Morning came without warmth.
The air in Nanyang reeked of spoiled grain and damp smoke. I stood at the edge of the inner courtyard, overlooking the market square where fire-blackened stalls still smoldered, and crimson footprints stained the cobblestones like ghosts refusing to fade.
The night before, there had been screams — not of war, but of neighbors turning on one another. Rioters surged through the outer districts, some crying for justice, others for blood. Three dead officials. A grain warehouse torched. A family strung up from their rafters, accused of hoarding.
All this after the murders. The poisonings. The grain rot that spread like plague across our dwindling reserves.
Sabotage.
"Wu Kang," Liao Yun whispered beside me, unrolling the scroll he'd marked in the dim hours before dawn. "These agents didn't come from the crowd. They were planted in advance. Some embedded in merchant houses, others posing as refugees."
He tapped three names. All connected. All gone now, vanished in the riot's wake — their usefulness spent.
"They orchestrated the unrest," Shen Yue said, her voice tight. She stood with her arms crossed, gaze burning through the fog. "They weren't just stirring the mob — they were directing it. Watching how we'd react."
Han Qing looked up from the street where Black Tiger scouts sifted through ash and shattered wood. "This wasn't a test," he muttered. "It was a message."
It was working.
For three days, I had worked beside masons and villagers, rebuilding roads, rationing grain, overseeing repairs to the aqueduct. We'd started with nothing. Now we had something — a flicker of structure, a sliver of loyalty. But one night of chaos, and that trust cracked again like old stone under frost.
Still, we did not bend.
I sent Liao Yun into the archives and markets to trace old associations. Shen Yue interrogated surviving guards and merchants — not the ones shouting in the streets, but the ones who said nothing, who watched too quietly.
And by dusk, we had names.
Real ones.
Not from confessions. Not from pleading peasants. But from documents. From trade logs and coded messages, from false ledgers and strange supply chains, all marked by a cipher used by one of Wu Kang's former lieutenants.
The instigators had hidden within civic life like maggots in fruit.
The next morning, we gathered them — quietly.
Some tried to run. One set fire to his own shop, screaming curses at the Black Tigers until his lungs filled with soot. But we caught them all. Six men. Two women. All Liàng subjects. All sworn by coin and vengeance to Wu Kang's cause.
I watched their executions in silence.
There were no cheers. No mourning either. Just the thud of heads hitting earth, and the soft sigh of a city that could breathe — if only for a moment.
Then, two days before the deadline…
Silver arrived.
Wagons of it. Grain sacks. Tools. Fresh iron. Clean cloth. A half-dozen carts guarded by palace troops under no known banner.
"They bore no crest," Liao Yun said, watching them unload. "But their route was imperial. No one touches a path sealed with the Lord Protector's seal."
"Not his doing," I said quietly.
He gave a short nod. "Wu Jin."
There was no note. No rider announcing the favor had been called in. But I knew. Just as he predicted, I had accepted his offer three nights prior.
He had sent exactly what we needed — only after the riots had wrung us dry, after I had burned what little goodwill remained to keep order. And he had done so without boasting, without claiming credit.
The best favors are the ones that make you kneel without anyone seeing you on your knees.
Liao Yun said nothing more. He knew the price would come. They all did.
But Nanyang was rising again. Slowly. Painfully.
I met with the stonecutters that afternoon. We marked new zones for housing. An artisan with only one hand offered to lead a crew to restore the collapsed northern bridge. A child handed me a sketch of the old gate as it once stood — not as it was now, charred and broken.
That night, the city fell quiet for the first time in weeks. The stars blinked through the mist. Somewhere, a lute played, off-key but earnest.
And then Wu Jin came.
He appeared just as the hour lamps began to fade — not announced, not accompanied by any guards. Just standing outside my chamber's courtyard, arms folded, face unreadable.
"You've made progress," he said, gaze drifting to the sound of hammering in the distance. "Some might call it a miracle."
"Some might call it sabotage delayed."
He smiled faintly. "Sabotage is just strategy with a different scent."
I didn't rise. I didn't offer tea.
He came anyway, stepping over the threshold like a guest in his own estate. His eyes swept the room, then fixed on me.
"I told you the price would come."
I nodded. "Say it."
"There is a peace delegation being arranged," he said. "To the Southern Kingdom. You will lead it."
I stood. Slowly. "You want me to be a peace envoy?"
"They requested someone with… credibility. Iron and blood behind the words."
"And the prisoner?"
"A noble of theirs. Condemned, they say, but valuable to us. You'll secure him. Quietly. During the ceremonies."
I said nothing. My mind already spinning through the complications, the risks, the traps.
"You have five days," Wu Jin said. "To prepare. Or refuse — though I doubt you will."
I met his eyes. "And if I do?"
"Then Nanyang's grain rots again. Its forges cool. And I call in your debt another way — likely with blood."
A beat.
Then he turned, already fading into the shadows beyond the door.
Before he vanished, he said softly, "Be careful, brother. The Southern Kingdom burns with velvet smiles. But some of those smiles have already fed on darker things than you."
And then he was gone.
I stood there long after he left.
Because I knew this wasn't a mission. It was a message.
Not just to me, but to everyone watching from the palace, from the Southern Kingdom, from whatever dark corners still waited beneath our thrones and temples.
The creature inside me stirred.
And I whispered, "Five days."
Just enough time to sharpen the knife