Dawn came late and came wrong. The eastern sky peeled itself open by thumb-widths, reluctant, as if the light had learned manners from frightened men. Ling An held still beneath it—walls squared, banners folded, watchfires reduced to stains. Even the pigeons on the inner roofs sat like written notes no one dared sound.
The Lord Protector convened council before the kitchens boiled grain. He wore armor not yet fastened and a face that had forgotten how to be tired. Ministers arranged themselves like brushstrokes meant to suggest strength. Half the benches were empty; absence has a posture. Wu Jin knelt near the third pillar, where he could be seen without being named. General Sun stood behind me, hands laced at the small of his back the way soldiers do when they prefer iron to prayer.
"The South has sent their hour," Father said, a paper in his fist. "A road, a valley, a sky they claim belongs to peace."
"Peace wears white when it intends a funeral," Wu Jin murmured, and the silk at his sleeve made a sound like water finding a leak.
I did not sit. The lamps leaned a fraction. It is a bad habit they have learned.
"We will parley," Father continued. "We will buy time. Zhou scouts have been seen near the northern pass. We cannot invite two wolves to the same sheepfold."
"Wolves prefer meat," I said. "The South brings a god. Sheep are decoration at a sermon."
"Words," said the Minister of Rites, too quick, relief making courage. "We must meet words with—"
"Walls," General Sun finished for him, not unkind. "Words do not catch arrows."
"Walls do not turn rivers," I said.
Silence softened around us, wary of the new grammar in my mouth. Father read the paper again without reading. He already knew what it said. "We send emissaries," he decided. "We offer witness, not submission. We stall."
Wu Jin bowed from the waist—obedient mathematics. "I will compose the phrases that say everything and admit nothing. We will stand in spring while winter kills the pests."
"Winter kills what spring forgot," I said.
Father's gaze held me. His mouth thinned, not quite refusal, not quite blessing. "You will keep your edge sheathed, Wu An. If you speak, you will speak in measures. If you act, it will be because I bid it."
"I will keep the roof," I said.
"Keep it with less fire," he answered.
The council dissolved into errands pretending to be policy. Scribes ran like rain in a gutter. The Households minister counted torches as if the city's throat could be soothed by light. Wu Jin passed notes that smelled of camphor and debt. General Sun left without bowing; the bow would come later, on a field.
I walked the battlements. Men watched me and then watched away. Fear is lighter than respect; soldiers carry it longer. The moat did not lie flat. It leaned, a width of reed's thickness, toward the southern gate. I spat from the wall. The spit did not fall the way it should have. It drifted, interested in someone else's gravity.
Shen Yue found me where the stones remember my weight. She wore plain cuirass, hair bound like a verdict. She did not touch me. She stood close enough that her breath made a private weather.
"You should sleep," she said.
"The water dreams first," I said. "I keep it company."
Her jaw set, a thin line a sword would envy. "Men begin to call you Winter," she said. "Not as praise."
"What name do you call me?" I asked.
"Wu An," she said. It hurt her to pick the simpler answer.
"Would you follow a god?" I asked, because the thing under my ribs wanted to hear it out loud.
"No," she said. "But I would follow a man who remembers being one."
Her eyes accused me of forgetting. I had not forgotten; I had set the memory on a high shelf where hands do not reach when cities burn.
Below, the practice yard beat with wood and breath. General Sun had the cohorts move like ink lines, precise and spare. The eastern archers trained at a cadence that did not quite fit the drum. Their arrows flew true and then twitched, small corrections made by nerves that could not admit the sky.
Before noon, the emissaries swayed out from the Red Gate—banner-bearers in willow, two eunuchs with voices calm as tea, a priest from Rites with lips already moving in apology. They carried nothing but dignity and a blank page. I watched them vanish into heat that was not there.