The city learned, slowly, how to move without a master.
In the days after the envoy left, men patched roofs before they mended walls. Women swept ash from thresholds and laid it carefully at the bases of trees, as if feeding the roots with what had burned them. Children ran errands for soldiers, wide-eyed and solemn, carrying bundles of bandages and baskets of stale bread like tribute to a new, uncertain god.
Ziyan spent the first morning not with generals, but with scribes.
They gathered in what had once been a minor records hall and now smelled of ink, damp stone, and too many bodies trying to think at once. Shelves that had held tax rolls and complaint scrolls were half-charred; the survivors leaned at exhausted angles. Ren sat at a low desk with three others, writing, copying, muttering to himself as if arguing with the past.
Ziyan walked to the center table and placed her hand on it. "We are done keeping only the Emperor's laws," she said. "He is dust. Zhang's decrees are burned. From now on, every word written here binds me first, not the people."
A scribe old enough to remember two coronations looked up, startled. "My lady?"
"You will write a new code," she said. "Short enough for a farmer to memorize between fields. Clear enough that a child can repeat it without tripping."
Ren dipped his brush. "What shall it say?"
"That no man may be beaten for bread he cannot pay," Ziyan said. "That no tax may be raised while granaries are half-empty. That no soldier may take what he does not replace." Her gaze sharpened. "And that no ruler is above the law she demands of others."
The old scribe swallowed. "Even you?"
"Especially me," she said.
Feiyan sat in the doorway, one knee up, idly rolling a knife along her fingers. "You realize most thrones are built precisely to avoid such trouble."
"I told you," Ziyan replied, eyes still on the scribes, "I am not building a throne."
The scribes bent to their work. Ren's brush moved fastest, the characters flowing like water finally allowed its proper course.
By midday, she stood atop the south gate.
Han, Zhao, and the remnants of Meng's men stood with her, armor clinking in uneven rhythm. Below, in the courtyard, a crowd had gathered: militia, farmers, street toughs with swords scavenged from the dead, widows clutching children's hands. Their faces were a palette of fear, stubbornness, hollow grief, and a thin, fierce hope that appeared only when they forgot to look weary.
"The law is changing," Ziyan called down. Her voice carried along the stone, across the banners snapped by wind. "We have lived too long under rules written to protect those above us. From now on, every man and woman who lifts a blade for this city has the right to speak in council once in a season."
A murmur rose. Wei, at her side, blinked. "You mean to invite them into that hall of wolves?"
"Yes," she said. "If a farmer bleeds on the field, he may at least bleed words on the floor."
Han rubbed his beard, skeptical and grudgingly impressed. "You'll drown in talk."
"I'd rather drown in voices than in silence," Ziyan said.
She let the murmurs settle, then raised her hand. "Listen. Xia comes with more men, more grain, more steel. They will offer you safety if you kneel. Zhang offered the same, and you know what his safety tasted like." She let the memory of burned streets and ration lines hang in the cold air. "If you follow me, you follow the risk of standing. But I give you this: I will not sign a single agreement you have not seen. No treaty will be secret. No surrender will be hidden in silk."
Someone in the crowd shouted, "And if we disagree?"
"Then you tell me," Ziyan said. "And if enough of you do, I lay down this sword."
Silence fell, thick and startled. No one laughed. No one believed fully, either. But for the first time, some looked at her without the reflexive flinch reserved for thrones.