The river's voice followed them back to the wall.
By the time Ziyan, Li Qiang and Feiyan reached the postern, word of the parley had outrun them. Eyes turned as they passed. No one asked outright, but questions hung in the air like smoke: Did he spit? Did she kneel? Did anyone come back with fewer limbs?
Wei met them in the inner yard, helmet crooked and worry not quite hidden. "Well?" he demanded. "Did the wolf offer to marry you, or just eat you politely?"
"Both," Feiyan said. "In his own way."
Ziyan drew back her hood. The wind had bitten color into her cheeks; it made her look younger and older at once. "He offered us time," she said. "At a price."
Han's mouth went hard. "Always a price."
"We'll talk inside," Li Qiang said. "Not on a flagstoned stage."
They gathered in the examination hall again. The windows rattled with each distant stone from the siege engines, but none had fallen inside the last bell. It felt like the city was taking a breath and no one knew what would be demanded for it.
Zhao arrived late, bringing the smell of wine he hadn't had time to drink. Chen Rui came straight from the western watch, cloak still crusted with ice. Shuye trailed soot and exhaustion, as if the jars he'd set last night were still weighing his shoulders. Ren the scribe sat ready with brush and blank tablet.
Ziyan placed Ren Kanyu's letter on the table. The first one, ink already smudged from many readings. Beside it she set a fresh strip of bamboo, thinner, bearing new lines in the same precise hand.
"He sent this with the arrow," she said. "A clearer version of what he said on the riverbank. It's easier to argue with words when they sit still."
Ren the scribe picked it up and began to read aloud.
"'To the council and people of Yong'an,'" he translated. "'I propose the following: that Yong'an shall keep its own laws and council, its own watch and its own granaries. That no Xia officer shall rule within your walls without the council's consent. That Yong'an will shelter no armies of Qi, nor any bands who seek to attack Xia from your streets.'"
Murmurs flickered through the hall like small fires seeking kindling.
Ren read on. "'In return, Yong'an will be recognized as under Xia protection. In years when your stores allow, you will send grain to the nearest Xia depot. You may trade beyond my borders; even with Qi, if you are foolish enough to trust them again. Any treaty between us will be written twice—once in my camp, once on your tablets.'"
He paused.
"'I will report to my Emperor that Yong'an is pacified and cooperative, not rebellious. So long as you do not raise Qi's banners on your walls, I will treat you as a border city, not a conquered spoil.'"
Ren's brush hovered over the blank tablet. "That is the heart of it," he said. "He adds curses on Zhang and a few polite threats I don't intend to waste ink on."
Chen Rui folded her arms. "So we live," she said. "Under their name."
"We live under ours," Ziyan said quietly. "He doesn't demand we call ourselves Xia."
"Names on maps matter," Han grunted. "What he tells his Emperor will be seen by others. And by us, when the next conqueror comes asking who we thought we were."
Zhao lounged, eyes half-lidded. "Maps can be redrawn," he said. "Graves less so."
Wei slapped his palm against his knee. "If we agree, are we still fighting Zhang's work?" he asked. "Or are we helping another man finish it better?"
Feiyan tilted her head. "Depends what you think Zhang's work was," she said. "If it was breaking Qi so someone stronger could rule, then Xia is already finishing it, with or without us. If it was teaching everyone that power only ever means knives from above, then… we've already done something else."
All eyes went to Ziyan.
She did not speak right away. She looked at each of them in turn instead—their scars, their exhaustion, the way even their defiance moved more slowly now.
"If we refuse," she said at last, "the siege goes on. Stones. Ladders. Fires. He presses until our food runs out, or his does. Men die. Children die. Law holds, maybe…but in a city with fewer living to remember it."
She touched the Emperor's old, cracked seal still lying at one corner of the table, kept as a reminder. "If we agree, we live under a wolf's shadow. We pay in grain and a kind of name. We don't call our law absolute—we admit it must share the map with another's."
Ren the scribe frowned. "Can a law survive if it's not the only voice?"
"It has, in our heads, for years," Shuye muttered. "We just never wrote it down."