The banquet hall of Jīn Lóng was a masterpiece of control — every petal placed, every silk thread embroidered with ghosts. Red lanterns floated in still air, casting slow shadows across pale walls carved with phoenixes devouring serpents. Beneath them, courtiers and nobles gathered in quiet clusters, speaking low and laughing lower. But their eyes never left me.
I moved through them like a drop of oil in wine.
At the end of the hall sat Princess Lianhua, cloaked not in military garb, but in silver and pearl. Her hair was pinned with a single jade phoenix, and her gaze shimmered with amusement too calm to be kind.
"Brother," she said as I approached, her voice clear as porcelain. "The North sends its most diligent shadows."
"Only the ones that survive," I replied, and bowed low. "It's been too long, Your Highness."
She gestured lightly. "Too long for peace. Too short for forgetting."
I took my place across from her, flanked by my false ministers and the Southern delegates she'd chosen — old men with sharp tongues and young wives, ministers with folded fans and ink-stained hands. One or two generals watched in silence, arms thick with jade bangles. They did not greet me.
That was fine. I wasn't here for greetings.
Wine was poured. Dishes appeared. None of it tasted like food. Every grain was measured, every gesture rehearsed.
"I trust your ride from Nanyang was smooth?" Lianhua asked as she sipped her plum wine.
"The roads were dry," I said. "Though some of the grain shipments disappeared along the way. Curious, that."
Her smile deepened. "How tragic. Perhaps the South's generosity was misunderstood."
"I assure you," I said, voice calm, "I never misunderstand generosity."
"Good." She leaned forward. "Because peace, my dear brother, is not built on kindness. It is built on memory."
She gestured around her — to the polished floor, the gold-trimmed walls, the silence behind the laughter. "This city remembers war. It remembers the day you marched through our forests and left bones beneath plum trees."
"So does the North," I said. "It remembers the smoke that rose from our shrines. And the sound Southern spears made against frozen walls."
Her gaze narrowed slightly — not in anger, but calculation.
The music continued. Somewhere behind the curtains, dancers moved like leaves caught in windless water. Perfume laced with incense masked the air.
Lianhua spoke again, this time quieter. "Why did the Lord Protector send you, not Wu Kang?"
"Because I build," I said. "Wu Kang only burns."
Her eyes flickered. "So does incense, and yet it perfumes the court."
"And rots the lungs if left too long."
She laughed softly, the kind of laugh used to break porcelain. "Still sharp. I worried the civil robes had dulled you."
"They've only made me more dangerous."
At that, she set down her cup. "Then let's speak plainly. You're not just here to eat rice and sign scrolls. You're here to test us. And I'm here to test you."
"I assumed as much."
"Then let us begin."
She waved a fan once, and a servant emerged with a lacquered scroll. It bore the Southern Kingdom's terms for the peace — symbolic tributes, trade routes reopened, joint patrols along the border. Nothing unexpected.
Until the final clause.
A ceremonial culling. Ten prisoners executed as a show of good faith — five from the North, five from the South. War criminals, they claimed.
I recognized one name.
The name on Wu Jin's scroll.
Lianhua met my eyes without blinking. "Surely the North has no love for traitors. Let us bury the past — with the bodies that earned it."
A silence bloomed between us, heavy and slow.
Then I smiled.
"A fair proposal," I said. "But I'd like to inspect the prisoners myself. A Northern envoy must ensure the crimes merit the sentence."
Lianhua tilted her head. "Of course. We value justice. Even for the condemned."
Behind her words was another game. She wanted me to ask. She wanted to watch me flinch. So I didn't.
I leaned forward. "And in return, I propose a gesture of goodwill. Let the executions be delayed until the final day. Let both nations feast and honor the living before mourning the dead."
She tapped her fan once against the table. "An odd request, from a man so feared for swift justice."
"Mercy is most potent when unexpected."
"Indeed." She leaned back, eyes narrowing. "You wish time to move your pieces."
"And you wish time to see where mine stand."
She chuckled. "Then let's allow the board to settle."
The rest of the banquet was performance — music, poems, actors in masks reenacting tales of divine wars that never happened. But no one watched the stage. They watched us.
By the second hour, I excused myself. Liao Yun waited outside beneath a garden lantern.
"She showed her hand," I said quietly.
"She always does," he replied. "But the blade is hidden in the sleeve."
"I need access to the dungeon within two nights."
"I've already found the scribe," he said. "Bribes have been accepted. He'll fake the records once we're in. But the guards—"
"Handle them quietly," I said. "I won't risk blood before the treaty."
"And the prisoner?"
I looked out over the garden wall. Beyond it, the palace loomed — too white, too perfect, like a corpse with powdered skin.
"If he's still alive," I murmured, "he's waiting. And he'll know this is his only chance."
Liao Yun hesitated. "And if it's a trap?"
"Then we spring it on our terms."
Back in my quarters, I found a sealed envelope on the floor. No crest. No wax.
Inside, a single slip of paper, written in Southern ink.
The dead speak before they die. Listen carefully.
No signature. No scent. But the paper was still warm.
I burned it at once.
Outside, the wind stirred the curtains — and something behind the silk walls whispered, not in words, but in hunger.
It didn't want peace.
It wanted something broken. Something freed.
I shut the window.
The next two days would decide more than a city.
They would decide whether I still ruled the fate of Nanyang — or whether I had merely been given rope, and was now expected to hang.