"It is still Qi's soil," he said stubbornly. "Yong'an cannot simply step aside and let Xia draw its line through you. That is treason."
Ziyan felt the old word try to take root in her ear again. Traitor. The name Zhang had flung at her to make his guilt lighter. The name Qi whispered when it needed someone to blame for its own rot.
"I am done," she said quietly, "letting other men's fear decide what treason means."
Li Qiang's hand rested on the gate's inner bar. Feiyan's shadow stretched alongside hers.
"This city," Ziyan went on, "stood when Qi did not. It fed its people when Qi could not. It carved its law when Qi lost its own. We made a bargain with the wolves so that when Qi remembers how to be a kingdom again, there will still be someone left to welcome it."
Sun's eyes narrowed. "You speak as if Qi is already dead."
"Qi as Zhang rules it is dead," she said. "If there is a Qi yet to be born, it will come from places like this. From people who have learned to argue with power instead of bowing to it blindly."
His horse stamped, catching his mood. Behind him, his men shifted, glancing uneasily toward the distant Xia lines and the stubborn walls of Yong'an.
"You would set yourself up as a kingdom," he said slowly. Not quite a question.
"Someday," she answered, equally slow, "perhaps there will be a banner that is not Qi's or Xia's or any other old name. A banner that stands for something other than who sits on which chair. If that day comes, it will not be because I declared myself anything today. It will be because people like these—" she jerked her chin toward the square, toward the law tablets, toward the scars "—chose it."
Silence lay heavy in the open gate.
At last, Sun swallowed. "Then you refuse the Emperor's writ," he said. "You choose Xia's protection instead of Qi's claim."
"I choose Yong'an," she said. "If Qi wishes to speak with us as equals when it remembers how, we will listen. Until then, if you try to march your thin line of hungry men between us and the wolves we've just taught to sit, both sides will eat you first."
Feiyan smiled, all teeth. "She's not wrong."
Something like relief flickered in Sun's eyes, quickly smothered. "I cannot march against Xia with ten men," he said hoarsely. "I cannot storm your walls either."
"Then take your men east," Ziyan said. "There are villages there whose roofs still smoke. Bring them here. Tell them Yong'an will not ask whose tax book claimed them last. Tell them we have law and bread and far too much work."
He stared at her a long moment.
"What do I tell the Regent?" he asked.
"That you found a city he threw away," she said. "And that next time he wants to use my name to cover his ash, he should look north and remember who kept the wolves busy while he counted his own coins."
For a second, she thought he might draw his sword and make everything simple and bloody.
Instead, General Sun bowed. Not to her. To the city behind her.
"I will bring people," he said. "From the burned villages. From the roads. They will curse you for taking the wolves' grain. They will thank you for taking theirs. I… will see which curse is heavier."
He wheeled his horse. His men turned with him, thin line bending away from the gate, away from Xia's banners, toward the scarred east.
The gate closed.
Feiyan exhaled. "That," she said, "felt like the last time."
"The last what?" Ziyan asked.
She met Ziyan's eyes. "The last time you asked Qi for permission to be what you already are."
Ziyan looked up at the city's inner face. The patched stones. The soot. The tablets. The people moving in the square—arguing, laughing, hauling.
"Good," she said, soft but clear. "I'm tired of asking."
Li Qiang's hand brushed her shoulder. "Then we build," he said.
"And we watch," Feiyan added. "Xia will not stay content with treaties forever. Zhang will not stay content with ash. They will both come, in different days. When they do, we will not be this small."
Ziyan slipped her bandaged hand inside her cloak, fingers finding the cool jade ring, the warm sparrow hairpin, the scratch of Xu Min's cloth.
"A kingdom," she murmured, tasting the word. "Not stolen. Not given. Built."
Yong'an's bells rang the day-watch hour. On the distant hill, Ren Kanyu watched Qi's tattered banner turn away and marked a new line in his ledger.
The river ran between them all, indifferent as ever. But it carried, in its slow dark body, the echo of something that had not been on any map before:
A city that belonged first to itself.