Bai'an's winter fog arrived on soft feet and refused to leave.
It blurred the palace eaves, swallowed half the river, and made the lamps in the inner court look like floating coins. Ren Kanyu came in out of it with his cloak stiff with damp and two reports in his sleeve that did not match.
One was on cheap Qi paper, copied by a spy who had learned Ji Lu's habits too well: On the Correction of Misled Subjects, Regent Zhang's decree with the grain bribes scratched out and the whip written in.
The other was silk, folded small, bearing a sparrow painted in a hurry.
He unrolled the silk first.
Shuye's rough hand sloped across it:
Haojin hangs your words. Du bent. We cut tablets small; now your law lives under bowls as well as on beams. If this makes us Road City, then we stand. Don't forget we are the first door Zhang will try to kick.
Underneath, smaller:
He punished wood instead of people. Split a tile and named his own men ringleaders. The sparrow above the wall has a chipped beak now. It seems to suit it.
Ren read it twice, then set it beside Zhang's decree on his desk.
On one, the Regent demanded "visible symbols of sedition" be removed and "ringleaders publicly corrected." On the other, a tavern in Haojin laughed about a broken plank and a captain who had decided a nail counted as obedience.
"Interesting," Ren murmured to no one.
His clerk looked up from the corner. "General?"
"Qi is arguing with itself," Ren said. "We should listen."
He rolled both reports into one bundle and headed for the inner court.
The Emperor had chosen the outer gallery that morning, despite the fog. He stood under the dripping pines with his hands in his sleeves, watching a pair of cranes picking impatience out of the frozen pond.
"You smell of river," he said as Ren approached.
"Of Qi's river," Ren said, bowing. "Their edicts are muddier than ours."
He offered the bundle.
The Emperor took Zhang's decree first. He read it with his mouth tightening, then let out a soft breath that could have been a laugh or a curse.
"Mercy revoked," he said. "Poor men made too clever use of it. He is angry at being tricked."
"He offers only punishment now," Ren said. "Anyone who still hangs the sparrow is enemy."
"And anyone who tore it down to earn his grain," the Emperor said, "now learns grain was a loan, not a gift."
He set the decree aside and picked up the silk.
As he read Shuye's account, something almost like mirth crept into the lines around his eyes.
"Your Captain Du split a piece of wood," he said, "and called it 'visible symbol'."
"He did," Ren said.
"He also named his own men ringleaders," the Emperor observed. "Not the ones Zhang had in mind."
"He began his correction at home," Ren agreed.
The Emperor let the silk drift between his fingers.
"So," he said, "Zhang gives an order that eats its way across his maps. Some captains obey it like a knife. Others obey it like men trying not to drown their own sons. Meanwhile, this… Road City… writes back and says: we will send our scant protection first to those who defy. They admit their limits. He does not."
Ren inclined his head. "That is the shape of it, Your Majesty."
The Emperor turned to look east, where Qi lay crouched behind its own fog.
"Is this good for us?" he asked. "A Qi that wastes its strength chasing tiles and peasants, while you watch?"
Ren did not answer immediately. The cranes stabbed at something invisible in the water.
"At first glance, yes," he said at last. "A neighbour busy burning its own skirts has little appetite for crossing the river. But chaos spills. Refugees do not respect borders, nor do ideas. If Zhang makes every sparrow-marked hall an enemy, some of those enemies will flee toward us. With their law, and with their grudges."
The Emperor's gaze sharpened. "You fear their law more than their grudges?"
"I have seen bandits," Ren said. "I know how to break them. This is different. These people are learning to argue with soldiers without reaching for spears. To expect records. To shout 'witness' as if the word itself had spine. That kind of thinking, once learned, does not stop at Qi's border stones."
"Does that trouble you?" the Emperor asked, not unkindly.
Ren thought of Reed Mouth, of Aunt Cao tapping a sparrow tile with flour-sticky fingers.
"It troubles me," he said slowly, "less than the hunger that made such law necessary."
The Emperor smiled faintly. "You grow bolder," he said.
"I grow older," Ren replied. "Age makes men tired of watching the same mistakes painted in new colors."
A drip slid from the pine, hitting the stone with a small, exact sound.
"The last time we spoke of Yong'an," the Emperor said, "you called them 'a useful irritant.' Do you still think they are more trouble to Qi than to Xia?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," Ren said. "For now. Zhang calls them bandits. They call themselves City. In the middle, fields still get planted. Markets still haggle. If we stay our hand, their Road keeps our border villages from boiling over while Qi beats its own pots."
The Emperor studied him.
"You would have me continue to refuse Zhang's invitations," he said. "Let him bruise himself against these tiles, while we watch from the bank."
"Yes," Ren said. "And I would add this: that when his whip lands too near our side, we step between without calling it alliance. If a village like Reed Mouth hangs the sparrow and obeys your taxes as well as theirs, I see no reason to burn it because a man in Qi screams 'sedition.'"
"You would shelter Road halls under our peace," the Emperor said. "Quietly."
"Where it serves us," Ren agreed. "Not for their sake. For ours. A village that expects witness makes fewer excuses to riot. A captain who splits wood instead of skulls keeps his garrison useful. Let Qi's anger make cracks we can pour calm into."
The Emperor turned the silk over, tracing the sparrow with one finger.
"And if this Road City grows from irritant to rival?" he asked. "If one day they decide that governments built on ash and thrones are no longer sufficient furniture?"
Ren thought of Ziyan on a river ridge, saying we claim people, not land.
"Then we will have had time to decide how much of what they teach our peasants we can afford to un-teach," he said. "And whether it is wise to try."