The steward was dragged in within moments, a thin man with ink-stained fingers. His eyes darted between faces, seeking a refuge that did not exist.
"The messenger?" Ziyan asked.
The steward swallowed. "I… I did not accept. I only— only listened. We have families, my lady. If Xia wins, they will punish those who resisted. If someone must be the bridge, better—"
Feiyan moved like a shadow. One moment she leaned against the pillar; the next she stood behind him, blade at his throat. "Be very careful," she murmured into his ear. "The last time our lady was betrayed, an empire burned."
The man trembled.
Ziyan stepped closer, close enough to smell the old ink, the sweat of fear. "Look at me," she said.
He did.
"I do not kill men for being afraid," she said. "And I will not cut the head off every weak branch—that only makes trees fall faster in storms. But hear this: the last time I trusted the promise of 'later safety', it cost my home and my blood. Betrayal has feasted enough. From this day, if anyone opens a gate behind my back, I will not stop at them. I will bring down the house they serve and salt its threshold."
The steward whimpered. Zhao looked as though he might be sick.
"Feiyan," Ziyan said quietly. "Let him go."
Steel left skin by a hair's width. A single drop of blood slid down the steward's neck. He collapsed to his knees. "I… I will not, my lady. I swear it. I swear—"
"You will write every message that leaves this hall under Ren's eye," Ziyan said. "You will copy every order three times. You will live under watch until this war is done. If you wish to be a bridge, you will be one I can walk across."
He nodded, too fast, tears freezing at the corners of his eyes.
Feiyan wiped her blade on a scrap of burned silk. "That," she said, "is the closest anyone gets."
Ziyan looked around the chamber. "You heard," she said. "There will be no more secrets. No hidden parley. If Xia writes, we all read. If I falter, you will see it. But if any of you sell this city from under us, know that I will not be merciful like the Emperor was. I will be exact."
Han's gaze held both respect and something older, harder. "Then we are agreed."
When the council broke, Xia's drums were closer.
From the walls, the army of the east no longer looked like a distant storm but like weather already risen—lines in disciplined formation, siege towers half-built on their wagons, supply trains stretching back toward a hazed horizon. Their banners rippled steady. They expected resistance. They did not yet expect a fight that changed shape beneath their feet.
As the sun climbed, the people of Qi moved.
On Ziyan's orders, stalls became barricades. Laundry lines were cut and rewoven as trip cords. Amphorae of water and sand appeared like mushrooms at every corner. Archers took positions in upper windows, their quivers shared between half a dozen hands who had never before touched a bowstring.
In a quiet lane behind the old mint, a boy no older than ten crouched with a bucket of stones, jaw set. "For my mother," he whispered to each one. No one had told him to.
Ziyan walked the inner streets once before noon, flanked by Wei and Li Qiang. People bowed, some deeply, some not at all. A woman with soot on her cheek pressed a bundle of flatbread into Ziyan's hands; she passed it to a passing runner without stopping.
Feiyan met her at the base of the north tower. "Scouts report Xia establishing camp within bowshot by nightfall," she said. "They're keeping just out of range, like polite wolves. General Ren is cautious."
"He sent an offer before drawing steel," Ziyan said. "He's not a fool."
"Then don't treat him like Zhang," Feiyan said quietly. "Zhang's pride was a wall—you could crack it. Men like Ren are rivers. They flow around whatever is in the way."
"Then I'll be the stone that does not move," Ziyan replied.
Feiyan looked at her, long and steady. "Stones erode."
"So do empires," Ziyan said.
Evening painted the snow the color of old wounds. Xia's campfires kindled one by one, a mirror of fallen stars laid out in tidy rows. From the wall, the glow made them look almost domestic—men eating, talking, sharpening weapons that had not yet learned whose blood they would taste.
On Qi's side, the fires were smaller, meaner, tucked behind parapets and broken roofs. Light leaked from them like secrets rather than declarations.
Ziyan stood above the north gate as darkness took the last of the fields. The city behind her was too quiet. Ahead, the murmur of distant engines and foreign songs drifted over the snow.
"They will test us before dawn," Li Qiang said. "Small unit, ladders, probing."
"We let them climb," Ziyan said. "Then show them the view."
Feiyan rested her forearms on the stone. "You could still send a counter-offer. Limited terms. Border concessions. They might take it."
"And when their Emperor dies?" Ziyan asked. "When their generals change? When some future court decides this city is too valuable to leave alone? I am tired of building lives on other men's promises."
Feiyan's mouth curved. "Good. Promises are flimsy foundations."
The wind rose, tugging at hair and banners. Somewhere below, someone began to hum an old work song—the kind that timed swings of picks in mines and strokes of oars on guarded rivers. Another voice joined it, then another, until the low, steady rhythm wound up the wall like smoke.
Ziyan listened.
"They're afraid," Feiyan said softly.
"So am I," Ziyan answered.
Feiyan glanced sideways. "You hide it better."
"No," Ziyan said. "I hold it tighter."
She slid her fingers over the blue silk at her wrist, feeling the knot bite into skin. A reminder. A tether. An oath that cut both ways.
"Tomorrow," she said, almost to herself, "we see if this road can carry a kingdom's weight."
Feiyan straightened. "And if it breaks?"
"Then I break with it," Ziyan said.
She stepped up onto the crenelation, just enough that if Xia's scouts looked closely through their spyglasses, they would see a small, straight shadow on the wall—the woman they'd been warned about, the one who'd killed a regent and refused an empire.
She did not wave. She did not shout challenges into the dark. She simply stood, letting them mark her, letting them believe they understood where to aim.
And under the stone, under the snow, under the breathing city, the road she had sworn to build held its breath and waited, ready to answer in fire and steel and the stubborn, inconvenient choice not to kneel.