Snow still powdered the cedar pillar where the arrow had struck. Ziyan's palm held the cicada bead until the lacquer warmed against her skin; the tiny cross-stroke cut into its wing might as well have been a signature pressed into her bones. Not Xia. Home.
They left the corridor in silence—Li Qiang flanking her shoulder, Wei already counting rooflines, Wen Yufei listening to a house that pretended it had not just tried to kill its own. By the time they reached the street, the wind had turned; flakes fell without hurry, as if the sky believed it had all the hours it needed to bury a city.
Dawn broke ragged. Messengers bled into the capital from the western roads: a boy with a raw throat muttering hooves wrapped in cloth; a monk carrying a charred tablet that still held the character for "grain"; a woman with ash in her hair and no shoes, whispering the names of three children until the list lost meaning. Behind them came carts—what little could be piled after fire—that stank of wet wool and fear.
By midmorning the Scholars' Gate had grown a second market: porridge kettles borrowed from kitchens; a line for blankets that mocked itself by moving; a circle of old men who remembered invasions as if they were bad winters and spoke too softly for this one. Ziyan crossed that improvised field without rank on her sleeves. Li Qiang cleared space without touching anyone. Wei vanished and returned twice with food he did not admit to stealing. Yufei's hands knew how to hold a child without frightening him.
"What did they wear?" Ziyan asked gently of a farmer whose hands still shook with the memory of reins.
"Black cords on their wrists," he said. "No banners. But their speech—Xia. One of them laughed when my wife bowed. He said we had learned to bow to the wrong men."
A novice from a small temple near the border kept twisting her sash. "They burned our incense stacks first," she said, as if explaining an exam question. "They said gods eat smoke; we should starve them."
Ziyan looked at the reddened eyes, the split knuckles, the way people held themselves like bowls with cracks. Numbers on a map made sense to generals and princes. These were the debts that never balanced in ledgers.
She sent for a scribe from the Eastern Bureau and for two wagons that could be spared without starving their own kitchens. "Names," she told the scribe, "not totals. And where each will sleep." The scribe bowed, startled that anyone had remembered names.
By noon, the Hall of Military Affairs had convened a restricted council that was anything but. Lord Gao stood longer than necessary so courtiers would notice; Grand Secretariat Zhou arranged his sleeves as if that could fold the border back into place. Prince Ning listened with his hands behind his back and his face turned toward nothing.
"You have courted disaster," Lord Gao pronounced when Ziyan had finished her brief report. "Harboring wolves from Xia, letting them slip under our very eaves—how convenient that their brothers now ravage our border."
Wei's presence behind a lattice could be felt if not seen. Ziyan did not glance toward him. "The envoy died on Qi soil," she said. "The wolves you name wore our markets' dust and our river's mud. Tell me which minister's ledgers paid for their boats."
A few eyes slid toward the Education Ministry without quite arriving. Li Wenxu stood as if on a winter shore, patient with the tide. "Ledgers do not light torches," he said mildly. "Men do."
"And men obey wages," Ziyan replied.
Prince Ning's gaze flicked once. "Names," he said, as if ordering tea.
"Not yet," Ziyan answered. "But routes. Storage courtyards that were empty yesterday and full last week. Relief lists that grew three hands heavier near the docks. Two of the names on those lists belong to my father's house."
Courtiers drew in breath the way a fire draws in air.
"Family disloyalty is fashion this season," Lord Gao sneered. "It sells well when one has no better wares."
Ziyan inclined her head as if to a teacher who had graded incorrectly. "The Censorate clerk who visited this morning will enjoy your compliment."
Ning let the silence do its work. "Supplies will move tonight," he said at last, and no one quite knew whether it was question or statement.
"They already are," Ziyan said. "If we put the correct seals in their path, they will slow without knowing why."
After council she returned to the teahouse and laid out two more sheets. Slanting characters grew beneath her brush: inventories and troop rations, one entirely true, one almost true and flawed in a way only an Education clerk would notice. "The true goes through Ning's box at the Censorate," she told Li Qiang. "The almost true travels by family hands again. Let them carry it; let them believe they've stolen something worth their trouble."
Wei watched the ink dry. "Gao's eyes are on the schools," he said. "He tells himself that cutting paper is cleaner than blood. He will burn the rosters and sleep well."
"Then we will make ash that stains," Ziyan answered.