Li Qiang's voice was low. "You ask us to trade one master for another."
"I ask you," Ren said, "not to let your people be crushed so my Emperor can sleep better for a year."
Feiyan's hand tightened on Ziyan's sleeve. "He's asking you to trust a wolf to keep its teeth sheathed," she murmured.
"And I," Ziyan said quietly, "am trying to decide whether to trust a wolf who sends medicine and writes his threats down where everyone can read them."
She thought of the boy in the temple, breathing easier. Of the steward beating out a fire he might once have lit for profit. Of refugees in the western alleys, learning to swear at law and still follow it.
"If I agree," she said slowly, "it will not be in secret. You understand that?"
"I expect nothing less," Ren said. "I know you by now."
"I'll carve every word," she went on. "On the tablets. On the gatehouse wall. I will tell my people: Xia stands at our door and we are making a bargain to keep them from stepping through it. I will not dress it as victory when it is not. I will call it what it is—breathing space. Time to decide what kind of place we want to be when the next army comes."
Ren's mouth curved, not quite a smile.
"That," he said, "is more honesty than most thrones manage in a generation."
"And you?" she asked. "What do you call it, in your letters?"
"A pacified border city with acceptable local variance," he said dryly. "Words my Emperor's ministers enjoy hearing. I will leave out your speeches. He has no taste for those."
Feiyan's jaw worked. "This is madness," she said. "You would tie Yong'an's name to an empire that may yet burn half the world to ash."
Ziyan looked at her. "And if I don't, Yong'an burns now," she said. "Under rocks. Under ladders. Under men who don't care what we called ourselves while we were living."
She stepped closer to the water's edge, enough that its breath touched her face. "I swore," she said quietly, "that being betrayed would not be how my story ended. Not by Zhang. Not by Qi. Not by you."
Ren held her gaze. "Then make sure," he said, "that whatever terms we agree, you write yourself into them as little as possible. Build it around your people, not your name. It is harder to betray a city than a single soul."
Feiyan's breath left her in an annoyed huff. "I hate that he's right," she muttered.
Li Qiang finally spoke. "If we take this road," he said, "we are not done fighting."
"No," Ziyan said. "We are changing which battle we fight first."
Silence stretched, thin and dangerous.
At last, Ziyan nodded once.
"I will bring this to my council," she said. "I will read your terms aloud. They will argue. They will curse me. They will improve them. If, by dawn, this wall still stands and this city still chooses to live under your shadow rather than die for its own reflection, I will send you an answer."
Ren inclined his head. Respect, not triumph. "If your answer is no," he said, "then tomorrow will be worse than today."
"I know," she said.
"And if it is yes," he added, "do not mistake this for peace. It is… an arrangement. Between two tired enemies who would prefer not to kill every last person they admire in the other's camp."
Feiyan rolled her eyes. "He admires you," she muttered. "Hide your blush."
Ziyan did not blush. But she looked at Ren and felt, alongside anger and grief and the cold, a strange, hard shard of something like recognition.
"You could have been a different kind of man," she said.
"So could you," he replied. "Perhaps in another world, we would have argued about law in a courtyard instead of across a river."
"The river is more honest," she said.
He almost smiled. "Perhaps."
He turned to go, then paused. "Whatever your answer," he said over his shoulder, "keep carving those tablets. Even if they end up beneath my Emperor's seal. The world needs places that remember what else law can be."
He left without waiting for reply. His adjutant and the scholar-soldier followed. No arrows hissed. No hidden knives flashed.
On the Yong'an side, Feiyan let out a breath she'd been hoarding.
"I still think we should have brought archers," she said. "Just to make him as nervous as he makes me."
"He was," Ziyan said. "He hides it better."
Li Qiang murmured, "You're considering it."
"I have to," she said.
Feiyan grabbed her cloak, fingers digging into the stitched cloth over Xu Min's scrap. "Just remember your road," she said. "You're not making this bargain for Xia. Or for Qi. Or for him. If you decide to buy time, spend it on the people who stood under falling stones today, not on anyone else's crown."
Ziyan looked back at the city.
At the cracked wall and the stubborn square. At smoke rising thinly from temple roofs. At lamps flickering on in alleys where refugees were learning the shapes of new rules.
"I know," she said.
The river slid past, indifferent.
The siege had not ended.
But for the first time, there was a third thing on the field besides surrender and annihilation.
A narrow road, treacherous and half-built, running between a wolf's patience and a city's pride.