Frost still clung to their horses' fetlocks when they crossed the second ridge. Behind them, Lucheng was smoke and echo, the city's heartbeat too faint to hear. No one spoke. Even the road seemed to hold its breath.
Fields stretched on either side, trampled to dark ruin by Zhang's vanguard. Half-buried ruts marked where siege wagons had passed, and in the ditches lay broken helms, snapped shafts, and one child's shoe. Ziyan slowed her horse until the others matched her pace.
"This is what waiting looks like," she said at last, voice low enough to be mistaken for thought.
"Then we do not wait," Feiyan replied. She did not look back.
By the second night they reached Pingyuan. The city was noisier than Lucheng, brighter too, its taverns warm and its dice games clattering as if war were a story told about someone else. At the manor gates, Zhao's guards inspected them with the weary arrogance of men told to watch for trouble but never expecting to find it.
Shuye had sent word ahead, and before the moon cleared the clouds they were seated in Zhao's lesser hall, the painted screens casting long patterns over the polished floor. Zhao entered with the smooth step of someone used to being observed. His hair was tied in a high knot, his robe trimmed with fox fur he had probably never hunted himself.
"They said the road would bring me a ghost," Zhao said, pouring his own wine. "I see a girl instead."
"A girl who survived Zhang's bounty, his spies, and his ladders," Ziyan said evenly. "And who just held a gate against his men long enough to make him bleed for it."
Zhao smiled, amused, but his fingers stilled on the rim of his cup. "Lord Meng sent word. He calls you the storm that would not pass."
"Then I will pass through here next," Ziyan said. "Zhang's net will close on Lucheng again. If you do not choose now, you will have no choice later."
Wei braced one hand on the low table. "You like to gamble, my lord. This is the last throw before the house takes the dice away."
Zhao laughed, delighted at being read so easily. "Bold words from a man with blood still on his boots."
"Better than blood on my knees," Wei said.
Feiyan's shadow shifted near the screen. "If Zhang wins, he will make you kneel anyway. Better to kneel now, to the side that has not lost."
Zhao's mirth faded just enough to let the weight of the moment settle. He refilled everyone's cups, even Feiyan's. "I will hold my gates," he said at last. "I will not open them to Zhang's men, nor feed their horses."
Ziyan inclined her head. "And when the drums call you to join him?"
Zhao's grin returned, sharp this time. "Then I will be deaf for a little while."
At dawn, a courier reached Pingyuan, dust-flecked and raw-eyed. The hall fell silent as he handed over a scroll bound in common hemp. Ziyan broke the seal and read aloud:
By order of Regent Zhang: those who harbor the traitor Li Ziyan are declared conspirators with the foreign power Xia. Their lands will be seized, their heirs struck from the register, their names burned from the rolls of the Empire.
The proclamation named Meng of Lucheng first. Then Zhao of Pingyuan. Then, to Ziyan's surprise, the Qi envoy who had helped her cross the border.
The hall buzzed like a kicked hive. Zhao's steward hissed and demanded the scroll be burned. Zhao himself only laughed. "I asked to be made famous," he said. "I did not expect it to be so soon."
"You have made yourself a target," Li Qiang said, grim.
"Better a target than a shadow," Zhao said, raising his cup. "But if I am to be hunted, I will not be hunted cheaply. Give me something to fight for."
"You will have it," Ziyan promised.
They left Pingyuan that night. The streets were quieter than before, word of the proclamation already whispering from doorway to doorway. Mothers pulled their children inside as Ziyan passed, as if her shadow might stain the threshold.
By the third watch, another rider found them on the road—this one half-dead, his horse staggering. He slid from the saddle and knelt, though he could barely breathe.
"From Qi," he rasped. "Gaoling has fallen. Xia banners at the river crossings. Three days, and they will see the capital's lamps. The Emperor calls all riders back. No aid for Lucheng. No aid for anyone."
The words struck like a thrown spear. Shuye swore under his breath. Wei's knuckles whitened on his reins.
"So that is it," Li Qiang said. "We are on our own."
"No," Ziyan said, quiet but sharp. "We are the only ones left who can do anything."
They made camp in an abandoned granary, the moonlight silvering the broken rafters. The jar sat between them like a second fire, its cedar scent sharp in the cold.
"We have two lords," Wei said. "Two gates closed. And Zhang with ten times our number."
"Three lords will be enough," Ziyan said. Her eyes were dark and steady. "Three gates closed makes a wall. We find one more. Someone whose men can ride fast and strike Zhang's supply lines until he starves in his own camp."
"And if no one will swear?" Li Qiang asked.
"Then I will ride alone," Ziyan said.
Feiyan's laugh was low, almost fond. "You will not. Roads may be lonely, but blades are not."
She crouched beside Ziyan and tied the blue silk tighter around her wrist. "You have stopped walking," she said. "The road is a blade now. Time to cut."
Ziyan looked at the faces around her: Wei grim and loyal, Li Qiang silent but unyielding, Shuye still grinning through ash-smudged cheeks, Feiyan's shadow steady at her side.
"Then we cut," she said.
The wind outside turned, coming from the north, cold and full of promise. Somewhere in the hills, a drumbeat rolled once, twice—warning, or invitation.
Ziyan rose and began to pack.