Before she could answer, the river changed its tone. Boots scraped stone above the bend. A voice, too officious for this hour, called to another voice: "Check the bank. The notice says the traitor favors rivers and shrines. Even her metaphors give her away."
Zhang's patrols. Their lanterns spilled yellow like a stain over the coping stones. Another boot tested the steps down toward the bend.
The bodyguard's hand went to his sleeve and produced nothing, which was either the best knife or the worst lie. The envoy exhaled once through his nose. "It seems our metaphors have betrayed us."
Ziyan stepped close enough to smell the faint ink and winter tea on his robe. "Can your lantern swim?"
"Not gracefully," he said. "But I can."
"Then drown it."
He clicked the latch and the light went to a fist, then to a seam, then to nothing. Their world narrowed to breath and the soft insults of snow. The patrol's lantern scraped closer. Ziyan took the envoy's elbow and drew him toward the waterline where an old fisher's platform sagged into the current. Wei was already there beneath the planks, a darkness with teeth.
"Under," Ziyan whispered. "Hold to the beam with one hand. The river will think your lungs are smaller than they are."
The envoy did not argue. Neither did his shadow. They slid into the black and let the water take their chests to knives. Ziyan followed, dress and bones turning to weight. Above them, boots reached the last step. A lantern shivered on the planks inches from her face. Something heavy—perhaps a bored guard—sat on the platform and made the beam creak like a complaint.
Wei's hand found Ziyan's wrist and pressed once, counting out the slow stubborn rhythm of a human refusal to drown. Li Qiang's shape was a deeper dark under the arch, where he had learned which currents forgave. A drop of river crawled into Ziyan's ear and made the world lopsided. The patrol's voice practiced contempt.
"Empty," it declared at last. "Just fisherman stink and old prayers. Move on."
The lantern's stain retreated. Boots climbed stone with a rudeness born of confidence. When their silence grew honest, Ziyan and the envoy rose together from the river like two thoughts the water had not quite learned to keep.
They crawled under the arch where Li Qiang waited. Wei wrung his sleeve once and scowled like a man cheated of a proper fight. The envoy shook water from his hair without dignity and laughed once—a single unguarded bark that startled even his shadow.
"Good," he said. "Now I have bled your river into my ears. We are properly introduced."
Ziyan did not laugh. She took the jade ring where it sat, wet, in the envoy's still-open hand. She turned it under the moon until the character inside caught a colder light.
"Listen," she said softly. "I accept your night. I accept your map. Tomorrow before dawn, the ledger-room. If we keep it from fire, your people will have their conversation—with ink and witnesses, not swords. If I fail, we both lose the century."
"And the oath?" he asked.
"I will speak once at your border without banners," she said. "Not to kneel. To argue."
"Arguing is how nations are sometimes spared," he said. "It is also how they learn to hate properly. But one conversation is something." He nodded toward Li Qiang and Wei with the politeness soldiers give other soldiers. "Your men are not unskilled."
"They are stubborn," Ziyan said. "Sometimes that is the same thing."
He drew a thin roll of paper from an inner seam and placed it in her hand. "The ledger-room. The cedar wall is double, as you were told. There is a crawl-space above the beam. Zhang means to send oil from below. Your best entry is from the western eaves, where the tiles were replaced after the fire three years ago and not properly sealed. He trusts the moths he paid to stay dead."
"How many guards?"
"As many as a man hires when he wants to be seen guarding," the envoy said. "And two who are there to actually see."
Ziyan tucked the plan into the band at her wrist. "Then we will be the thing they are not paid to notice."
The envoy bowed, not deeply but with attention. "If you live through dawn, wear the ring when the moon is small. The road beyond your gate will find you."
"And if I die?"
"Then give it to the river," he said, "and it will find another stubborn hand."
He and his shadow withdrew the way they had come, footfalls careful, choosing the paths that belonged to people who learned to survive before they learned to speak. Wei watched them vanish with a face that did not yet choose trust. Li Qiang watched Ziyan.
"You took their token," he said.
"I took our window," she answered.
They moved before the frost could tighten their joints. Under the arch, Wei muttered, "Consorting with Qi is treason. I will say it until the words grow tired and leave my mouth."
"Then rest them," Ziyan said. "We do not have the luxury of loyal crimes."
He grunted, which was either surrender or admiration disguised as indigestion.
When they were clear of the river bend and its habits, Ziyan paused on the broken step that looked east toward the sleeping Academies. She could almost see the cedar room, the ledger spines, the ink survival had clung to like a vine to old brick. She slid the jade ring onto her thumb. It was cold with river and someone else's continent.
"If the Empire would rather kill me than hear me," she said, the words meant for the stones and those who make them patient, "then let it hear me through its enemies."
Wei's shoulder brushed hers, a weight shared for a breath. Li Qiang's hand rested on the hilt he rarely drew first.
"Before dawn?" he asked.
"Before dawn," Ziyan said.
They vanished into the city that had learned to mistake its patrols for peace. Behind them, the river carried lantern ash and boot prints into tomorrow, and somewhere beyond the wall a foreign envoy wrung water from his sleeve and listened to how a winter capital names its own silence.