The drums began before dawn, a blunt heartbeat rolled across roofs and snow. Proclamation banners unfurled like tongues. Men with cold hands nailed them to posts already bruised by older nails, and the city woke into attention.
By order of emergency decree: curfew tightened; checkpoints doubled; scholars to present themselves for questioning; merchants to declare ledgers at the nearest ward hall. The notice named no one and named everyone. In the last line, written with a stingy flourish, the phoenix girl's loyalists were accused of an attempted arson at the Southern Academies.
"We saved the room," Wei muttered, reading a banner from the safety of a shutter's slit. "And he still burns us with the smoke."
"He is teaching the city how to remember," Ziyan said. "We must teach it how to doubt."
In the carpenter's shop, the rescued scrolls lay beneath a plank false-bottom, wrapped in oilcloth, tied with blue silk. Ziyan had sorted them by the weight of their ink: names that throbbed, dates that lined up like soldiers, shipments that vanished between signatures. Proof sat a hand-span from her knee, warm as a fever, useless as a secret.
Li Qiang came in with snow on his shoulders and alarm caged behind discipline. "They raided the Eastern Courtyard. Teacher Shen and two clerks taken. The registrar who helped us once—gone before dawn."
"How close?" Feiyan asked.
Li Qiang set his palm on the table so the wood could feel his answer. "Two streets. They search houses with more attention than before. The pattern is not random anymore."
"Zhang has found his net," Feiyan said.
"And we are the fish," Wei added.
Ziyan looked from one face to the next: a soldier who had learned patience until it became a weapon; another who had taught his anger to wait; a woman whose blade had decided many fates, including its own. The city pressed around them—breath, brick, rumor. Each proclamation rung the air tighter.
"We cannot leak everything," she said. "Not yet."
Wei's head snapped up. "Why not? One page and we set the Guilds against him. Names shame men faster than swords."
"Names also tell him where to look," Feiyan said, voice even. "Every channel we use will be salted. Every ear will be priced."
Ziyan touched the jade ring on her thumb—the envoy's single moon, still cold with the river's memory. "We need a mouth he cannot close in a day. And we need to remain a rumor he cannot put a hand on. That means we live."
Li Qiang's gaze shifted to the false-bottom. "So we run."
Ziyan wanted to say no. She wanted to say that to leave the capital was to give it to Zhang like a bowl yielded before a lord. But the room had begun to smell of hunted breath. Even the cedar slats sounded watchful.
"There is another front," Feiyan said, reading the line her friend did not speak. "Nan Shu."
The name sat in the air with the weight of stone. Old smoke and river wind. A town whose idols had learned to keep their mouths shut. A place where Ziyan had read a child's silence and a border's lie.
Wei frowned. "Nan Shu is far. And watched."
"Not as watched as we are," Feiyan replied. "South, the patrols thin. The passes are bad with snow; the ambitious stay where the drums can hear them. There are men in Nan Shu who still owe answers to ledgers and ghosts. There are caravans that pretend to be poor. There are roofs that leak in ways a person can fit through."
"And Qi hands close enough to touch," Wei said darkly.
"Qi hands that offered a window," Ziyan said. "One conversation, later. But first we must arrive later."
Silence, and in it the city's quiet noise. Somewhere a rooster lied to dawn. Somewhere a door refused to be humble. Feiyan's knife clicked home in its sheath; the sound was not loud, but it counted.
A soft knock, the kind carpenters use on corners they love, sounded at the back door. Li Qiang's sword half-rose. Ziyan lifted a hand. The knock pattern repeated: two, one, two—the courier's habit. Wei moved, opened onto narrow shoulders and raw cheeks.
"Word from the inner quarter," the boy whispered, snow falling from his hair in stinging diamonds. "Minister Li is summoned. 'Assistance in clarifying irregularities.' He is to present himself before noon."
The room tightened without moving. Ziyan's fingers folded, not into a fist, but into a hold against her own heart.
"They will not kill him today," Feiyan said after a moment. "He is more useful alive a little longer."
"They will strip him until he volunteers himself," Wei said.
Ziyan exhaled. The breath left white on the air and did not return. "He will choose the Empire over me again. It is the choice one teaches oneself when one has to live with a city." She looked up, and the look was iron. "All the more reason to leave now. If Zhang puts a rope around him, it will be tied so that the other end leads to me."
Li Qiang said simply, "We go south."