Winter had learned their pace. It slid beside them without hurry, numbing the fingers just enough to remind them they were not yet home. The road north unspooled in hard ribbons—frost bright where the sun remembered, frozen mud where it did not. Ziyan rode with her hood low and her eyes higher, Feiyan a narrow shadow ahead, Li Qiang and Wei bracketing the pack horse, Shuye limping the rear guard with a clubsman's patience. The kiln-fired jar rode in a sling between the packs, unremarkable to anyone who had never watched a kingdom lean.
By the second morning they had left behind the gentle speech of Qi and entered the border towns where words sounded more like arguments. In one village square a herald nailed a proclamation beside a shrine so weathered even the god had learned to stop objecting. A dozen faces tilted to the ink. Ziyan did not dismount, but she listened to the air around the reading: a hiss when Zhang's name appeared among the signatures, a mutter when the theft of grain was named, a spit when the traitor was named.
"Funny thing about traitors," a woman with a barley sack said to no one. "They tell truths no loyal tongue will risk."
"Or they sell you twice," a man replied, cruel from habit and hunger.
Feiyan did not pause. She tilted her head once, the sign for keep moving, and the road swallowed them again.
At dusk they found an inn pressed into a hill, its eaves drooping like a tired man's eyelids. The yard smelled of turnip greens and horse. A boy took their reins as if they were any travelers; the innkeeper appraised them as if they were not. He was barrel-chested and sour, with an apron that had learned five different kinds of grease.
"Rooms?" he asked.
"Soup," Wei said, climbing stiffly down. "Rooms if the soup is honest."
"Nothing is honest," the innkeeper said, which was the most honest thing he'd said all day. "Two rooms. There's a levy on hot water since last week. The new decree says steam counts as comfort."
"Then we'll take discomfort," Shuye said, steady grin hiding the way his eyes swept corners. "And if any letters arrived on fast horses today, we did not hear them."
The innkeeper's glance was quick and wrong. "Letters are for people who read," he said, and his boy's ears pinked.
They stabled the horses themselves, hands memorizing saddle straps and the jar's weight in the sling. Inside, the soup tasted of bones stretched thin and patience stretched thinner. Feiyan sat with her back to the wall, eyes resting on the door with the casual attention of a cat near a mouse hole. Ziyan ate slowly, as if each sip should carry a decision.
On the post by the stairs hung a fresh parchment, its ink still wet in the thick strokes men use when they want to frighten anyone who can read. A bounty notice. Ziyan's name had been taught to bow below the charge: treason against the Empire, alliance with foreign courts, incitement of unrest. The reward was high enough to purchase a man's conscience twice and his wife's once.
"Generous," Wei said, mouth bent. "Either Zhang is nervous or he has learned to count faster."
"He is borrowing fear," Li Qiang murmured. "He means to pay back in blood."
Shuye leaned a shoulder against the post, eyes running over the characters like a man checking glaze. "The scribe who wrote this hesitated over your name," he told Ziyan. "There's a blur where the brush trembled. That's a hand who doesn't believe his own pen."
"Good," Feiyan said. "Doubt is a floor with a crack. We will widen it."
They took the upstairs rooms when the candles were half-burned. Feiyan rigged a silver thread across the door latch and a pebble trap beside the window. Shuye pushed a stool under the jar's sling as if it were a drunken uncle who might try to stand alone. Wei slept with his spear across his chest. Li Qiang did not sleep at all; he sat in the dark like a pillar that had never learned fear's grammar.
Ziyan lay with her palms open and listened to the inn: a cough two rooms over; the innkeeper counting coins twice; a mouse negotiating with a wall; the boy in the yard whispering to a horse as if horses could answer honestly.