Han looked to the river and measured it for betrayal and for use. "We march without our dam. Roads south are white and straight and eager to betray. If we march, we cannot come back quickly."
Feiyan fixed him with a look that made cowards remember their knees. "Who taught you that roads are two-way?"
He laughed, once, low. "Age."
Ziyan unrolled the banner with the single braid of blue silk and set it over the crate they used for decisions. The silk lay quiet and severe as a line in a holy book. "At dawn," she said. "We do not give the city time to remember it was meant to be loyal to anyone else."
They broke like ice that had agreed where to split. Orders walked faster than men could; boys learned to put porridge into hands before hands forgot how to hold. Ren called the new men by their names before they had a chance to forget them. Han took the lightest horses from those who could afford anger and gave them to those who could make speed make sense. Huo sent runners to the road wardens with a seal that said Inspection in crooked characters; the wardens, who had served more masters than weddings, chose to be honest for one day.
Li Qiang set men to write wills, his own included. He did not hide his on purpose. The little he owned fitted under a flap of leather: a knife whose crossguard was pretty beyond reason, a comb with two teeth missing, a scrap of cloth with a child's earliest characters learning how to be straight. He did not leave the scrap; he tucked it into his armor where breath would remember it.
Feiyan, sleepless, sketched routes on frost and realized she was drawing foundations, not escapes. It offended and pleased her in equal measure. Wei drank water like a man storing patience and then sharpened his spear further to see if there was anything left that was not already sharpened. Shuye packed his empty jars as if they were sleeping animals he meant to wake gently later.
Near midnight, a runner brought another letter stamped with the old seal and the new smell. Retire north, it said in the hand that had lost its right to command. Consolidate. Cede command to the Regent. Feiyan laughed once, like a knife being tested. Ziyan folded the paper and laid it in the brazier with a neatness that made men trust the act. "Now it is smoke's problem," she said, and nobody said the word treason because the smoke had already chosen its own.
The last hour before dawn learned dignity. Men rose quietly. Boots went on without curses. The river looked back at the ridge and did not blink. Ziyan stood at the edge with the jar under her palm and the silk at her wrist, and looked north only long enough to let the road see her face.
"The road remembers," she said. "So will we."
They rode. The ridge dropped away and the pines did not complain. Frost held the ruts with a courtesy they did not deserve. The day unwrapped itself careful as old silk: gray, then less gray, then white where the fields lay under a thin lie. Behind them Yong'an took a breath and did not exhale. Ahead, Ye Cheng waited like an old wound someone had dressed without cleaning.
The first halt came at a hamlet that had mislaid its name but kept its ovens. Women with smoke in their hair shoved hot stones into gloved hands, the way people pass blessings when language has melted. Ziyan took one and let heat talk sense to her skin. A girl touched the blue silk at Ziyan's wrist and didn't move her hand away in time; Ziyan caught it with her other hand and closed it gently. "Tie knots where you like," she said. "Even if no one sees."
At the second halt, a road warden showed his ledger before being asked, and Ren wrote a note in the margin that would keep two families fed through winter at the price of the warden's vanity. Feiyan passed by the exchange as if it were weather; her eyes were on ridge and ditch, on places where men would want to stand in the evening and in the morning.
Snow began as disagreement and decided to be commitment. It softened the old cart tracks into something that could be explained later. Wei grumbled and grinned in the same breath. "It's a good day to be clever. A bad day to be wrong." Li Qiang answered without humor: "Then we will not be wrong."
Toward noon, smoke showed thin on the horizon, the kind that comes from kitchens beginning to believe in dinner. Huo's hand went up, the signal that meant slow without lying. They came over the last rise and saw Ye Cheng as if through a memory—walls patched with the wrong stone, roofs in the wrong places, the market's bones rebuilt with the impatience of men paid by the gate, not the day. The long school wall where Ziyan had once learned to walk balance stood half a span higher, arrogant in ugly new bricks. At the north gate, Xia's banners drooped, damp and practical. On the south tower, the Regent's colors were a strip of arrogance, recent and badly washed.
Feiyan's breath left her and took nothing with it. "They have made a child's drawing," she said. "And believe it is a city."
"It will burn better for being proud," Wei said.
"No," Ziyan said. "We do not build the same lesson twice. We will not teach fire today. Today we teach choice."
They did not ride straight to the gate. They broke into threads: Han west to worry patrols and make a small noise loud, Ren east to find the river quarter and comb it for men whose oaths were lighter than their debts, Shuye with two boys to the old kiln street where potters had taught clay to hold purpose even when purpose broke. Li Qiang took the narrow road that led to the lower sluices because the water would want to talk to someone sensible before the day ended. Feiyan went to ground and became six rumors.
Ziyan rode down the central track as if she were allowed. She stopped where the road widened into the old tea market. She took the banner's pole into her own hand and lifted the pale cloth with its single vein of blue. No horn. No speech. Just height and color.