He surprised himself by laughing. It was not a sound big enough to warm anyone, but it did not apologize for existing. "If I put your proof in every hand from here to our border, Liang will curse your name and mine. If I do not, my people will curse only mine. Either way, Xia does not stop because we are clever."
"Then let us be more than clever," Ziyan said. "Let us be loud. Let my name do work in your streets as it already does in mine. Liang calls me traitor; use that word. Let the traitor show you whose loyalty starved your soldiers. And when the lords who bend with every wind feel a new wind, they will bend again."
The Emperor looked at Feiyan. "And you? Are you her blade or her doubt?"
Feiyan's face was winter and mercy in equal parts. "Both," she said. "When she needs either."
He turned to Wei and Li Qiang. "And you are her pillars."
Li Qiang inclined his head. "We are what she needs until she does not."
"And you," the Emperor said to Shuye, curiosity winching his mouth. "Why are you here?"
Shuye thought about lying and found the wrong words in his hand. He let them go. "Because Madam Wen said the jar would be ready by morning," he said. "And because some things should be carried by someone who knows the weight of heat."
"Good," the Emperor said, as if that answered something private. He rose. "Leave the jar. Keep the clerk."
Wang Yu, who had waited just outside the door, stiffened like wet paper in a draught. "Your Majesty?"
"You will live under my seal tonight," the Emperor said. "Tomorrow you will choose whether to become a witness whose name is known, or a shadow who guides my riders through other people's lies."
Wang Yu looked at his hands—the ones that had held keys for years and now shook not at all. "I used to think safety was the shape of a lock," he said. "Today I learned it is the shape of a door opening. I will guide your riders."
"Then burn what you no longer need," the Emperor said, nodding toward the small brazier.
Wang Yu reached into his coat and drew out a ring of iron keys, old teeth glittering in the flame's appetite. He held them once as one might hold a friend too long. Then he laid them on the coals. The metal sang briefly, then remembered how to be quiet.
"Good," Ziyan murmured, and did not let her throat close.
The Emperor paused at the threshold. "Your road began as escape," he said to her without ceremony. "If I follow your plan, it returns you to Liang not as quarry but as witness and blade. Are you prepared to be used that way?"
Ziyan thought of her father's signature cut from a register, of Lian'er's hairpin warm against her wrist, of Madam Wen's imperfect thumbprint, of Ye Cheng's smoke drawing lines where streets had been. She thought of the jade ring's single character cooling her thumb: listen.
"Yes," she said.
He inclined his head, the courtesy of a man who had stopped wasting any. "Then let us see which empire trembles when the story changes its voice."
He left. The brazier breathed. Outside, the capital's lanterns guttered in a wind that could not decide whether it was from the north or the sea. Wei ran a hand over his face and found it his still. Li Qiang stood watch against a door that would not open without permission. Feiyan's fingers traced the knife's spine, a woman teaching steel to think.
Shuye nudged Wang Yu with his shoulder, gentle as a brother. "There is a spare cot where the kiln warms the wall," he said. "It creaks, but it creaks for friends."
Wang Yu smiled crookedly. "I used to think friendship was tea poured without asking," he said. "Tonight it seems to be not being left alone with my choices."
Ziyan stepped to the window. Snow freckled the courtyard. Somewhere, far off, a drum remembered its duty and struck once, twice—no ceremony, only warning. She set her palm against the cold lattice and did not ask it to be warm.
"Ye Cheng," she said softly to the night that had not been there when it burned, "I will not build you again. But I will make your ash heavy enough to tip a kingdom."
No one answered. That was proper. Some vows belong to the person who makes them until the world learns their shape.
Behind her, the jar sat on the table, unremarkable, perfect in its flaw. In the morning, riders would leave with its contents turned into proclamations and orders, maps and threats. In the morning, the road would tilt north again.
For now, the hall exhaled at last. And the Empire, having finally heard a different voice, listened.