We took the ridge by the standing stones—the ones shepherd boys use as markers and men with more learning call the spines of old gods. Ditches had already been cut where the wind trips; Sun's men had salted them in their private way. Sling posts waited with their cords coiled like snakes taught to behave. Priests stood with their hands down. I had reminded them that altitude offends gods more than silence.
Across the low ground the South arranged itself in beauty. Even their spears kept a poet's spacing. The white silk of the mourning standard did not shiver when the mist touched it. Under it a palanquin stood as if grown from marsh. Around it, lines rolled back like surf reconsidering the shore. A boy in their drumline wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist; the smear he left was the color of old lacquer.
"Word from the northern pass," a runner panted up, hair slicked flat with the sweat of men who have already run out of sweat. "Zhou lit three beacons and then snuffed them. They wait to see who learns the right grammar first."
"Good," I said. "Let them learn."
"Hold," Father's voice came down the ridge. He had reached us without my noticing, wrapped in the sound of men keeping discipline because they needed something to keep. He wore his crest now. Symbols make other men honest if they cannot make symbols honest. "We do not strike first."
"Understood," I said, and the word felt like a cup I had promised to keep empty.
The southern hum resolved itself into drums, then into one drum, then into something the drum wished it could be. The palanquin's curtain did not move. Men lifted their standards, not because of a signal, but because their hands had decided the moment required posture.
Shen Yue slid her hand nearer her hilt. She did not touch it. She has always known the exact length of her reach. General Sun raised two fingers; the flag at the rear turned the color that means prepare to pretend to retreat. He is a man who keeps two exits where others keep one.
The silence under my ribs unrolled. The moat back in Ling An leaned; I felt it without seeing. Lamps along the eaves bowed to a courtyard where I was not. The culverts beneath the ridge breathed once, long, like animals preparing to stand.
"Do not," Shen Yue said, very quietly.
"I will keep the roof," I said.
"And if the roof keeps you?" she asked.
"Then it remembers my weight," I said.
The South lifted their mourning silk. You could hear the cloth think. A crier's voice carried across the wet air, tight and perfect:
"In the name of the Son of Heaven made law, we call the North to kneel. Lay down false badges. Release the false Lord of War. Bring forth the usurper, Wu An. Heaven's mercy is offered now. Heaven's correction will follow."
Correction. A word chosen by men who have discovered they cannot say sword without tasting blood.
"Do we answer?" General Sun asked.
"We do," I said.
I raised my hand. Not high. A little below the height of a man's throat. The horns at our rear lifted to their mouths. Father's breath gathered in objection.
Our horns answered—but the sound did not come from brass. It came from below, from the river's spine, from the black brick that holds its patience, from the cisterns that have learned to count. A tone rose under our boots, deep enough to make teeth feel loose. Horses shifted their weight and remembered they once had ancestors who feared the sea.
Shen Yue's voice cut clean as a whetstone. "That is not a horn," she whispered. "It is something waking."
Across the low ground, the white silk inclined—as if to bow to a guest older than banners. The palanquin's curtain opened the width of a coin. No face. A shape around which light avoided being precise. The crier tried to speak again and choked on air that had decided to forget him.
I did not speak to them. I spoke to the ground and to the stone that keeps the ground from forgetting. My voice did not rise. It filled the space permitted it.
"Return."
The word moved through the ditch, into the salted seams, along the cut reed-lines where men had bled quietly the day before. The marsh rippled as if a boat had passed where no boat could. The southern lines hesitated the width of a breath—the hardest distance in war.
"Hold," Father said for the last time. He meant it.
"I am," I said, and let my hand fall.
Drums found their answer. The first slings loosed in a whisper. Fire took the ditch like a thought that had been waiting for a mouth. The south advanced and sang in the voice of one drum and many throats. We stood in a place where bells could not reach and taught the day to count.
Behind us, Ling An leaned. Before us, the river remembered a word and spoke it, again and again, until banks forgot their names.