In Yong'an, the latest pigeon dropped its message on Ren the scribe's unwashed hair.
He swore, the bird swore louder, and between them they managed to get the silk untied without bloodshed.
Ziyan read Ren Kanyu's report under the arch where they had once nailed their first tablet.
"Reed Mouth," she said, tasting the foreign name. "Our little tiles have long legs."
"They've stolen our rules," Wei said, sounding weirdly offended.
"Let them," Lin Chang snorted. "We sent them to be stolen. If we wanted to keep them, we'd have carved them on the inside of our skulls."
Feiyan, perched on the wall like a second sparrow, nodded toward the last line.
"'Prevents fevers,'" she read. "Ren writes pretty metaphors when he's worried."
"He's telling his Emperor," Ziyan said, "that smashing our law will cost more grain than leaving it alone."
"And telling you," Feiyan added, "that he's prepared to drag his feet if someone orders him to smash."
Han tapped the silk. "Between Zhang's teeth and Xia's soft paws, we're becoming very popular," he said dryly. "Everyone wants us to be useful. No one wants us to be loud."
Zhao lounged against the gate, fox-fur collar slightly damp. "We are useful," he said. "Bandits behave better in my lands if they think Yong'an's Riders might show up and ask them to sign something. They hate paperwork worse than they hate spears."
"We are not your hired scribes," the midwife snapped. "We don't ride around fixing all the stupidity you little lords let grow."
"Not all," Zhao conceded cheerfully. "Just the bits that might spill over into your square."
Ren was already kneeling at his tray, brush hovering over fresh clay. "We should add Reed Mouth to the map," he said. "Haojin. Yong'an. Reed Mouth. That's three."
"Three gates," Han murmured. "You like your threes."
"They won't stay gates forever," Feiyan said. "Soon you'll have to decide if they're outposts of a city or bones of something larger."
Ziyan's thumb pressed the jade ring hard enough to leave a crescent in her skin.
She thought of Reed Mouth's unknown faces, arguing under a sparrow. Of Haojin's cut tiles tucked under bowls. Of Yong'an's square, where law and stubbornness had outgrown their original walls.
"They call us disease," she said. "They call us vaccination. They call us proto-kingdom. None of those are names we chose."
Ren glanced up. "Then choose one," he said. "Before someone else chisels one into our stones."
"Not today," she started to say, reflex.
The wind, coming over the wall from the south, smelled of wet earth and something sharper. Smoke. Not from Yong'an. From farther. From some town she had not yet visited and did not yet know.
She closed her mouth.
Feiyan's eyes tracked southeast. "Zhang's ash," she said. "He's burning something to make a point."
"You don't know that," Wei said.
"I know the taste," she replied. "Ye Cheng taught it to me."
A runner barrelled into the square, lungs arguing with his legs.
"From the east road," he gasped. "Refugees. Two dozen carts. More on foot. They say the Ash Hall named their town 'unclean.' They say—"
He swallowed, throat dry.
"They say Zhang called them 'Road's nest' and set fire to their outer wards to prove he does not favor some traitors over others."
Silence fell like a dropped pot.
"Name," Ziyan said, already moving.
The runner blinked. "What?"
"The town," she said. "Say its name."
"Stone Gate," he panted. "Two days east. They held for Qi three years. Fed soldiers. Paid taxes. Someone said they had a sparrow mark on their market wall and refused a patrol a second helping of grain. Zhang sent a decree. Said if they liked Road law so much, they could live in Road ash."
Wei swore. Han's face went flat. Zhao's lightness dropped like a mask from his features.
Feiyan's expression did not change. Only the fingers on her knife's hilt tightened until the knuckles were white.
Ziyan stood in the middle of the square and felt something old and brittle in her chest finally snap.
"He uses our name to kill them," she said. "Even when they are barely ours."
"Which is," Feiyan said softly, "why you can't stay 'barely' anymore."
Ren's brush hovered over the clay, waiting.
"You said 'not today'," Wei murmured. "But the days keep choosing themselves."
Children peered from behind the pillars, eyes huge. People stepped closer, the circle around Ziyan tightening without anyone quite deciding to move.
She looked at them: the faces this city had given her. The law they had carved together. The road that had grown under their feet when they were busy surviving.
Stone Gate, burning, did not know Yong'an's face. It only knew that a man far away had decided their lives were a message.
"If Zhang will call any place with our sparrow a nest," Ziyan said, voice low and dangerous, "then we owe those places more than a pigeon and a tablet."
"We owe them… what, exactly?" Han asked. There was no mockery in it. Only a soldier's need for shape.
"Name," Feiyan said. "Shield. Teeth."
"Responsibility," Ren added softly.
Ziyan exhaled.
"We have law," she said. "We have riders. We have outposts that swear by our tablets even if they don't know our faces. We act as if we are a kingdom, and then flinch from the word because we remember too well what Qi did to its own."
She looked at the sparrow carved above the gate. It looked back without apology.
"Fine," she said. "If Zhang needs a name for his maps, we will give him one that isn't his."
Ren's brush finally touched clay, ready.
"We will not call ourselves 'kingdom,'" Ziyan said. "Not yet. Heaven has had too many kingdoms. Let the thrones argue over which sky belongs to them."
"What then?" Wei asked.
"City," she said. "Road City. Under-Heaven City. A place that claims people, not land. Any hall that carries our tablets and answers our calls is part of it, whether Qi's dragon or Xia's wolf sits on their gate. We will write it. We will sign it. We will send it by every pigeon and jar we own."
"An oath," Feiyan said. "One that runs sideways through their borders."
"An oath," Ziyan agreed. "If you hang our sparrow, you are under our law. If you call for help, we answer if we can. If we cannot, we send word and shame. Anyone who burns you in our name will learn what it means to make ash out of our people."
The midwife thumped her staff once. "Good," she said. "I'm tired of dying in other people's footnotes."