The Hall of Frosted Reeds had not been this full since the offering months. The same banners hung from the rafters, but they drooped as if ashamed of what they'd witnessed since. Ministers lined the benches, hands folded to hide their tremor.
Wu Jin sat halfway down the dais, smiling a scholar's smile that never touched his eyes.
The Lord Protector rose first. His armor was black lacquer, untarnished; the silence that followed was reverence mixed with exhaustion.
"The South," he said, "has sent a message."
The attendants brought forth a lacquered chest bound in reed rope. When they opened it, a hush spread like ink in water: inside lay folded silk, pale as old paper, and a bundle of white salt reeds. Their scent was wrong—too sweet.
"They call it peace," said Wu Jin.
He lifted one reed, let it bend. "Soft things bend until they cut."
I stood apart from them all, hands behind my back. "Negotiation is what kings call surrender when they still have breath to spend," I said.
Some of the ministers flinched; others looked to the Lord Protector, who did not rebuke me.
Wu Jin's smile stayed. "And yet breath is still a kind of currency, my prince. Winter has its uses for diplomacy."
"Winter kills what diplomacy leaves unfinished," I said.
The Lord Protector's gaze flicked between us—father, son, shadow. "Enough," he said. "We cannot face Zhou to the north and the South both sharpening their knives. The passes are not yet ready."
"Then make them ready," I said. "Or the South will bring our Emperor on their banners."
That made the court whisper. Wu Jin leaned forward. "If the Emperor truly walks beneath their banners, perhaps he no longer walks for you."
I met his eyes. "Then he walks for no one."
They arrived at dusk—three monks in gray, a white ox pulling a cart draped in prayer silk. The ox's hooves left dark tracks that smoked faintly where they touched stone.
The lead monk's eyes were all reflection: when he looked at me, I saw only the torches burning behind him.
They carried a sealed roll. When I broke it open, grains of salt spilled onto my palm, warm as breath. The message within read:
"The Emperor remembers the roof. He asks whether it still stands."
That night, the ox was found dead. Its blood was not red. It ran black as ink.
The next morning I went to the temple.
The roof had half-collapsed years ago; pigeons nested in the rafters. I knelt among the broken tiles. The silence under my ribs waited, patient as hunger.
I touched the cracked altar. The air thickened. For the first time, the thing inside me spoke—not in words, but as a tide that entered the bones.
You will not drown them, it said. You will teach them to breathe water.
When I opened my eyes, the lamps in the temple leaned toward me, every flame bowed as if to a guest too terrible to name.
That evening, the Lord Protector met with General Sun in the northern courtyard.
I watched unseen from the archway as my father's voice carried low and tired.
"He is changing," he said. "There is a patience in him that frightens the air itself."
Sun bowed. "He commands men, my lord. But he no longer belongs among them."
My father looked toward the gates where the southern monks were housed. "If he breaks, we break with him."
Sun did not answer. He did not need to.
Storms came by night. The southern monks began to chant in their sleep. The walls shook—not from thunder, but from echo. Their prayer was a sound that waited for its reflection to return.
At the third bell, a messenger stumbled in from the southern road, tongue cut out, eyes wide. In his hand he carried a seal pressed into wet blood: the Imperial Dragon, inverted.
Shen Yue read the mark and whispered, "The Emperor walks."
"No," I said. "He is being carried."
The silence under my ribs shivered with pleasure.
By dawn, I had sent riders north and east.
By dusk, I would choose ground for the South to find me.
The lamps bowed again as I passed, obedient as dogs. The river beneath the city leaned west.
And the voice within me—old, cold, untranslatable—laughed once, just to see if I would answer.
I did not.
I sharpened my sword instead.