At first light, the traps said everything they needed to say. The pebble had moved a finger-width; the thread had pulled half a hair. Feiyan's smile showed teeth without joy. "We go now," she said.
They saddled in silence. The innkeeper came out with forced cheer and a bill that pretended it had not been written in the night as advice. "You forgot to pay for the steam you didn't take," he said.
Wei tossed him copper with a soldier's contempt for complaints that lived in the mouth. "Keep the change for your courage," he said.
They made it to the ridge above the inn before the road remembered to be dangerous. Four riders slid out of the trees ahead, three more from the ditch behind; not soldiers in proper colors, but men whose armor was piecemeal and whose expressions said they liked the math of bounties. The leader wore a fox-fur collar and the smile of someone who believed in simple stories.
"Ladies," he called, as if politeness would add coin to the purse, "we are here to escort you to a generous patron. Your friends may follow and live."
Feiyan's eyes lifted once to the tree line. "Seven," she said, to no one and everyone.
"Eight," Shuye corrected mildly, nodding toward a bush whose leaves held their breath.
"Eight," Feiyan allowed, and stepped sideways so her shadow fell where she wanted it. "Ziyan, jar."
Ziyan moved the pack horse behind Li Qiang's mount, her body between the sling and the blades. The jade ring cooled her, a voice she had learned to hear saying listen before you cut. She listened. There was another sound under the men's easy threats: the scrape of a bow being settled on a knee, the high foxed breathing of someone trying not to be the first mistake.
"Put down your weapons," the leader said, still smiling the way simple men smile the moment before they find out about complexity.
"We did," Wei said, sliding his spear around in his hands. "We put them down a long time ago. Then we picked up better ones."
The first arrow came from the bush with held breath. Feiyan flicked her wrist and the knife in her hand moved without seeming to; the arrow jinked in polite surprise and kissed the road instead of Ziyan's throat. Li Qiang surged forward at the same breath, his horse shouldering the fox-collared leader's mount aside as his sword met the man's blade with a sound that woke birds. Wei's spear found a knee where a man had expected to have one later.
The fight was not a dance; it was carpentry. Feiyan cut where the joints were weakest. Wei drove iron into the spaces between certainty. Li Qiang stood where the road needed to hold. Shuye did not look like a fighter until the club in his hand remembered the kiln's beat; he struck low and sure, the way a potter knocks air bubbles from clay. Ziyan struck once, twice, keeping herself between steel and jar, the anger in her chest a new kind—clean, focused, a line connecting Ye Cheng's ash to the hand that reached for her proof.
"Alive," she said once, across the noise. "One."
Feiyan's knife altered its music accordingly.
Two of the ambushers fled early, surprised to learn that bounties sometimes collect their own purses. One fell from his horse and did not stand again; one curled around his breath as if he had found a more valuable thing to hold. The fox-collared leader tried to disengage and discovered that Li Qiang did not subscribe to the concept. Their blades skidded, stuck, parted; Li Qiang's elbow met a throat, efficient as gravity.
The last man, the one who had hidden in the bush, lifted both hands before Wei's spear decided his future. His mouth opened to surrender and only fear came out.
"Please," he managed. "I—I only carry messages—no, no, I mean I can tell you things, I can—"
"We don't have space for things," Feiyan said. "We have space for information and one heartbeat's patience."
The man's eyes rolled to Ziyan, found no mercy there, found something worse, then thought better of lying. "A rider left the inn last night," he yelped. "Went north with the word. Signal drums on the ridge passed it. The bounty was doubled at midnight. They said the potter's jar was proof, that the woman with the road name carries it. We just—just wanted—"
"Money," Wei supplied, grimly kind. "A simple story."
"Which drum," Feiyan asked.
He pointed with both hands, as if pointing with one might halve his chances. "The old watch tower after the bend. There's a runner post where the ridge narrows and—"
"Enough," Li Qiang said, not unkind, and tapped the man's temple with the flat of his blade. He went to sleep with the relief of those given instructions