiet of a man who already knew which men would not return.
Wu Jin lingered until we were almost alone, then approached with the humility of a cat at a shrine. "If you will allow counsel," he said.
"I allow it," I said.
"Purge with a ladle, not a bucket," he murmured. "Let the court believe you can forget. It frightens men when cruelty remembers too well."
"And you?" I asked. "Do you frighten?"
"I amortize," he said, almost cheerful. "Fear paid in installments buys longer seasons."
He bowed and left before my silence could answer.
When the last silk had withdrawn, Father looked at me. The lamps near him leaned away, which is the closest lamps come to opinion.
"You will submit the names," he said.
"I will submit the first page," I said. "The rest depends on whether the Emperor is found alive."
"We are not executioners without a throne," he said.
"We are not sons without a father," I answered.
His mouth thinned. He did not say I was wrong.
Shen Yue and I walked out under a sky that had the color of cooled blades. In the courtyard the wind made the prayer flags at the lesser shrines twitch in ways that looked like handwriting. The lamps along the colonnade leaned toward my shoulder as if asking for orders.
She stopped me by the low pool where carp wrote forgotten characters with their backs. "Say what you intend," she said. "Not for them. For me."
"The lists stand," I said. "Tonight Sun will find doors the priests forgot to nail shut. Tomorrow I will remove the hands that keep them open."
"Whose hands?"
"Men who feed Wu Kang with bowls painted as virtues," I said. "Men who fear our house but still drink from its well. Men who prefer a missing Emperor because his silence is their language."
Her chin lifted. "How many?"
"As many as it takes for the roof to learn my name," I said.
She took a half step back, not far, not dramatic—just enough to show her balance had moved to a place from which drawing a blade would be quick. She did not know she had done it. Her eyes did.
"Do not make me your enemy," she said.
"I am building a roof," I answered. "Enemies nail themselves to beams."
A runner found us then, young enough that the hair at his lip still asked permission to be hair. He bowed breathless. "From the lower cisterns," he said to me. "General Sun bids report: an old door behind the third sluice. Sealed. Spirals carved above the lintel. Two men missing who crossed first." He swallowed. "And sir—the water… leaned."
The word should have been ridiculous. It was not.
"Post a double line," I said. "Torches in thirds. Cord to each man's wrist and the other end tied to a beam. No prayers."
The runner fled, grateful for orders that sounded like a map.
I looked back at the Hall of Frosted Reeds. Its cranes did not move. The lamps along its eaves tilted, polite and attentive.
"Tomorrow," I said to Shen Yue, "we begin with the first names."
"Whose?" she asked again, voice very low.
I gave her three—the smallest, the safest, the ones whose absence would make noise but not war. She heard the truth behind them: there would be more.
She nodded once, a soldier counting a cost she could not yet speak against. "I will see the warrants drawn," she said. The words hurt her. She did not let them show.
As she turned away, the silence under my ribs rose until it hummed behind my teeth. It felt like standing in a temple where the god you do not believe in decides to attend.
I raised my hand. The lamps along the colonnade bowed toward the gesture, a fraction of a flame's width.
"Tonight," I told the dark. "We search."
"Tomorrow," I told the city. "We remember."
And to the part of me that had begun to count in winters, I said nothing at all—because it already knew.